Paul Lindner

Paul here from the Superfund Squad, where we're getting rid of the infrastructure you love to hate and paying off unfunded mandates with technical debt. And digging up the History of Google's Social Efforts in the attached collection.

I've been cranking at this social thing for almost 7 years at Google on Google+ and a long time before that at places Six Apart (home of Typepad and Livejournal), hi5 and LinkedIn. I did a lot of work on OpenSocial and other standards back then which is a big reason I'm here today.

Oh and this enterprise thing isn't my first rodeo. Way back at Critical Path we provided hosted email, calendar and tasks for Italian Telecoms, Major Universities *and* the Kiss Army. And at Red Hat we sold shrink wrap and services to all sales channels.

But I'm most proud of the work I did at the UN on telecom standards, relief efforts and publishing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 500 languages. (And the site is still standing to this day!)

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/SearchByLang.aspx

And finally before that was the Internet Gopher.. Me, with Heavy Metal hair:

https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol

Beyond all this tech I enjoy life in Oakland with my fabulous wife Julie and our Great Pyrenees Gus. You'll find us exploring the parks of the East Bay, checking out obscure music or cruising the rapidly gentrifying Valencia street in the Mission. I'm also heavily interested in building software and systems that last the long term. I'm a member of the Long Now (https://longnow.org) and I have a 20% project called Digital Vellum (http://go/digitalvellum)

Happy to be here with y'all and looking forward to our next adventures!

#googplus

#googplus

Remember Vox? I had the good fortune to be at Six Apart for it's development and launch. A lot of amazing work went into it and sadly it is no more. Vox was ahead of it's time and I feel that Google+ has much of what I liked about it.

You see back then Six Apart acquired Livejournal for it's amazing technology and it's foothold into the social space beyond blogging. There was a hitch though, LJ code was open sourced and GPL'd. It would be hard to sell a rebranded LJ to people like NTT, or other Typepad partners.. Also as a service LJ had developed it's own culture that might not benefit from a wave of mommy bloggers, nor would said bloggers be comfortable with the cutters and goths over at LJ.

Thus Comet was born and launched as Vox. You could follow with Friends/Family groups. Each post could be as private and public as you liked. You could cross-post to LJ, apply stylish themes to your blog and there was the #qotd (question of the day) which sparked up some great conversations and helped build a sense of community.

Some of the features found their way into Typepad, and Typepad's profiles. Sadly, many did not.

What do you think Six Aparters? What features do you miss that you'd like to see here?

#gplus

Now if only I could cross post this to livejournal...

#googplus

 At hi5 we've been busy busy busy getting OpenSocial up and running.  We released our developer sandbox, and are rapidly implementing features.  So check out the following URLs

• hi5 OpenSocial developer announcement
• http://sandbox.hi5.com/
• hi5 Platform Development Group

Also, here's a copy of my response to Tim O'Reilly's blog post:

OpenSocial: It's the data, stupid

Hi folks,

Good comments all around. However I'd like to posit that data access is _not_ the problem. We've had universal standards for years now with little uptake. Tribe.net, Typepad, LiveJournal and others have supported FOAF for many, many years, which encompasses the OpenSocial Person and Friends APIs. Not much has come of that -- there isn't a large enough base there to get people interested.

Now you have a broad industry consensus on a single way to provide all of the above plus activity stream data. You have a rich client platform that allows you to crack open that data and use it in interesting ways, and finally you have a common standard for social networks to interact with each other based on the REST api.

So Patrick's statement at the Web 2.0 Expo is correct, a app running inside a container only allows you to see what that container shows you. However that does not mean that a container could not contain friend references to external social networks via it's own federation mechanism. Movable Type 4.0 has shown that you can support any OpenID login in a single system, there's no reason to believe that social networks could not leverage OAuth to do the same.

And here's a final point to consider -- you have Myspace opening up to developers. That's huge. That alone is going to draw more developer attention to this problem than much of the oh-so academic discussions of the past few years.

I suggest people that _want_ OpenSocial to solve all the social graph ills get involved on the API mailing list and make sure that those elements are addressed as OpenSocial evolves.

There's a tremendous amount of momentum. Let's not waste this chance.

#hi5 #opensocial #vox

Just caught up 10 days worth of Neighborhood posts.  I now have Vox fatigue combined with Vox guilt.  I didn't even read comments, for shame :(  After this post I'll need to check on the 'ol LiveJournal Friends page.  Don't even ask about the umpteem BlogLines blogs stuck at 200 posts...

Hi5 has a new Skins system that actually can make profile pages look good.  I had some input early on and made sure Vox and the SixApart styles were part of the inspiration.  It's coming out really well and we've received over 200 submissions.  Check out the snazzy new profile page?  Designers can check out the specs page.

Embeds are evil.  They mess up divs and tables and are often pasted in haphazardly.  Amit  came up with an amazing solution.  Use JTidy to clean up the user submitted content.  Tags match and broken html goes bye-bye!

Now back to the super-secret Hi5 Project Funk.

One Nation Under a Groove

Funkadelic

#design #hi5 #metavox #tidy #vox

I can't believe it myself, Paul leaving Six Apart? Yes, it's true -- I've accepted an offer to be Hi5's Architect.

You can't fathom how much I will miss Six Apart -- the smart people, the positive dynamic environment, the technology and vision. I'm proud of what we've accomplished together and hope that my contributions have a lasting legacy beyond my final day, October 20th.

It sure has been a wild ride. Hard to believe it, but when I arrived TypePad was in the terrible twos - 2 app servers, 2 web servers, 2 Postgres 7.3beta databases, and (oh my) 2 SnapServers. Linux Kernel 2.6.5 had just been released and we were pushing a little over 10Mbps of traffic. Since then we've scaled up beyond belief while overcoming all sorts of obstacles. We've seen many new Typepad Stacks, two colo moves, three new ISPs, three new versions of Postgres, and dozens of software pushes all while building up great Engineering and Ops organizations to care and tend it all.

My immediate plans are to wrap up all of the loose ends while pushing forward on one last hurrah -- finishing up a simple version of Typepad and Mogile integration. If there's unfinished business or you want a brain dump of anything please let me know so we can take care of this in the next week and a half.

Don't forget to join me for a very special FooBar on October 20th to reminisce about all the great success we've shared over the past two and a half years.

After that... well, let's try to keep in touch.

I'll do my best to blog more on my Vox Blog, my LiveJournal, and my new experimental Typepad Blog. You can email me at lindner@inuus.com.

You can also find me at the following places

• Hi5 Profile
• LinkedIn Profile
• LastFM Profile
• Friendster Profile (rarely used)

Thanks again for everything!

Paul

So mugshot is now out: http://www.mugshot.org/

It appears quite interesting in how it integrates with the desktop environment. See the ArsTechnica review for more info.

I'll likely get access to this soon, have to talk to the old Red Hat Peeps asap...

#livejournal

Does LiveJournal have an official band? "Best Friends Forever" has the appropriate name, lots of songs about boyfriends and they even pull off writing an ode to being Abraham Lincoln's wife:

My Head In Front Of Your Head (mp3).

Current Mood: happy

Current Music: Best Friends Forever - My Head In Front of Your Head

 

#livejournal

This time it's Union 76's chance to get their billboard modded.



priceless.

Go on over to the New York Times home page and view source. Drop your jaw at the HTML comments that reveal their gnarly SQL they use to generate their home page.

Each three article section has the SQL used to generate it in a comment above it. The funny thing is that the SQL is longer than the results.

  select oid 
    from assetrelationtree
   where otype='NYT_Article' and nparentid in 
         (select nid from assetrelationtree where nparentid=0 and oid in
            (select id from collection where id in 
              (select distinct oid from assetrelationtree 
                where nparentid=(select nid from assetrelationtree 
                                  where oid=1004547 and nparentid=0) and
                                        otype='Collection') and 
                                    subtype='NYT_Article')) and 
                      ncode <= '20060407' and 
                      oid not in (1125004343548,1125004284421,1125004335857,
                                  1125004327602,1125004279763,1125004286523,
                                  1125004276389,1125004338045,1125004296004) 
     order by ncode DESC,nrank ASC

#livejournal

Yesterday I spent 2 hours powerwashing the sidewalk in front of our Loft. I now hate gum chewers. I almost understand why they ban it in Singapore.

Current Mood: tired

#livejournal

1990-2006

Current Mood: sad

#livejournal

The parking meters in front of the office are now 5 minutes for a quarter. That's a cool three bucks an hour.

Better stock up on coin at the nearest laundermat or get a snazzy parking card:

http://www.sfgov.org/site/dpt_index.asp

#livejournal

So one of the last hurdles to mod_perl 2.0 development has been fixed. libapreq 2.07 has been in gestation for months and is now available. This is the first non-dev release and it opens the doors to actually using this in production.

Current Mood: tired

Current Music: None

 

#livejournal

So if LJ is a Goat and Six Apart is human, what is the combination?

The greek mythological character Pan. Half Goat/Half Man, plays the Pan pipes and gets everyone in trouble with his mischievous ways.

BTW, Inuus is the Roman name for Pan, just so ya know...

#livejournal

No? Really?! duh...

Hookers Found On Craigslist
South SF cops make arrests after finding ads for a small prostitution ring on community Internet board. BayCityNews

#livejournal

will be online later...

#livejournal

Barak signed off on the keynote contract. Finally. Spoke with Ben about solutions to the excess bandwidth usage problem.

He's also going to file a fogbugz for using the load balancer to point users at one cluster or another.

#livejournal

Trying to come up with a plan to deal with our excessive bandwidth usage for our internap pipe..

ick. No good options exist.

#livejournal

Finished with meeting. Need to talk to Michael Sippey about getting downtime scheduled. Next get BR code installed and distributed...

Still problems with staging.sixapart.com. need to fix.

#livejournal

woo..

#livejournal

Nick dropped by. More staging.sixapart.com work..

#livejournal

Keynote followups.

writeup staffing plan.

#livejournal

Bagels in the kitchen.. Talked status.sixapart.com with Deborah...

#livejournal

Brickhouse here I come...

#livejournal

Zornitza, Brenna, Nick. status.sixapart.com looking good.

spamtop is a hit.

Still haven't finished the staffing plan.

#livejournal

My old roomate on the front page of slashdot...

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22332

The whole affair today typifies everything I think is wrong with the industry. I didn't name names, post links, or lay blame directly on purpose. To be honest, this time I have no proof. People have tried to bribe me, people have tried to get me to write things they want written, and people have tried to cower me. I have told them all that they possess more than enough orifices to place their ideals.

#livejournal

logjam is awesome..

Time to get FogBugz sorted out. Brenna is here. Talk to Nick about staging.sixapart.com.

Oh, and Data Center Staffing plan. Must not forget about that..

#livejournal

Prescriptions refilled, errands run, dog walked. Coffee and pastries at Butler and the Chef consumed. Beautiful weather in the park...

#livejournal

run errands, breakfast, dog walking..

#livejournal

dozed off around 3 odd something. Never did get back to JY about that tonline server. Checking on that and hitting the email (550/1253)
Current Music: Big Black - The Hammer Party - I Can Be Killed

#livejournal

Cutter says I must read:

http://www.uwtv.org/programs/displayevent.asp?rid=2459

CP moved out of the Colorado HP data center and are going to dump Digiquant's sorry ass. 'bout time..
Current Music: Lamb - Fear of Fours - Ear Parcel

#livejournal

Going to use a separate vhost on the production box for staging for now. This will help get us jump-started.. People should really use their desktop to do most of this sixapart.com dev..

Another static IP request. This time from JY. Trying to find old tonline qa server..

Current Music: The Prodigy - The Fat of the Land - Serial Thrilla

#livejournal

Harlem Globetrotter episode of Futurama on now..

web1-5 squid rpms upgraded. Cat petted. Nap taken.
Current Music: Nirvana - MTV Unplugged in New York - About a Girl

#livejournal

Time to get the new version of squid out there..

still seeing bazillions of "Active Cache Request" hits from IE.. idiots..

web1, web2, web3 done..
Current Music: Tetsu Inoue - World Receiver - Background Story

#livejournal

web1-5 have new css for psycholgies.com and noos.. Sam is happy.

http://tabata-land.blogs.psychologies.com/
Current Music: Sunscreem - O3 - Idaho

#livejournal

Getting the 1.5.6.2 mods on web1-web5 for .shared support that was overlooked in the last push.

Ask Yann to file FogBugz.

Make static route to work around sonicwall problem for Yann..

Plus catch up with Cutter for potential hires..
Current Music: Shonen Knife - Let's Knife - Flying Jelly Attack

#livejournal

Hey rubber duck.....

Email:
Cron, Alerts, all that.
Garth Tagging..
Tania minutes..
VPN Problem (Ben)
DB Upgrade (Ben)
Jason Upgrade Status
Matthew stuff

down to 547/1131
Current Music: Convoy

#livejournal

You wanna know what happens in a day in Paul's life? Midnight to Midnight all laid bare..

In any case the dishes are done, the daily show watched and now it's time to get to work.. Start by whacking down email.

Email: 545 personal, 1239 work.

Ouch.
Current Music: Pictures of Matchstick Men

#livejournal