Tag Archives: URL shortening

Apple, comment-fishing, consumerism, consumption, content, Crazy Predictions, digital lifestyle, DRM, economics, enthusiasm, gadgets, geek culture, geek niche, Google, hype, idealism, innovation, intellectuals, iPhone, iPod, iPod touch, iTunes, linkfest, mac, mac os x, microblogging, musings, optimism, podcasting, podcasts, predictions, product and process, productivity, ramblings, shameless plug, soapbox, social networks, social software, software, techno enthusiasts, techno lust, technology, Twitter, Ways of Knowing, wishful thinking, wishlists, WordPress, workflow

iCloud Dreams

1 Comment

Got lots more to blog, including something about “received knowledge”. And a list of things I love about Google. (I’m also getting started on “logical punctuation”, as you may already be noticing…)

But, at the risk of attracting trolls and Apple haters, I thought I’d post some notes from a daydreaming session. In some ways, it’s easier to write than the rest. And it’s more “time-sensitive”, in that my thoughts will likely sound very silly, very soon.

But I don’t care.

So, yes, this post is about iCloud, which will be officially unveiled in a few hours. No, it doesn’t mean that I expect anything specific from iCloud or that I trust Apple to deliver something awesome.

Contrary to what some people seem to think, I’m no Apple fanboi. I use a number of Apple products and I find several of them to be close to the ideal in my workflow, but I don’t have any sort of deep involvement in “the Cult of Mac”, Apple Inc., AAPL, or even Apple-focused development. I use the tools and like them, but I don’t think Apple will save us any more than will Facebook, Dell, Google, Amazon, Twitter, HP, or Microsoft.

[Automattic, on the other hand… 😉 ]

So, back to iCloud…

According to many, “cloud computing” (whatever that means) is a domain in which Apple has been relatively weak. I tend to share that opinion, despite the fact that a number of tools that I use have to do with either “the cloud”, Apple, or both. What might give trolls and haters some ammo is that I do have a MobileMe subscription. But there’s a lot I dislike about it and the only features I really find valuable are “over-the-air” syncing (henceforth “OTA”) and “Find My iPhone”. And since I use GSync on my iPod touch, MobileMe’s OTA isn’t that incredibly important. Depending on what iCloud may be, my MobileMe renewal (which comes up in a few days) could be a very hard sell. I don’t regret having it as it did help me retrieve my iPad. But it’s rather expensive if it’s the only thing it does. (Then again, so is insurance of any kind, but I digress…)

So, I’m no MobileMe poweruser. Why would I care about iCloud?

In some ways, I don’t. Or, at least, I didn’t. Until very recently, though I saw rumours about Apple’s new “cloud services”, I was only vaguely intrigued about it. I did think that it might solve my MobileMe issue. But I treated these rumours with a lot of skepticism and a rather low level of interest.

Yet, today, iCloud has been giving me a drift-off moment. Like Android did, at some point.

It’s not that I have predictions to make about iCloud. I’m not even speculating, really. But it got me to think. And, I admit, I enjoy thinking.

Without further ado (about nothing), my fanciful thoughts stemming from a short daydreaming session about iCloud…

The main thing people seem to be expecting  (based on rumoured negotiations with music publishers) is a music streaming service similar to Music Beta by Google or a digital file storage service similar to Amazon Cloud Drive. Both of these are quite neat and I could see myself using something like this. But it’s not exactly what makes me dream. While iTunes integration might make Apple’s version of a music streaming service somewhat more useful than the others. Besides, rumours have it that, through agreements with the recording industry, iCloud might sync music without requiring long uploads. It’s quite possible that this only works with tracks purchased on iTunes, which would upset those whose expectations are high, but could already be useful to some.

Where I’m beginning to drift off, though, is when I start thinking about OTA for podcasts. It’s been high up on my wishlist, as a feature, and you might say that it’s a pet peeve with iOS devices for podcatching. Having to sync my iPod touch to my main desktop just to have my podcast list up-to-date is a major hassle. Sure, there are apps which sync podcasts OTA. Problem is, they can’t add podcasts to the native iOS media player, which is a dealbreaker in my case. (As absurd as it may sound to others, one reason this is a dealbreaker is that I now listen to everything at doublespeed. Hey, it’s my podcast library and I listen to it as I want, ok?)

So, OTA podcasts would constitute a significant enhancement to my experience. Nothing absolutely required and possibly not that significant for others, but it’d really help me in more ways than one could imagine.

Thing is, syncing my iPod touch isn’t just about podcasts, even though podcatching is my main motivation to sync. After all, I don’t listen to podcasts yet I still sync my iPad. So, what else? Well, backing up is the main other thing, and it might be one of the core reason for Apple’s implicit insistence on syncing. That’d be classic Apple. Data loss can be such a big problem that they’d “do what they can” to prevent users from losing data. Far from perfect, in my experience (I ended up having some problems when I lost my “iTunes Library” file). And quite annoying when it meant that the sync would take a very long time to finish at precisely the point when I’m trying to leave home. But a classic Apple move, even in the way Apple haters may mean it.

So OTA synchronization of the whole iOS device, and not just podcasts or music, would be a definite plus, in this perspective. If it does end up coming with iCloud, it’d provide support to the idea that the tethering of iOS devices to desktop computers is really about ensuring that users back up their devices…

…and stay up to date. Firmware updates aren’t that frequent, but they’re probably a major part of the equation for Apple.

But not so much for me. If OTA podcasts were available, I’d still sync my iOS devices on occasion, through whatever means necessary. In fact, were I to use an Android device, a backup app would be essential, to me. So still not much dreaming from the backup aspect of iCloud.

Although… Sync is much broader than preventing device-specific data loss and making sure your device has the latest firmware.

For one thing, it does encompass some of the aforementioned OTA functionalities in MobileMe. Useful, but still not dreamworthy.

We get a bit closer to a “dream come true” if we talk about Xmarks, a bookmark-sync service originally meant for Firefox.  Sure, it sounds incredibly prosaic. But OTA bookmarks would open up a wide range of possibilities. This is about a qualitative difference from going OTA. In the case of backups, it’s about avoiding an annoyance but, arguably, it’s not really about changing something major about our behaviour. (Then again, maybe it is, with people who don’t back their devices up.) Point is, with something as simple as bookmarks, OTA is “disruptive”. At least, it gets me to daydream. One reason is that:

…no matter how fundamental they have been for the Web, links and bookmarks have yet to find their full value.

Hmm… Ok, perhaps a bit hyperbolic… So let me rephrase…

There’s still a lot to be done with URLs and, as simple as they are, I love thinking about links. Maybe I’m just obsessed with URLs.

As it so happens, I have a full list of thoughts about “link processing” and I’ve already blogged about related topics (on more than one occasion, in different contexts, going back to relatively early blogposts). And I even think social science can help.

I mean, think about it! There’s so much you can do, with links! Much of it is obvious, but I’d argue, rarely discussed. For instance, it’s very clear that we can post links pretty much anywhere. Doing so, we’re sharing their “content”. (In a semiotic sense, links are indices. I wish we can move from the “semantic Web” to the “semiotic Web”. But that’s another issue.) Sharing a link is the basic act of the social Web. It’s so obvious and frequent that it seems not to require discussion”.

Another obvious thing about links: we can measure the number of times they’re followed. In 2011, more than thirty years after hypertext has been introduced as a stable concept, much of the Web’s finances still relies on “clickthroughs”. Seems important.

And there’s a lot of processing which can be done with URLs: shortening them, adding them to “to do” lists, checking them for validity, keeping them in link libraries, archiving their “content”, showing them as external or internal links, preventing them from “rotting away”, showing the wordcount or reading time of the item they “target”, display them as QR codes, abuse them, etc.

As you can notice, it’s easy to get me on a tangent simply thinking about URLs. What’s this have t’do with iCloud, you ask? Probably not much, in terms of the actual service which will be announced at Moscone. But I’ve been dreaming about iCloud as a way to integrate Diigo, Instapaper, Delicious, reddit, digg, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Spurl, The Nethernet, Xmarks…

Hey, I told you I was dreaming! Something as simple as managing, processing, sharing, and archiving links in iCloud could lead to just about anything, in my imagination.

And speaking of Xmarks… It’s now owned by Lastpass, a company which focus on password management. IMHO, some Lastpass-like features could make their way in diverse products, including iCloud. Is this far-fetched? Possibly. But secure handling of passwords can be a major issue in both of Apple’s new operating systems (Mac OS X Lion and iOS5). From “keychains” to SSO, there’s a lot of work to be done which relates to password management, in my mind.

Which leads me to think about authentication in general and the rumours about “deep Twitter integration in iOS 5”. (Not directly related to iCloud, but who knows?) Again, something which can send me (and others) on drift-off moments. What if this integration suddenly made iOS devices more useful in terms of social networking services? Something to ponder, if one has a propensity for pondering.

At the same time, given the relative lack of activity on iTunes Ping, I wouldn’t bet on Twitter integration having that major an impact by itself. Not unlike Google, Apple has a hard time making a mark on the social Web. Now, if Twitter integration does connect to everything else Apple does, it could lead to interesting things. A full-fledged online identity? Access to contacts for not only messaging and photo sharing but for collaboration, group management, and media sharing? Not betting on any of this, but it could be fun. Again, not specific to iCloud, but quite related to “The Cloud”. If Twitter integration is deep enough, in iOS 5, it’d be possible to use iOS devices for “cloud computing”, getting further into the “post-PC era”.

An iCloud feature which is expected by several people, is something like an OTA version of the “iTunes file sharing” feature in iOS. Several apps (especially Apple’s own apps) use iTunes and a USB cable to share files. It was a welcome addition to iTunes 9.1 but it’s rather inconvenient. So many other apps rely on Dropbox for file sharing.

Which leads me to dream about iCloud as a replacement for Dropbox. Sounds extremely unlikely that it’ll have the full Dropbox feature set, especially if one thinks about the “Pro 50” and “Pro 100” plans on Dropbox. But I dream of the day when Apple’s iDisk will compete with Dropbox. Not that I’m convinced it ever will. But it’d make Apple’s devices all the more useful if it did.

Something similar, which isn’t frequently discussed directly, in connection with iCloud rumours, but which would rock: Mozy– or Carbonite-style backup, for Mac OS X machines. Sounds very unlikely that Apple will ever offer something like this but, as crazy as it may sound, the connection between Time Capsule and iCloud would be great if it went that far. From a user’s perspective, the similarities between Time Machine backup and “backing up in the cloud” (à la Mozy/Carbonite) are quite obvious. The advantages of both are clear. And while no hardware announcement is supposed to make its way to the WWDC 2011 keynote, I’d give the Time Capsule some consideration if it provided me with the equivalent of what I currently have with Mozy. Not to mention that Mozy has already sparked some drift-off moments, in me, before they announced their new plans. What if I could have a single service which combines features from Mozy, Time Machine, Dropbox, and YouSendIt?

I even think about the possibilities in terms of web hosting. As it stands, MobileMe does allow for some Web publishing through the iWeb application in its iLife suite. But iWeb has never been a major effort for Apple and it hasn’t been seen a significant update in quite a while. What if iCloud could become a true webhost just like, say… iWeb.com? (Semi-disclaimer: I won a free account with iWeb.com, last Fall, and I host some sites there. I also know some of the people who work there…)

Yet again, I don’t expect this to happen. It’s not speculation, on my part. It’s a daydream.

The reason this makes me dream is that I find all these things to be related and I wish they were integrated more seamlessly. Something about which Apple haters may not care much is the type of integration represented by iTunes. As clunky as iTunes may be, in some respects, it’s quite a success in terms of integrating a lot of different things. In fact, it probably overextended its reach a bit too much and we need to replace it. Apple needs to replace iTunes and we should also replace iTunes in our lives.

Like Gruber, I end up thinking about iCloud in relation to iTunes more than in relation to MobileMe. But I also dream about the ideal cloud service, which would not only sync and backup files between iOS devices, hundreds of millions of iTunes store accounts, and Macs, but replace several of the services for which I’m paying monthly fees.

Here’s to dreaming…

Other parts of this crazy, iCloud-infused daydream, in notes form:

Uncategorized

URL Shortening

1 Comment

In other news..

One thing which has been working quite well in my migration (and one of a large number of reasons behind said migration) is my own URL shortener. In this case, I’m pretty much a happy camper. 🙂

Heard about self-hosted URL shorteners on several occasions and remember hearing about YOURLS (the system I’m using) during Jérôme Paradis‘s presentation at WordCamp Montréal. (Interestingly, Jérôme’s latest post is about URL shortening.)

Not only do Jérôme and Kim do all sorts of cool stuff with YOURLS and other tools, but I’d been meaning to “go short.” At least to try it. Not just because “all the cool kids are doing it.” Because my participant-observation stuff implies that I should try stuff out. URL shortening wasn’t a huge priority, but it was on my list.

So, what’s URL shortening, you ask?

Well, it’s very simple. You take [insert Crisco joke here] and add URL..

Somewhat more seriously, and from my personal perspective..

Short URLs are services which convert URLs containing lots of characters into short versions, containing much fewer characters. Along with this conversion, URL shorteners also provide some services which go along with those URLs. Most notably “analytics” or statistics about clicks.

Here’s an example of a long URL:

http://collectingtokens.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/pa280823.jpg?w=480&h=640

Here’s a shortened version:

http://lar.me/2h

Another shortened version:

http://xkr.in/AcceptingThanks

They all point to the same thing, this image from a friend‘s blog:

Accepting Thanks

Ambiguity
Accepting Thanks Giving Orders Now

One item, many URLs. Not so unified, eh?

So, it is about adding an extra step in the transmission of URLs. Both ways. When you post a link, you convert to a short form. And when you click on a link, the same service expands from the short form to a long form, so you can get the actual destination of the URL.

Basically, encoding and decoding. In the Shannon/Weaver model of communication which is so prevalent in the “online worldview,” a very familiar process.

With some disadvantages and benefits.

The most obvious benefit is probably the number of character used to transmit the URL. Which might explain the popularity of such URL shortening services. While the basic idea was probably on people’s minds for a long time, it mostly took off with short-form communication (such as SMS/texting and chat) and especially with microblogging. In some ways, short URLs are associated in people’s minds with Twitter but they have other uses.

In all of these cases, the number of character is somewhat constrained. In chat, there may not be an actual limit, but people don’t want to type long URLs. In SMS and in most microblogging systems (which take their limits from SMS), there’s an official limit which, it turns out, is related to work by Friedhelm Hillebrand and (interestingly, given some comments about issues surrounding length) to telex.

The point being that these services have length limits from convention, rule, or habit. And short URLs help avoid these limits. Copying and pasting URLs is actually a very common thing to do, online.

So it makes sense to have services which help in the process. In fact, I’m still surprised that there aren’t more services around this. Such as a service which allows for quick pasting links from your personal database of links into any document on any machine.

And this is one of the somewhat unexpected benefits of URL shortening..

Sure, URLs are shorter. But you can also make them more memorable, (1) easier to type from memory. Actually, since URL shorteners work as “personal databases of links,” they can help in the (2) retrieval of some links, a bit in the way “social bookmarking” works. Using a “custom domain,” it is possible to customize these links, (3) making them more personal. They also serve as a (4) list of recent items, with some neat searching features.

Plus, you get those “analytics” I mentioned earlier. One obvious benefit of this is that you can (5) track a marketing campaign or (6) follow the spread of some “viral content.” Neat stuff which gets some people’s panties in a knot.

But, wait! There’s more!

Statistics on short URLs allow you to (7) assess trends in behaviour. Clicking is the simplest online behaviour and observing this behaviour is fascinating for anyone doing anything online, regardless of marketing and SEO and virality and clickthrough rates. Clicking is just an indicator of something but, in aggregate, it may help you understand what’s going on. The analogy I have in my mind is about whether or not students are engaging with readings. So I’m thinking here about course-specific Web analytics the way “clickers” are making some people all giddy.

Then, there’s a potential use for short URLs as a way to (8) way to fight linkrot. The way this works is that a personal shortlink database is modifiable. So you can actually change the long version of the link, if the “destination URL” has changed. Sure, it still requires some work, but there’s a benefit, here.

Once links are in your personal database, you can (9) build collections of links. Again, pretty much like a “social bookmarking service.” It’s not because it’s already done through other methods that it’s not fun.

A personal use that is related to other ones but I find fun is as (10) a reading list. Basically, as I accumulate links in my personal database, I’m building lists of things I want to keep, somehow. I could integrate it into something like InstaPaper, or Diigo, etc. to construct lists of things I want to read (or watch, listen to, play with..).

Something obvious from the start and still cool is that URL shorteners provide tools to (11) easily share individual links, often in the form of bookmarklets, tools, “click to copy” buttons, and Twitter/Facebook integration. Similarly, I can have RSS feeds of my shortened links, (12) easily sharing collections of items.

I mentioned bookmarklets but one (13) very neat method for getting links in your personal database in the first place is to add the URL shortening domain in the URL bar, followed by a slash. Sounds complicated but it’s very easy to use and about as convenient as you can get.

And a “totally not obvious, gosh this is so geeky” use that I personally like, I can have a special URL shortening service to (14) share things only with that special someone.

I could possibly go on and on, talking about obvious, extended, and potential benefits. But I don’t feel like it.

There are also disadvantages. While I’m acutely aware of them, I also don’t feel like spending too much time on them.

A large set of disadvantages have to do with the fact that shortlinks hide their “destination.” So, when you see a short URL, you can’t tell where it’s leading you. So, for one thing, you don’t know whether you’re being sent to a YouTube video, a PDF on a university server, an MP3 file from the same site, or an article in a major publication. All of this can be quite annoying and shortcircuits some link-following behaviour. Much worse is the fact that the destination can be a potentially very dangerous place. There are some rather nasty things which can be done to someone who merely follows a link.

But:

a) Following a link should already be about negotiated trust, and some harmless-looking links may also send you just about anywhere.

b) Maintaining short URLs puts power in the hands of the linker (the person creating the link), instead of the person in charge of the content which is linked. As mentioned in terms of linkrot, it means that the person who adds the link can change it if the destination has changed, including if there’s been an exploit of that landing page.

c) There are multiple services out there to “preview” short URLs, showing you where they lead. Some of them show you the long URL any time you mouse over a short URL. Others actually (such as the New Twitter and several Twitter apps) show you the results, visually. Yet others may warn you if a particular link seems to be inappropriate in some way.

d) Some “branded URL shorteners” actually tell you something about the destination. The main examples are TechCrunch and The New York Times. In both cases (at least, if I understand correctly), URLs beginning with the custom domain refer to pages on the actual domain. So, if you see a link starting with “nyti.ms,” you know it’s leading to NYT content and a link starting with “tcrn.ch” should be from a TechCrunch page.

I’m actually doing something similar to the last point in that, so far at least, all links on enk.im are to content on my own Enkerli.com domain.

As you might have noticed, if you’ve been mousing over my links, I’m using another domain, here: Lar.me. This is my main URL shortening domain, at this point. I was actually pretty glad to be able to get it as it’s relatively short (a high value for a domain used in URL shortening) and it actually spells out a word [Well, «larme» is French for “tear” or “teardrop.” Not the cheeriest word in the world but it still works: my shortlinks are like little tears.] And I’ve been going overboard with it.

As for the domain I use with my sweetheart, it’s a secret!

I still have some stuff to say about short URLs. Especially about what I like about YOURLS. But that will have to wait.

App Store, blog comments, blogging systems, blogging tools, cluefulness, comment-fishing, content, Crazy Predictions, creativity, enthusiasm, Facebook, getting things done, Google, hype, knowledge management, linkfest, microblogging, musings, naïveté, new media, online privacy, online publishing, openness, optimism, Outlining, participatory culture, Placeholders, predictions, productivity, ramblings, social bookmarking, social butterfly effect, social media, social networks, social software, software, tagging, tags, Tech, techno enthusiasts, techno lust, Touch devices, Twitter, Web 2.0, wishful thinking, wishlists, workflow, writing, YouTube

Sharing Tool Wishlist

4 Comments

The following is an edited version of a wishlist I had been keeping on the side. The main idea is to define what would be, in my mind, the “ultimate social bookmarking system.” Which, obviously, goes way beyond social bookmarking. In a way, I even conceive of it as the ultimate tool for sharing online content. Yes, it’s that ambitious. Will it ever exist? Probably not. Should it exist? I personally think so. But I may be alone in this. Surely, you’ll tell me that I am indeed alone, which is fine. As long as you share your own wishlist items.

The trigger for my posting this is that someone contacted me, asking for what I’d like in a social bookmarking system. I find this person’s move quite remarkable, as a thoughtful strategy. Not only because this person contacted me directly (almost flattering), but because such a request reveals an approach to listening and responding to people’s needs that I find lacking in some software development circles.

This person’s message served as a prompt for my blogging this, but I’ve been meaning to blog this for a while. In fact, my guess is that I created a first version of this wishlist in 2007 after having it on my mind for a while before that. As such, it represents a type of “diachronic” or “longitudinal” view of social bookmarking and the way it works in the broader scheme of social media.

Which also means that I wrote this before I heard about Google Wave. In fact, I’m still unclear about Google Wave and I’ll need to blog about that. Not that I expect Wave to fulfill all the needs I set up for a sharing tool, but I get the impression that Google is finally putting some cards on the table.

The main part of this post is in outline form. I often think through outlines, especially with such a type of notes. I fully realize that it may not be that clear, as a structure, for other people to understand. Some of these bullet points cover a much broader issue than what they look like. But the overall idea might be fairly obvious to grasp, even if it may sound crazy to other people.

I’m posting this to the benefit of anyone who may wish to build the killer app for social media. Of course, it’s just one man’s opinion. But it’s my entitled opinion.

Concepts

What do we share online?

  • “Link”
  • “Page”
  • Identified content
  • Text
    • Narrative
    • Contact information
    • Event description
  • Contact information
  • Event invitation
  • Image
  • Recording
  • Structured content
  • Snippet
  • Access to semi-private content
  • Site’s entry point

Selective sharing

Private
  • Archiving
  • Cloud access
Individually shared
  • “Check this out”
  • Access to address book
  • Password protection
  • Specialization/expertise
  • Friendship
Group shared
  • Shared interests (SIG)
  • Collaboration (task-based)
Shared through network
  • Define identity in network
  • Semi-public
Public
  • Publishing
  • Processed
  • Reading lists

Notetaking

  • Active reading
  • Anchoring text
  • Ad hoc list of bookmarks
  • “Empty URL”
    • Create container/page
    • Personal notes

Todos

  • To read
  • To blog
  • To share
  • To update
  • Projects
    • GTD
    • Contexts
  • Add to calendar (recognized as event)

Outlining/Mindmapping

  • Manage lists of links
  • Prioritize
  • Easily group

Social aspects of sharing

  • Gift economy
  • Personal interaction
  • Trust
  • Hype
  • Value
  • Customized

Cloud computing

  • Webware
  • “Online disk”
  • Without download
  • Touch devices
  • Edit online

Personal streaming

  • Activities through pages
  • Logging
  • Flesh out personal profile

Tagging

  • “Folksonomy”
  • Enables non-hierarchical structure
  • Semantic fields
  • Related tags
  • Can include hierarchy
  • Tagclouds define concept map

Required Features

Crossplatform, crossbrowser

  • Browser-specific tools
  • Bookmarklets
  • Complete access through cloud
Keyboard shortcuts
  • Quick add (to account)
  • Vote
  • Bookmark all tabs (à la Flock)
  • Quick tags

Related pages

Recommended
  • Based on social graph
  • Based on tags
  • Based on content
  • Based on popularity
  • Pointing to this page

Quickly enter links

  • Add in place (while editing)
  • Similar to “spell as you type”
  • Incremental search
  • Add full link (title, URL, text, metadata)

Archiving

  • Prevent linkrot
  • Prepare for post-processing (offline reading, blogging…)
  • Enable bulk processing
  • Maintain version history
  • Internet Archive

Automatic processing

  • Tags
  • Summary
  • Wordcount
  • Reading time
  • Language(s)
  • Page structure analysis
  • Geotagging
  • Vote

Thread following

  • Blog comments
  • Forum comments
  • Trackbacks
  • Pings

Exporting

All
  • Archiving
  • Prepare for import
  • Maintain hierarchy
Selected
  • Tag
  • Category
  • Recently used
  • Shared
  • Site homepage
  • Blogroll
  • Blogs
Formats
  • Other services
  • HTML
  • RSS
  • OPML
  • Widget
Features
  • Comments
  • Tags
  • Statistics
  • Content

Offline processing

  • Browser-based
  • Device based
  • Offline archiving
  • Include content
  • Synchronization

Microblogging support

  • Laconi.ca/Identi.ca
  • Twitter
  • Ping.fm
  • Jaiku

Fixed/Static URL

  • Prevent linkrot
  • Maintain list for same page
  • Short URLs
  • Automatically generated
  • Expansion on mouseover
  • Statistics

Authentication

  • Use of resources
  • Identify
  • Privacy
  • Unnecessary for basic processing
  • Sticks (no need to login frequently)
  • Access to contacts and social graph
  • Multiple accounts
    • Personal/professional
    • Contexts
    • Group accounts
  • Premium accounts
    • Server space
    • Usage statistics
    • Promotion
  • Support
    • OpenID
      • As group login
    • Google Accounts
    • Facebook Connect
    • OAuth

Integration

  • Web history
  • Notebook
  • Blogging platform
  • Blog editor
  • Microblogging platform
  • Logbook
  • General purpose content editor
  • Toolbar
  • URL shortening
  • Address book
  • Social graph
  • Personal profile
  • Browser
    • Bookmarks
    • History
    • Autocomplete
  • Analytics
  • Email
  • Search
    • Online
    • Offline

Related Tools

  • Diigo
  • WebCitation
  • Ping.fm
  • BackType
  • Facebook share
  • Blog This
  • Link This
  • Share this
  • Digg
  • Plum
  • Spurl
  • CoComments
  • MyBlogLog
  • TwtVite
  • Twistory
  • Windows Live Writer
  • Magnolia
  • Stumble Upon
  • Delicious
  • Google Reader
  • Yahoo Pipes
  • Google Notebook
  • Zoho Notebook
  • Google Browser Sync
  • YouTube
  • Flock
  • Zotero

Relevant Blogposts