Digital identity event at Future Salon

Last night I attended a Future Salon presentation about digital and online identities. The event was hosted at SAP in Palo Alto.

Eric Sachs of Google spoke about Google’s relatively new entry into the digital identity realm with services such as Orkut and Gmail. Jeff Hodges of Liberty Alliance talked about identity systems in the enterprise marketplace. Fen Labalme of Identity Commons talked about identity systems built at the grassroots level for non-governmental organizations.

I recorded all three speeches as well as the question and answer period using a directional microphone from my seat in the front row.

Eric Sachs
MP3 audio
19:14, 8.7 MB
Jeff Hodges
MP3 audio
15:40, 7.1 MB
Fen Labalme
MP3 audio
22:49, 10.3 MB
Questions & Answers
MP3 audio
36:34, 16.6 MB

Reserve a product at your local Apple Store

Would you like to get your hands on the latest Apple product as soon as it hits your local Apple Store? You can go online at the store or from anywhere in the world to reserve a product when it becomes available. I used the system to reserve an iPod shuffle and I received a call today that the San Francisco Apple Store will keep one on hold for me until the end of the day.

URL syntax is http://apple.webassociates.com/request/reserve.cfm?sid= + your local Apple Store ID. Visit the Apple Store retail page, select your nearest store, and note the store ID in the Genius Bar link. Build your URL as described above.

Reserve a product from the Apple Store

To reserve a product just enter your full contact information including a phone number. The same information is available from the “Contact Us” link in the Apple Store if you are worried about a spoofed site. You will receive a phone call when your item of interest is in stock and it will be placed on hold.

Six Apart HQ visit

Six Apart headquarters

Yesterday I dropped by the Six Apart headquarters unannounced. Everyone was very busily working for 4 p.m. on a Friday. I took some pictures of their new office space.

The office layout is open and airy allowing for easy collaboration between teams. There are plenty of conference rooms if you would like some privacy. Two conference rooms are identified as Movable Type and TypePad battlegrounds as the War Room and the Make Love Not War room respectively. The central core of the office space contains lounge areas, executive offices, and a kitchen. Their kitchen had four or five refrigerators, most likely expanded for Firday FooBar events.

It was good to see a lot of corporate culture in the Six Apart offices. Almost everyone had a personal memento or toy at their desks from sock puppets to Robosapiens.

Geek wine gathering Monday, January 31

Enomatic wine vending machine

I am hosting a geek wine gathering and tasting at VinoVenue in downtown San Francisco on Monday, January 31 at 6:30 p.m. VinoVenue dispenses 1-ounce sample of wine by inserting a smart card into an automated machine hooked up to wine bottles. Very geeky, and a good space to mix after work. If you plan to attend please leave a comment so I can get a reasonable headcount. If you do not drink wine they also have some nice teas. There is a small market next door, A.G. Ferrari, and outside food is allowed.

VinoVenue is located at the corner of 3rd Street and Mission Street in San Francisco, half a block from SFMOMA and a block from the Montgomery BART station.

As seen in Wired and Wine Spectator. The wine is dispensed using Windows-based software and argon is added to the bottle to keep the wine fresh. The smart cards are written in Java.

Minimum smart card purchase is $10 and I saw some wines for less than $1 during my scouting trip today.

Bay area technology events calendar

I try to keep track of events in the Bay Area of interest to techies like me. There seems to be enough interest from like-minded people that I decided to publish an aggregated calendar of local events of interest to me. I pull information from venues, local groups, and personal contacts. Cost information will appear at the top of the notes section.

Yes, I could output in hCalendar or RSS as well but publishing my calendar on .Mac is just so easy.

Click on one of the links below to view my list of San Francisco Bay area events of interest to me and possibly of interest to you.

  1. View events online
  2. Subscribe in iCal

Technorati Tag API

Technorati opened up their tag API for anyone to query for posts associated with a tag. The query currently only returns Technorati’s own XML. Some other API changes now live:

  • You can choose to not receive claimed weblog data for cosmos and search queries by setting the claim parameter to 0.
  • Search query now has a limit parameter to allow for selective browsing.
  • Cosmos query has a highlight parameter to highlight the anchor text within the excerpt.

Take 2 Games acquires Civilization franchise

Take 2 Interactive Software announced that it has purchased the Civilization game franchise from FIRAXIS. Civilization IV will be released in late 2005 with 3D graphics and support for XML and Python user-created add-ons.

I have spent many days over the years playing Civilization and its expansion packs. I’m looking forward to being able to code for the next version and bringing the Irish closer to virtual world domaination!

Amazon visual yellow pages

Amazon’s A9 search engine added a business directory today with images of the business storefront alongside the address and a clickable telephone number. A search for Starbucks returns Starbucks locations within five miles of your Amazon.com default shipping address by default with thumbnail images for the business location and an overlay of a MapQuest map. You can even browse up or down the block to see surrounding storefronts.

Very cool technology! In my sample searches I found Starbucks location in a mall or office park setting had an address that did not match the picture on the listing. Business owners and managers are encouraged to update their Amazon listing for free, complete with a web address, products and services offered, and brand information. Looks like a simple start to a shopping comparison service!

Managing the Technorati community

Starting Tuesday, February 1, I will start a new job as Community Manager at Technorati. I will be responsible for helping the world understand Technorati’s service offerings and providing developers with the tools they need to build and extend Technorati. I will help make your voices heard and build new features to strengthen the links we create while consuming and producing content.

I am excited to be working with a team of smart and passionate people. Technorati is not the only company competing to be your live search destination and keep you informed of the latest happenings in the areas you care about. The differentiating factor is the team of people at Technorati working hard to make the business work .

I have written about Technorati many times before, partially motivated by the idea of my voice being heard and the ability to make a difference in the service I use. Dave Sifry motivated that feedback loop early on, and I remember when he first commented on my weblog post a conversation was started. I continued to participate in the feedback loop and develop applications on top of the Technorati database. I now have the opportunity to energize a community of users and developers in the same way Dave energized me a year ago.

I do not remember the first time I used Technorati, but I remember chatting with Scott Johnson of Feedster about the company at Gnomedex in July 2003 and the old page design looks very familiar.

The interview process

I first inquired about a job at Technorati in May of last year. Technorati was hiring on an invitation-only basis due to a very limited budget. In December Richard Ault and I had breakfast to talk shop, and he asked if I would be interested in working for Technorati. Richard and Dave put together a job description with a little input from me regarding what I would like to work on if I came onboard. I took a day off from NexTag and met with Dorion, Ian, Jason, and Derek. Everyone was very busy getting tags ready. Theresa explained to me what are some of the current features of Technorati in case I was not already familiar (she must have had little background on me!). I met with Richard again a week later over coffee and reviewed the job offer. I accepted the offer that afternoon.

Why do I mention all these details? Technorati is hiring, and you might be interested in an open position and go through some of the same process I just did. I like to provide job candidates with a more personal experience than most companies.

What’s next?

I will continue write about Technorati, Feedster, PubSub, and other companies in the weblog search space. My comments may now be seen as an official Technorati position so I will have to watch what I type a bit more.

Adding a community manager to a staff of twelve is a big move for any company and a strong signal to a community of users. Expect big things and we will all be working hard to deliver new tools to track the world live web.