Gabe Wachob: Google's Open Social: The missing pieces? :

I see OpenSocial as being 3 pieces.

1) Gadget Writers can write gadgets for Orkut and they'll run on any social network that supports the openSocial specs. Hi5, Plaxo, Ning are already close. However, each SN Container will make it's own rules about what gadgets can run.

2) Social Networks that support the specs don't have to reinvent Facebook's API in order to deliver similar functionality. They can build a relatively rich profile page, relatively quickly and take advantage of a large ecosystem of gadgets by being a Container.

3) Social Networks and other websites can support the Data APIs. This should encourage the sort of ecosystem of Applications (web and desktop) and Mashups that has grown up around Twitter. But instead of being restricted to supporting one site, they should be able to work with any ste that implements the data APIs.

The problem today (7-Nov-07) is that:-
- The Orkut Sandbox is the only testing environment and it's flaky
- There are no examples of the data APIs anywhere.
- The specs for the data APIs are minimal and have some serious holes.
- The specs for the Container side haven't been released. And work on this is currently restricted to Google's NDA partners.

It seems that way too much of the early analysis has focussed on data portability between Social Networks. This is something that is only hinted at by the Data APIs. And at least for a while, the write-once, run-anywhere gadgets will be what is actually built. Except that they will actually be write-once, run-on-Orkut until there are other reliable Containers out there.

Imagine for a moment that Twitter implemented the OpenSocial Data APIs to sit alongside their own API. We'd have:-

- AuthSub instead of HTTP AUTH
- Atom instead of RSS
- GData People API instead of the Friends calls
- AtomPub instead of the calls for posting status

Pewrhaps then there was a concerted push by all the Twitter client apps to work with the new API.

Now imagine that Jaiku, Pownce, MySpace and anything else that has a Twitter-like status function did exactly the same thing. Those new client apps could then offer a simple UI choice to the user. Which Status service do you want to work with? Or perhaps you'd like to work with all of them? And we'd see all those huge numbers of Twitter Apps and Mashups work quickly with all the Status type services.

There's something huge here, isn't there?

But then you get into the horrible sticky details.
- There is no example of the Data APIs yet and the specs are in flux.
- Orkut has no Status field so there's no incentive for Google to add this area into the specs
- Which means each OpenSocial Service that does have a status field potentially ends up implementing it in their own way.
- And unless we impose standards on endpoint URLs, we'll need auto-discovery standards as well. eg. is your profile always at /feeds/people/me on every site?

Lots of the SNs out there now are using Octazen's technology or similar to provide a function that says "Find my friends and create invites from my webmail contact list." This is a first step to porting your social graph from one SN to another. Quite a lot of us have taken to using GMail as the master contact list, simply because it has the widest support for this function.

Now imagine two extensions to this. SN owners (and Octazen) add two more possibilities to the user interface
1) Give me the URI of your FOAF file.
2) Tick the boxes or give me the URI for networks that support the OpenSocial Data APIs.

There's some fine detail in here to make this common:-

- We need a common identifier as well as Email Address. If we used foaf:mbox_sha1sum we get past some of the privacy issues around publishing email addresses.

- Which means that SNs should index their membership on foaf:mbox_sha1sum

- We should try and get foaf:mbox_sha1sum added to the OpenSocial GData people definition. Or we should establish a convention that the foaf namespace is added to GData output by supporting SNs and
foaf:mbox_sha1sum is filled wherever possible.

- SNs should support AuthSub as well as OpenID and whatever other single signon standards they support.

Do you see what Google have done here?

Quite apart from SN graph portability, if lots of sites support the OpenSocial data APIs, what new Apps and Mashups does this enable? Is there a chance that we'll see the same explosion of helper apps and
mashups that grew up round Twitter?

Here's another take on Google's OpenSocial.

Orkut, LinkedIn, Ecademy, and all the rest simply couldn't compete with Facebook's API technology. There's just no way we could reverse engineer it and rebuild it. Even MySpace would find it very hard.

But Google already had Google Gadgets and lots of other similar technology. They've also got lots of very clever programmers who know how to build things like the Maps API and hook it all together. They had all the pieces to copy Facebook inside Orkut. But nobody cares about Orkut outside Brazil.

So they've played the political game to leverage the technology and help everyone else take Facebook down a notch. Because Facebook is a pinprick in their side. They didn't get the FB advertising contract and they can't see the FB data. And after all, their mission is to index all the data and serve ads next to it.

Now I'm really in awe of the Political-PR, snow job they've done on us all, from the name, to the leaked releases, to the behind the scenes deals. Google have done an absolutely masterful job of blind siding the whole industry. It's way better than anything I've ever seen from Microsoft. They're doing exactly what MS did. Embrace and Extend, leading to Control. But they're not evil, right? And they've got us all eating out of their hand. What they want is for the whole world to use the Google standards. Atom, not RSS. AuthSub, not OpenID/oAuth. gData, not FOAF. The spec is "what Orkut does". They've managed to enlist the whole industry outside MS and Yahoo into trying to use and implement those standards. And we (the other social networks and gadget writers) will do our bit to help them because we can't afford not to.

As a geek it pisses me off because there's absolutely no accountability or transparency in how those standards are developed. It's every bit as bad as MS trying to force the Word XML standard through the standards bodies. Google is something of a black box. There's no way to influence them. Stuff appears out of the black box fully formed.

Orkut is just not very good, or very complete. And the data available to gadget writers is also not very good or very complete. But when all the SNs implement the Orkut interface as a lowest common denominator, that's all the gadget writer can depend on. Individual Social Networks that want to be Containers will have to extend the standards in non-standard ways and we'll be back where we started. To make that clearer, I expect people to add namespaces to the People data like FOAF and VCARD. Gadget writers will have to try and second guess which new namespaces might appear. And to make that even more concrete, most SNs have a Skype ID field. But Orkut and GData don't, so a Gadget that shows your Skype ID and it's presence won't know exactly how that will be presented in the data.

Then there's the name. If it had been called GoogleGadgets instead of OpenSocial people would have found it much easier to understand what it was all about. But OpenSocial was much better as a PR tool because it hides what's really going on.

But after all that I don't feel that angry. Google have given the industry a kick up the backside. And I don't think there's anything malicious about it. It's just clever people being clever about leveraging their position.

I've got to go now. Because I've got a whole new set of APIs to implement.

That is indeed the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the end to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous over-indulgence
Or to take arms against a sea of wrinkles, grey hair and flab,
And by opposing end them? To almost die of shame on national TV:
But then, by using every trick in the book, to end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To nearly die of shame but then be reborn;
More attractive than we'd ever dared to dream: ay, there's the rub;

(c) Paul Blezard with a nod to Bill

I do believe Twype is done. It seems to be stable, it does what I want it to. Get it here.
http://tinyurl.com/37xkxb which is http://www.voidstar.com/downloads/twype.exe
Current release is 0.2.0.20

It copies your latest Twitter to your skype mood. If you use Winamp it can copy the track you're currently listening to, to your Skype Mood. And it can ping Moodgeist with mood changes; both yours and your contacts.

With a nod to Rudy Rucker. How to survive Malls, Hotels, Airports and places like the Adam Street club that are completely underground. Imagine you're 2 miles below the surface of the Moon. The food is all grown in a vat of algae and most of the other people are cyborgs who have had half their brain eaten by stainless steel rats.

It would probably work for London as a whole but it takes a bit more imagination. That greyness above you is actually painted on the inside of a plexiglass dome.

I've been playing around with posting Twitter Tweets to my Skype Mood. The alpha is just finished and you can download it from here.
http://www.voidstar.com/downloads/twype.exe

It's a small Windows tray program.
- Once every 5 minutes it checks your Twitter account and grabs the latest tweet. This gets posted to your Skype Mood.
- If you use Winamp it optionally checks what's playing and posts that to the Mood instead. This overrides the Twitter post but when you pause Winamp it reverts to the Twitter post. Winamp is checked every 5 seconds and when the playing state changes or track changes so it's more or less instantaneous.

Installation just consists of copying the .exe somewhere and running it. The first time you run it, it will popup the dialog so you can put in your Twitter ID. Once that's done it will start in the tray so you can add it to your Start menu and forget about it.

I'm open to suggestions for improvements. In particular it needs a better icon if anyone wants to help. I'll be posting the source code in a couple of days. I can't guarantee to maintain it, but I use it myself so it'll probably get some changes and improvements anyway. The next thing is probably to find some libraries for iTunes and WMP.

Oh, and it's Windows only.

This is a little tricky so pay attention!

Go and get yourself the following:-
- A Twitter Account
- A Facebook account
- An OpenID
- The URL for the RSS from your Ecademy status. This will be something like
http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=status&op=feed&uid=9999
Where 9999 is your Ecademy #ID number.

1) Sign in to Twitterfeed with your OpenID.

2) Create an entry in Twitterfeed for your Ecademy Status RSS. Route it to your Twitter account.

3) Add the Twitter application to your Facebook profile.

4) Click on the button at the top of the Twitter application setup where it says "Want Twitter to update your Facebook status? Click here!"

Now when you update your Ecademy status, it will flow though to Twitter and then on to Facebook automatically. [from: JB Ecademy]

As mentioned earlier, there's a storm going down at the moment about a rich Russian with a taste for Football, a volatile ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan and Boris Johnson. (Together, at last!)

The story so far.
Craig Murray posted a juicy blog post about Alisher Usmanov's past which may or may not have been true. Schillings (who act as libel lawyers for Alisher) started sending take down notices to Craig, Craig's hosting service Fasthosts, and anyone who had republished or linked to the article. Fasthosts caved and cancelled the account used to buy hosting services. This had the side effect of taking down many other blogs on the same account including Boris Johnson, Bob Piper and Tim Ireland.

The reaction
Not surprisingly this has rallied the UK Bloggers from the whole way across the political spectrum. They take the view (which I share) that just because someone is rich and can afford expensive lawyers, that does not give them the right to censor publications simply by asking for it.

As Craig himself says in The Register, "If the man believes he was libelled then he should take me to court."

There is a temporary blog documenting the progress of the farce here.

Craig Murray, Tim Ireland, Boris Johnson, Bob Piper... and many others off the air due to a little problem with lawyers, Russian businessmen and the UK libel laws. Oh and a yellow belly hosting company.

More on this ongoing story at El Reg

No smoke without fire? A quick Google Coop search of UkPoliBlog turns up rather a lot of comments from the Political Blogosphere.

My good friends, Sue, Grabbitte and Runne do seem to have been busy as they attempt to follow the instructions of their Fat Russian Footballing Client.

Here's how I manage to be a Conservative, Socialist and Anarchist all at the same time.

I'm a Conservative because I have great faith in the ability of free market capitalism to drive society forwards, create wealth and increase the overall standard of living. There's just one problem. There are almost no free market economies. Those that call themselves free market are actually highly controlled, regulated and dominated by special interest group government lobbying aimed at creating non-free markets.

I'm a socialist because I believe society should provide a safety net for the least able members of society. We should make sure that everyone, regardless of class, race, creed or ability should have access to universal health care, transport, schooling and so on. And this is not about some liberal feel good wishy washy socialist ideology but about enlightened self interest. This also drives society forwards, creates wealth and increases the overall standard of living. I'm further a socialist because I believe that it's important for society as a whole to enable some sections of society to goof off and do unproductive things like make music or philosophise. And I believe that Government has a role to play in doing the big long term projects that private capitalism cannot manage.

I'm an anarchist because I believe that the best government is the one that governs least. Government should be incentivised to constantly simplify and reduce it's involvement in society and it's system of rules, laws and taxes. It has no business telling us how to be or telling us how to behave or telling us what we can put in our bodies. It has no business acting as employer of last resort. And so it has no business in creating bureaucratic structures to justify it's own existence. It has no business wageing opportunistic wars across the world. Its only interest should be in the increasing wellbeing of the society that it represents.

ipodminusitunes: Apple cuts us off : So, it's finally happened. Unhappy with other media players being better than iTunes, Apple have apparently decided to stop them from working with the new range of iPods.

Grrr. I really like Sharepod. I really hate iTunes.

Slashdot. The new iPods have encrypted firmware and have changed the database structure to include a hidden hash.

This means:-
- No more 3rd party Sync utilities. Effpod, Sharepod, etc
- No more iPod support in non-iTunes music players. Winamp, Amarok etc etc
- No more support for the iPod on Linux PCs. Unless you can figure out how to run iTunes in VMWare
- No more alternate firmware. Linux or Rockbox.

Sigh.

Just take the shiny white pill and don't question Apple. They're only doing this for your own good.

I spent some time manually grabbing contacts on all the YASNs I belong to. Here's the recipe. The trick is to make your GMail account the master list of all your contacts.

1. Get as much CSV as you can. Export your contacts from Outlook, LinkedIn and anything else with a contacts export function.

2. Import all your CSV into a Gmail account.

3. Use Plaxo to sync everything you can into GMail

4. Go to each YASN and use the import or find friends function to grab your Gmail contacts and find friends that are already on that network. Be very careful that you only find existing members and don't spam or send invites out to those that aren't. Almost every YASN now has a Gmail import system to help you do this.[1]

5. Repeat every once in a while.

Now clearly, this ought to be automated. Which is what Brad is getting at with his essay "Thoughts on the Social Graph".

What's sad here is how few of the YASNs have an export function.

[1] if you're a developer check out Octazen Contact importer code. They've got cheap PHP code that will grab the contact list from a large number of web email systems.

Seen on Twitter: zephoria Proof that I'm old: I get cross when people send msgs to me through SNSs instead of email. I *cannot* maintain a bazillion queues.

With Twitterfeed and Twitter4Skype we solved the problem of tracking status updates across multiple networks. Can we solve the multiple inbox problem as well?

I'm going to try to Skypecast the London Event tonight with Don Tapscott for people who cannot attend.

At around 7:30pm (UK time), go to this web address and follow the instructions. You will need your Skype ID and Password. [from: JB Ecademy]

Last.fm has a program to Audio Fingerprint your MP3s as they build a new database of track metadata. It looks like this database will eventually rival CDDB and Musicbrainz.

Oh, yes, "Time spent trying to get the layout to work in CSS before giving up and using tables."