This post at TechCrunch about residence-based social networks reminded me about an idea I had about a year ago for a similar system.

I was going to call it Neighbor.ly and register the obvious domain (.ly being Libia's TLD). Users would register with their physical address and would then be grouped into dynamic networks consisting of all the other registered users within X number of city blocks. The features available to users would be the standard message boards, marketplace, invitation system, etc. I think it could be successful (and I'm sure there are already a few sites doing something similar) but at $150/yr for just the domain, I decided that it was too spendy for something that I might never get off the ground.

So now that I've put it out there, you're free to go ahead and register neighbor.ly and see my plans through, but I want a 5% stake. Deal? Deal.

AutoAuth is an extension for Mozilla-based Web browsers that automatically submits HTTP authentication dialogs when you've chosen to have the browser save your login information. (If you've already told the browser what your username and password are, and you've told it to remember that username and password, why not just have it automatically submit it instead of asking you each time?)

The extension is pretty simple right now (very simple, actually), but I think it has the potential to become a very useful base for enhancing the HTTP authentication process in the browser. For example, a future feature might add the ability to specify login credentials for wildcard subdomains, so that once you've entered a password for foo.com, you don't have to manually re-enter that password for a.foo.com, b.foo.com, c.foo.com, if they all take the same username/password pair. Just tell AutoAuth the username and password to use for *.foo.com, and let it do the work.

You can install AutoAuth from the AutoAuth homepage. (AutoAuth is compatible with Firefox 1.5 and 2, Netscape Navigator 9, and Flock.)

My restoration of Digg's Top Users page yesterday got a lot of press around the Web:

Both the list and my blog post about the list were submitted to Digg, but both were buried off of the front page. (Buried, or manually removed?)

Michael Arrington mentioned the list at TechCrunch, and the readers commenting on his post inexplicably turned against Netscape. Even though my actions had nothing to do with Netscape, the fact that I write code for them as well apparently makes my reproduction of the list "lame":

"If this would have come from someone NOT at a competitor (in this case Netscape), I would have thought 'cool!' The fact that this comes from someone at Netscape makes me think 'lame!'."

Deep Jive Interests (a personal favorite of mine) was the first to wonder how long it would be until I heard from Digg's infamous legal team. Nothing yet, but I'll blog about anything that comes in.

This blog somehow decided to go with the headline "Netscape Bringing Top Digg Users Page Back." I think if Netscape was sponsoring this effort, they'd want some kind of mention somewhere on the page. What? It only links to Digg? That's awfully strange.

Like many others, Technacular incorrectly reported that I was scraping user profile pages for the rank number that is displayed there; kudos to them, however, for being the only ones to update their post after I sent them a clarification on how the script actually works.

Additionally, my blog was linked from Techmeme, blurbed on Download Squad, and mentioned at ValleyWag.

Oh, and there's one question that I've been asked a few times that I'd like to address here: Sorry ladies, but I'm already taken.

Here's something I can't stand about Digg:

Say you're not logged in and browsing the front page, opening stories and discussions in tabs (or new windows, if you're stuck in the past) as you go, and you see a story you want to either digg or bury. So you go to the login box on the left and enter your information.

Now, any decent system would process your login and send you back to the page you logged in on. (A better system would prompt you for login information when you try to vote for a story, and after logging you in, process your vote and send you back to the correct page.) Digg, however, will always redirect you to the last page you loaded in Digg, whether or not it was the page from which you logged in. So if I've opened a Digg discussion page in a new tab since loading the home page, I'll be sent there after logging in.

That is extremely lazy programming; instead of checking which page sent the login request, Digg must just store your last loaded page in the session and assume that's where you want to go. Come on, Kevin; is it that hard to just add something like

<input type="hidden" name="referrer" value="<?=$_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]?>" />

to the login form? With as many users as Digg has, you'd think enough people would have complained about it by now for it to be fixed.

If you've ever used Macromedia Homesite to write code, then you're probably aware of a feature it has called "bookmarks." You can bookmark (or unbookmark) a line of code with Ctrl-K and then visit each consecutive bookmark by pressing Ctrl-Shift-K. This way, you can keep your proverbial finger in several parts of the page without losing your place.

Am I the only person that thinks that this would be a great feature for a TV (or satellite/cable box)? Instead of having only the "Previous Channel" button, you could have a "Bookmark" ("TV Mark"?) button plus a button for scrolling through your marked channels. With the myriad of channels available in some cable packages, surely there are more than two things that people are trying to keep an eye on at once...