Archive for March, 2007

Maro22

Christian Decker

0

Highrise opens up

Just a few days ago 37Signals launched Highrise and the feedback has been overwhelming. A search for “technorati” shows up with more than 6’500 hits. Along with many praises, many were not too happy that some features are available for the professional accounts. But 37Signals listen to feedback and react immediately: they added some features to the lower subscription plans:

When we launched we only offered Cases on Plus, Premium, and Max plans. There was a fair bit of negative reaction to that decision. We hear you. So today we’ve made a change. Now all plans include some Cases.

  • Plus, Premium, and Max continue to include unlimited Cases
  • The new Solo plan (explained below) includes unlimited Cases
  • Basic includes 5 Cases
  • Personal includes 3 Cases
  • Free includes 1 Case

And most exciting of all they upped the maximum number of Contacts from 25 to 250! And they added a Single user plan, that will be really interesting for freelancers.This makes Highrise definitely the CRM-Tool of choice.

Congratulations 37Signals, if only every company would react so soon to user feedback :)

P.S.: On a side note that is really interesting to me:

Another interesting stat is that 9% of the people signed up are using OpenID. Lots of early adopters on board!

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Maro20

Christian Decker

0

Linux runs on top of Windows? I don’t think so!

I usually try not to join the flame wars between supporters of one Operating System or another but this jewel is just too nice to miss it:
Hah….
Thanks Brad, for pointing it out :D
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Maro09

Christian Decker

1

OpenID Provider Wishlist

Will Norris has pubblished an extensive list of “nice to have features” for OpenID Providers, including:
  • SSL
  • Strong Authentication
  • Auditing (logging transactions)
  • Real Attribute release policies
  • Modify attribute value for the current Transaction
  •  Identity Linking
These are certainly interesting ideas, anything else to add?
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Maro07

Christian Decker

1

Yet another OpenID Provider (WordPress)

I was pretty excited earlier today, when I read that WordPress.com would start providing their users with OpenIDs, but most importantly accept OpenID as an authentication method, becoming a Consumer. Sadly the news where wrong… WordPress is just another OpenID Provider but they won’t accept OpenID as authentication mechanism. This significantly reduces the importance of this news: we have enough OpenID Providers, what we need are consumers. By now everybody, yes really everybody, has about 2 OpenID Identities, but besides blogs there are very few places we can use.

It is easy for sites to provide their users with OpenID, but accepting them is a major barrier…

Sorry to spoil it for you, but I’m can’t be bothered with yet another Provider.

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Maro05

Christian Decker

2

OpenID and security issues

Why don’t the big players accept OpenID as authentication mechanism, although some provide OpenID accounts? Kevin Farnham raises some valid points in this discussion:
So, what does it mean if we have a flurry of companies providing OpenIDs to users, but almost no one accepting OpenID credentials? Why would this happen? I can immediately think of one good reason: providing OpenID URLs is relatively easy to do and does not require a lot of coordination with other vendors; accepting OpenID credentials is a more complex process and requires interactions between your own servers and those of all OpenID providers. Providing OpenID sounds relatively safe compared with accepting it.
Being vulnerable to phishing attack, especially for non tech savvy user, OpenID is not suited to provide high security accounts. I personally think that until a solution to this problem the Protocol is facing some really hard times.
I think so. I think the news that so many people have OpenID URLs will encourage more sites and vendors to accept OpenID credentials. It will provide them with a way to stand out from the crowd. Maybe the big players won’t join in right away, but for smaller sites accepting OpenID has a lot of advantages
Providing their users with an easy way to register and use their services will certainly be a major advantage  for many smaller players. And some others are getting on the train too, remember the Digg announcement a few days ago?
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