Navarr's Tech Side

DataPortability has continued moving forward.  Now, word in the tubes is that Microsoft is joining, and from what I gather, they will be making a way to use their Windows Live system portable.  Hopefully with OpenID and OpenAuth and etc.

Here is the original posting from Windows Live Dev:

I’m pretty excited about the news that Microsoft is joining Dataportability.org. A lot of the work we’ve been doing at dev.live.com over the last year has focused on opening up data stored in Windows Live in secure and user-friendly ways. The Windows Live Contacts control and API, for example, allows users to share their Windows Live Contacts with other sites. We’re working on more APIs that allow users to move their data around the Web—and we can’t wait to see how this new effort can help.

Here’s the official announcement:

“Today Microsoft is announcing that it has joined DataPortability.org, a group committed to advancing the conversation about the portability, security and privacy of individuals’ information online.  There are important security and privacy issues to solve as the internet evolves, and we are committed to being an integral part of the industry conversation on behalf of our users.

The decision to join DataPortability.org is an outgrowth of a deeper theme that technology and the internet should be deployed to help people be at the center of their online worlds, a theme that has begun to permeate our products and services over the past few years. We believe the logical evolution of the internet is to enable the removal of barriers to provide integrated, seamless experiences, but to do so in a manner that ensures that users retain full control over the security and privacy of their information.

Windows Live is focused on providing tools and a platform to enable these types of seamless experiences.  Windows Live has more than 420 million active Live IDs that work across our services and across partner sites.  Through each Windows Live advancement we’re making technical investments to ensure users’ information is available to them in the places they want, even across the networks they use every day.  Windows Live Writer, Mail, Photo Gallery and Spaces, for example, allow users to get access and publish to the places they want, even outside Microsoft’s network.  And the Windows Live Platform and Terms of Use offer a set of APIs and controls that allow for the growth of an ecosystem based on the premise of user control and portability. 

Microsoft feels strongly that getting the right balance for data portability, security and privacy is critical for the industry, and doing it well requires the participation of all the major web services.  We are no stranger to these types of broad industry dialogues, and the one that is taking shape at DataPortability.org will be very effective in furthering users’ interests.”

This is my newest concept that I will one day attempt to put into reality.

If you’ve been reading my blog for the short period of time that I’ve been writing it, you’ll have noticed that I have a lot of interest in standards such as HTML5, XHTML, Microformats, and the newest concept group, DataPortability. 

Since I learned about DataPortability, I’ve been excessively interested in the idea that I would be able to share my data between websites.  If you’ve paid attention to my twitter, you’ll notice that I even went out and created such a test system on my website.  I have an OpenID, FOAF, and XRDS all hosted on my own personal web server.  The next step I want to take?  Creating a beta system for account management.  Unfortunately, one of the only things that is holding this back is how it would work.  How are websites supposed to query for your XRDS, your FOAF, your APML, RDF, and so forth?  You obviously don’t want them to just directly download the feeds off of the webserver by themselves.  Why?  Privacy controls.  We need privacy controls and the only thing stopping me from creating such a system, are these privacy controls.

My ideas already span over the concept of having multiple systems.  For example, certain data would be added or excluded to your "Professional" FOAF and the same for your "Social" FOAF.  The concept even goes over the fact that you could create as many FOAF, XRDS, RDF, APML, etc. systems so that you could share only the data that you want to share with certain websites.  And that this interface.. this GUI would help you manage it all, from a single OpenID login.

Yes, it sounds impressive.  But I’m not quite there yet.  First thing I need to do, will be to create my own OpenID server.  And by that, I don’t mean download the newest PHP OpenID client/server I can find, I mean reading over OpenID 2.0 and its accompanying standards and program one from scratch.

What do my readers think of this idea?  Do you like it?

I was looking through slashdot articles today, and low and behold if I wasn’t reminded of the popular animé and manga, Ghost in the Shell.

For those of you wondering, I’ll list the headlines of these articles, which, if you’ve seen the animé or manga will probably bring back some pretty nice memories.

• Prosthetic-Limbed Runner Disqualified from Olympic Games
• Bionic Contact Lens May Lead to Overlay Displays

Does that not remind you of anything Sci-Fi?  I mean, come on, its begging to be compared to Ghost in the Shell.

Personally, I can’t wait for Bionic Contact Lenses.  From working on this 1920×1200 resolution computer, my eyesight is already fading, but get contacts with a new display overlaid on top of what I’m normally seeing?  That would be wonderful.  I would have some RSS feed showing headlines in small 8pt text.  Mobile from a new level.

For those of you wondering about the Prosthetic-Limbed runner.  He was a dual amputee, and he was disqualified for having prosthetic legs.  The reasoning behind this?  His prosthetic legs were 25% more efficient then human legs, giving him an unfair advantage on the track.

The world’s thinnest notebook.  I have to admit, this notebook is pretty impressive.  One of the best at the $1,800 price limit.  But its features, how much of its new?  And yes, I’m sorry if I’m raining on your parade.

Indeed, Intel went way out of their way to make that super-mini Core 2 Duo Processor.  Good Job Intel, I salute your efforts.  It has a rather large battery (as shown in the keynote demo), a very small motherboard, a full size keyboard, and a lovely display.  It is indeed, a work of art.

One of the main things that bugged me, was the wireless Optical drive.  It is, indeed, a wonderful idea.  But its nowhere near new.  As any technology enthusiast knows, Macintosh OS X is modified from the FreeBSD system.  While doing some hacking around inside of my step-father’s mac, I noticed that it uses the Samba program.  Samba is a program used in Linux, Unix, BSD, (and macintosh) operating systems for file-sharing and networking and all that good jazz.

*Nix mounts CDs/DVDs to a certain folder, such as /media/cdrom or /media/dvd or any other possible mount point that the operating system or user specifies.  And Samba, can quite easily share this system over the network.

I’m assuming (now its not know because nobody has the Windows disk for the MacBook Air, seeing as it doesn’t ship for two weeks), that it includes a modified version of Samba made for Windows, and that all it really is a hacked version of Samba.

It was just a little something that bugged me, but that’s not to say that the MacBook Air is not an impressive machine.  I’d be lying if I said that, it is a VERY impressive machine.  I want one . 

So, that’s my take on the Remote Disc feature of the MacBook Air.  I don’t really have much to say right now, I’m just blogging away, heh.  Its currently 12:37 am CST, I’m watching the end of the Apple Keynote over QuickTime right now on my wonderful Windows Vista computer, and I just felt like I had to blog about it.  So, there you go.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll post some real content, eh?

DataPortability – Connect, Control, Share, Remix

I am now participating as a member in the W3C HTML Working Group.

After about five years, people were wondering what Windows was doing and why their operating system wasn’t out yet.  Businesses and Technology enthusiasts were pushing Microsoft to release their next big upgrade, but Microsoft’s technology specialists weren’t anywhere near finished with Windows Vista.  There were a lot of features that they really wanted to put into it, and judging from some YouTube videos I’ve seen (some of which may not be authentic), Windows Vista was going to be one hell of an operating system, with one hell of a GUI.

After being rushed, they took away the WinFS, which was truly going to be a revolutionary file system (or so they say).  But they also toned down the GUI a lot.  And I can see why.  Even after Windows Vista was released, there was a lot of complain over how computers that were marked "Windows Vista Capable" were only capable of running Windows Vista in basic mode, not with Aero capabilities.  Imagine how much more infuriated people would have been if the GUI had in fact been much better.  Computers (considering how bloated Vista is) would have needed to be much faster, and have much higher computer requirements.

This is my opinion anyway, based on some videos I watched, although, I can not confirm how authentic they are, I’ve posted some links below:

• Longhorn Concept
• Windows Vienna Experience Scenarios
• Windows Vienna?
• Windows Vienna Login

Enjoy yourself ^.~

Until Later,
Navarr

Alternative Text:  A short YouTube video showing that Windows Vista Voice Recognition actually does (surprisingly!) work.  Using it to program a small PHP script.

As I’m sure by now, you’ve all seen that this is a sub-domain under gtaero.net.  Although, if you visit www.gtaero.net all you’ll see is a very odd black page, with multiple lines of text in headings that validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional (which is perfectly fine to submit as a text/html mind you :-p).

But.. what is GTAero.net?  It couldn’t have always been like that, could it have?

That statement, would be correct.  If you check archive.org, you’ll see that there were, most definitely, different versions of the website.

GTAero.net was my first real introduction into The Web.  I wanted to make a video game.  Grand Theft Aero.  This video game was to be like Grand Theft Auto, but take place in outer space, with hover-crafts and different planets and so on and so forth.  I created a couple of 2D-shooters by modifying some other games that had been made with some free game creation software, but that was as far as that project ever got.

Eventually, what soon became known as Project: Grand Theft Aero, worked on designing "Dragon World" and "PoKéQuesT" (PoKéQuesT being the only one still alive).

Indeed, if you look at the Dragon World website, you’ll notice how childish it is, specifically the Terms.  Hard to think that it was only about four years ago, but I was.. 12 then?  I guess people do mature pretty fast.

The question now, though, becomes "What is the future of Project: Grand Theft Aero?".  The original meaning of the website is gone, yet I still keep the domain, and I still use it.

Well; Project: Grand Theft Aero is also my history, and so I don’t plan to drop it anytime soon.  I hope to work as a Web Design/Developer in the future, and so GTAero.net is where I’ll keep things like my résumé, links to my MySpace, Facebook, blogs and various projects.

I will soon, again, be trying to place an OpenID on the website, after which I will use it as my official profile and location on the internet.  If I ever get a .name for myself, it’ll just point to the exact same place.

There are some people reading this tech blog of mine, so, I guess I should introduce who I am, eh?  Considering that most people reading this are people I’ve never talked to before, or some of the people that know me online.

My name is Navarr Barnier.  I’m a sixteen year old student at Klein Collins High School in Houston, Texas.  I work in PHP, (X)HTML, XML, CSS, and am starting to get familiar with JavaScript.  I considering myself a Web Developer.  I can’t really do anything with layouts, but code and backend, they are my friends.

Recently, I’ve started being more active in the Web Design and Development Community.  I’ve joined the mailing lists for Microformats, became a member of the DataPortability Google (and Facebook) group, Joined the APML Facebook group, and started the process of getting a spot in the HTML5 W3C working group.

I hate the terms, but I love the concepts of Web 2.0, Web 3.0, the Semantic Web.  The internet is truly moving in a good direction.  We are truly entering the Information Technology age.

Those are the basics.  When I post Part 2, I’ll cover over what www.gtaero.net is as well as its future.