Rob Crowther

Technorati Claim

Rob — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 11:25:00 +0000

In order to claim this blog on Technorati, I must include this link in a post: Technorati Profile

Web Identity

Rob — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:08:00 +0000

I've been playing around with various identity related web sites in the last week or so. Seeing as .name domains are "intended for the use of individuals' real names" I thought this might be an appropriate place to discuss my experiences.

The first thing I came across was OpenID, I got a MyOpenID account when I first signed up for Ma.gnolia. Thanks to Simon Willison's excellent tutorial I managed to set up my home page as a proxy (not that I use it).

This is all well and good, but an OpenID doesn't really capture who I am - it's the label for the thing rather than the thing itself. All I use it for is to log in to the sites which support it, it doesn't connect back to me or what I'm doing. A more interesting candidate for this role is something like Jeremy Keith's Life Stream idea - a record of everything he's done online collected from various RSS feeds. I could have just downloaded his PHP script, but I thought it might make a nice little learning project if I implemented my own in Ruby on Rails. Of course, I thought that and then, for several weeks, didn't actually do anything about it. Then last week I started exploring Mugshot, which I'd had installed on my Fedora box for many months but hadn't really seen the point of before. Mugshot lets you add your del.icio.us, last.fm, reddit and twitter accounts, as well as your blog and LinkedIn details, and then, through the magic of RSS, keeps track of all of it. Very like a life stream. Of course, it's not perfect, it's no help for anything which isn't on the list of supported services and even something as simple as someone having two blogs is beyond it, but it's easy enough to setup and it will do for now.

So, how to link your OpenID to your life, as defined by your Mugshot life stream? Enter claimID:

A claimID is essentially a profile. Some people have called it a "link resume." It is a place for you to show the world the stuff about you - your hyperlinked identity. To get started, all you need to do is start saving the links that make up you online identity to claimID. Once you save the links, you will have a public claimID page that you can use as an OpenID, a homepage, or whatever else you might like.

I could have set up a page on one of my websites to proxy my OpenID login and also list all of this stuff (and, at some point, I probably will, just for the fun of it), but it's nice in the meantime to have all these pre-built solutions available.

About Me

Rob — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 18:28:00 +0000

While I figure out what else might appear on this blog, a little about me.

My name, as you may have guessed, is Rob Crowther. I currently live and work in London as a Web Developer, Web Designer, System Admin and general technical dogsbody. Working for a small firm means there aren't many specialists, we all have to deal with a wide range of stuff we only learned about because some client mentioned it.

In my spare time I read a lot of blogs I also read books, mostly Sci-Fi and Fantasy but my A-level in English Lit. has given me a taste for the occasional 'high brow' novel. Playing computer games takes up a significant portion of what's of my life, even though I'm not very good at it, as does playing American Football, which I am fairly good at. Back when I had more free time on my hands, and less intellectual stimulation in my day job, I did a few Philosophy evening classes.

That's all for now. Check back soon for, erm, something else.

First post

Rob — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:56:00 +0000

The first post, not very interesting...

... but I couldn't understand the default post in French.

No idea what I'm going to end up writing about here, but I wanted my name on a .name