David suggests that your identity belongs in the browser. It is already in there anyway. For any of us that browse, for the most part, from the same computer every single day – we take advantage of the browser’s ability to save our login information for tons of Web sites into its own data store. Or, sometimes (like with Mac OS X) into the system’s secure data store.

Either way, its there. Easy. You go to a site – it prefills the data you need to login, off you go. But what if the browser only needed to record one bit of information rather than all of these separate bits per site? Who you are. In the world of OpenID who you are is represented by an URL.

By the way, Hi, I’m http://cdevroe.com/ – Nice to meet you.

If the browser held that information, rather than the surfer needing to understand what that actually means – imagine the possibilities! Imagine this; you go to a Web site, Web site wants you to create an account, browser knows this, you just hit “Yes, I’ll have an account here at XYZ.com” and poof, you have an account. You don’t have a new username and password (though I’m sure said service will allow you to create a handle there, but you won’t need to remember that to log in again). Every single site on the Web would grow faster because of this. For better or worse.

I had the privilege of speaking to David last week on the phone about a matter having nothing to do with OpenID but I can say that from speaking with him that I enjoy his style of explaining things. It is simple and real. Others in the OpenID world are either extremely long winded or, and maybe this is just me being unwilling to sit through the boring lecture about things that do not interest me, they just seem to never get off their horse to talk to the people here on the ground.  David does not do this. He shows real examples, explains them in ways I can understand (and so could my Mom probably), and wraps it up in a post that even I have the attention span to read through.

Regardless of where this discussion goes – I like the idea, and I like that it will now be talked about.

Web applications are different then the applications you run on your computer in two very specific and obvious ways. First, they are run completely in your web browser (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, etc.) and you do not need to download or install any local files for the application to function. Second, the data that the application stores or edits is not on your local machine but rather saved “on the Internet”. These may seem like very obvious differences but I’ve mentioned these two reasons because the paradigm has shifted overtime and Google Gears almost completes that shift.

One of the many mantras of “Web 2.0″ applications has been to freely allow users of these applications to have access to their data both via an API and being able to “export” their data into various formats. These APIs afforded many developers to blur the line between desktop and web applications – such as being able to geotag your photos in iPhoto using Google Maps – but these solutions still required an Internet connection for them to work properly. Something also to note is the fact that these APIs are mainly used by developers and not by the users themselves so even though the data was portable, this fact hasn’t been exploited by the average user much, yet.

Enter Google Gears – which provides developers with the needed technology to make their entire applications portable not just the data. The first example Google chose to show off Gears with is Google Reader (a really great example). Google Reader, up until a few days ago, was a way to read your favorite sites by subscribing to their feeds but its use was limited to when you were connected to the Internet. Google Gears allows you to use Google Reader, at least most of the application, offline. You connect to the Internet, download your latest feed subscription’s updates, get offline, and you’re still able to read the feeds that you’ve cached on your local system. What’s more is that you are able to flag those items and Google Reader will sync with your Google Reader account once an Internet connection is available.

In short; Google Gears brings your favorite web applications to your local computer and allows them to run almost like desktop applications.

Why am I excited? Because my main reason for not using some of the most popular web applications has been because I can not use them offline. I am a firm believer in having all of my data available to me at anytime. Unfortunately in some cases, such as my photo and music libraries becoming larger than my laptop’s hard drive, I’ve had to make sacrifices. However, when it comes to much smaller yet more important pieces of data such as email messages, bookmarks, and important documents I can not afford to make those sacrifices. As Google Gears is adopted and implemented in more web applications I’ll be able to begin using them offline.

So here are mine and remember, these are not predictions – just some services I wouldn’t mind disappearing.

• Digg is simply annoying. The editorial process is no longer very valid and some of its features are definitely abused. I still use the service from time to time but I’d like to see a competitor come along that does a much better job.
• MySpace (which also made Paul’s list) is just horrible to use. I find it incredibly ironic that one of the hardest sites to use is also one of the most popular and used by the most inexperienced of Internet users. Again, I’d love to see a few of its competitors get a big break.
• Basecamp is one of the more popular “project management” applications (especially in my industry). I really do not like this application and I am sometimes forced to use it. I think the application is built and designed well, it is simply not built for the way I think.

Again, I do not foresee any of these services disappearing this year (even though some have predicted the downfall of Digg).

Do you have three services that you either have to use or would love to use but you simply would like to see them improved, replaced, or just “die” in 2007?

[tags]digg, myspace, basecamp, web 2.0, death list, paul scrivens, wisdump[/tags]
[slug]web20-deathlist07[/slug]

There are several sites, some still in existence that I really do miss. I remember spending hours on the old Deviant Art just trying to find minimalist desktops and indy art. I also remember digging, refreshing (what is that anymore?) and bookmarking countless pages on The Force.net to find the latest and greatest information on release of the Star Wars Special Editions. I remember pulling my damned hair out trying to get ASP to do what I wanted by using Microsoft’s documentation.

It goes beyond sites though, since back then the web wasn’t about usage but rather building the foundation for what we have today. Using the Web in the 90s wasn’t, for me, about sharing photos and bookmarks, or creating and distributing content quickly and easily, it was about communication and expression of thoughts via hypertext. The more I think about Web 2.0, the clearer the picture becomes about the Web as a whole. We have an insanely far distance to travel before the Web becomes what it has the potential to be. Obviously services like Flickr, Del.icio.us, and Newsvine are getting closer to what we’d all love to see replacing Deviant Art, e-mailing bookmarks, and CNN, but they are still only very simple concepts done in fairly complex ways.

I listened to a few of the Carson Workshop podcasts and, I must say, I realized how complex our jobs sound to the “average uninformed developer”. Combine the complexity of learning the “best practices” in Web development with how many developers out there that are still using tables for layout, Microsoft Access databases, and reading Lockergnome for HTML tips, and you can see that we’re not even close to where we could/should be.

What makes it even worse is that the people that could be advocating these changes in the new and ignorant developers, are resting on their laurels or even bad-mouthing efforts to help out. Perhaps such efforts as Naked CSS Day won’t make a large impact on Web Standards Awareness, but who cares, at least Dunstan Diaz is trying to do something about it!

“Back in the day” (according to Dane Cook this was indeed a Wednesday) I was always amazed when new specs were released, new technologies developed, or different ways of accomplishing tasks were mastered. Nowadays, I see a lot of copying going on. Sure, we have our elite few that are definitely leading the innovation pack, but in the old days everyone was an innovator. If you couldn’t get something to work, you figured out a way to do it regardless. You busted down walls, you hacked like a mad-man, until finally the result you were looking for was accomplished. Nowadays, you run to Google and do about four searches and copy what someone else has done right from their site. Sometimes this is good, but if you find yourself doing this every time, it isn’t.

I suppose I miss the speed at which innovation seemed to be moving on the Web. Even at 56kbps and under, it surely seemed that the Web was changing faster in 1996-1999 than it is now. I think we’ve hit a Web 2.0 plateau where 10 major services were released and everyone else is trying to catch up with them instead of trying to do better than them.

Take microformats for example. A great effort. Standardize the way specific chunks of content are marked up, this way it will make it much easier to move, distribute, and work with going forward. However, some of these standards are just atrocious. I look forward to trying my hand at making some updates to some of those specs in the near future, but instead of trying to simply use microformats, we need more than just five people thinking about how to improve them.

Recently we’ve seen a gathering for an RSS Advisory Board. Thank heavens, the last guy that was running the show was not only an asshat, but he made Communism look like Kazaa (if you don’t get this joke you probably have a life, which is cool – can I borrow it?). I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with RSS in the near, and distant, future.

AJAX. Oh god, do not get me started. A superb effort has been put into improving not only awareness but accessibility, implementation, and documentation of the HTTPRequest Object. Sure, we’ve had these types of abilities for ages, but I still think all this “excitement” will lead to one good thing – improvements. Ajax, while not revolutionary at all, has caused many newbies to open their eyes to, not only standards (due to the use of XML, etc), but also to the thinking a little bit beyond the separation of presentation and content – but also of functionality. I’d like to put a name on this particular movement, but I doubt the World could hold such an acronym.

I said we’re on a plateau right now, but I think that might be incorrect. Rather, I believe we are on the escalator. The down escalator. And, instead of actually going down with it, we’re trudging onward and upward – each foot landing on the next step only to find another one approaching right after it. This battle to make the Web better may never really “end” but I definitely think we need to pick up the pace a little. Like back in the old days when we said “Screw you” to tables for layout, WYSIWYG editors that wrote horrible HTML, and oh yeah – Windows servers.

[tags]internet, web 2.0, ajax, web development, programming, microformats[/tags]