Brian Parsons

I wrote a python script to update DNS on Amazon Route53. You can use it on dynamic hosts by putting it into cron, or on boot for cloud instances with inconsistent IP addresses.

It uses the boto Amazon Web Services python interface for the heavy lifting. You'll need that installed. (Arch Linux has a python-boto package)

You need to edit the script to place your AWS credentials in the two variables near the top of the script (awskeyid, awskeysecret). Then it's ready to go.

You can specify the hostname as an argument on the command line:

        updatedns.py myhost.mydomain.com

        ...or it will try and resolve the hostname itself.

You can download the script here, or from github.

Read Write Web's Dan Rowinski has penned a great article with some background on Nokia's decision to partner with Microsoft and offers some opinion on how they are faring.

I disagree that Android was not a viable choice for Nokia. What got Nokia into the quagmire they were stuck in was a relentless pursuit of perfection - not just in the hardware, but the UX of the device.

Focusing this way makes it very easy to become entrenched with the underlying OS - in Nokia's case this was Symbian. It is what you know, you can move faster with it. Before you know it, however, it becomes outdated and suddenly you are stuck.

I see some of this same pattern developing with iOS on iPhone. Android is really outpacing them currently. However, I believe having the tablet product line and the need to keep pace with the constant evolution in OSX will keep Apple from getting completely bogged down.

I hear great things about the Nokia windows phones. I loved my Nokia phones and will hold out hope that eventually they build an Android-based one. I'm aware that some folks have it running on their current phones, but like I said above - part of what I want to see is Nokia's UX influence - that's one thing that is still missing in Android.

This site is now completely flat and being served directly off of Amazon S3. No PHP or Wordpress.

I did this mainly as an experiment to see how hard it is to pull a dynamic site back out of a CMS like Wordpress. Not needing a server makes this ridiculously cheap to host and being distributed in Amazon's S3 infrastucture it's fast.

There are several site "compilers" out there, but I settled on Blogofile. It's python. It adheres to my core concept of separating code, content and design; and the templating language (mako) was very simple to pick up.

Great info here: Mobile Sites vs. Apps: The Coming Strategy Shift from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox - especially about responsive design as a tool but not the solution.

I hear a lot of talk about a single web site using responsive design being able to effectively service computer, tablet and mobile visitors. Maybe for simple sites this approach would work, but I don't think it can be as effective as a dedicated design for mobile or even a mobile "app".

Like any new trend, the short term impact of responsive design is overestimated, while the long-term impact is underestimated. This comes down to overusing it as a solution - a common trend in technology.

Content management systems will need to support different elements and tweaks for mobile. Designs and layout can be smart, just not that smart.

Interesting article from Forbes on Google's privacy announcement and how it will drive the Personal Identity Management industry.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/forrester/2012/01/26/google-data-integration-could-it-drive-pidm-adoption/

Personal Identity Management (PIDM), is heating up because of three factors:

• The formation of large online networks that collect data about consumers (Google, Facebook, Zynga)
• Web 2.0 technologies and trends to be open platforms creating access to that data
• Increased consumer and government awareness of privacy issues

Picture a Personal Identity Management solution as a dashboard that shows you what these big networks know about you and enable you to update or edit it where the policies allow it.

Forrester Research has put out a report: Forrester Report on Personal Identity Management

The Forrester report asserts that: the consumer will be in control of their data; that solutions will emerge that help the consumer manage that data; and ultimately those solutions will be well-positioned to control marketing relationships.

While Forrester doesn't directly say this, I would argue that legacy industrial warehouses of consumer data like credit bureaus will not be able to hop on this bandwagon. They are not able to innovate quickly enough to keep pace with changes in data, data access and policy.

For entrepreneurs this means that the field is open for start-ups around PIDM.