WhistlinDixie

Link (And Video) Dump

It’s time for me to clean up some of the tabs that I have open in Firefox, which means that you get to see what was in them

• What is a Reflow?
• Amazing shredding from Michael Angelo Batio
• Why It’s Impossible to Become a Programming Expert
• How To Know You’re Ready For Parenthood
• The 10 Worst Video Game Consoles of All Time – A Review
• 12 Ways to Use Twitter to Increase Productivity – I especially like @trackthis and @fuelfrog
• 15 Reasons That Mr. Rogers Was The Best Neighbor Ever
• Rethinking the Stop Sign
  
• IT Guy Vs Dumb Employee
  

Facebook Reinvents the Wheel

At the annual Facebook developers conference (they even have one?), it was announced that Facebook would add support for an OpenID-like service, called Connect, that would allow Facebook users to use their logins to login to websites such as Digg and Six Apart. The key phrase here is OpenID-like. This is not OpenID, nor will it likely work with it. Rather, it is a proprietary system that a small group of websites are using to share logins with eachother.

A few years ago, before OpenID was anything more that a project at Six Apart, I would have applauded these websites for putting forth the effort to share logins amongst each other. These days, however, we have OpenID, which is seeing greater adoption as time goes on. Big names are already on board with OpenID: Yahoo, MySpace (intentionally unlinked), AOL (includes AIM), Six Apart, WordPress, and Blogger, to name a few. VeriSign and MyOpenID are some of the many entities that are OpenID providers only, and add to the usefulness of the ecosystem.

Facebook and the other parties that are part of Connect are hurting the OpenID community by starting up their own, incompatible identification sharing service. There is no cost to OpenID other than the time to get it set up to work with your infrastructure. So, why are they creating their own service? Even stranger is the fact that Six Apart, the creators of OpenID, are one of the parties that is working with Facebook on this new protocol. Why is Six Apart undermining their own child? It will be interesting to see this play out.

EDIT: Just ran across another article about Connect. I guess Connect is more than just an identity provider. Still, I do not like the fact that Facebook traps all of their data inside their walls.

Apple Slows Updates to App Store

In a Wired interview with Brett Simmons, creator of the NetNewsWire application for the iPhone, it was revealed that Apple is holding back updates that Brett has made to his application for over a week, in which time he has made five maintenance releases, fixing many customer complaints. Why are the updates being held back? It ends up that Apple is testing each and every application and update that is submitted to the App Store before it is listed in the App Store.

I have two issues with this. First, if Apple is sufficiently testing these apps before they are listed, then why would they require bug fixing updates to begin with? Is Apple really gaining anything by "testing" these apps before listing them? If they are only testing to make sure that the app is not malicious, then I would expect them to show a level of trust to application developers who have a track record of submitting solid, non-malicious apps to the store. Mozilla follows a similar model with Addons.Mozilla.Org (AMO), where a trust is built up between Mozilla and a developer, eventually allowing the developer to post updates directly to AMO without the addon having to be vetted by any people at Mozilla.

Issue number two: Since all apps in the App Store are monetized, then couldn’t developers argue that Apple is hurting their income by preventing them from offering fixes for their apps? If an app gains a reputation for being buggy or slow even though a version that fixes all of that is awaiting approval from Apple, there is nothing the developer can do to regain their lost reputation and revenue. Telling the users that an update is being held up by Apple will likely get them nowhere since most App Store users are most likely not privy to the application listing process. They would most likely see this as little more than an excuse while the developer scrambles to fix their application. With Firefox, you can install an addon from any website you want, allowing a developer a completely separate channel to distribute their addon through that bypasses the vetting process on AMO. However, with the iPhone, you can only get applications through the App Store, unless you want to jailbreak your phone, leaving you with no alternate channel to distribute your application.

I am curious why more iPhone developers are not up-in-arms about this. Their reputations are being harmed and their profits decreased because Apple has chosen to lock down the App Store and not trust the developers that are helping the iPhone reach new heights. If Apple would only follow the model that is used by Mozilla on AMO, then I am sure developers and users would be much happier.