Craig Burton

I had a great time at the VRM and IIW conferences in the last week. The sessions are not only informative but intense. I met a lot of new people especially–no kidding–some europeans.

There were a few very funny moments that I thought I would share. On the first night I was there, Doc took me to the hotel where the folks from the UK were staying. I noticed one of the guys had a moleskin notebook. I showed him my moleskin sketch book and hinted we could be moleskin mates forever.

In typical british fashion, he pointed out that his moleskin was smaller and “had lines.” Hey to me, a moleskin is a moleskin. Typical Yank. I assured him that I had a smaller one with lines back in the hotel.

The next day, I showed him my lined moleskin and–once again like a typical yank–I tossed it to him from across the table.

Now I know better. I just didn’t think. People from the UK do not “toss” things across the room to each other. But my new friend William has a great sense of humor. But very British for sure.

Here was his response as he caught the notebook:

Ohhh, and its aerodynamic as well.

It was a true Monty Pythonic moment. He could have said:

OMG, a Yank tossed me a moleskin.

But no, just a quick slap up side the head with the aerodynamic remark. It was so subtle it didn’t even hit me till two days later.

I also met a brilliant young programmer from Austria, Markus. I couldn’t help it, on ocassion I would tease Markus and talk to him in my best Arnold imitation voice. He didn’t laugh or respond to my teasing all that well. So I cooled the Arnold remarks. But the best is yet to come. I was just headed to the airport and leaving the conference room when he looked at me without even cracking a smile and said:

I’ll be back.

Now that was funny.

Action Cards change everything; Greasemonkey is a Firefox only hack.

Paul Madsen blogged about his rejection of how the recently announced Action Cards—specifically the ChoixVert card—changes anything. He further posits that Greasemonkey can do everything a selector-based Action Card can do for browser augmentation.

Since I wrote the white paper he refers to, and the ruleset for the ChoixVert card, it is appropriate that I respond.

My position is that greasemonkey is a Firefox specific hack that is a fun toy and is no more than a harbinger to the real thing. Selector-based Action Cards are the real thing and do—in fact as claimed—change everything.

Paul states that “client-side personalization of search results is undeniably cool” but that this coolness was changed a while ago with greasemonkey. If you have read the whitepaper, you will be able to read between the lines that I anticipated this reaction from those who were too occupied to dig and understand the facts. Sure enough, here we have a blog post making ignorant claims.

Paul then jumps to the ChoixVert whitepaper and lists why I say the selector-based web augmentation is way better than any others. When I referred to “many scripting languages and web augmentation tools” I didn’t spell out greasemonkey, but that was one of the specific browser augmentation tools I was talking about.

In the whitepaper, I list the following reasons why selector-based augmentation is superior to client-side scripting:

1. KNS is selector driven
2. KNS is accessible. (human readable)
3. Secure glue to accessible data to any service or application.

In his blog post, Paul addresses two of the points found in the white paper. The case he makes is wobbly and uninformed, but here are his points.

Paul’s Claim

Being selector driven is at a disadvantage, as the user cannot customize the Information Card.

My Response

Cardholder access to the ruleset would reflect poor design. It isn’t done for a reason. Access by anyone to any card’s ruleset is fraught with huge danger. Any hacker could completely destroy the integrity of your card for whatever reason.

The way Kynetx KNS is set up, any person can generate their own card and write their own rule set. The ruleset and card then become signed to each other. You can’t have a card from one ruleset and be running another (spoofing or phishing). I much prefer this approach than letting anyone edit the ruleset.

Of course this is one of the reasons greasemonkey is so dangerous, anyone can hack a greasemonkey script and the script user would be none the wiser. This is why greasemonkey is a hack. Smart people came up with a quick and dirty way to augment the browser. Very cool. Very hackable. If hacked, you’re screwed, there is no viable remedy but to start over.

Here is the bottom line difference. With Action Cards, smart people architected a well thought out, scalable, experienced, sustainable, manageable, secure method of augmenting the browser and the operating system. Very, very cool. Very, very tough to hack. If it is hacked, there is a manageable remedy.

Paul’s Claim

Paul presents the cliché “His mother is reassured that rulesets are readable.”

My Response

While I discourage the use of clichés, it is kind of funny; but irrelevant. Obviously I wasn’t referring to Paul’s mother or mine when I stated that KNS is accessible because it is human readable. What I meant by that is that almost anyone (not your mother) could look at a ruleset and get an idea of what it is doing. In other words, creating rulesets is not a prohibitive activity. I could have been clearer on the issue; I don’t think I needed to explicitly exclude his mother.

My point was, a person capable of writing a greasemonkey script could write an action card ruleset.

Paul doesn’t address the third point. He does so for good reason. Greasmonkey has no capability, or possibility of being the data glue for any service or application. It is a hack that can use web-based data for browser augmentation on Firefox. Cool, but not earthshaking or does it change much.

Let me add a few points to each claim that I made in the whitepaper.

To refresh, I stated that web augmentation based on KNS is in a class of its own. And that other web augmentation tools (specifically Greasemonkey) don’t hold a candle to the KNS implementation. Here is more on each of the three reasons stated.

Selector Driven KNS

KNS is selector driven—obviously, greasemonkey is not. Here are the reasons why a selector-driven augmentation tool makes greasemonkey look like child’s play:

1. Security—there is no question that the Azigo/Kynetx architecture leaves a bigger security opening than if the information card was a traditional personal or managed card. This is because Kynetx uses an Azigo provided API to the selector to query which card to assign a specific ruleset. This is why it is called an “Action Card.” However, every information card—even an action card—is digitally signed. Thus an action card can’t be spoofed or phished. If a mal action card is discovered, it can be banned or stopped at the server so it will not work anymore, anywhere.
2. Cross-browser –greasemonkey is a Firefox only thing. For all of us avid Firefox users that works. For much of the planet, it doesn’t. You can get a selector for almost any operating system/browser combination. Soon, you will be able to for any combination. In the future I expect selector access to be built in to all browsers.
3. Cross-platform—binding data to a browser experience is one thing. Information cards can be used for authentication and data relationship management for applications and cloud-based applications. No greasemonkey is this space.
4. Cloud-based—have the ruleset exist and run in the cloud brings lots of advantages. It makes it much more manageable and scalable. It also provides a much greater level of control. For example, if there is a bug in ruleset, you simply change it in the cloud and every cardholder automatically benefits from the fix. Nothing needs to change on the client, no reinstallation, just clear sailing.
5. Auditing and Analytics—KNS is way cooler than greasemonkey as it lets the ruleset developer access analytics and auditing for the ruleset. As any good SEO person would know, good records of what is happening isn’t an option if you want to be on top your game. Greasemonkey has no such notion. This point alone makes greasemonkey look like the toy that it is.

Accessible Technology

Simple User Interface—while it isn’t likely that my mother will write a rule, she—or my father—can install an information card. I doubt that finding and installing a greasemonkey script is anything she will ever do.

Data Glue

This is the one point I made the Paul didn’t bring up. I can only speculate as to why. But let me say this:

Greasemonkey can’t be browser and platform independent glue for any application or service. KNS does this so elegantly and specifically. We haven’t seen the tip of the iceberg yet.

Summary

Web augmentation is an incredible phenomenon that we are just beginning to understand and use. There is a spectrum of tools available to accomplish various levels of augmentation. I only talk about two of those here. Greasemonkey and Action Cards.

I stand by my position that Action Card web augmentation changes everything. And that greasemonkey—at its most lofty view—is a mere harbinger of the real thing. Greasemonkey lets you do basic web augmentation with lots of potential problems and drawbacks.

Action Cards—the combination of the selector-based information card, KNS, and cloud-based data is elegant, well thought out, and well architected capable of making long lasting significant changes to the Internet.

Don’t get me wrong about greasemonkey though. I love greasemonkey. I use it every day. But I love it for what it is. I don’t expect it to be something other than that. To pretend that it goes beyond its design is a disservice and uninformed.

Greasemonkey is a hack for changing Firefox browsing and chrome. An easy fun hack. But a hack nonetheless.

Look for Action Cards to change everything and greasemonkey to be a fun toy script for hackers.

There is a lot to talk about. But to get started, let me point you to our new project Project ChoixVert.

The whole history behind this is fascinating. Take a look at the youtube video.

I will post the rest over the next few days.

I was watching CNN this morning. Perhaps that was the mistake. John King was interviewing Ex-vice president Dick Cheney. John King asked a loaded question: “Do you believe that President Obama’s policies put the United States in jeopardy of being attacked by terrorists?”

Cheney responded: “Yes I do. The press and people do not understand that we won the war in Iraq.”

All my life I have worked hard to stay out of politics, but this guy gives one reason to change.

Let me see here, I seem to recall Mr. Cheney telling us about the incredible dangers of Weapons Of Mass Destruction that were be amassed in Iraq.

Trillions of dollars and thousands of lives wasted in a lie.

I am not sure why I don’t trust him. Somehow I think he has an agenda that doesn’t match mine.

#followfriday The Twitter-based Endorsement System—not just for Fridays anymore

Micah Baldwin started a brilliant phenomena known as Follow Fridays. Follow Fridays has become the first Twitter-based endorsement system. Here is the premise, every Friday, endorse another tweetist  by tweeting the hash “#followfriday” followed by tweetist reply tag. So the tweet “#followfriday @micah” results in the tweetist making an endorsement of @micah.

This is a good idea. As Scott Lemon recalls, Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) of Forrest research twittered something like “It would be interesting to see who the most recommended people are on #followfriday.” Another good idea. My good friend Scott Lemon (@humancell) jumped on the idea and proceeded to pump out the code over the weekend to do just that. Thus http://topfollowfriday.com was born. Topfollowfriday.com is a statistics engine that gathers stats on #followfriday. Sweet little implementation Scott!

Scott called me up on Skype to tell me about his stat engine. We proceeded to have a little brainstorm about how to extend the #followfriday syntax. Without putting too much pressure on Scott to deliver, I will give you a hint. Drummond Reed (@drummondreed) was involved.

I love how this stuff happens.

So I will say it. You read it here first. Wouldn’t it be cool if besides giving an endorsement, you could give some “context” to the endorsement. I mean context like actually saying what the you are endorsing the person for in a format that can be searched and indexed? Hey, I know, let’s call it microtagging.

That’s it, a microtag-based endorsement system with classifications and ratings using standard syntax. Hmmmm. Now that’s a good idea.

Can it be abused? Probably. Good questions. I put this on my wiki, go make comments and suggestions. You can also make comments here of course.

The Advent of Microtagging

Wouldn’t be cool if instead of creating a syntax out of the blue for microtagging, we used an existing, vetted, well thought out syntax? Say maybe XRI?  Thank you Drummond.

Hey, I’m not saying this has all happened yet. But what fun to think about and watch the beginnings.

I have updated the blog to support Disqus comments. You no longer have to subscribe to leave a comment.

Thanks for doing all my work for me Jesse.

Kynetx Inc. has a new white paper out today. The Advent of Next Generation Browsing. I love these guys. This vision is brilliant. This is the first writings I have seen that actually show the real value of Infocards. Single-sign on is interesting, structured browsing is mind-blowing. Kim Cameron—my bestest friend—pay attention to this.

Steve, Phil, you have nailed this vision. Congratulations.

cb

It all started from a twitter converstation. (Like so many things these days)

Rob Paterson posted a note that after yesterday’s google fiasco, that he is worried about his blog. He tweeted to see if anyone knew a good service for backing up his blog. He then went on to say that he uses typepad for his main blog and that he really likes typepad.

I  did some quick research, typepad has some fundamental problems. Here are some experts of the typepad support page:

Exporting your weblog content does not backup any of the templates associated with your account or files inserted into your posts. There is not a way to backup Basic templates currently, but users with Advanced Templates may want to copy and paste their existing templates into new text files.

Backing Up Your TypeLists

As with posts, you can also export your TypeList content to an OPML file. You are able to export notes from Links, People, Albums and Books TypeLists. The exception in this case is Notes TypeLists. There is not a way to export your items at this time but it may be helpful to copy and paste all notes into a text file for future reference. You can find more information under Exporting TypeList Content.

Backing Up Your Photo Albums

Currently there is not a way to easily backup your Photo Albums. To work around this, view each page in your browser and from the browser menu go to File > Save As > Web Page Complete to save copies of each page to your computer. The best option right now is to keep copies on your computer of photos you upload so that you can upload them again if need be.

You cannot create an archive from which to rebuild your site without A LOT of work, if at all. What the support page doesn’t tell you is that you don’t have a backup of the database that Typepad uses for your blog. Typepad “renders” a page from its database everytime a page is requested. You can only back up that text from renders. This sucks.

In my opinion, this makes typepad unusable.

The wordpress.org site says they make backups. I assume they do. But you have no access to those backups and cannot make off-line backups of the data found in your blog.

If you want to make sure that your wordpress blog is archived, you need to put your blog on a hosted service provider that will backup your database and let you do an off-line backup. I use Dreamhost. Here is the backup screen from their dashboard. I consider this an adequate approach. But you must stay on top of this. You could loose up to thirty days of data.

To do a bit more on this excersize, I checked out blogger.com. Here is what the support page says.

How do I create a backup of my entire blog?

Blogger does not have an export or download function. However, you can use the following instructions to create a single file with all your posts which you may publish and then copy to your own computer for use as desired.

In other words, blogger.com does not let you create an archive of your blog either. Just the data. Recreating your blogger.com blog should something happen would be difficult if not impossible.

Summary

I strongly recommend you find out if your blog is in jeopordy. I am still reeling from the transition to wordpress. I lost years of data, links, discussions. No thanks to Dave Winer. Dave, I love you, but I think you left a ton of us locked into your silo with no way out.

I don’t want this to happen again.

If you use the wordpress.org site. You are vulnerable. If you use the typepad.com or vox.com blogging services, you are vulnerable. If you use blogger.com, you are very vulnerable.

The best solution I have seen so far is to find a service provider that will host your wordpress blog and archive the database for you. You must also do an off-line backup and store backups of the database—not just the posts and pages—of your blog.

Recreating a wordpress blog would still take work, but at least  you can do it.

PS. I scared myself writing this post. The state of blogging really sucks.

I am downloading the Windows 7 beta. I don’t plan to use it in production obviously but I am hearing good things so I thought is was time to take a look. It still has a few more hours of download time. I will let you know how it goes.

I have talked about one of my favorite books several times, recently I brought it up in the podcast interview with Phil Windley at Technometria. The book is by Peter Drucker and is titled Innovation and Entrepreneurship. I read this book some time ago and I recently decided to buy a replacement copy, I found it on Amazon for .73 cents. The shipping was significantly more than the book. The book—however is invaluable. Here is an intro to one of the chapters to just whet your appetite:

The Practice of Innovation

Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms and indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation.

Read this carefully. Very carefully. Innovation as a practice? This is uncommon thinking. He even blows away any traditional notion of entrepreneurship. I have added a lot to it but I strongly recommend it to anyone doing development. Gee, I think that would include a few of us eh?

innovation,technology,entrepreneurship,bussiness