Archive for September, 2007

openID is going wild

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Orange (aka France Telecom) has decided to use openID as their unique authentication solution for more than 40 millions of their users. This is a big news for mainly 2 reasons:

  • they are the first world wide company to announce the use of openID publicly (ok AOL use it too, as well as Plaxo), although it is only for their own customers, it is still a good start.
  • a year ago or so, France Telecom announced a huge technological partnership with Microsoft. Now, I wonder why they choose openID and what is going to be MS reaction with their Passport and co.

There are some interesting and more-experts-than-me comments on the planet openID. So now, what about Google, Facebook and co? It would be great to have them using this solution too. By the way, you can easily find wordpress plugins to integrate openID and wordpress.

Amazon launches MP3 shop (DRM-free)

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

Finally real competition is starting on the music download market, thanks to Amazon. They have launched their MP3 (DRM-free) shop with a couple of millions of titles. They may be able to make Apple move and innovate again in this market.

I went there to try it…and guess what?…it just works! As easy as an Apple product, design and user interface excepted though! It is still limited to US titles mainly but it works even from outside US, I was able to “buy” their free song as well as buy the latest Norah Jones with my asian credit card (something you cannot do on the iTunes Store) and it was even cheaper with better audio quality than iTunes Store!

It is simply amazing how those big names they change their mind about DRM, or at least, how they are force to… Anyway it is good for us customers, and guys, you see, you make me buy music again!
Now my only wish would be that they open to all their artists, not only by country, so I can get french titles or whatever I wish. Anybody listening this?

Amazon MP3 downloader

I forgot to mention: I was able to use my Amazon account (created on Amazon France) without any problem, again iTunes is out on this point since you must create different accounts for each iTunes store.

quicksilver addiction

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

I am a Mac user and I cannot live anymore without a quicksilver installed. This is a so convenient tool with almost no limit of usage, testing it it’s already keeping it!

Some of us are really addicted, watch this video:

Quicksilver in Real Life from Matt McInerney on Vimeo.

Get your bill, everybody can get a bill!

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

Welcome to the wonderful world of utilities! Those companies are only interested by one thing: to bill you! – I must be carefull, I am working for one…

Let’s talk about what I really want to talk: I finally took some time to start to put an online demo of CS-4U, the billing system for small utilities. It is web-based and has been developed for East-Timor, but if you want to know more, check the dedicated page for this…