OpenID Delegation Makes Vidoop’s Failure Painless*

May 30, 2009 by 3 Comments

I asterisked the word “painless” in the title of this post since Vidoop’s downfall certainly isn’t painless for its employees, many of whom I call friends. But as an OpenID user taking advantage of delegation, the process of switching providers is fairly straightforward.

The quick backstory for those of you wondering What Is OpenID Delegation: Delegation allows one to use a URL that is not an OpenID provider as their claimed OpenID URL. A bit of code that is embedded in the headers of that URL contains redirection code so that OpenID requests are sent to the actual OpenID provider.

In my case, I’d been using Vidoop’s MyVidoop product as my OpenID provider. I added code to the header section of http://www.aaronhockley.com so that I could give that out as my OpenID URL. When I made an OpenID claim using that URL, the code would redirect the request to Vidoop, where I would authenticate, and be redirected back to the relying party. The sites that use OpenID record my aaronhockley.com address, but I authenticated using Vidoop’s secure system.

With Vidoop about to disappear, I needed a new OpenID provider. I chose VeriSign’s PIP system due to their support for two-factor authentication. After signing up for PIP, I updated the code on aaronhockley.com to point to VeriSign’s servers, and that’s the end of the story. I can continue to use aaronhockley.com as my OpenID URL even though my provider has changed, and all of my accounts across the web that are linked to that URL will still work without any disruption in service.

Filed Under: General Info, Technology · Tagged With: , , ,

Does this Make Me a Mac?

May 11, 2009 by 11 Comments

On Saturday, I bought a Mac*. I’m a switcher.

Folks have asked: “Why?” There are a number of reasons, some major, some minor, but all leading me to think that my life will be smoother once I’ve converted over to OS X. As a photographer, it makes sense. Much of the world of photo software revolves around the Mac. Having looked at Windows 7, Microsoft has made some nice updates for networks and corporations, but I didn’t see too much there that would really benefit me as a one-man photography shop. When I look at software innovations and I look at new tools being released, more often than not these tools seem to be arriving on OS X.

I’m still getting things set up and need to start the heavy migration of my photos and Lighroom catalog along with some other random data that I store locally. Twitter has a been a great migration resource… with so many of my tweeps being Mac users, I can throw out questions looking for software recommendations or wondering about hardware and I get back a bunch of useful information from people I trust.

What else should I know? What random bits of Mac or OS X coolness do you want to share with me as a comment?

* I bought the MacBook Pro, 15″, 4GB RAM, 512mb video. It’s this one.

Filed Under: Technology · Tagged With: , ,

Thesis is Awesome

May 7, 2009 by 1 Comment

I’m loving Thesis, a premium WordPress theme that I’ve been using since November on this site as well as Hockley Photography. Thesis offers a bunch of really great options for point-and-click configuration through the administration screens, as well as a powerful “hooks” system that makes it easy to write PHP code (in one file) to take care of custom theme alterations that often require editing several different theme files with a “typical” WordPress theme.

Because these theme changes are kept in one customization file, upgrading the theme preserves all of the customizations.

Another big plus is that Thesis features excellent SEO features. Canonical URLs, appropriate meta tags, alt text, management of noindex for archives, and other search-engine-friendly features are all editable via the admin screens. Here’s a real life example of the SEO power of Thesis: last night I attended a photography seminar on the theme of “Exciting Light” led by top-notch photographer David Ziser. If you Google [David Ziser exciting light] you’ll find that my blog posts are the top results for his seminar.

Want to see Thesis in person? Find me at Beer and Blog or Portland’s WordPress User Group or another local event and I’ll show you how it works.

Want to buy Thesis? If you buy Thesis via this link, I’ll get a few dollars and you’ll get a great theme.

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media · Tagged With: , , ,

BarCampPortland Journalism Recap

May 4, 2009 by 4 Comments

Other than WordCamp, my favorite local geek event is BarCamp, because it brings together all sorts of people that are smarter than me to have great discussions on a variety of random subjects.

Last weekend there were a number of discussions related to journalism and “new” media, as well as the possibilities for knowledge transfer between traditional journalists and those with skills related to conversational media such as blogs and Twitter. As noted previously, Rick and I hosted a discussion on Saturday morning that focused on bloggers learning from journalists. The audio from that discussion is now available (approx 43mb, .mp3 format).

Following the first discussion, a related session led by three Columbian employees looked at the future of newspapers (timely, given that their paper had declared bankruptcy on Friday). I have a video of that session but need to figure out hosting options. John Hill (one of the Columbian folks) posted his thoughts on his blog.

We didn’t touch much on the conversation aspect of new media during the morning sessions, so some of us gathered for an afternoon talk about comments, Twitter, and the two-way nature of internet media as opposed to traditional (mostly) one-way media blasts. I posed a question, wondering if most newspaper and TV websites’ half-assed attempt at comment abilities were because the companies didn’t really care or want to hear the readers feedback and a couple of the journalists validated my hypothesis. That attitude will need to change. Tonight, @oregoniansteve linked to a piece suggesting that if newspapers aren’t going to do comments right, they shouldn’t do them at all. I wholeheartedly agree.

What’s next? Abraham Hyatt has announced Digital Journalism Camp Portland, to be held some time in August. Follow that link to find out more. The BarCamp discussions were a good start, but there is a LOT of conversation to happen in this area and I applaud Abraham for taking the next step to facilitate the learning.

Filed Under: Events, Music/Movies/Media, Portland/Vancouver, Social Media · Tagged With: , , , ,