Semantic web startup Twine hard to get wrapped up in

Twine is [yet another] site that offers recommendations for webpages, stories and information based on things that you've read. I've seen demos that are amazing, that pull together disparate threads of data in new and surprising ways. It is powered by some sort of fantastic semantic juju that allows it to create recommendations and connections that simpler probabilistic analyses cannot. Sounds good right?

The problem is that it is just too. damned. much. work. You start with nothing, and have to enter your links, from scratch, one at a time. You don't get any immediate satisfaction. Unlike FriendFeed or SocialMedian, it doesn't just figure stuff out based on your other activity elsewhere on the web. It doesn't even attempt to figure out what you already like. So all of the heavy lifting is left up to the user, and there's no immediate payoff. The new user is left wondering just what the hell this site is supposed to do for them.

So although it probably has good technology, so far it's a failure. If they don't realize that everybody's not suddenly going to start posting everything in their little walled garden with a promise of getting payoff, maybe, someday, they'll be left behind by other sites who have given a great experience out of the gate to new users. Other sites – Facebook, FriendFeed, etc. – can add this semantic hooey to their own sites at their leisure. Sometimes technology really doesn't matter.

Greenspan gets a clue after the damage is done

From Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation in today's New York Times:

Facing a firing line of questions from Washington lawmakers, Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman once considered the infallible maestro of the financial system, admitted on Thursday that he “made a mistake” in trusting that free markets could regulate themselves without government oversight.

Whoopsie!

Referring to his free-market ideology, Mr. Greenspan added: “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact."

Oh no, he's *distressed*. Well, fuck me with a chainsaw, it sounds like the poor man is suffering! Everybody should be so concerned about Alan Greenspan's legacy while we pick up the ruins of our financial system and economy. I am not sad to see that irrational cult of personality come to such an ignominious end.

Central authentication is coming, and here's a good reason why

Some interesting reading today on OpenID, Facebook Connect, and the dog's breakfast of authentication standards in the market:

Facebook Connect and OpenID Relationship Status: “It’s Complicated” – John McCrea of Plaxo

The authentication landscape appears to be coalescing. I think a lot of vendors will still want to have a "walled garden" ID scheme, but I'm inclined to think their customers will drag them kicking and screaming into a federated identity world.

I have a good reason to think so. People already use a dangerous form of single sign in: they use the same user ID and password across multiple sites. Some day soon an enterprising young script kiddie from Yemen is going to sit down and write a Distributed Identity Theft Attack that will plunder the databases of weak sites (like some forum that you don't even remember signing up for) to take possession of more valuable sites (like Facebook and LinkedIn) and then finally the holy grail (your email account, used to unlock everything else). Nobody, not even Bruce Schneier (by his own admission), has a different password for every site: at best, we have low, medium, and high-security passwords. But if you're using the same password everywhere, you're only as secure as the weakest site you visit, which means gold bars for the putative Yemeni banks.

Also, über-paranoid password complexity and periodic forced password change rules actually encourage people to use a password formula across different sites, and to change only the last character in a preset sequence. They're virtually assured to do so, because security training has taught people to never, under any circumstances, write down their passwords. So a dictionary attack will still work in most cases for the DITA outlined above – forty-seven variants isn't a lot to try, and most sites don't lock accounts for password failure.

So go change your online banking password right now, I'll wait. Don't forget PayPal, too. And Amazon, which holds your credit card info, as does iTunes.

So, we'll stumble along with our user ID (which is, often as not, the email address) and password (same everywhere) until the Russian Business Network strings together some Perl code and causes a smart-spam and bank fraud wave big enough to shake consumer confidence in the web. At the very least, consumers will learn not to trust websites with homegrown authentication. They'll pick one or two big-name vendors they trust.

Help stop constitutionalized bigotry in California

California's Proposition 8 is intended to end same-sex marriage in California, which the California Supreme Court ruled constitutional in June. The California Assembly had previously passed a law to allow same-sex marriage, but Governor Schwarzenegger (it hurts to type that) vetoed it, saying that it was up to the supreme court to decide. Well, they did, and although Arnie said he'd campaign against Prop 8, he's done dick-all about it. I guess he's too busy to call a press conference.

Anyhow, the Mormons are pouring enormous sums of cash into the campaign for Prop 8, and although many high-profile celebs are donating to the fight to stop it, it isn't enough. I've given, and I'd like to ask you to give as well. Everybody deserves the right to marry the person they love, and shouldn't have to emigrate to do so, as I did. Equality can be maintained, but only at a cost. Please give now.

Just what is the freaking deal with Henry freaking James lately?

Having just finished The Conversion by Joseph Olshan, I find that a plethora, a torrent, a veritable cornucopia of recent gay lit seems to revolve around Henry James, "The Master".

Well, three books anyhow, but three books mark a trend. The first I noticed was the most Jamesian (and by far the best), Alan Hollinghurst's 2004 novel The Line of Beauty. Chronicling upper-class life in Thatcher's Britain, Hollinghurst earned the Booker Prize. His first book The Swimming Pool Library was powerfully charged with social commentary, but The Line of Beauty was stunning, and all about the Henry James.

Next up: Edmund White's 2007 novel Hotel de Dream in which Henry James appears as the villain. A riveting semi-fictional tale of Stephen Crane's last days from his wife's point of view, it echoes some of the death themes White first explored in The Married Man, echoing Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky. Although I prefer White's biographical novels, particularly The Beautiful Room is Empty, this is my favourite of his historical fictions thus far.

And finally, back to Joseph Olshan's The Conversion. It is also part of a recent spate of young-gay-Italian-American-Jew-under-a-loggia fiction that is clogging summer bookshelves from Provincetown to Fire Island (but I digress). The Conversion is chock full of Jamesian references, ranging from explicit mentions to flaming manuscripts to the aforementioned loggias. But it surprised me with its layered subtlety and insightful parallels, and it kept me guessing until the end.

Apparently part of the maturity of gay fiction is the rediscovery of the canonical figures from the mainstream whose gay subtexts were so very circumspect. At the same time, gay fiction has entered the mainstream and exists less and less as a separate genre (just try finding a section in a bookstore anymore). Eighty-eight years after his death, Henry James seems to be the model for gay fiction to come. Or maybe some excitable queens are taking the whole "Master" thing just a little bit too close to heart.