For the sake of my developing RSI – one profile please!
By no means is this a new idea but it is certainly bothering more now than ever before. Why must I fill out all the same information on every social network site I visit? Why can’t I use something like OpenID to store all those boxes and the social network can get it from there? Secondly why can’t I get my profile information out? Facebook’s API is decent but generally useless as I can’t really grab the profile information I want. Sure I can pull events but I can’t put any back… It’s the same boring information.
This annoyance was brought on finally by Virb. I love the site, I appreciate the Flickr integration, but the bands I like are sorta in Facebook (I got bored, couldn’t list them all) and I am too lazy to fill in the boxes again.
This has come up with applications here. I want to share contact information between applications but I can’t. We have centralized authorization but it just tells me who they are (with the name they gave HR) and not much else. I want to try and fix that for the apps CPA manages and offer it to others at UW who want to use it.
I am still in the planning stage but I propose an update for Kiwi that is a sort of add-on to the core service of authentication. Here is what I want to add:
- Profile creation – email preferences, SMS, etc. The fields should be flexible and will certainly grow.
- Sharing between apps that use Kiwi for authentication.
- Once Kiwi logs you in you can go to any Kiwi authenticated application without logging in again.
- OpenID will be allowed to be used to authenticate, Kiwi will manage that.
Yes this all exists in other applications out there but not here. I want to play with OpenID anyway so here is my chance. What do you think? Is the effort worth it?
Waterloo turns off Internet, cites security concerns
Well it looks like this is my last post. Starting today the University will shut off its Internet connection due to security concerns. There was a move to simply remove all web browsers in favour of Lynx and firewall the campus so only port 80 worked but bandwidth concerns ended that.
“We just use too much internets,” states Yuri a network specialist in IST. “With the CS club choking the tubez and all the hackers from Romania attacking the networkz we need to just shut things down to protect us all from the internet.” Roger, Director of Networkz, adds “in the 24 years I have worked on networkz at UW it has been nothing but trouble, I think this will allow us to focus on core services.”
The faculty association has hinted that they will welcome this move as there has been concern that students are spending more time in Facebook than they are in Angel. They are even using MSN during class time.
With the loss of Internet it is anticipated that the productivity levels of all students, staff, and faculty should go up. I imagine the next surplus sale will attract many historical computing buffs looking for ancient network gear… 
