Category Archives: Directory Technolgies

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LDAP and C#
I haven’t yet started to write code in C# … it’s something that I want to take a look at. I saw this posting and started to think that maybe I found some examples that might get me going. I enjoy developing code that uses LDAP directories and the data they contain … and this article demonstrates Novell’s work to continue to ease the development of LDAP-aware applications.

Jan 18th, 2004: LDAP class libraries in Mono tutorial.. Sunil Kumar has written an introduction to Novell.LDAP class libraries, which are part of Mono. [Mono Project News]

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The return of WebPhone
When I first started to really use the Internet, I was involved with a group of friends in lookin at what was possible. We played with a lot of software – including WebPhone and CUSeeMe.

WebPhone was an application that looked like a little phone on your desktop, and it allowed you to use Voice over IP (VoIP) to talk with other WebPhone users over the Internet. The other day I found a list, that I was keeping, of all of the places around the world that I spoke to using WebPhone. I remember one day when we talked to a professor and his class at Kent University. They joked about us having Internet in Utah, and we joked back that we just heard they had a shooting on the campus.

CUSeeMe was a Video Conferencing package that we used at the same time. It was really impressive to set-up a “reflector” on one of our servers, and then to connect to the server using the CUSeeMe client. You were able to see who was connected in a list, open a video display of one or more of the participants, and then type back and forth. Audio was possible, however not well implemented.

What was interesting is that we were doing this with 14.4kbps modems, and then 56kbps modems. It seemed that as the bandwidth increased, the use of these applications dropped off. I just spent some time to go and find some of the “remains” of CUSeeMe … I’m going to see if I can get a reflector going again.

In the mean time … it was interesting to read about this new application catching attention … a decade later! Skype is almost exactly what WebPhone was …

OK, Skype has 240,000 downloads in just half a month. It took ICQ 60 days to get that many back in 1996. What’s different? Well, for one it was an established company that released Skype. ICQ was released to 40 users and no one knew anything about ICQ. But, remember, back in 1996 no one had weblogs. In fact, I had one of the first five public pages up about ICQ, while Skype has been talked about everywhere.

Anyway, Skype is now my new bar of release excellence for a small-company software product.

Hey, during that Sun keynote this morning the IP telephone from Vodaphone failed on stage. They shoulda used Skype. Hasn’t failed for me yet and the audio quality is unbelieveable.

People are asking me “you were the NetMeeting bigot, why you so excited about software that just does audio?” (NetMeeting was Microsoft’s audio/video/collaboration product that was released in 1995). For one, it works. For two, its user interface is clean and uncluttered. Don Norman would love it. For three, it makes you feel good using it, and makes you want to use it with your friends and family. (Translation: the audio quality rocks and is better than NetMeeting, or even MSN Messenger 6.0).

[Robert Scoble: Scobleizer Weblog]

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RSS … the alternative to e-mail …
I really like the essay that Adam has written about using RSS as an alternative to the existing protocols used by traditional e-mail. In the “essay” link below, Adam outlines many of the advantages and ways that this could become a much more effective medium for communication when compared to e-mail.

The one area that I have to disagree a little – or at least have my own ideas – is when it comes to managing the “publish-subscribe” relationship creation. He indicates a variety of ways to encrypt the content, however after doing a lot of work in the past on digital identity, I have to think that there are some ways that I like the “username/password” schemes much better.

In my own thoughts, I believe there is a space for the creation of a new “personal introduction” protocol for the creation of digital relationships. This protocol – and I’m only beginning to think through how this would work – would automate the management of identity information, and the exchange of the necessary information to create the relationship.

I have to agree with Adam, that once such a relationship has been created between two people (or entities) then the ability to terminate the relationship becomes much easier. The entire process becomes a “pull” of information that I am interested in … instead of being spammed with information that I do not want!

email dying – rss alternatives. Steve Outing [via sn]: “Any e-mail publisher with a survival instinct should be publishing RSS feeds of the content that it currently e-mails.” Nomention of my essay, so here’s the link again. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]

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TMDA … an anti-spam solution …
Several years ago, while at Novell, I began work on a simple idea that I called AgreeMail. It never went anywhere, however it was an anti-spam solution based on an idea that I got at a Foresight Institute conference.

The idea was pretty simple. For any e-mail that was sent to me, the AgreeMail engine would check to see if it came from an “approved” sender. If it wasn’t, then it would automatically kick back an e-mail to the sender with an “agreement” that had to be replied to. When the AgreeMail engine received the “agreement” it would add the person to the approved list and let their e-mail through.

Well … years later … here is the solution as an Open Source project! I am now updating my mail server, and will soon be installing the TMDA engine.

This article is a great overview of TMDA, and the benefits!

TMDA Ends Spam. Tagged Message Delivery Agent (TMDA) is a challenge/response style anti-spam system which I’ve been using successfully for about six months. The system is based on a white list. When someone not on the list sends me a message, their message is held in a queue, and a challenge is emailed back to them. When they respond to the message, they’re added to my white list, and their original message is delivered to me. I’ve seen some resistance to systems like TMDA. This resistance comes in two basic objections: (1) it doesn’t work, and (2) it’s too rude. These objections are based on encounters with systems with various obvious faults, but condemning all challenge/response systems based on some bad implementations is like saying that cars are a bad idea because the Model A Ford has some problems. I intend to show that TMDA works well and that the real debate is over whether a system like it makes victims out of the people who aren’t using it. [kuro5hin.org]

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Google … an amazing entity …
From my early days on the Internet, I have been facinated with Internet Directories and Search Engines. The various players have come and gone … and some have stuck around. Yahoo! is still one of the “old-timers” in the industry, as Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, and Altavista have all gone there own ways.

The one “newer” player that has come to dominate the landscape is Google. With their radical new architecture for gathering, storing, and indexing web content, and then “ranking” based on URI linking frequency, they have created an amazing solution for managing the wealth of information on the Internet. Ouside of all of this technology, there is also the “clean” and lightweight design of their website. Google appears to be the most used resource for searching the web.

There is another side to Google that many people do not see, nor understand. It is the core technology, and how is can be used and repurposed … and expanded. This is what I am most interested in with Google. If you have not visited their Advanced Search page, or explored the Google Labs, then you might not have seen some of the other aspects of Google.

Over the next month of so, I am going to be posting about a model that I have created in my observations of Google and what they are developing. I am hearing more and more about the impending IPO of their company … and I have to admit that I believe they are on to something. I believe they are creating something that is truly amazing.

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Improved efficiencies in information processing …
While I was working at Novell, I used the GroupWise solution that they offer for e-mail and collaboration. One of the terms that was used over and over again was the “Universal Inbox” … meaning that they wanted all of your incoming information to be delivered through the GroupWise user interface. It was actually a very impressive product, and I have to admit that I really miss using it. It never became what the creators envisioned, however it took great strides in the right direction.

This project at MIT is also moving in this same direction. It is exploring ways to consolidate a wide range of information sources into a user interace for optimal information processing by humans. It has some very impressive customization features, and I like many of the concepts behind it’s personalization.

This is more of a trend towards, what I call, Humaneural Software … software that enables humans to operate in a neural fashion …

Haystack – Universal Information Client [Nooface: In Search of the Post-PC Interface]

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Domains, Domain registrars and Internet property
I have to admit … I hate the Internet “tax” that comes in the form of “domain name registrations”. I remember when I experimented with my domain servers to add the Alternic name space to our servers. It’s amazing to me that with all of the “peer to peer” development going on around the net, that someone hasn’t come up with a good, distributed alternative …

My main purpose in bringing this up is that I “lost” some domain names by not paying in time. It’s an amazing process, and I had given up hope of recovering these names. As of today, I again own my WarBlading domains, and I have found that I “lost” my NoizCast domain.

In the future … I’ll be watching much more closely to ensure that I do not loose these again!

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SOAP Service Directories … appearing on the net …
The appearance of more SOAP Service “registries” or “directories” reminds me of watching the early Internet as the first web sites appeared that listed other web sites on the net … the beginnings of Yahoo!, Excite and Lycos … and many that are no longer around. What we are now seeing is the “web services” version of this … the beginnings of sites where software can look for software … the beginnings of something Kurzeilian … 😉

http://www.mysantra.com has a good Web Services search engine, which does include all services found in UDDI, SalCentral, and XMethods. You can even compare the services against each other for properties such as Uptime availability (reliability), operations, etc.

[Robert Scoble: Scobleizer Weblog]

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Growing interest in REAL digital identity …
After my experiences at Novell with digital identity, I quickly realized that it’s a tough vision to communicate without having the whole subject tainted with corporate profit making mentalities. What’s funny, is that those exact mentalities are what will prevent their architectures from ever being successful!

This is a very cool effort that I am going to be following, and that I am going to get involved in. Once digital identity moves outside of Novell, Microsoft, Sun, AOL, etc. it will be able to evolve in a more natural framework that mirrors reality.

RFC: Sponsored Feature Section on Digital Identity. I have a proposal for the site, that I’d like your comments and thoughts on. Jabber.com founder Andre Durand and ISPCON founder Phil Becker recently started a new website called DigitalIDWorld.com. K5er Adam Theo is also working with them, and thought that the subject of digital identity would be something other K5ers might have some interest in, and perhaps we could arrange some kind of syndication agreement. I talked to Andre and Phil a few times, and below is what we came up with. We all think it has a lot of potential, but as always, you make the final call as to what’s good for K5. So read on for the idea, and let us know what you think of it. [kuro5hin.org]

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Time between posting …
I am starting to learn that my weblog provides a good display of time for me. I can’t believe that it has been almost a month since I caught up on my back-log of reading, and made my last posts.

I have been having a lot of fun though … and am about to venture out and make some more changes to my blog page. I have been in contact with a few open source projects … working on some digital identity work, and getting NoCat working for our http://80211.net project. I also was able to buy and install a new keyboard on my laptop which is making typing a lot easier! I had started to learn whole new ways of typing when my left-hand CTRL and Shift keys started to fail. 😉

Overall the last month has been a blast … I had a few trips on the road – New York to Chase Manhatten for work on a disaster recovery solution – Silicon Valley for the Foresight Institute Senior Associates Gathering and a series of analyst and partner meetings with Vultus. The more I have been working with Vultus the more I am learning about the implications of the Web Services revolution … giving me lots of ideas about the future.

I also ended up doing a couple of presentations on Wearable Computers … one for the State of Utah School systems “Test-out” Challenge talking to a lot of high school students from across the state … another for the Utah Computer Society. I’m also meeting with a variety of companies on my “mesh network” ideas … one that is implementing a last mile solution – UINetworks – and another making some inexpensive radios that will provide me with some peer-to-peer wireless that I have been looking for.

Lastly … I’m completing some work on my video/photo kiosk ideas, my wearables, and my location-based services applictions. Oh yeah … and I have a baby coming in September, so I have been learning a lot about what to expect with fatherhood!

It’s been a fun month … and it’s going to be a fun summer …