Sky’s Blog

Good to see this … Twitter will be offering “verified” accounts soon.

We’re starting with well-known accounts that have had problems with impersonation or identity confusion. (For example, well-known artists, athletes, actors, public officials, and public agencies). We may verify more accounts in the future, but because of the cost and time required, we’re only testing this feature with a small set of folks for the time being. As the test progresses we may be able to expand this test to more accounts over the next several months.

We ran into a problem with an account purporting to be the office of the Dalai Lama [OHHDL] in 2008. The account looked like it might be real, but turned out to be someone impersonating the office. But it wasn’t exposed until more than 10,000 people had started following the Twitter account.

This move on Twitter’s part will be welcome.

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I like OpenID^[1] although I think it’s more complex than most people can handle — and that’s a big hurdle. OpenID gives visitors to your blog or web site a chance to log in (create an account on your site) using their login information from a participating OpenID web site (like gmail). In other words, they don’t have to create a separate account at your blog – they just reuse their Yahoo (or gmail or other^[2]) account. In theory this should make it easier to remember account names and passwords because you just use one account to log in at many sites.Ever since OpenID was announced (2005) I’ve loved the idea. There are OpenID providers, and then there are other sites that allow users to utilize OpenID for the creation of accounts.

(continue reading…)

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Marcia Connor  (@marciamarcia) pointed me at this blog article -> “5 Reasons Teens Don’t Like Twitter.” It’s the blogger’s first article ever, and I don’t agree with all of the points, but it’s an interesting premise, so let’s dive into it. Why would teens (or anybody for that reason) not like Twitter? (continue reading…)

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The debate continues around the world about whether computers should be required to blacklist porn and other sites, and now according to a New York Times report China will require pre-installed software on all new PCs that permits the government to proscribe sites that would be harmful to web surfers. If recent history is any guide, this means censoring sites that speak out against government policies or against corruption. [Update: China Backs down^[1]…read footnote in the expanded post] (continue reading…)

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