If you can see this post in your browser, your DNS servers have been updated. I've just moved the site over to A Small Orange, my new host. I've heard good things about them over the past couple of years, especially about their speedy support response times, so let's see how things go here. :)

I have also decided to switch from Blogger to WordPress as my publishing platform. I've just finished migrating my template over to WordPress, and I took this opportunity to dump the existing code with all the remnants from 2003 and start afresh. So even though the site will look almost the same, it's all rewritten, semantic XHTML 1.0 Strict code. I'm going to move the content from all the static pages over tonight. If all goes well, this will be my last post through Blogger and the WordPress blog will be up tomorrow, just in time for the new month.

See you on the other side. :)

Some of you might remember CNET CatchUp, a free tool from back in the day that used to scan your computer for installed software and tell you if there were any updates for them. It was a handy little app that ended up being discontinued for some reason.

File Hippo recently released a similar app called the Update Checker to step into CatchUp's shoes. It's a tiny 112 KB executable that does its job in a couple of seconds, and presents the results in a browser window with direct download links to available updates.

During Tuesday's keynotes at the Web 2.0 Expo last week, John Battelle interviewed Google's Eric Schmidt, and asked a number of really great questions, some of which had to do with Google's online office productivity applications. If you have some time, I would highly recommend watching the video of the interview.

When Google Spreadsheets launched almost a year ago, there was lots of chatter on the web about how Google was building a web-based Office-killer. My belief then was that, for many users, Google's tools would actually become complementary to Microsoft Office rather than replacements. As a student, I was personally using both, and while Office is undoubtedly more mature and feature-rich (with many features that I actually used regularly), the realtime collaboration features in Google's suite were very valuable to me when working on group project reports and papers.

Anyway, now that Google has announced its plans to introduce a Powerpoint-like presentation application, Battelle brought up the question again - is Google's suite really a competitor to Microsoft Office? Here's what Schmidt had to say:

We don't think so, and the reason is that it doesn't have all the functionality, nor is it intended to have all the functionality, of products like Microsoft Office. This is really a different way of managing information. It's casual, it's sharing, it seems to be a better fit to how people use the web, and we think it's an example of one of the applications categories on the Web 2.0 framework that will be very, very successful. [...] For people who are using products that are on the web, who need presentation access, and the sharing (which is really the driving thing), they're going to use this. Or something like this.

I think that's actually quite a rational and down-to-earth response. Matthew Glotzbach (Head of Products - Google Enterprise) also had a similar viewpoint when asked whether Google's suite is meant to replace Office, during a discussion on Wednesday morning with Dan Farber, ZDNet's editor-in-chief. TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, on the other hand, calls Schmidt's response "complete spin."

What do you think? :)

(If you've heard of the OpenID initiative, jump ahead. If not, take a look at my previous post on that topic.)

Vidoop is a new OpenID provider that was showcased during the Launch Pad event at the Web 2.0 Expo last week. The thing that makes Vidoop different is its new "passwordless" authentication system. As many of you know, password-based authentication comes with its fair share of problems - keyloggers can sniff passwords, phishing sites can trick users into giving them away, man-in-the-middle attacks can intercept them, and in many cases, brute force methods can be used to guess them.

Vidoop attempts to mitigate these problems by eliminating passwords from the equation, and replacing them with single-use codes instead. The Vidoop login screen consists of a grid of pictures, with letters associated with each one, that gets randomized each time. When you first sign up for an account, you're asked to pick a series of general categories of objects - for instance, cars, fruits and animals. Then, at the login screen, you simply identify the pictures belonging to your secret list of categories and enter the letters associated with those pictures. Since the pictures, letters, and the arrangements of classes change randomly each time, the user's "password" essentially becomes a one-time-use code. This means that even if the code is stolen or intercepted, it is useless for subsequent login sessions.

In order to make the system even more secure, Vidoop actually goes one step further - if a user tries to login from a computer that he/she has never used before, the system asks the user to add the machine to a "trusted" list before it even displays the picture grid. This is done by sending the user a unique pin code via SMS, telephone, or email, which he/she has to enter on the computer. This is one-time step for each new machine that a user attempts to login from. I talked to Luke Sontag, Vidoop's Co-Founder and President, on the show floor, and he mentioned that they also plan to add Jabber/XMPP support for this step soon.

Vidoop's monetization strategy is also quite interesting. Since the system is free for end-users, the company gets its revenue from advertisers who can promote their products and brands by buying a slot in the login screen grid. Smart USA, for instance, has already bought a sponsored slot in the cars category.

The service is still in an invitation-only beta. If you'd like to try it out, I have one extra invitation code to give away to the first person who asks for it, either by posting a comment here, or by sending me an email. :)

Most of us have lost track of the number of usernames and passwords we have for the hundreds of sites that we visit on the web. In the offline world, we carry just a couple of ID cards (like a driver's license and a school ID, for example) that everyone can use to identify us. So why should it be any different on the web?

This isn't a new problem space, and there have been a number of attempts to implement "single sign-on" systems for the web, none of which ever really took off. Microsoft's Passport (now Live ID) service is one of the most well-known examples. One of the biggest concerns with such services is that they're centralized, and your online identity is essentially in the hands of a single company. As you can imagine, that wasn't something people were comfortable with.

OpenID is a relatively new, community-driven initiative that's attempting to solve the online identity management problem, and it's already showing signs of potential success, with backing from large corporations like AOL [1], Microsoft and VeriSign, as well as popular web services such as Wordpress.com, LiveJournal, Digg, Technorati, Drupal, and so on. The difference this time, though, is that your identity isn't in the hands of a single company, and you can move to a different OpenID provider at any time.

There are two basic parts to the OpenID system - an OpenID provider and OpenID relying parties. There are several OpenID providers that you can sign up with, or you can even run one yourself. Relying parties are basically sites that are OpenID-enabled. Rather than creating a separate account for each site, you simply log in to a relying party using your OpenID (which is just a URI like kunalk.myopenid.com). You are then redirected to your OpenID provider's page, where you sign in, and you are then redirected back to the relying party as an authenticated user.

If you have your own site or blog, you can turn its URI into your OpenID without having to install anything. Once you sign up with one of the many OpenID providers out there, you just need to add a couple of lines of code to the "head" section of your index page. If you look at the source code for this page, you'll see what it looks like.

You can also define multiple personas that tell your OpenID provider exactly what personal information it can share with a relying party. For instance, I can allow my OpenID provider to share my mailing address and phone number with a certain site so that I don't have to fill out that information manually when while registering, but I can choose to share only my first and last name with another site.

It's a simple, but at the same time, effective way to maintain a single identity on the web. You can find out more about getting an OpenID or making your existing apps/services OpenID-enabled at OpenID.net.

[1] If you have an AIM screenname, you've already got an OpenID - openid.aol.com/name