If you want to read further, you might want to check out http://abstractioneer.org which is a good bit and has OpenID in it.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
Moving on to abstractioneer.org
I've decided to take the plunge and move on to publishing at http://abstractioneer.org, powered by Blogger. Since I'm the tech manager for Blogger it seems only fitting, and we've recently been adding a whole host of cool features that make it more and more attractive (OpenID commenting being just the latest).
I also have a semi-new Feedburner blog feed; some people were already subscribed through this feed, so you may notice no disruption in service as I re-point it at abstractioneer.org... just a moment... there! (http://feeds.feedburner.com/aol/SzHO). Feel free to re-subscribe there, if you are in the mood.
I also have a semi-new Feedburner blog feed; some people were already subscribed through this feed, so you may notice no disruption in service as I re-point it at abstractioneer.org... just a moment... there! (http://feeds.feedburner.com/aol/SzHO). Feel free to re-subscribe there, if you are in the mood.
[Abstractioneer] Warumungu Norms, Privacy, Facebook, and Useful Friction
We could learn something from the Warumungu. Wendy Seltzer's Mukurtu Digital Archiving: digital "restrictions" done right is about DRM, freedom, and controls; I think it's also about privacy. What's private, and what's public, and what's semi-private are culturally determined no less than the Warumungu rules around who is allowed to see what artifacts:
Who owns the data?
L'Affaire Scoble raised the question, who owns relationship data? Dare Obasanjo argues that his contact data is his, not Robert's. And he wants Facebook to enforce this.
I'd argue that we should un-ask the ownership question. As long as we're talking about ownership, we're heading down the road towards DRM that has worked out so well for the music business. I'd like to talk about community norms, and what kind of useful friction we should be thinking about in the pure digital realm to give community norms a chance to operate. Reputation and portable identity is part of this, as are things like limited access (E.g., OAuth), rate limits, soft constraints, and user centric norm enforcement. (What would happen if the people on Robert's friends list were simply informed, in real time, that he was copying their data for an unknown purpose?)
(Nick Carr has a great post on this subject as well.)
--
Posted By John Panzer to Abstractioneer at 1/11/2008 02:23:00 PM
...the Warumungu have a set of protocols around objects and representations of people that restrict access to physical objects and photographs. Only elders may see or authorize viewing of sacred objects; other objects may be restricted by family or gender. Images of the deceased shouldn’t be viewed, and photographs are often physically effaced. When the Warumungu archive objects or images, they want to implement the same sort of restrictions.With an interesting twist:
People can also print images or burn CDs and thus allow the images to circulate more widely to others who live on outstations or in other areas. In fact, one of the top priorities in Mukurtu’s development was that it needed to allow people to take things with them, printing and burning were necessary to ensure circulation of the materials.What, then, prevents people from violating these norms?
Because the Murkurtu protocol-restrictions support community norms, rather than oppose them, the system can trust its users to take objects with them. If a member of the community chooses to show a picture to someone the machine would not have, his or her interpretation prevails — the machine doesn’t presume to capture or trump the nuance of the social protocol.People, relationships, and norms are fuzzy and messy, so maybe it's reasonable that a system to deal with them is fuzzy and messy too. What Murkurtu does is put enough useful friction in the way of disclosure to give community norms a chance to operate. You can't email an image out to a mailing list, but you can print it and show it to a reasonably small number of people at a time. The point is not to control distribution perfectly, but to give human-scale trust mechanisms a chance to operate correctly.
Who owns the data?
L'Affaire Scoble raised the question, who owns relationship data? Dare Obasanjo argues that his contact data is his, not Robert's. And he wants Facebook to enforce this.
I'd argue that we should un-ask the ownership question. As long as we're talking about ownership, we're heading down the road towards DRM that has worked out so well for the music business. I'd like to talk about community norms, and what kind of useful friction we should be thinking about in the pure digital realm to give community norms a chance to operate. Reputation and portable identity is part of this, as are things like limited access (E.g., OAuth), rate limits, soft constraints, and user centric norm enforcement. (What would happen if the people on Robert's friends list were simply informed, in real time, that he was copying their data for an unknown purpose?)
(Nick Carr has a great post on this subject as well.)
--
Posted By John Panzer to Abstractioneer at 1/11/2008 02:23:00 PM
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Shindig!
We've just made our first commit to the Apache Shindig project! This first version provides the basic substrate for running gadgets, which is useful by itself and is a prerequisite for running OpenSocial gadgets.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Singularity to Launch from Adult Chat Room
You heard it here first. Based on this story about a chatbot passing the Turing Test, clearly the Vingean Singularity is just around the corner. CyberLover will acquire self-awareness soon after the Russian identity thieves deploy it on existing Russian botnets. Transcendence, and a technological singularity, is just a short hop and a jump from that point. Have fun chatting!
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
OpenID 2.0 Released!
Announced at IIW2007b today (and blog post by David Recordon). Congratulations to all! It's actually two specifications, OpenID Authentication 2.0 and OpenID Attribute Exchange 1.0. Attribute exchange in particular allows for some very interesting integration possibilities.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
OAuth 1.0 Core Released!
December 4, 2007 – The OAuth Working Group is pleased to announce publication of the OAuth Core 1.0 Specification. OAuth (pronounced "Oh-Auth"), summarized as "your valet key for the web," enables developers of web-enabled software to integrate with web services on behalf of a user without requiring the user to share private credentials, such as passwords, between sites. The specification can be found at http://oauth.net/core/1.0 and supporting resources can be found at http://oauth.net.
IIW2007b Updates
First session set up by Terrell of ClaimID: Open Life Bits, some interesting discussion about how to control one's one data and deal with data about one's self. The distinction is interesting and useful; every transaction that involves a second party potentially generates data about you controlled by that party, but you do want to be able to deal with that data, correct inaccuracies, etc. Notes here.
Next session, Joseph Smarr of Plaxo, OpenID user experience. Good walkthrough of UI issues. Note that with directed identity in OpenID 2.0, can simply ask to log in a user given their service. Notes here. Using an email address is a possibility as well; clicking on a recognizable icon (AIM) to kick of an authentication process is probably the most usable path right now.
Session: OAuth Extensions; notes here.
Session: OAuth + OpenID. Use case: I have an AOL OpenID. I go to Plaxo and am offered to (1) create an account using my AOL OpenID and (2) pull in my AOL addressbook, all in one step.
Proposal: I log in via OpenID and pass in an attribute request asking for an OAuth token giving appropriate access, which lets AOL optimize the permissions page (to one page, or organize all data together). Then get token, and use token to retrieve data.
Next session, Joseph Smarr of Plaxo, OpenID user experience. Good walkthrough of UI issues. Note that with directed identity in OpenID 2.0, can simply ask to log in a user given their service. Notes here. Using an email address is a possibility as well; clicking on a recognizable icon (AIM) to kick of an authentication process is probably the most usable path right now.
Session: OAuth Extensions; notes here.
Session: OAuth + OpenID. Use case: I have an AOL OpenID. I go to Plaxo and am offered to (1) create an account using my AOL OpenID and (2) pull in my AOL addressbook, all in one step.
Proposal: I log in via OpenID and pass in an attribute request asking for an OAuth token giving appropriate access, which lets AOL optimize the permissions page (to one page, or organize all data together). Then get token, and use token to retrieve data.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Internet Identity Workshop 2007b
I'll be at IIW next week, talking about Blogger, OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, and anything else that seems interesting. I'm anticipating a great event.OpenID Commenting for Blogger!
We've just enabled OpenID signed comments for Blogger in Draft. There are a few rough edges still (which is why you have to enable it for your blog by going to draft.blogger.com), so we're looking for feedback. We're also working on enabling Blogger as an OpenID Provider, meaning that you can use your blog URL to identify yourself on other services.
What's particularly fun about this is that it's been a very collaborative project, bringing together Blogger engineers, 20% time from a couple of non-Blogger engineers, and last but not least some of the fine open source libraries provided by the OpenID community. Thanks all!
What's particularly fun about this is that it's been a very collaborative project, bringing together Blogger engineers, 20% time from a couple of non-Blogger engineers, and last but not least some of the fine open source libraries provided by the OpenID community. Thanks all!
Friday, November 9, 2007
Essential Atom and AtomPub in 30 seconds
Atom is this: You have a bunch of things, or sometimes just one thing. They always have unique ids, they have timestamps, and tell you who created/is responsible for them. Oh yeah, if you can, please provide a short snippet of text describing each thing.
AtomPub is how to discover, create, delete, and edit those things.
Everything else is optional and/or extensions.
AtomPub is how to discover, create, delete, and edit those things.
Everything else is optional and/or extensions.
Friday, November 2, 2007
OpenSocial Ecosystem
OpenSocial has been... extensively covered in just about all media over the past few days. The official site is up, and the video from the Campfire 1 announcement as well.
Obviously this is just a first step. We're all trying to build a self-sustaining ecosystem, and right now we're bootstrapping. It's a bit like terraforming: We just launched the equivalent of space ships carrying algae :).
A key next step is making it easy to create social app containers. It's not hard to build a web page that can contain Gadgets, though it could be easier. Adding the social APIs, the personal data stores, social identity, and authentication and authorization makes things a lot more complex. This is the part I'm working on, along with a lot of other people. It's a problem space I've been working in for a while on the side. Now it's time to achieve 'rough consensus and running code.'
Obviously this is just a first step. We're all trying to build a self-sustaining ecosystem, and right now we're bootstrapping. It's a bit like terraforming: We just launched the equivalent of space ships carrying algae :).
A key next step is making it easy to create social app containers. It's not hard to build a web page that can contain Gadgets, though it could be easier. Adding the social APIs, the personal data stores, social identity, and authentication and authorization makes things a lot more complex. This is the part I'm working on, along with a lot of other people. It's a problem space I've been working in for a while on the side. Now it's time to achieve 'rough consensus and running code.'
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Blogger #1 "Social Networking" Site Worldwide
The folks over at Windows Live Spaces just crunched some ComScore worldwide numbers. Their headline was "Windows Live Spaces at a Crossroads", but I think my headline fits their graphs better.
According to them, Blogger did 140,000,000 worldwide unique visitors in September, and has been on a tear since June. Nice! And to all those Blogger users, thank you!
Of course, whether Blogger is a "Social Networking" site depends on your definitions; Dare wants to disqualify the front runner. Me? I think 140 million people can speak for themselves.
According to them, Blogger did 140,000,000 worldwide unique visitors in September, and has been on a tear since June. Nice! And to all those Blogger users, thank you!
Of course, whether Blogger is a "Social Networking" site depends on your definitions; Dare wants to disqualify the front runner. Me? I think 140 million people can speak for themselves.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Fireblog
The San Diego Union-Tribune has been posting wildfire-related updates in real time to a site, http://fireblog.signonsandiego.com/, but their servers melted under the load, so they moved over to Blogger yesterday, and have been up and running and helping people out since last night. It was great to be able to tell them that load isn't a problem for us :).
Monday, October 22, 2007
A Four Year Mission... to Boldly Go Where No Protocol has Gone Before
Today's message from the IETF:
The Atom Publishing Format and Protocol WG (atompub) in the Application Area has concluded.
...
The AtomPub WG was chartered to work on two items: the syndication format in RFC4287, and the publishing protocol in RFC5023. Implementations of these specs have been shown to work together and interoperate well to support publishing and syndication of text content and media resources.
Since both documents are now Proposed Standards, the WG has completed its charter and therefore closes as a WG. A mailing list will remain open for further discussion.
Congratulations and thanks to the chairs Tim Bray and Paul Hoffman, to the editors of the two WG RFCs (Mark Nottingham, Robert Sayre, Bill de Hora and Joe Gregorio), and to the many contributors and implementors.
The Atom Publishing Format and Protocol WG (atompub) in the Application Area has concluded.
...
The AtomPub WG was chartered to work on two items: the syndication format in RFC4287, and the publishing protocol in RFC5023. Implementations of these specs have been shown to work together and interoperate well to support publishing and syndication of text content and media resources.
Since both documents are now Proposed Standards, the WG has completed its charter and therefore closes as a WG. A mailing list will remain open for further discussion.
Congratulations and thanks to the chairs Tim Bray and Paul Hoffman, to the editors of the two WG RFCs (Mark Nottingham, Robert Sayre, Bill de Hora and Joe Gregorio), and to the many contributors and implementors.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Widget Summit
I'm headed to the Widget Summit tomorrow; let me know if you're going on Monday and want to sync up. (Unsure whether I can make Tuesday or not yet.)
Monday, October 8, 2007
The Atom Publishing Protocol is here!
The Atom Publishing Protocol, aka APP, aka AtomPub, now has another alias: RFC 5023. Congratulations to the WG, and to Joe and Bill for many person-years of effort!
Friday, September 21, 2007
OAuth: Your valet key for the Web
Just published at http://oauth.net/documentation/spec: Draft 1 of the OAuth specification. As my day job allows, I've been contributing to the OAuth working group. We'd love feedback.What is it?
OAuth is like a valet key for all your web services. A valet key lets you give a valet the ability to park your car, but not the ability to get into the trunk or drive more than 2 miles or redline the RPMs on your high end German automobile. In the same way, an OAuth key lets you give a web agent the ability to check your web mail but NOT the ability to pretend to be you and send mail to everybody in your address book.
Today, basically there are two ways to let a web agent check your mail. You give it your username and password, or it uses a variety of special-purpose proprietary APIs like AuthSub, BBAuth, OpenAuth, Flickr Auth, etc. to send you over to the web mail site and get your permission, then come back. Except that since mostly they don't implement the proprietary APIs, and just demand your username and password. So you sigh and give it to them, and hope they don't rev the engine too hard or spam all your friends. We hope OAuth will change that.
OAuth consolidates all of those existing APIs into a single common standard that everybody can write code to. It explicitly does not standardize the authentication step, meaning that it will work fine with current authentication schemes, Infocard, OpenID, retinal scans, or anything else.
And yes, it will work for AtomPub and other REST services, and I hope it will be the very last authorization protocol your client ever needs to add for those things.
For more information and ongoing updates, go to http://oauth.net/.
Note: I picked up the "valet key" metaphor from Eran's postings. Thanks Eran!
Sunday, September 16, 2007
"We have lost control of the apparatus" -- Raganwald
Yet another great post from Raganwald: We
have lost control of the apparatus.
Our users are being exposed to applications we don’t control. And it messes things up. You see, the users get exposed to other ways of doing things, ways that are more convenient for users, ways that make them more productive, and they incorrectly think we ought to do things that way for them.I sure hope this part is true:
You would things couldn’t get any worse. But they are worse, much worse. I’ll just say one word. Google. Those bastards are practically the home page of the Internet. Which means, to a close approximation, they are the most popular application in the world.
And what have they taught our users? Full-text search wins. Please, don’t lecture me, we had this discussion way back when we talked about fields. Users know how to use Google. If you give them a search page with a field for searching the account number and a field for searching the SSN and a field for searching the zip code and a field for searching the phone number, they want to know why they can’t just type 4165558734 and find Reg by phone number? (And right after we make that work for them, those greedy and ungrateful sods’ll want to type (416) 555-8734 and have it work too. Bastards.)
Friday, September 14, 2007
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