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The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

theregister.co.uk

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Re: The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

#31

Post by josefresco »

enomar wrote: post #13

Oh no. Some guy at The Register was able to point out 3 new technologies that haven't seen wide adoption. The world is ending. Google is a one hit wonder. San Fransisco is just a bunch of dumb hippies. OMG.

I'm sorry (I'd love to poop on this) but this little gem:

"Therefore, if you collect a bunch of Web 2.0 engineers in San Francisco, the inevitable outcome is the OpenSocial Foundation: a nonprofit organization that only exists to support an API for programming social network applications."

Is hilarious. +1

Re: The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

#32

Post by maxklein »

simonw wrote: post #30
maxklein wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sign-in with yahoo button is a lot more accessible, but on a personal level, I am strongly against it. The internet tends to coalesce around the most widely used method, leading to one site becoming disproportionately larger than all the others. So if we have this "Sign-in with yahoo" button, soon everywhere will have 3-4 sign in methods, likely to be Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and maybe Facebook. So we basically h…

But that's the beauty of OpenID - it allows you to keep your identity with the thing that you trust. One of the future developments I'm most excited about with respect to OpenID is the ability to run your OpenID server on your mobile phone. Phones can already run web servers, and with IPv6 they'll be able to have public facing direct internet addresses. Voila, your online identity lives in your pocket.

I wish you guys would see sense. OpenID is a geeks dream; conceptually, it's very difficult for normal people to grasp.

WHY did open Id have to use a URL? What is wrong with me typing maximusklein@gmail.com into my 'openid' field, and then it authenticates at gmail.com using the unique identifier maximusklein?

What's the big difference? One is complicated as hell conceptually, and the other is very easy to understand.

Re: The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

#33

Post by simonw »

maxklein wrote: post #32
simonw wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's the beauty of OpenID - it allows you to keep your identity with the thing that you trust. One of the future developments I'm most excited about with respect to OpenID is the ability to run your OpenID server on your mobile phone. Phones can already run web servers, and with IPv6 they'll be able to have public facing direct internet addresses. Voila, your online identity lives in your pocket.

I wish you guys would see sense. OpenID is a geeks dream; conceptually, it's very difficult for normal people to grasp. WHY did open Id have to use a URL? What is wrong with me typing maximusklein@gmail.com into my 'openid' field, and then it authenticates at gmail.com using the unique identifier maximusklein? What's the big difference? One is complicated as hell conceptually, and the other is very easy to understand…

The OpenID community is working on exactly that:

http://eaut.org/

Re: The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

#34

Post by omouse »

axod wrote: post #15

"Like every other product Google has released since search and ads, OpenSocial has been a dud." This is just plain wrong. Although maybe some of the issue comes when you compare things to search+ads. When compared against those, perhaps things look 'dud'. But taken alone they are successes.

MySpace uses OpenSocial: http://developer.myspace.com/Community/forums/default.aspx?G...

MySpace has how many users again? Even if a tiny percentage of them interacts with OpenSocial, I would hardly call it a dud.

Also:

"There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING."

That is a lot of users that someone can reach with an OpenSocial app. If this is failure, I want some.

Re: The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

#35

Post by [deleted] »

ricree wrote: post #5
maxklein wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you're missing it because you are unable to move out of your personal perspective into the perspective of less computer capable people. OpenID is hard and pointless. It deserves to die.

In all seriousness, though, what's the part that's such a stumbling block here (at least for anyone who is already computer literate enough to go through a normal user account creation)? I really fail to see why "now create an account you can use at any OpenID site" is so much of a problem compared to "create an account for this site". In my experience, the account creation is nearly the same, and the login procedure…

[deleted]

Re: The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

#36

Post by tptacek »

sachinag wrote: post #4
ricree wrote: post #2

Am I missing something with the whole "OpenID is hard" thing? As far as I've used it, OpenID has pretty much consisted of going through a fairly normal registration with the open ID provider, getting a login name url, and then just using that at sites that support openID. At most, it's been marginally more complicated than a normal ID, but it saves me the trouble of creating yet another new account at every little si…

This is the thing: the "yet another new account" thing isn't a problem for real users. Real users use the same damn user/pass on every site. This is terrible for their security, but it just works.

Of the minority of users who have enough accounts on web applications to care, only a small fraction have accounts they care about that are ever likely to support OpenID.

I don't think most users see this account/password thing as one of their major Internet challenges.

Re: The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

#37

Post by ricree »

maxklein wrote: post #32
simonw wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's the beauty of OpenID - it allows you to keep your identity with the thing that you trust. One of the future developments I'm most excited about with respect to OpenID is the ability to run your OpenID server on your mobile phone. Phones can already run web servers, and with IPv6 they'll be able to have public facing direct internet addresses. Voila, your online identity lives in your pocket.

I wish you guys would see sense. OpenID is a geeks dream; conceptually, it's very difficult for normal people to grasp. WHY did open Id have to use a URL? What is wrong with me typing maximusklein@gmail.com into my 'openid' field, and then it authenticates at gmail.com using the unique identifier maximusklein? What's the big difference? One is complicated as hell conceptually, and the other is very easy to understand…

Why is typing something like maximusklein.gmail.com and logging in with google more complicated than maximusklein@gmail.com.

People keep saying over and over again that open ID is too hard for average users, but I just don't see any evidence that this is the case.

Re: The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

#38

Post by nradov »

IBM has had a tool for building off-line web applications for many years. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/domino/dols.ht... It works OK, but never really caught on even among customers who already have Lotus Domino. Seems to be a solution in search of a problem. So I'm not surprised that Google Gears uptake has been slow.

Re: The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

#39

Post by maxklein »

ricree wrote: post #37
maxklein wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you guys would see sense. OpenID is a geeks dream; conceptually, it's very difficult for normal people to grasp. WHY did open Id have to use a URL? What is wrong with me typing maximusklein@gmail.com into my 'openid' field, and then it authenticates at gmail.com using the unique identifier maximusklein? What's the big difference? One is complicated as hell conceptually, and the other is very easy to understand…

Why is typing something like maximusklein.gmail.com and logging in with google more complicated than maximusklein@gmail.com. People keep saying over and over again that open ID is too hard for average users, but I just don't see any evidence that this is the case.

Because I know clearly what one is, but I am unsure what the other one is. To me, the URL is a webpage. And it's not clear to me how a webpage is going to log me into another webpage if I am a user.

Users don't see URLs as URLs, they see them as pages, like on a newspaper. So OpenID is based on a concept that alien to users.

Re: The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

#40

Post by unalone »

theschwa wrote: post #6

This is about the winiest thing I've ever read with no real content. "Unfortunately, excitement died off quickly as people remembered that they don't really give a shit about social networks." Really? So, those 100 million or so for facebook myspace and orkut don't count?

They care about one social network at a time, at most.

People don't give a fuck about anything social outside of Facebook. Not most people.

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