randommsdev writes "Microsoft has announced the release of Windows Live ID Web Authentication. This means that WLID (formerly known as Passport) is now opened to third party websites to use as their authentication system. Any Windows Live user can potentially log in to a website that implements Web Authentication. Interestingly sample implementations are available in the Ruby, Python, Perl, and PHP open source languages amongst others — tested on openSUSE 10.2 but expected to work on any platform that supports these languages. More details are available in the SDK documentation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeffrey Zeldman on the W3C: "But a glacial pace isn’t all bad, especially if you’re driving off a cliff (which I gather we are). Driving off a cliff at a glacial pace affords you the luxury to turn around. I loves me some glacial pace." #

Cameron Moll's long awaited book will be available August 28th in PDF form. Excellentness. #

Irvu writes "Diebold has apparently failed in their bid to sell their tainted elections systems unit. Unable to find a buyer the CEO of Diebold promised that the system will be run more 'openly and independently.' To prove that they are serious, they renamed it. Diebold Election Systems is now Premiere Election Solutions. They still sell GEMS, AccuVote OS and the ever-unpopular AccuVote-TSX which performed so disastrously in California's Top-to-Bottom Review under the same names. Apparently their rebranding effort only goes so far."

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Although the effects on the tech industry have been muted, we've been following the impact of the mortgage/credit mess that's been roiling financial markets for the past few weeks. While many folks (particularly bankers and regulators) would like to claim that the situation is contained, every day brings more evidence that it's not. Michelle Leder has been tracking the number of times companies are using the word "subprime" in their SEC filings and she's found, not surprisingly, a spike in the word's use. What is a bit surprising are the companies that have invoked the situation to explain their performance. It's not just financial firms, as you'd expect, but companies as diverse as restaurant chains and wireless operators. The question, then, is whether this is simply an excuse for bad performance (like how retailers always claim they were hurt by the weather), or whether this issue has really started to creep up on companies in some way or another. At this point, it's probably a mix of both, although it wouldn't be a surprise to see a lot more companies affected by the situation than people currently expect.

1.	Integrating an aggregator.
2.	Integrating a podcatcher.

I am in favor of both #1 and #2.

I'll explain more about this tomorrow.

bigstrat2003 writes "For the past day, Wizards of the Coast has had a countdown to "4dventure" on their web site. The countdown ran out at 6:30 eastern time today (and the web site promptly crashed), but stories are already appearing on the rest of the web. Wizards also has had their 4th edition forums up for a couple of days."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This evening, Dell announced the preliminary results of a multi-month investigation into past accounting irregularities. As many had expected, the company revealed that management had deliberately massaged results to hit Wall Street targets. That being said, the total size of the fraud was not particularly significant. Overstating earnings between $50 million - $150 million between 2003-2006 is not all that big for a company as big as Dell. This doesn't excuse what the company did, but it does raise some questions about the incentives facing business managers. In the post-SarbOx era, these kinds of infractions can lead to serious penalties, and yet managers felt it was worthwhile to add a penny here and there in order to satisfy the Street's demands. Not only did SarbOx not do anything to prevent the fraud, but it didn't even prove to be a deterrent. The event should call into question the usefulness of the law, while also reigniting debate about the 'tyranny' of quarterly earnings, which pushes companies to make these choices.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In what appears to be a first, RIAA defendant Michelle Santangelo, the 20-year old daughter of Patti Santangelo, has made a motion for leave to serve a third party complaint against Kazaa and AOL, as well as against someone who installed Kazaa software, in Elektra v. Santangelo II. Her proposed third-party complaint (pdf) alleges that any injuries plaintiffs might have sustained were the result of the third party defendants' "negligence and breaches... in the defective design of Sharman Network's program, "Kazaa" which was a dangerous instrumentality in its each and every use as it existed in 2002-2004; the trespassing and reckless installation by Matthew Seckler [the person who allegedly installed the software without authorization] of such program; the failure to warn by AOL and Sharman; the failure to block the downloading of such files by AOL; the improper blocking of alleged (RIAA) warning messages by AOL and Sharman; and, the secretive file sharing system of and by Kazaa.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dave writes in to point to a ruling by the "Press Complaints Commission" in the UK, saying that the media needs to be careful to respect individual's privacy rights in making use of user-generated media. As we all know, many news organizations have increasingly learned to leverage the fact that so many people are carrying around mobile phones that can take photos and record video. When news stories break, the news organizations are more than willing to make use of this content to add value to the story -- as they should. However, what if the video is taken in private somewhere and reveals things it shouldn't? That was the case before the PCC, where a news organization had used a student's cameraphone video of an unruly classroom in a story. The school complained that no one had given consent to be filmed. The PCC noted that the story clearly was a matter of public interest, but that the people in the video should have been hidden, so as not to be as easily identified.

Of course, this sounds good in theory, but becomes very tricky in practice. In fact, this story is similar to one a few years ago, where a school punished the students for filming an angry outburst by a teacher, rather than blaming the teacher for the outburst. The efforts to hide these videos often comes across more as a way to coverup the very problem that resulted in the filming in the first place. It's like blaming a whistle blower. At the same time, it's ridiculous to think that such content can be blocked. Sure, they can tell "the media" that it can't use that kind of content, but that won't stop the content from showing up on YouTube anyway. In fact, this ruling makes it harder for the "official" media to report on certain stories, while guaranteeing that others will do so instead.

eldavojohn writes "IBM has turned to long time rival Sun in an effort to bring Solaris to its mainframes. Sun may be taking this chance to drop out of the server market while at the same time capture Solaris subscriptions via IBM sales. Either way, this certainly pressures HP in the server department."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Pescovitz: Ulysse Nardin's Tellurium J. Kepler watch rotates the Earth as it would be seen above the Earth. The timepiece was named in honor of Johannes Kepler, a 17th century astronomer who formulated the Laws of Planetary Motion. Only 99 of the timepieces were made and they are priced at more than $100,000. From the Ulysse Nardin product page:

A flexible spring bends from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn to reveal the part of the Earth lit by the Sun and to indicate the time and place of sunrise and sunset. The moon rotates around the Earth.

The dragon hand indicates the eclipses of the sun and the moon. The perpetual calendar completes one turn each year.

Link (via Thoughts From The Sidelines)

David Pescovitz: Now if only they'd publish a regional edition for their African subscribers: Zaire Official Meeting Facilities Guide.
Link to Neatorama post, Link to OMFG.com

Bunderfeld notes more details coming out about how bad guys got into the TJX network. Last time we discussed this, the best information indicated that a WEP crack had started the ball rolling. Now we learn that instead, or in addition: "Poorly secured in-store computer kiosks are at least partly to blame for acting as gateways to the company's IT systems, InformationWeek has learned. According to a source familiar with the investigation who requested anonymity, the kiosks, located in many of TJX's retail stores, let people apply for jobs electronically but also allowed direct access to the company's network, as they weren't protected by firewalls. 'The people who started the breach opened up the back of those terminals and used USB drives to load software onto those terminals,' says the source. In a March filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, TJX acknowledged finding 'suspicious software' on its computer systems."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Pescovitz: My old pal and seasoned music critic Mike Breen wrote a thoughtful, nostalgic, and bummer of a blog post about Perry Farrell, currently on tour with his new project Satellite Party. For many of us, Farrell was an avant garde art-rock prophet, a multimedia visionary who emerged from Venice Beach in the late 1980s and spread the word of weird to the masses. According to Breen, who was one of fifty or so fans who bothered to catch Satellite Party at a Cincinnati, Ohio club, the shock of the new has given way to the yawn of the boring. From Cincinnati CityBeat's Spill It blog:

I have had to leave concerts for a variety of reasons. I confess, I’ve been thrown out. I’ve gotten sick. I’ve gotten bored. I’ve gotten too drunk to remember anything anyway (a sort of mental exit, I suppose).

But I have never had to leave a show due to depression. That's exactly what happened tonight...

With Jane’s Addiction, Perry was a Tasmanian devil driven by freakazoid, banshee-like impulse and dangerous debauchery. You couldn’t stop watching Perry when Jane’s was in their heyday (though Stephen Perkins is a fascinating drummer to watch play). I’ve seen different incarnations of Jane’s and I’ve seen Porno for Pyros. All good shows. And I have seen Satellite Party twice before tonight, both times at Lollapalooza in Chicago. They didn’t do too much for me. Perry seemed pretty chill at the most recent Lolla a few weeks ago. I didn’t see that hunger, that prowess, that theatrical mania in his eyes (though he's still oodles more tolerable than, say, the singer for Mink, whose Rock Star stage moves were more phony than a prostitute’s moans of “Oh yeah, baby, that feels so good”). I loved seeing Perry play the kids’ stage at Lollapalooza, where he did “Pets’ and a cover of “Whole Lotta Love” (a song with the words “fucked up” in it and a song about — just guessing — fucking?). He seemed even mellower than he had on the main stage, surveying the kiddie crowd and beaming proudly, perhaps moved by the curious generational overlap.

He surveyed the small crowd at Bogart’s tonight, too. His glance around the venue seemed to say, “Wow, how humbling, but these people really love me.” The audience may have been small in numbers, but almost everyone there seemed to love seeing their hero on stage. Perry’s children’s-stage haze seems to have stuck with him and, while he’s graceful and still somewhat engaging on stage, he came off a little like an AltRock Icon version of Perry Como. Comfortable and familiar, but not even remotely provocative.

Link (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!)

Although Blockbuster sat on its heels for a long time while NetFlix gobbled up market share, the company has aggressively fought back this year, prompting a lot of pain at NetFlix. NetFlix stock has been pummeled lately as its been drawn into a price war in order to stem customer churn. The problem is that its business model is easily replicated, which partly explains the company's attempt to assert a patent on it. However, the company does appear willing to actually compete, which is refreshing. The New York Times reports on the company's unorthodox decision to offer customer support services from friendly sounding Oregonions (as the company puts it), rather than rely on offshoring or email support. Although this is an expensive move, the company feels it will prove to be a key differentiator as it battles back Blockbuster. Obviously, good customer support means happier customers, while bad customer support can turn customers away. But the lesson isn't that companies should immediately stop all offshoring of these services. Rather, it's important for companies to think of customer support strategically and weigh the various costs and benefits, rather than just going on the lowest-price option.

Down-with-the-patents writes "As this community discussed earlier, the US Patent and Trademark Office is collaborating with the Peer-to-Patent program to stop bad patents from issuing. Brigid Quinn, spokesperson for the USPTO, explains the motivation of the USPTO to open up to the public what has been a behind-closed-doors process. Groklaw's Pamela Jones notes that 'when it comes to software, there is more knowledge outside of USPTO than inside it.' While some of Jones's readers are staying away from the pilot program, hoping that the patent system will just collapse of its own weight, Jones says that's a goal she understands but doesn't view as realistic. The project seems to be doing pretty well with over 1,000 active participants, and plans to replicate it in other patent offices starting with the UK next year." Slashdot and Linux.com toil for the same corporate overlord.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Xeni Jardin: I filed a report for today's edition of NPR News "Day to Day" about how and when our government -- city, state, and federal -- hangs on to official email, and what that means for both IT budgets and public knowledge.

Short version: policies are all over the map, there's no consistency, and government watchdogs believe more frequent purging means the public loses access to valuable historic information.

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty recently ordered that all e-mails not flagged as "save" by city government workers will be deleted and purged from the city's email system in January of 2008. After that initial purge, all city employee email older than 6 months which is not specifically flagged as "save" will be auto-deleted.

The more e-mail government employees send, the more there is to store, costing taxpayers money. But costs must be balanced against the need to preserve history, and ensure government transparency. If individual officials decide which emails to save and which to delete, will they choose to save potentially incriminating or embarassing emails?

We hear from Wired News reporter Ryan Singel, who often covers news involving technology and government transparency; Purdue University professor and cyberforensics expert Marcus Rogers, Christina Fleps, general counsel for the office of the Chief Technology Officer for the DC city government, and Kevin Hall, who is spokesperson for Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine.

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Link (and direct MP3 Link) for "How Long Should Government Email Linger?"

Link to audio streams for a related conversation that ran today with Day to Day host Madeleine Brand, about deciding when and how to delete or archive personal email.

Or, listen in the "Xeni Tech" podcast (subscribe via iTunes here). NPR "Xeni Tech" archives here.