Joshua Thorin Messer

This is a continuation of the previous entry.

So there I was, in some kind of thought-frenzy, wondering why no one was harnessing public key encryption to solve this problem. We already had something similar working with ssh, where you can set up to authenticate you without a password by using an authorized key. I’m not a cryptographer (ologist? Which is correct?) so I don’t really know how viable my idea was, but basically I wanted some way to authenticate myself to all these internet fora, blogs, and maybe even e-commerce sites. Why not?

Basically, my idea had two parts: A desktop application, where you stored all your profile info. Maybe this bit also controlled who could get what, I hadn’t really thought it all the way out. The other portion would be a library, plugin, what have you on the website’s side, that queried your desktop app to get your info. Again, I’m not really a software developer so I wasn’t sure how it would all hang together. But I wanted something like a desktop app because I wanted me to be in control of my info, not Microsoft or Oracle or whomever. And I didn’t want to have to manage 500 profiles. Just the one.

I writhed in mad brainstorming mode for maybe an hour trying to come up with a name for this. At this point I was up, there was no getting around it, so I went full on and grabbed pen and paper to write all the possible names down. Why I always think an idea and a name are pretty much enough for any project I’ll never know, but there it is. I had a huge list of possibilities, none of them really caught me. Finally, exhausted, I turned out the light and hit the pillow again.

I was just starting to drift away when a bolt straight from Odin struck me: Snowflake.

That was it. It’s the perfect name, the perfect description. Snowflake. I’m a huge fightclub fan, and that’s definitely the inspiration here. I am a beautiful, unique snowflake. It would look great on websites too, on the register page, you’d have the monstrous, painful-looking form people would have to fill out normally to get an account on your site, and there, at the top, would be a simple link: I am a beautiful, unique Snowflake. You click, and…MAGIC. So you see the flaw in my plan. And then a miracle happens.

Here’s what it all comes down to, I had a great idea. I know I couldn’t have implemented it. But yesterday I came across OpenID. My name is better. But OpenID is pretty much snowflake. Or it could be.