Well, with things finally starting to surface, i'm a bit more comfortable talking about them. The first part of what i'm working on is Notifications. What the heck is "Notifications" you ask? Well, it's kinda tricky.

The elevator pitch i like to give is "Somewhere between Instant Messaging and Email is 'Notifications'". It's a way for sites to semi-anonymously send messages to a user. Communication is one way right now, mostly for simplicity sake between the site and the user, but there's precious little to prevent the communication from going either way.

Ah, this is our floor, shall we get out of the elevator and actually talk about this? Cool.

The history lesson

A little over a year ago, a couple of damn bright interns spent their summer building a prototype notification system that used AMQP and a few other things to pass messages back and forth. The cool thing is that it allowed browsers to talk to browsers, or sites to talk to browsers or really anything to talk to anything. You could get twitter announcements in your chrome, or send a tab to your mobile device or all sorts of things. It was spiffy, but unfortunately, had issues. A fairly large one was relying on AMQP, meaning a persistent socket connection. That's expensive on a whole slew of levels, not including trying to convince your grandma to punch a hole into her firewall.

So, as is the case with a lot of good ideas, we headed back to the whiteboard to figure out what elements we can use. Some things, like sending a tab to a device, turned out to work better if we used something like sync. That still left a few other features that we wanted.

Enter the BrowserID

BrowserID is cool. The ability to log into a site by selecting what email you want to provide to them is amazingly simple! Granted, if you're logging into a site like GnomeBondage.com, you probably don't want to give them an email that will let them fill your work email box with things you may not want your employer to see.

That's why you want something that is a bit harder for them to associate back to you. And that's what i've been working on.

(Originally, Bipostal (BrowseriD Postal Services, no, really. Stop giggling like that.) was meant to be a later addition to the Push Notifications stuff. Because BrowserID pushed forward, though, the need was higher for that part.)

So, Bipostal generates a token that is specific for you and the third party site (say example.org). The token is ~64 base36 characters resulting in 64*(log₂(36) ~= 5.17) = 330 bits of entropy or 2187250724783011924372502227117621365353169430893212436425770606409952999199375923223513177023053824 possible combinations. That's pretty large. Plus, we're doing a number of things to prevent spammers and other ne'er do wells from sending in just random garbage.

When a site wants to send you a note, the send it to an address like "6e7snqnx6lomcr67r0clqyimrspopjt894kjhh0dafpfysa3sey944kc3aek1gfi@browserid.org". We make sure it's legit, strip out the fancy HTML cruft, and sent it to you. You can also quiet messages to that address (if some site turns out to be overly chatty) or delete that ID. In the future, sites can include bits of JSON in their email that can get pulled out and sent to you as notifications. All magical and pseudonymous. Well, unless you fill out all the profile info with your real values, in which case, they know everything about you, but that's an "out of band" problem.

What's to come

Honestly, quite a bit. While a lot has been nailed down (both Push and Bipostal are on Github), but that doesn't mean we don't want to hear folks comments and ideas. i've included two of the ways you can provide feedback on the Notifications main page. Likewise, you can comment here and i'll try to respond both here and via email.

Likewise, we'd really love for other companies to help us work out the details to provide a cost effective, light weight platform for this sort of thing. (Websockets and SIP are neat, but require persistent connections which can be costly. We have the option to do message encryption, which would allow the server to not know the content of the message being transmitted, but it would be neat to use non invasive encryption validation to see if we can prevent bogus messages from being delivered.) It's always good to have bigger brains helping out. There's a lot we can do and a lot we're trying to make sure we don't mess up.

Now more than ever, What do you think?

i have a cousin who is far more interested in the family legacy than most of us are. She is very interested in breaking the apparent wall that extends beyond my grandfather's generation. In fact, at the time of his passing (i was only around 8 or so), i had asked his surviving brother if there were any particular stories of note regarding the previous generations. We had lots of other stories of family members past to whet our appetites for more. Stories of Spanish War veteran uncles who met their fates leaping through windows after hearing cars back fire, others who had been run out of town for reasons that i was too young to know. "Son," the equally reclusive and religious gentleman asked in sonorous tones, "Do you love your Mother and Father?" Of course i did. If for no other reason than it would have been a very long walk back to the house for an eight year old. He smiled and replied "Then that is all that matters."

He never did tell us anything else.

It's both natural and alliterative that one does wonder about one's past, and since i am the uncle with a history minor, the crest of family history has undoubtedly fallen to me.

So i'm going to do the honorable thing, and make sh*t up.

You see, that's the glorious potential that i have. History is indeed written by the survivors, and if i've learned nothing from companies that sell family coats of arms and various online family research sites, every bloody one of us is descended from some drunken night of debauchery by an ancestor with a golden hat. Families, it would seem, often do not include a great deal of peasants and vagabonds.

This is why it is both my duty and obligation to ensure that my particular family branch be properly recorded so that when my time has come to pass this veil of tears, those that are curious can learn of our history.

And more importantly, we're all dead so they can't prove that we're lying.

Much like my great (fifteen times removed) grandfather Eric the Carnlyn. A great medium of a man who tilled his farm most days of the month, but when the moon was full and the mists rolled over the hills of the western tuath of Connachta, horror gripped his village. Terrible howls and screams would fill the night. The weathered farmers of the village told stories in cautious whispers. Tales of men who became like great wolves and murdered the sheep and oxen in the night. On those nights, mothers would call upon the gods and elves of the hills for protection of hearth and home. Strangely, while other homes would keep the peat fires burning though the night, Eric's small home would always be dark and empty. The screams would end by morning, but only a few knew the truth. The sun would greet Eric as he stood, fists upon his hips, a great smile upon his face, skin glinting in the dawn's light. He stood both equally defiant and pantless. No cow nor sheep murdered, and only blood drawn were from the scratches and bruises on his skin.

For he, Eric, had protected the tiny village in the manner that he found best. By having forced, carnal relations with the lycanthropes that roamed the hills.

That's right. He raped werewolves.

Of course, "Eric Carnal An Lycanthrope" was abbreviated to "Eric CarnLyn" (and eventually softened to "Conlin"), but that was mostly done to avoid the lingering lawsuits and demands for reparations.

So what's a soul to do?

Turns out that a rather clever person came up with the idea of MPAA Offsets. They're like carbon offsets for the soul. What you do is match your media consumption with a donation to EFF. Spend a buck buying a track off iTunes? Send a buck to EFF. Got a Netflix subscription? Fork over $8 a month to keep the web open. This is particularly great if you've got cable or satellite, because those services aren't cheap.

Hopefully, this will have a two fold effect. One, you're going to be a bit more prudent about going with indie labels or direct to artist sales for media. You're probably also going to seek out what the web has to offer, like the various short form movies you can get off of Youtube. You'll also get a fairly sizable tax credit if you're a US citizen. (If you're not, i'm also fine with you supporting your local equivalent.)

This is about money, plain and simple. You're the one with money, so it really matters what you do with it. If this crap matters to you, vote with your wallet.

SAN JOSE — The following is a statement by J R Conlin, Guy who understands the internet and how things actually work on the so-called statement regarding "Blackout Day" by the Chairman, CEO, Ex-Senator, and Mortgage expert, Chris Dodd.

"Only the day before Internet Blackout Day, after the White House, various Internet professionals, and pretty much the rest of the planet has stood up and say <expletive> NO! to a hastily cobbled together, slap dash, obvious power grab being rushed through congress from two fronts, Mr. Dodd and company are saying how this is unfair. Because they obviously know how to play fair.

Granted, the sites most prominently calling for citizens to come to their rescue are the sites that would be most directly effected by the bills that Mr. Dodd wants to rocket through our elected representatives so that they can shut down the phantasmal threats that they see, must like previous threats that needed immediate action lest his industry suffer forever.

Still, how does one react to the fact that Mr. Dodd's own reaction was a statement, dictated to a secretary, and drafted as a document "published" on the internet, without option for public comment or discussion? Quite possibly with the un-typed "Your's sincerely, yadda yadda, type that up and post it up for those low lifes will you sweetheart?". Maybe accented by the clatter of ice cubes in his glass as a subtle reminder that his gin also needs topping.

i think that description pretty much sums it up.

And frankly, he can go get stuffed."

About JR Conlin
He's just some guy, but one that bets he's done more for the benefit of society that Mr. Dodd.

For more information, contact:

Your Elected Representative
In Congress
And let them know that SOPA and PIPA are horrible.

Of course, there are bad guys. These folks want to use social sites (like facebook, twitter, google plus, yahoo mail, etc. to send you a free ipad for filling out endless surveys that end in your checking account being emptied as you unbox your very own 241mm x 186mm slab of plywood. Since CAPTCHAs are hard for computers to figure out, they pay folks to guess CAPTCHAs for them. Thousands of them per day.

So, in some respects, the greater force for aiding in the digitizing of lost texts is probably some guy in a coffee shop being paid $.05 for every ten ReCAPTCHAs. Those endless ads for discount Canadian Viagra may have also helped immortalize Robert Guillaume's groundbreaking show.. Or Anne of Green Gables. Maybe we'll go with Anne of Green Gables.

That's fine and dandy for doing distributed OCR work, but what about the other big problems out there?

How about solving a little protein folding? How about matching chromosome sequences? Maybe record weather patterns from historical logs? Sites know "problem nets" and could simple toggle a switch to use the new system. Heck, folks from other countries might actually appreciate not having to deal with figuring out English words.

As long as spammers are paying keyboard monkeys, let's use the spammer's money to help society more than they're trying to ruin it.

More importantly, i've decided that i need to work on a few things in this new year:

1. Learn a new framework a month.
Anyone can learn a new programming language in a day or two. Honestly, they're mostly the same, just some of the words are different and some tweaky crap like how hashes and lists are handled. (Obviously, there are huge exceptions to this, as there always are, but on the whole, most heavily used languages descend from the ALGOL branch).

What really sets some languages apart is the meta-programming aspects of them. What are those? Meta-programming are the libraries and frameworks that people have added to the core language to do all the spiffy things that folks actually talk about. Some languages seem to acquire frameworks far faster and easier than others. Perl and PHP, for instance, don't really have the same level of meta-programming that Python or Java do.

So, i'm going to try to become reasonably well versed in the various major frameworks that are out there. Possibly giving myself a project to work on each month.

2. Be less hostile toward enemy technology.
First, let me be clear by what i mean as "enemy technology". Basically, it's anything from a service or company that i'm not very happy with. This means companies like Facebook, Apple and the like. Unless it's some element of core infrastructure that there's no way for the company to express direct control over (like Redis or ProtocolBuffers), i tend to view it with an absurd level of distrust and suspicion.

i need to back down from that a bit. The suspicion will still be there, but i can't figure out if the idea is valid if i shun it entirely. Plus, if it's really closed, that gives me the added incentive to create an open version. Time to make friends again with wireshark.

3. Be mobile.
Ok, this is something i've been working on for a while. In essence, i need to be able to move at a moments notice. That means being able to be effective anywhere. It also means being more active in the mobile space and building things that are scoped for that sort of environment. Much like fighting greenhouse gasses, even if it's not really needed in the future, it's going to make things better anyway. Perhaps, after nearly 10 years, i ought to consider updating the look of this blog.

That doesn't mean sitting around listening to Gran'ma talk about the war all Christmas, though. The Internet provides lots of options for holiday fare. What's more, since a lot of laptops/tablets/doo-hickeys have HDMI output, you can even plug these into the big screen and watch there. Plus, if you decide to donate to or buy any of these, you'll be giving money directly to the folks, which is what the MPAA and RIAA have been saying we should do anyway. (Which is odd, considering how little they give, but that's beside the point.)

Here's a list of movies that are going to be more fun than paying $100 to take the family to watch a regrettable flick:

Rufus the Dog's Christmas Carol – A heart warming classic that reminds me more of Henson's Muppets, than Disney's.

Cinematic Titanic's Santa Clause Conquers the Martians – A personal holiday tradition of mine. A horrible movie improved by the original cast of MST3K.

Rifftrax presents the Magic Christmas Tree – The other half of MST3K present their own commentary on a classic (and disturbing) movie.

If you're not into that sort of thing:

Sita sings the Blues Honestly, if you haven't seen this movie yet, you need to. It's funny, charming, sweet, poignant, and it was blocked from theatrical release over music rights issues regarding the public domain songs used.

Louis C.K. Live at the Beacon damn funny $5, from a guy absolutely not motivated by greed.

Toss a 1/4 cup of popcorn and a tsp of oil in a brown paper bag, nuke for 2:30 (or until it doesn't pop as much), crack open your beverage of choice, and enjoy some holiday fun where you can pause for bathroom breaks.

Crap.

How the hell did this happen? i mean Christmas is obviously early for a holiday that has a fixed calendar date, but normally i'm slightly better about these sorts of things.

That's why i am unilaterally declaring January 15th to be Holy Shitsmas. The traditional holiday were folks (hopefully) receive cards from me that may have been purchased at the 50% off table, and if they don't they can rest assured that folks who now live at their a previous address of theirs are either deeply confused and/or offended.

It's not that you're not important, quite the opposite. If you weren't important, you wouldn't get a made up holiday designed to sorta/kinda appease you. Think of this as bucking the trend of over commercializing the holiday along with a gentle reminder of the joy you're supposed to be having right now as you also sprint around trying to make sure you've not forgotten most of the folks you actually have.

Plus, the post office could probably use the money.

So, Holy Oshitsmas to you, and a grovelly New Year!

i'll also note that i have no idea what the currently popular story lines are for most TV shows, or who's leading in what reality game show, or whatever.

Truth be told, if the TV is on, there are about 5 shows i regularly record and watch, otherwise it's local news and weather.

This doesn't mean that i sit in a cave, it means that i just find the internet far more entertaining than the latest steam-punk, high action adventure of some previously public domain work (that was better in the original form anyway). My wife is kind of the same way, and she watches far more TV than i do.

i know that this scares big media. To be honest, if i were in the business of making sure that the limited content i produce is under my strict control, i would be too. i think the worst part is that the internet also shows that creativity is actually pretty cheap. There are millions of great ideas out there (along with the trillions of horrible ones), and the "wisdom of the crowds" helps do what a lot of studios used to do. We no longer need professional filters. Amateur ones work pretty well.

Granted, there's an easy model that studios could adopt that would guarantee that they stay profitable and useful for decades, but it's not my job to tell them, and considering their constant attempts to kill what i find far more interesting than them, i'm sure as hell not going to help them.

For now, i'll just ask a question that's been bothering me since i first heard about ePARASITE, SOPA, and the other Death to the Free Net bills that are out there: In light to what the Internet has contributed to society, what has the MPAA and RIAA done to improve things in the past 30 years?

i didn't break the alarm clock, although i certainly did try. None the less i lay there debating my future. Should i get out of bed, get dressed and go sit in a two hour lab about something that i was forced to take to fulfill my curriculum, or should i skip that class and catch a few more precious moments of sleep? Hell, who was i kidding? i couldn't even answer that coherently. So i put it up to the universe. "Give me a sign, some indication that i should get out of bed."

At that very moment the last train to use the tracks located not 200 yards from my dorm room rolled by, blaring it's horn and loaded with a brass band, providing a suitable retirement for the landmark event. The sound of the horn was nearly deafening, only to be followed by a solid two minutes of a Sousa march and solemn cheers. Dust fell from the ceiling and i'm fairly certain that my bed may have moved a few inches from the reverberations. i'm pretty sure St. Michael was taking notes for his solo come Armageddon.

"Nope. Not good enough", i proclaimed and pulled the cover back over my head.