Here is Natalie, a cute non-Korean girl (as far as I can tell ;-)) based in LA, singing a popular song by K-POP group Wonder Girls:
and idol-mob girl group SNSD’s song:
Being a cultural mutt, I enjoy this sort of cultural mash thingy. She looks and sings great. It would be cool to see her make it big time in South Korea, hopefully short of turning things into a circus as usual.
Apparently the invite-only OpenID meetup at Facebook took place tonight. The fact that it was held at Facebook points to a shift taking place in the OpenID world. What’s coming is obvious: somehow retrofit Facebook Connect into OpenID architecture. Repeat after me. Yes, we can.
Facebook Connect can become a OpenID middleman, serving attribute-enriched OpenID to consumer sites that selected Facebook as its OpenID supplier. OpenID middlemans solve two key OpenID usability issues as well as opening up the potential to solve some privacy issues.
The first usability issue the middleman solves is the need to type in OpenID URL by replacing the URL input box with a button saying Signin with OpenID or a branded version like Facebook Connect button.
The second usability issue is users forgetting which OpenID they’ve used at a OpenID consumer site. Site can save that in a cookie but that opens up privacy and taste issues, particularly since consumer sites will be less trusted than OpenID supplier services like Facebook and Google.
The middleman can also support anonymous personas for users to minimize privacy issues but, to do so, they’ll have to provide bridging service between the sites and the real identity to meet the needs of consumer sites.
Who will be the players? Facebook and Google, of course. Throw in MySpace, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL as well. I reckon security, payment, and infrastructure companies to come in too, late of course. Now, they are all OpenID providers but, to act as middlemans, they’ll have to also act like OpenID consumers to either pass on third-party OpenID identity or return a proxy identity. IMHO, it’s a very small price to pay IMHO since only oddball users will choose to do so.
Yes, it’s going to be a party night and, when the dawn comes, small OpenID providers will just fade away like old soldiers, taking the name with it too and leaving behind only big name portals and social networks wrapped in brand names.
Is micropayment what the ailing news industry needs? Will it save New York Times? Like Clay Shirky, I have my doubts about micropayments, particularly from usability perspective. Micropayment UI can get as bad as Vista UAC, endless parade of buy this and buy that.
What I think the news industry should do is follow the example of cable TV industry. Bundle contents by type into channels then charge per channel or channel combo deals like 10 free news channel + choice of 10 premium news channels + 100 article of choice from other channels for $5 per month. For $10, 30 premium plus 500 articles of choice. To add an extra channel for a month, an extra $1.
Regardless of details, the core idea is to transition to finer-grained subscription model, selling sections instead of the whole newspaper, bothering the user only once per month and when the fuel tank (a-la-carte article budget) gets empty to ask whether refill for a fee or add a channel.
Just a couple of crumbs from my brush with Merb tonight:
dependencies.rb
After merb-gen app, edit config/dependencies.rb to fix version numbers of dm_gems_version and do_gems_version gems used by the generated app. To find out what which version you have, type
gem list {gem-name}.
Missing some MySQL dylib on OS X
When I got some errors like “dyld: NSLinkModule() error “, probably after doing sudo gem install do_mysql for reasons I can’t recall, I fixed it with this:
sudo mkdir /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql
cd /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql
sudo ln -s /usr/local/mysql/lib/*.dylib .
I’ll add to this post over time as more crumbs fall. Note that I am not a Merb, Rails, nor Ruby guy. I am not a guru in anything but everything which means exactly nothing. Yes, I am trying to confuse you. ;-p
For the past six months, I’ve been thinking about sex. Not the sweaty kind, you perv — wink wink, nudge nudge — but about perspective differences between sexes and what that means to the Web at large. I am drawn to the differences to identify new business opportunities instead of trying to save the world or make it a better place or anything but I’ll take the bonus points if it’s on the way.
Fred Wilson asked rhetorically Hasn’t It Always Been About Status? in his post about Facebook opening up their status update API more. My answer from the sex-difference perspective is: Yes, for guys, not as much for girls.
I think status updates offer two things:
Awareness
Back when we had more hair than brain, awareness had direct impact on survival, resulting in the need to be aware carved into our veins. As civilizations advanced, focus of awareness expanded from elements and beasts to include awareness of what others are doing, moving from dodging predators and bashing skulls to keeping an eye on strangers and smelling whiffs of wars in distand lands.
The twin brother of Need is Fear. Even while drowning in constant avalanche of information, modern man fears not knowing enough soon enough.
Presence
Whether it’s simply brushing shoulders or social status, men feel the need to be acknowledged and, if given a chance, respected. I don’t think it’s pride but more to do with the dog brain part of us, wolfpack mindset.
My current thinking is that men’s need for awareness and presence are far greater than women. For women, I think things like order and intimacy are more important which could mean that:
Right or wrong, I use this kinds of thoughts like I would a bottle-opener and would like the readers to do the same.
Ice skating is a sport where high spirit and confidence impacts the outcome greatly. I don’t usually watch ice skating performance because inspiring perfection is rare and heartbreaking mistakes are too common to make fine entertainment. But I watch Kim Yu-na’s performances because watching the growth of her spirit and confidence is a joy in itself.
Photos below illustrates the change very well.
Good spirit, still vulnerable
Confidence finally finds home
From recent Four Continents event
Don Park's Weekly Habit 