Who Are You?
It is quite possible that half of the reason that people watch the
various editions of CSI can be attributed to the brilliant choice to play The Who during the opening. The selection of “Who Are You?” is especially brilliant. It speaks directly to the core of any criminal investigation: establishing identity.
Did you catch the segue? Did you see how now I can transition to one of the other meaning of identity. Oh my, we do sometimes think of ourselves as the bee’s knees (if not the actual cat’s pajamas).
It has been traditional for sites to ask you to give them at least two bits of information
- Your email address
- A username to identify you
And what happens? We almost always use the same email address and the same username. Except when the username is taken. So then you have to break out the common variations of your username or email name.
Why do we need usernames at all? Our email address is unique. We are the only one who can have it. What most sites call a username is better called the short name. It is just used to identify yourself to other users on the site. If you look at MySpace there isn’t even a requirement that the short name even be unique.
We will admit that when we started coding ParkR we fell into the classic model of username and email, and forcing people to user their username. Our good friend Ross Olson, was kind enough to gently remind us, we were idiots and act as a sounding board for how to do it correctly.
So starting with version 0.2 of ParkR, when an account is created we give the user the option of picking their short name (which must be unique). If they don’t provide one, then the system will attempt to create one for the user (based on the portion of their email address before the at sign).
This means that those of you who have accounts on the system, will have to change how you log in. That is ok, because all the data is going to be wiped between versions. This is beta software, live with it.
PS: The thinking above is hardly new, or in front of the curve. Nor it is original, Ross pointed us to Jared Spool’s excellent essay. Be sure to read both parts…
