Simon Willison’s Weblog

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Entries in Dec, 2006

Filters: Type: entry × Year: 2006 × Month: Dec × Sorted by date


How is Google giving me access to this page?

Google have an open URL redirector, so you can craft a link that uses that:

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Sending a postal letter via the internets?

Thanks mycapaciousbottega. It looks like there’s still a business opportunity here because emailbypost.com doesn’t work! I got through the create-your-letter step, but when I hit the “pay” button I got an error from the payment service stating that their user account didn’t exist.

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What is the physically smallest and cheapest laptop capable of running OS X?

Apple rumors are worth approximately nothing, but there’s one going around that a ultra-slim 12“ MacBook Pro is going to be announced at MacWorld Expo some time in the second week of January; might be worth holding on until then to see if there’s any truth to it. There’s certainly a 12” sized hole in the line-up at the moment.

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OpenID screencast

OpenID’s biggest problem is its learning curve. Using it as actually really simple, but if you’re not technical the amount of stuff you have to know before you can understand it is enormous. If you are technical, it just doesn’t seem like it should work—there are a bunch of questions that come up every time OpenID is discussed anywhere (“but surely there’s nothing to stop someone else from spoofing your ID”) which OpenID has answers for, but which are easily misunderstood.

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Why JSON isn’t just for JavaScript

Dave Winer’s discovery of JSON (and shock that “it’s not even XML”) has triggered an interesting discussion thread, on his blog and elsewhere. Plenty of people have re-assured him (and themselves) that it’s only used for JavaScript—it’s convenient in the browser but irrelevant elsewhere.

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How to turn your blog in to an OpenID

Wouldn’t it be great if you could use the same account to log in to multiple sites and applications, without having to trust them all with your password? Wouldn’t it be even better if you could do this without having to hand ownership of your online identity over to some monolithic third party? (I’m looking at you, .NET Passport Microsoft Passport Windows Live ID.)

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Finally powered by Django

It’s been way too long, but I’ve finally replaced the ball of PHP duct tape that has run this site for the past four years with a shiny new blog engine powered by Django.

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