The latest salvo in the fight for owning users’ identities revolves around URLs. Google just earlier this week promoted profile search and with it URLs of the form http://www.google.com/profiles/awenger (when I signed up for gmail a long time ago I thought shorter would be better – now wish I had chosen albertwenger, as I have on most other services). Facebook is clearly getting ready to launch their version more broadly and is apparently asking users whether they would pay to have a specific...

The latest salvo in the fight for owning users’ identities revolves around URLs. Google just earlier this week promoted profile search and with it URLs of the form http://www.google.com/profiles/awenger (when I signed up for gmail a long time ago I thought shorter would be better – now wish I had chosen albertwenger, as I have on most other services). Facebook is clearly getting ready to launch their version more broadly and is apparently asking users whether they would pay to have a specific...

Last week’s overview of “How the Web Works” introduced the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) as the fundamental way things are addressed on the web. Before we pick apart some actual URLs, it is worth looking at the name itself. The promise behind “Uniform” is that this addressing scheme can be used across all kinds of resources and that explains why URLs are so powerful - they can be used to address content such as a blog but also services such as the Twilio telephony API. On the web a blog entr...

Last week’s overview of “How the Web Works” introduced the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) as the fundamental way things are addressed on the web. Before we pick apart some actual URLs, it is worth looking at the name itself. The promise behind “Uniform” is that this addressing scheme can be used across all kinds of resources and that explains why URLs are so powerful - they can be used to address content such as a blog but also services such as the Twilio telephony API. On the web a blog entr...