No strategy here. I though facebook is pretty much ubiquitous. May be I can provide a way to login through twitter as well. I am just asking for basic level of access for FBConnect.
May be I can provide a way to login through twitter as well
No, that doesn't solve the problem at all. I really doubt it's any harder to use OpenID than it is to use twitter if you're really hung up on not storing usernames and passwords yourself (which really isn't that hard!).
I also played with browser history to create something more useful http://bsearch.heroku.com/ i.e. access other search engines by clicking back button while on Google.
I made this tool for my personal use in last few days. I think many of you will also find it useful. Specially StackOverflow, blekko or such exotic search engine users.
Very interesting! What's the status of this project? how does it compare with what the OP posted here? Can you attach a persistent video as well to guide users?
I just checked it out for a couple of minutes... And what's even more interesting is that when you were browsing HN my browser had obviously loaded it as if I were browsing. (We definitely saw 2 different things... My guess is that you record mouse coordinates, scroll positions, and url changes.) With that said, I could see this as a potential security risk - unless there are protocols already in place of which I am unaware. I was curious to see if you'd start typing or post a comment or something but I didn't stick around long enough. I think browsers natively have measures to prevent security breaches like this but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a way around it.
>The playback seemed to show the current version of the target pages
The way recording and playback happens, only URL of visited pages is recorded, so you can understand the reason why it was showing latest pages.
> the scrolling and cursor playback weren't aligned
I think it should work. If you mean playback did not show it correctly, then I will look into it.
> What sort of uses are you hoping to enable?
I plan on letting users record their browsing session as a demo or educational purpose. I haven't finalized how to best use it. What would you use it for?
You could possibly snapshot the page when the recording happens – if the page changes a lot – so the playback still makes sense.
I could scroll the displayed page, but the cursor still seemed to be moving about as if at the original viewport offset. At one point it seemed to snap back.
The interaction has potential... I almost grok the filmstrip of frames right-and-left... but not quite how cursor time-series interacts with the frames.
Yes, I'd agree a possible application would be recording web-driven presentations. With no install required, it could be better than existing 'screencasting' options. More tools to mark up a page with annotations/overlays could be helpful for that.
Watching users interact with sites, if normal clicks rather than intentional drag-opens can be enabled, might be interesting for remote usability studies.
http://www.morningtabs.com/
Give it a try.