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Murphy's Law: Unfolding the Future of the Social Web with OpenID

David Murphy — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:00:00 -0500

A large part of the Web as we know it today is built around independent communities. Think about it. You have a login for your Twitter account, a login for your Facebook account, a login for your [insert favorite Web site here] account. And while each of these independent entities can play with each other via plugins, coding trickery, or outright hacks... you're still stuck in three separate sandboxes at the end of the day. Does Twitter know what I like on my Facebook page? Can Amazon take a gander at my current interests and suggest related purchases? Do any of these sites know who my friends really are--not just the people I tweet, but the people I email on a regular basis?

While that's the current state of social affairs on the Web, it's not necessarily the future. Open-source projects like OpenID are paving the way for a new generation of connectivity, one where differing Web entities come to you for information and display it in a format and location of your choosing. Instead of jacking your life into the Web on a variety of fronts, you will have one point of interaction, one location to present your information. The litany of daily sites you visit will become more accurate, customized elements for your lifestyle. And best of all, you won't have to login to 85 different places to make it work.

OpenID is just one of the open-source Web technologies that are leading the charge into this new social sphere. In case you haven't noticed this little element appearing on sites like Wordpress, Livejournal, and Google -- amongst more than 25,000 others -- here's how it works. The basic approach of OpenID is centered on the login experience for Web sites. Rather than having to remember a login and password for the unlimited number of sites you likely visit in a day, OpenID allows you to choose a single provider as the source of your digital identity in cyberspace. Once you've selected a common user name and password, you can use this -- rather than a site's proprietary login/password specifications -- to interact with anyone who supports the service.

Technologies like these, and Facebook Connect, make up what Forrester Research's Jeremiah Owyang dubs the "Era of Social Colonization." Like the rise of humans from primates to people, Owyang has crafted up a series of timelines for the evolution of the Web's social experience. We're currently in stage two, the Era of Social Functionality, highlighted by a growth of interactive applications that transform social networks into more than just meeting grounds for talking parties. Or, to put it blandly, we've moved from a chat room to an interactive portal.

DestinationCRM.com does a great job of illustrating the differences between these eras, so I'm not going to lift their work in favor of pointing you to the source itself. Suffice, the light at the end of the cyber-tunnel is expected to start around 2011, when the power of online groups begins to replace the importance of top-down brands. Companies will engage communities to shape and develop their products, and the power of social networks and one's personal connectivity will be the driving force behind distributed content. Corporate Web sites will lose their relevancy, as companies will be forced to interact and engage customers based on their social identities, rather than waiting and letting customers "find them" or their products.

In essence, OpenID is but the first drop in the bucket toward a more connected Internet experience. As the walls between social networking and social commerce begin to blur, peer-to-peer trust is going to emerge as the ultimate arbiter of what's hip, what's hot, and what's horrible on the Web. I suppose that means we're all going to become a bunch of Newegg reviewers in the future. But that's the power of the community -- and it's a new force that companies are going to have to adopt and cater to, should Owyang's predictions hold true!

In the Lab: David Murphy Explains Case Reviews

David Murphy — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:10:03 -0600

The art of testing cases at Maximum PC is a lot like the sword ceremony scene in Kill Bill. There’s a lot of razzmatazz and showmanship at first, but in the end, a worthy case is treated with honor and delicacy as it’s gently placed back in the Lab; wretched cases are also moved to the Lab… to be used as pedestals upon which we rest the worthy enclosures.

I’m being only a bit facetious when I say that because reviewing a case really does require delicacy. I start by giving a case’s exterior a full inspection. Aesthetics play the smallest role in our overall verdict, but as our September 2007 review of Dynapower USA’s Hachiman case illustrates, I do point out the look of a case when a vendor tries something new—or when an exterior is worthy of contempt (although I do recognize that one person’s pile of garbage is another person’s Pieta).

The real fun begins once I’ve popped off the side panel—and if that’s not a pleasant experience, the chassis earns its first ding. Inside, I’m looking for elements such as screwless mounts that are easy to use but secure, convenient and accessible drive bays, and cooling potential. Mounting a motherboard in the case typically exposes any flaws in the overall design: We experienced this with an early version of Antec’s Nine Hundred case, which didn’t allow certain cables to be connected. (The problem was fixed prelaunch.)

I like to come at case reviews as if I’m a basic user, and in doing so, I ask myself a series of questions during the review process: Is the case difficult to work in? Is this case easy to manipulate and fill with components? Is there a better way to do what I’m doing? Do I need extra parts, tools, or products to complete my rig? And once the rig is built, are the provided cooling solutions too loud? Does the case adequately muffle my noisy components? Is its cooling sufficient? Does the case lack anything that would be necessary for me to build the perfect rig?

There are two primary case design styles: classic and over the top and gamer themed. Depending on your needs, even a 10 Kick Ass case might not be exactly what you’re looking for.

A case can have a lot of features and still have a horrible design. Conversely, a case can be a little skimpy with its add-ons—holes for water-cooling tubes and included tri-speed fans and LCD display panels—but still deliver an amazing experience for rig builders. Reviewing cases is part exact science, part surprise and delight.

Western Digital My Book World Edition II

David Murphy — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:44:57 -0500

We fondly recall reviewing this unit’s connected brother in arms, the My Book Pro Edition II (March 2007). The products are virtually identical, featuring two 500GB hard drives locked in a RAID 0 configuration that gives you one honkin’ terabyte of space. The difference, of course, is that you access the World Edition II through an Ethernet cable instead of a FireWire or USB connection.

A little piece of software called MioNet serves as the gateway between your computer and this NAS box. We love how it effortlessly allows you to share folders from your My Book with anyone you want via an awesome web-based interface. But that’s all it does unless you want to open up your wallet. Yes, that’s right, to share folders that are on your computer and access other functions, like remote login to any PC with MioNet installed, you have to pay the piper—$7 a month or $65 a year. Say it slowly now: What. The. Hell.

Worse still, we have good reason to believe that MioNet cripples the My Book’s performance. It takes the My Book forever to load up and be recognized by the program, and sometimes the connection doesn’t even occur. For some strange reason, the drive won’t show up in Windows Explorer but will be accessible through the Manage Devices option in MioNet.

Considering it took an average of 12:42 (min:sec) to transfer 3.6GB (475 files), we remain thoroughly unimpressed with the My Book World. A pity, really; we had such high hopes.

Ableton Live 6

David Murphy — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:20:44 -0500

You can do so much with Live 6, it’s hard to know exactly where to begin describing this masterful software sequencer. So we’ll start at the top. With just a few clicks of an in-application help system, we were up and running with the program’s Operator add-on, creating notes and beats that sound as though they were pulled straight from a Keith Schofield music video. Awesome.

While the program references a number of functions that are a lot to swallow for a beginner—filter frequencies, resonances, waveshapes—the simple interface encourages the ol’ “try it” approach to learning the program. That said, audio enthusiasts will find plenty of opportunity for experimentation under Live 6’s hood: You can create your music using a MIDI-attached keyboard, directly edit the MIDI notes within your loops, and then change up your beats with a ton of plugin-style effects.

Live 6 would benefit from a better navigation system to simplify accessing its many functions, and the drab gray program needs some Apple interface treatment. But these are paltry concerns for such a sweet, learner-friendly music application

Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 Hard Drive

David Murphy — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:02:40 -0500

Holy hell, man. We have been waiting for this day for a long time, and Hitachi is the first hard-drive manufacturer out of the gate to meet our terabyte-size storage needs. Yes, that’s right. A terabyte. One thousand gigabytes stuffed into a hard drive, or in this case, a Deskstar.

For those keeping score at home, that’s 250GB more than the current storage leader, Seagate’s 750GB Barracuda drive. And while the differences aren’t quite as dramatic in terms of speed, Hitachi’s 7K1000 storage monster still beats out the Seagate in our HD Tach benchmarks.

The Deskstar 7K1000 drive sports five platters with 200GB of storage apiece, which doesn’t give the device an amazing areal density, especially compared to its smaller peers. In theory, drives with a higher areal density perform better, but not so when it comes to the 7K1000. We recorded a whopping 72.7MB/s for the drive’s average read test, which curb-stomps the Seagate’s now-paltry 66MB/s. While Western Digital’s Raptor drive tops that score with a random access speed of 77.9MB/s, it’s also less than one-sixth the capacity of the 7K1000.

Looking at random access times—a measure of a hard drive’s ability to pull information from a variety of different spots on the disks—Hitachi’s terabyte drive again tops the Barracuda, by only 0.3 of a millisecond, but a difference nonetheless. As one might expect, the Raptor drive retains its speed-king position. You’d merely need to RAID seven of them together to get the capacity of the 7K1000.

In a comparison of apples and oranges—the Raptor’s speed versus the Barracuda’s size—Hitachi’s terabyte drive is nothing short of a watermelon. It’s the fastest of all the drives in its class, of which there is one, and even tops the drives that hover around the meager 500GB mark. Toss in the terabyte of storage, and you get an absolute winner.

Thermaltake V1

David Murphy — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:28:25 -0500

We’ve been operating under the assumption that Zalman’s CNPS9700 is the Highlander of CPU coolers—immortal and utterly immune to the benchmarking threats posed by other, lesser devices. That’s until we ran across Thermaltake’s newest V1 cooler. As far as we can tell, the blue-lit device is the guy who brings the chain saw to a swordfight. It looks great, fits great, and outcools our reigning champion ever so slightly.

Installing the cooler was almost a breeze (ha ha), save for one hang-up. The locking mechanism for our AMD X2 rig ran into the cooler itself. It’s not a deal-breaker, but in this case, you really have to push on the little lever to set the cooler in place. It’s a minor flaw for such an explosive device.

Ultra Products E-Torque Midtower Case

David Murphy — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:49:06 -0500

Reviewing Ultra Products’s E-Torque case is a bit challenging because this product is a strange mixture of good and great. And we’re not sure if that means it’s “grood” or “goodate.”

The E-Torque could be awesome, but every component seems to have been stepped back a notch. Consider the side window. It’s pleasing to the eyes and even comes with an air duct attached to a mountable grill. But the randomly placed

“VGA vent” below the fan is awkwardly out of place.
Speaking of cooling, the case comes with two awesome 12cm fan mounts. Their screwless, clipable design should become the standard for every case on the market—we love these mounts that much. But this case comes with only said mounts. You’re kidding, right, Ultra? An LED fan or two wouldn’t break the bank.

The front I/O panel doesn’t feature HD audio and is bland, just like the entire front of the case. The E-Torque looks good, not spectacular—only its screwless PCI holders are truly kick-ass. Again, we have yet to see a better design.

But this is the difference between a sprinter and a marathoner. The E-Torque succeeds in small bursts, but these spurts don’t ultimately push the case to the front of the pack.

Thermaltake LanBox VF1000SWA

David Murphy — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:57:40 -0500

At first glance, Thermaltake’s Lanbox case looks like an absolute dud. Not because of its design but rather its size. What’s the point of buying a case that won’t fit, say, a GeForce 8800 GTX card?

So let us first rest your troubled heart. Yes, you can stuff a modern rig into the Lanbox. A rig based on a micro ATX or mini ITX formfactor, mind you. It’s a tight fit, and you might have to get a little creative with cable management, but a sweet, easily totable rig is not an unobtainable dream.

That said, the Lanbox’s design is an utter success. There’s just enough space for all the essential parts of a gaming rig, and the presentation is as artful as it is simple. Toss the case’s three fans into the mix and it’s obvious that Thermaltake understands its market. Almost.

Building your machine takes a lot of screw-work, which is forgivable, considering the case’s size. We can’t overlook the lack of “1337,” however—with no window etchings, no crazy paint job, and only one LED fan, this case isn’t going to impress anybody at a LAN party. Come on, Thermaltake, where’s the bling?