Menu

Subscribe
     

MaisonBisson

a bunch of stuff I would have emailed you about

Signs Of User-Centric Shift At CES?

Doc Searls in Linux Journal compares previous CES expos to 2008 and finds a shift from talk of “broadcasters and rights-holders extending their franchise” to a Web 2.0 enlightened user-centricity.

At every CES up to this one, I always felt that both open source and user-in-charge were swimming upstream against a tide of proprietary “solutions” and user lock-in strategies. This year I can feel the tide shift. Lots of small things point toward increased user autonomy, originality, invention and engagement. The story isn’t just about What Big Companies Are Doing For You any more. It’s what you’re doing for yourself, and for whomever you like.

Google Pumps OpenID Too

Following news that Yahoo! is joining the OpenID fray, it appears Google is dipping a toe in too. While those two giants work out their implementations, others are raising the temperature of the debate on IDM solutions. Stefan Brands is among the OpenID naysayers (<a href=“http://daveman692.livejournal.com/310578.html" title=“David Recordon’s Blog - Stefan Chooses to Take the “Fox News” Approach to OpenID Blogging”>David Recordon’s response), while Scott Gillbertson sees a bright future. Let’s watch the OpenID Directory to see how fast it grows now (count on January 19 2008: 446).

WordPress + Invalid URLs = Extra Database Queries

After reporting weirdness last week I finally sat down with a completely clean and virgin install of WordPress 2.3.2 and traced what happens when you make a permalink request for a non-existent URL. Here are two sets of URLs to use as examples and context: These are valid URLs: http://site.org/archives/101 http://site.org/page-name These are _not_ valid […] » about 400 words

Is Facebook Really The Point?

A post to Web4lib alerted me to this U Mich survey about libraries in social networks (blog post) that finds 77% of students don’t care for or want libraries in Facebook or MySpace. the biggest reason being that they feel the current methods (in-person, email, IM) are more than sufficient. 14% said no because they […] » about 500 words

@tinfoilraccoon: is it really …

@tinfoilraccoon: is it really so complex that it requires training? PLS tell them Amazon and iTunes don’t require training, ask why OD does.

Casey Bisson

Bits Of MySQL Query Syntax I’ve Learned This Week

Watching the WordPress hacker list this week, a couple messages related to selecting information about users schooled me on MySQL syntax. I obviously knew the following would work, but I’d previously used the UNION syntax in similar situations and somehow hadn’t thought of writing it this way:

``` SELECT (SELECT meta_value FROM wp_usermeta WHERE meta_key = 'first_name' AND user_id = 2) AS FIRST, (SELECT meta_value FROM wp_usermeta WHERE meta_key = 'last_name' AND user_id = 2) AS LAST, wp_users.* FROM wp_users WHERE wp_users.ID = 2 ```

That’s much cleaner to my thinking, though I’ve no idea which is more optimal. When somebody replied asking for a solution that would work in pre-MySQL 5, this was the response:

``` SELECT ID, user_login, FIRST.meta_value AS fname, LAST.meta_value AS lname FROM wp_users LEFT JOIN wp_usermeta AS FIRST ON (wp_users.ID = FIRST.user_id AND FIRST.meta_key = 'first_name') LEFT JOIN wp_usermeta AS LAST ON (wp_users.ID = LAST.user_id AND LAST.meta_key = 'last_name') ```

And the lesson to me here is that I didn’t realize the syntax allowed us to match multiple conditions for the JOIN. Makes sense, but I just hadn’t thought of it. Thanks go to Phil Williams and Otto for tipping me to these.

@edventures: their hardware an…

@edventures: their hardware and operating system operations are getting squeezed. They’ve gotta look elsewhere.

Casey Bisson