Meetup authentication & email addresses

As part of its OAuth authentication process with other apps, Meetup doesn't provide email addresses of its users. (I refer to this official Meetup forum question, and to this page in the Meetup API docs—search the page for 'email'.)

Twitter doesn't provide email addresses either. However, Meetup seems nicer than Twitter.

People use multiple Twitter accounts (I know some who do). But people don't use multiple Meetup accounts (at least supposedly not).

When registering new users through this difficult class of OAuth authentication providers (those which don't supply an email address) one might ask each new user directly for some email address, or might not. Requesting this is normally recommended.

If an app uses Meetup authentication (and it doesn't request and confirm an email address during user registration), and uses another form of authentication also (even added later) then there's no way to identify the same user, if or when they sign on by a different way.

So Meetup authentication (without email) is only good if the app is forever limited to using Meetup authentication alone. With that permanent limitation, in such an app, nobody (mysteriously) will run into the problem of having more than one account.

Of course, having Meetup as the single method of authentication is useful, reasonably, only to apps which are already limited to Meetup users.

Keeping the UI simple (by not requesting an email address when people register) means the app might never have email addresses. But that might be okay if an app uses Meetup authentication alone, forever.

Then one need not bother people with asking for their email address when they first use an app. The ease of that emotional UX moment when new customers are forming their first impression of an app (and making their initial commitment to it), from the standpoint of building a customer base—depending on the app—could be considered more important than ever knowing their email addresses.

BTW, omniauth-meetup is a good gem for doing Meetup authentication in Rails.

Copyright (c) 2013 Mark D. Blackwell.

Chopin mystery

Here is a puzzle, involving a short piece by Chopin: Etude No. 3 in E [major] (Op. 10)

realized by Katsuhiro Oguri.

(For this, it is essential to use good wave-table MIDI synthesizer software like the Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth (which is based on Roland wavetables). The Creative (SoundBlaster) SoundFont Synth and the QuickTime Music Synthesizer (at least on PC's) somehow blot out temperaments' emotional content, and thus they make meaningless this listening comparison.)

Etude No. 3, but different

The first was better, right? but just how is it different? That is your problem to solve, ladies and gentlemen!

Especially note the chromatic passage, starting at 1:50.

How is it different? In other words, what makes it better?

You will see the answer in a forthcoming post!

If you still cannot put your finger on it, here is another piece:

Impromptu in Gb [major] (Op. 51)

realized by Robert Finley.

Impromptu in Gb, but different

Especially note the passage (in Bb minor, I think), from 2:11 through 3:26.

(Thanks to the The Classical MIDI Collection for the original Chopin MIDI's.)

Copyright (c) 2010 Mark D. Blackwell.