Whomwah.com

My friend Michael wrote The Simple Joys of Web-Scale Identifiers, and it made me think about about problems I’m having, because I didn’t think about my username as a unique-identifier.

I got married almost a year ago, and part of the process was changing my surname from Ponting to Robertson (the reasons may be in another post one day). The actual process of changing your name is very simple in the UK, in fact you can do it online for about £30. The real pain has been changing everything else! Changing banks details etc is boring, but easily do-able. It’s websites and more importantly usernames that are the bind. You see, here’s some urls to sites I am registered with:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/duncanponting
• http://del.icio.us/whomwah
• http://www.last.fm/user/duncanponting
• http://twitter.com/whomwah
• http://www.dopplr.com/traveller/whomwah

The problem is I never really thought about the username when I registered with all my favourite sites. I’m now being bitten by that lack of thought. You see, I am no longer known as Duncan Ponting, I am Duncan Robertson, so the username of duncanponting no longer makes sense. As you can see I have used whomwah in some cases where I have been able to change, once I had realised the error of my ways, but sites don’t always let you do that, fair enough.

So, what does this mean? Well nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it does mean that if you wanted to aggregate stuff about me –yeah, I know but just say you did– just by using my username, it’s not gonna get you too far right now. You are going to have to change tack, and use something else. You could scrape the XFN data on my homepage, or maybe via Googles Social Graph API. The My Connections App pulls back loads of great stuff.

These simple examples work, and would get you some of the data you want, but if I had seen my username as a unique-identifier when I first started registering with various websites, you would be able to get all this stuff just using that. So note to self, If I ever get to do all this stuff again.

Find a username, don’t make it to something that could change, and use it for everything.

I have only just found out about Google suggest. It is as it says on there site:

As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you’re typing and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google’s “Did you mean?” feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except that it works in real time. For example, if you type “bass,” Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include “bass fishing” or “bass guitar.” Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like “progr,” Google Suggest might offer you refinements like “programming,” “programming languages,” “progesterone,” or “progressive.” You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse.

I’m not really sure how useful this would be too me on ‘would I use it’ level but progmatically it’s amazing. The JavaScipt involved is highly complex and has been dissected and explained by Chris Justus over at his blog. He has taken time to re-write the code and comment it so it is easier to read and understand. Well worth a look if you are a developer.