T-shirt gets Van Nuys woman kicked out of federal building (via Neatorama)As she headed for a line to pick up a Social Security card for her son, Gilbert was stopped by a guard who said her T-shirt, naming an educational and resource Web site for gay women, was offensive.
She said the guard, who works for a private company hired by the Department of Homeland Security, demanded that she leave the building or face arrest.
(Image: Hans Gutknecht)
OpenID support continues to spread throughout the Web ecosystem and new names are added to the list of sites that support OpenID all the time. Since the release of OpenID 2.0, which includes better security features, OpenID has gained major traction as the single sign-on standard. Its biggest benefit being tremendous reduction in the number of login names and passwords that you have to manage. In addition, great time savings when registering at new sites.
Ultimately, all you will ever need is your single OpenID URL or an email address linked to it. Here’s where you can get your own OpenID and all of the sites that support it:
Where Do you Get your own OpenID?
If you have an account at any of the following sites then you might already own an OpenID that you can use anywhere else on the Web that supports it. The format of your OpenID URL will be slightly different from site to site so pick one that’s easiest to remember.
- AOL - openid.aol.com/screenname
- Blogger - blogname.blogspot.com
- Flickr - www.flickr.com/photos/username
- LiveDoor profile.livedoor.com/username
- LiveJournal - username.livejournal.com
- Orange (France Telecom) - http://openid.orange.fr
- SmugMug - username.smugmug.com
- Technorati technorati.com/people/technorati/username
- Vox - member.vox.com
- Yahoo - http://openid.yahoo.com (Every Yahoo ID is now an OpenID 2.0 ID)
- Wikitravel provides an identifier to each registered user
- WordPress.com - username.wordpress.com
Who are OpenID Identity Providers?
If you don’t have an OpenID yet, you can create a free one at any of these 80 and counting OpenID Identity Providers. Keep in mind that these providers all offer different features when it comes to OpenID. Here’s an excellent Guide for OpenID Identity Providers that compares their diverse feature sets.
Below are just some of the most popular OpenID Identity providers:
- ClaimID - One of the most popular OpenID providers
- myOpenID Another popular provider. Hosted OpenID server by JanRain.
- VeriSign’s Personal Identity Provider - Free OpenID Provider with support for multi-factor authentication.
- myID.net - Free OpenID Provider with support for groups and Korean language.
- myVidoop - Free OpenID Provider that eliminates passwords with security features, customization, and browser integration.
- MyLID - Unique because it’s the only identity aggregator as it supports not only OpenID but also LID and Yadis. Thus, your single sign-on such as mylid.net/Paisano would work on any site that supported any of those three identity services. You can also host it yourself by downloading the code here.
Want to Run Your Own OpenID Identity Server?
For you hardcore geeks there’s always the option to host you own OpenID identity Server. Delegation is the simplest way to get up and running with OpenID because it requires nothing more than an OpenID Provider and some basic HTML. OpenID for Developers provides excellent information. You can find additional valuable information at: Plaxo OpenID Recipe and Sam Ruby’s Intertwingly
Who supports OpenID anyway?
The list of sites that support OpenID continues to grow as increasing numbers accept the fact that it’s not going away any time soon and realize that there’s a great demand for it. The good news is that even startups are coming out of the gate supporting OpenID (Blippr, Rejaw, etc.) So, how do you know if a site supports OpenID or not? Just look for the OpenID logo on any sign-up or login page. It’ll always be clearly visible and sometimes even labeled with OpenID. Here’s a sample login screen.
The other thing to check is the MyOpenID OpenID directory that the folks at MyOpenID maintain. There’s also a handy RSS feed that you can subscribe to in Google reader or whatever RSS reader you prefer that’ll let you know whenever a new site has been added to the directory. If you know of a site that is not listed in the OpenID directory then simply send the site’s URL to MyOpenID’s email address for the directory.
Here’s another OpenID directory that also tracks all of the sites that proclaim to support OpenID. This directory is a little different because it allows visitors to vote for their favorite OpenID sites so it’s like digg in that respect. Here are the top voted OpenID Providers.
Here are just some of the sites that support OpenID with many more added all the time:
- Skitch.com - A Web service that gives you 1-click uploading of images for fast image sharing.
- PBWiki - Create a free wiki using your OpenID. It’s as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich.
- LiveJournal - One of the first blogging platforms.
- Drupal - The official website of Drupal, an open source content management platform.
- Mixx - The well-known news site.
- 37Signals - Simple software to help you get organized. Basecamp, Highrise, and Backpack are all OpenID enabled.
- Foodio54 - Has a database of over half a million restaurants with reviews.
- ToodLedo - An easy to use Web-based to-do list.
- WetPaint - A popular wiki host.
- Grou.ps- Allows you to create sharing platforms for your social groups
- Jyte - Allows you to make claims about yourself and your friends, give and receive cred and manage your contacts and groups.
Conclusion
OpenID continues to gain support and acceptance. Even the big boys like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and AOL have all made the decision to embrace and support it. One of the strongest signs of this acceptance occurred when Microsoft added OpenID support to their own Identity platform called CardSpace. Since OpenID appears to be headed towards becoming the single sign-on standard then it might make sense to give it a look to see what it’s all about.
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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:
SourceForge Now OpenID-Friendly
The Daily Poll: How Often Do You Use OpenID to Login?
Another Victory For OpenID: Yahoo Announces Support
Blogger’s OpenID Support Now Official
Wikispaces Adds OpenID Suport
Blogger Beta Gets OpenID Support
Wetpaint Adds OpenID Support
it’s time for a list about brilliant bridges, but not the bridges you normally see in these kinds of lists. i wanted to avoid the usual suspects as they seem to get pounded to death on the intertubes and there’s only so many photos of the golden gate bridge you can look at without becoming just slightly bored.
voila…
this beautiful arched bridge in lake austin was a private build by miro rivera architects and is used to connect the client’s main house to the smaller guest house on the other side of the water. the idea was to make the bridge seem as natural as possible within its surroundings and to do this they made the decking and reed-like hand rails as imperfect as possible. the result is a bridge that looks extremely fragile but definitely worth the risk.
sources: top / middle / bottom
opened in may of this year, the octavio frias de oliveira bridge is a stunning x-shaped cable-stayed bridge that crosses the pinheiros river in sao paulo. it’s design is unique in that the 2 curved decks of the bridge cross each other through its x-shaped supporting tower, an illuminated structure that stands 450ft tall and has attached to it 144 steel cables. the bridge’s LED lightshow can be read about here.
the original kintai bridge was built in 1673 and didn’t stand very long until it was damaged due to flooding. it was then rebuilt and survived for more than 200 years until a typhoon battered it to death in 1950. the bridge that stands now over the nishiki river is the 3rd build and looks magnificent, it’s 5 wooden arches displaying an incredible amount of detail and craftmanship. interesting fact: no nails or bolts have been used to build the arches, only clamps and wires.
the jk bridge in brasilia is a lesson in elegant bridge design. the 3 huge arches diagonally hopping over the deck of the bridge give the structure an amazing visual fluidity and make the whole 1.2km bridge look effortlessly cool. since being built the bridge has won awards for its design but is still massively underappreciated on a wider scale. i reckon this must be one of the best bridges around.
thomas heatherwick’s award-winning rolling bridge is an ingenious addition to the grand union canal system in london and is unique in its design. unlike regular movable canal bridges, the rolling bridge curls up on itself to form an octagon by way of hydraulics. it’s an amazing sight and a reminder that a fresh perspective can produce great, innovative results, even when dealing with a structure as common as a bridge.
beipanjiang river railroad bridge in guizhou is an enormous railway bridge that was built as part of the much larger ‘guizhou-shuibai railway project’ (pdf). connecting 2 mountains over a deep ravine, at its highest point the bridge’s deck sits 918ft above the ground (to compare, at its highest point the millau viaduct’s deck clears the river underneath by 890ft). the bridge has succeeded in connecting 2 of the country’s poorest areas.
‘henderson waves’ is singapore’s highest pedestrian bridge and can be found at the southern ridges, a beautiful 9km stretch of gardens and parks which has frequently drawn comparisons to new york’s central park. the bridge itself is absolutely stunning. the deck is made from thousands of balau wood slats, perfectly cut and arranged, and along the length of the deck a huge snaking, undulating shell cleverly forms sheltered seating areas on every upward curve. if i was to make sweet love to a bridge, this would be the one.
this is the incredible, brand new vertical lift bridge in rouen, france, a beast of a structure whose 2 bridge spans weigh 1′200tons each but can be hoisted 180ft vertically by the bridge’s lifting mechanism in an impressive 12 minutes. just the angular structures at the top of each tower weigh in at 450tons each, helping to support the lifting system as cruise ships sail through.
sources, clockwise from top: 1, 2 (pdf), 3
technically, this is a bridge: it’s a structure which spans a gorge. the only difference is, the bridge can’t be used by humans due to the fact that its purpose is to support 2 pipelines - 1 gas, 1 oil - across the extremely high gap in papua new guinea. so high in fact that if this were to be officially recognised as a bridge it would rocket to the top of the ‘world’s highest bridge-span’ list at an impressive height of 1′290ft. by comparison, the current highest bridge span belongs to the royal gorge bridge in colorado, hanging a mere 1′053ft above ground level, whilst manhattan’s chrysler building measures 1′047ft.
Shared by Ben ShoemateHome library organization doesn't necessarily mean alphabetizing. See more methods of home library organization, from color to chronology.
library organization...very interesting
Aza Raskin at Mozilla Labs thinks there’s got to be an easier way to create Web mashups. Today, he is announcing the launch of Ubiquity, an experiment in using natural language to invoke Web services. Ubiquity is an extension to the Firefox browser that lets you type in what you want to do—insert a map, translate this page, Twitter this block of text, search on Google—and invokes one of 30 Web services. As Raskin describes the problem in his post:
You’re writing an email to invite a friend to meet at a local San Francisco restaurant that neither of you has been to. You’d like to include a map. Today, this involves the disjointed tasks of message composition on a web-mail service, mapping the address on a map site, searching for reviews on the restaurant on a search engine, and finally copying all links into the message being composed. This familiar sequence is an awful lot of clicking, typing, searching, copying, and pasting in order to do a very simple task. And you haven’t even really sent a map or useful reviews—only links to them.
With Ubiquity, all you do is type in map, and it calls up the Google Map and sticks it in your e-mail. Just as you type what you want into a search box and it figures out what you are looking for, Ubiquity tries to figure out which services you want to access. In a phone call, Raskin explains it to me this way:
Ubiquity is an experiment in connecting the Web with language. The problem with the Web is that services and locations and data are disconnected. You want to send a link to a map, translate a Web page, convert things to PDF, add a review for a restaurant—all of these things you want to do right now, but you have to trundle around the Web to do it. Ubiquity is instant access to services through language.
This is an ambitious project whose goal is to make natural language into a programming interface. It is open-source so anyone can contribute to make it work with more APIs and Web Services. The extension can be downloaded at the link above. More detailed information is available here and in the video below.
Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
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Last March, Google began inviting a select number of publishers within its AdSense network to test a new hosted advertisement management tool called Google Ad Manager. The search company has now announced that the tool is out of beta and available to all publishers with AdSense accounts.
Since its unveiling, Google Ad Manager has been seen as a direct threat to OpenX, an on-premise software solution (known previously as OpenAds and phpAdsNew) for managing the advertising campaigns on websites. Both solutions serve and track the performance of ad units sold either directly or introduced by third party networks like Federated Media or Google AdSense (which we use here at TechCrunch). But only Google can “use AdSense to fill unsold inventory or compete on price against other ad networks,†optimizing returns for publishers by serving up the most profitable ads from campaigns vying for the same space on a page.
As a hosted solution, Google Ad Manager also has the advantage of an easier setup and administration process since it doesn’t require any server-side installation or code maintenance. A hosted version of OpenX - which would necessarily depart from the company’s open source roots - has been anticipated for awhile now but has yet to be released.
Some will say the public release of Google Ad Manager spells serious trouble for OpenX. But seen in a different light, the release also enhances OpenX’s standing as acquisition bait for the likes of Microsoft, who wishes to compete more effectively against Google in the online advertising space.
Since its acquisition of DoubleClick, Google has also run the DoubleClick Revenue Center for publishers with large in-house ad sales teams.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
The Google Reader team hired us to create this one minute introduction to Google Reader.
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Our other videos for Google include:
View all of our custom client productions.
My coworker Lori Grunin already covered Canon's announcement of its $1,400 mid-range EOS 50D SLR, but as somebody who's in the market for a new SLR, I thought I'd weigh in with some thoughts of my own. I'm glad Canon is investing where perhaps it counts most: the sensor, and if the reviews look good, this is the first time I've really been tempted to upgrade from my well-used Canon Rebel XT.
Canon's EOS 50D will ship in October for $1,399, not including a lens. Also shown here is the new EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens.
(Credit: Canon)When it ships in October, the 50D will sport a 15.1 megapixel sensor, up from 10.1 megapixels in the current 40D. The increase in megapixels is nice for the poster-print and microstock-sales crowds, but what's most notable is the increase of the top ISO from 3,200 to 12,800.
That means Canon has done some serious work to cut down on the noise levels inside the sensor, which bodes well for image quality not just at the new extremes but also at more ordinary sensitivity settings. ISO 3,200, for example, is now part of the ordinary range, not the extended range that must be manually enabled before it's available. Canon hit some sweet spots in sensor design, for example with its earlier 20D and the full-frame 5D, and the 50D holds the potential of being another model that balances megapixels with low noise and accurate color.
Canon attributes the advance to "newly designed gapless microlenses over each pixel to reduce noise." Microlenses gather light for the light-sensitive part of the image sensor, compensating for surface area occupied by other electronics. Gapless microlenses presumably stretch across the entire pixel width. Perhaps this technology will also help out whatever model will succeed Canon's 5D, my other obvious upgrade path but one that likely would require spending twice the price for the camera body and that would require me to shell out another few hundred dollars for a new wide-angle lens to support the full-frame sensor size.
Fending off Nikon
Higher sensitivity is important for Canon. It's been losing market share to Nikon, which has pushed high sensitivity as an advantage, though with lower megapixel counts. The full-frame sensors on Nikon's D3 and D700 can reach ISO 25,600, though reaching that level was made easier through a sensor design that emphasizes a smaller number of larger pixels.
