Veel van de webapplicaties die nu worden gebouwd besteden wel veel aandacht aan gevalideerde HTML en CSS, maar daar zit een gebruiker helemaal niet op te wachten. Die wil YouTube en roddels over beroemdheden.

Wat essentieel is volgens Aoki voor we met webapplicaties World Domination kunnen bereiken, is een open software-ontwikkeling. Zoals Open AIM zijn API's heeft verbeterd en veel restricties in het gebruik ervan heeft meegenomen, zo zouden alle partijen dit moeten doen.

Resultaat van deze ontwikkeling zou zijn dat iedereen met een passie alle beschikbare services aan elkaar kan koppelen, en zo zijn eigen webapplicatie bouwt rondom een bepaalde niche. Developing Web Apps for Dummies. Zodra dat boek in de winkel ligt, zijn we een stap in de goede richting.

From Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology...
SaaS vs. Open Source
Michelle Murrain discusses the sometimes conflicting nature of the relationship between SaaS vendors and the open platforms upon which their offerings are built. "SaaS vendors are taking good advantage of open source software, and, in many situations, not giving a whole lot back."

From onLine...
Mobility is Moving In
Matt Blasi writes about the potential for mobile technology in advocacy and fundraising. This is something we've discussed before as an upcoming trend, but we're wondering - exactly how prevalent is mobile tech in organizations' current tech strategy?

http://dna.daum.net/devday

1박2일 제주도에서 즐기는 OpenAPI
첫째날은 열심히 창의적인 매쉬업 개발을
둘째날은 제주도 투어
숙식,항공료 모두 daum에서 대준다.

86개 팀,약 330~340명에서 14팀, 40명만 뽑혔다.약 8:1 이다.
무슨 그냥 이벤트행사인데 경진대회 수상한 것 같은 기분이 든다.

나름 openAPI를 다뤄봤다고 하는 쟁쟁한 현업 개발자분들이 너무 많이 몰렸기에 나라고 장담할 수 없었는데;;; 이거 팀원들이랑 축하주 한잔 해야할 분위기이다.

매번 크건작건 당첨되고 선발되고 뽑힐때마다 느끼는 이 짜릿함에 중독되었을지도 모른다.

이참에 daum GMC 센터도 구경하고 ~

앗싸 제주도야 기다려라 옵화가 간다아~

If you are familiar with this subject then you can skip to the next paragraph (or this post entirely). For the ones that are not familiar with mashups and how to get them working for you, please read this short preface. There are many online services today: social networks like Facebook, bookmarking services like ma.gnolia, news like Digg, media sharing sites like Fliker and YouTube, and more. In the screen capture of the form below you can find 43 such services. These services provide online APIs (a way to request data and to execute functionality in remote from service by the world outside). This allows the development of new services on top called Mashups. The new service interact with the underline services and add value because of the unique mix created. The first form below is taken from FriendFeed a mashup application that help you keep track of your friends' activities across many web services. In this form you are requested to select the services that you permit the current application to pull or push information from and to (in the case of FriendFeed, pulling only). In order for the application to be able to access your data the system needs to know who you are i.e. your user name (login). In some cases it will ask you for your password too.

FriendFeed version:

MyBlogLog version:

These form raises three hot issues in the growing environment of open API and mashups. If you want to see how rapidly this world is growing look in this excellent source of information: ProgrammableWeb

• Security: not having login and password information stored in multiple places. Single sign-on (SSO)
• Access Control: having control over what the service can do with my data. Defining security policy.
• Single Identity: not having to re-enter my profile and friends' information all over again. Data Portability.

Security

Every service offers a sign-up process where you type in your login and password. Companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that offer multiple applications online offers kind of single sign-on mechanism that once you're signed in to one service you can safely go to the next one without re-login. The available solution for web sites that are not belong to the same company is the OpenID and here is an example for how to use it from Wordpress. It is in a way the solution for single sign-on on the web today. Not all the services today support it but the adoption seems promising. If you want to see a decent amount of available options to authenticate across service just click on the "Sign in using" drop down list in ma.gnolia's login page.

Access Control

When I allow a service to access my data from another service I don't have a way telling the source what I allow them to provide. I can't tell the service if I allow it to just read my data or also the update information (e.g. updating Twitter status). It is mostly determined today by the APIs. If there is a way to configure it (to some extent in Facebook) it is not consistent across the web. I know that there is an effort by multiple leading software companies to deal with it. For more information read the page about the new OAuth protocol.

Single Identity

The term profile today refers to way more than your name, address and email. I think that Facebook took it the farthest including your media preferences, activities and your choice of applications. But most important it includes your contacts i.e. your network.  It is in the basis of most social network services that your experience and satisfaction from the site is in direct relationship with your network size. Yet, no one want to re-type his personal information and re-build his network. Some claim, and I agree, that this data should not belong to anyone but you. The Data Portability initiative is trying to eliminate the need for recreating your online identity and profile over and over again by defining a new open standards that will allow services to port it to your request. This is a great step and I can only hope to see it implemented across the web soon.

If you are new to the subject but not new to using mashup applications I hope that you'll find this post helpful - maybe now you can start using the OpenID option instead of your login. If you are about to start a new service or mashup I hope that this will help you to think about how to make it easy for us to interact with it.

Do you see more ways for improving this process?

If your API only exposes "read only" API i.e. an option to pull some of the data out of the system you're only in half of a trouble. In a case where your API allows the "writing" option too, i.e. modifying system records in the database, now things gets really interesting. Example for read only: Technorati provide blog, bloggers and posts information to Internet Bots and badges. Twitter is an example for both read and write API. Bots built using Twitter API can get members' status updates as well as automating posting status messages.

Btw, both of te above examples are for Data Producers that are working night and day to scale these open API support.

The problems are generally the same and so does the solutions: performance (throughput and latency)hardware sizing and cost, traffic pattern predictability, load balancing, throttling, caching, stateless web nodes, multi-casting, table partitions (having skilled=$$$ DBA for building high availability database), backup, API format (there are too many of them), message queuing, redundancy, recovery, security, quality of service (premium services), statistics, logging, error handling, monitoring, abuse protection, you name it.

Gnip is a new start-up founded by Eric Marcoullier that is working to address some of these common problems. Reading their blog shows how much thought and sweat is put into addressing some of these common scalability problems. They aim at addressing some the other pain point in the open API arena like consistent API and Identity discovery. Having a consistent/normalized entity ID across multiple web services can solve one of the biggest obstacle today for using WYSIWYG mashup tools like Popfly - but this is for another post:).

If you fit the profile description from the first paragraph reading more about them icould help, but this is not all this post is about.

Let's assume that the "read" part is getting better due to service like Gnip (ping in reverse) same way that blogging platforms improved new posts indexing using ping service. Now, bots and mashup services don't need to be "busy waiting" on the API. What about the "write"? What can be done to make this reusable and scalable?

I think that it all come to a new opportunity here to outsource the entire open API development and support, and to save a bundle. Here are some ways to save on this effort through consolidation.

• Reusing hardware through hosting solutions whether physical or virtual like Amazon EC2 or Google App Engine
• Reusing technologies implementation and integration like using memcached, terracotta and many more
• Reusing expertise - Database Administrator and Security experts
• Protocol and meta data standards
• Monitoring tools and technics

Saving: blood, sweat, tears, grief and reputation (in other words avoiding embarrassment).

Bottom line is, that in my opinion, Gnip take it a good distance forward but there is a room for another reusable, consistent and scalable layer between the Data Producer and Gnip.

What do you think?

From A Small Change...
Growing your Existing Donor Base
jason Dick offers up seven solid ideas for building a bigger donor base. particularly interesting in the second suggestion, "Ask your faithful donors if they could introduce you to some of their friends." This is, of course, where social networking comes in. Philip King of Artez has a great presentation on the effect of social "sneezers" that has recently been discussed in greater depth on GenerationYGive. Check it out!

From PNN Online...
Recession Proof Fundraising
This piece is a few months old, but still an excellent read. Marc Pitman outlines the three worst things fundraisers can do in a recession (spend less on fundraising, become pessimistic, apologize when they're asking), and offers some suggestions for avoiding those pitfalls. One thing to consider: does charitable giving operate under the same principles as consumer spending in the first place? Is a recession as big a threat to fundraising as everyone's worried about?

We don’t accept vendor lock-in in many aspects of our daily life and we shouldn’t accept it at the very heart of nonprofit line of business applications, fundraising tools. It’s a fundamental obligation on the part of IT directors to constantly push for openness of architecture in both hardware and software purchases. This doesn’t necessarily mean you stop buying Microsoft. Instead, you help foster a marketplace where Microsoft feels COMPELLED to compete with open source vendors to provide you with the best bang for your buck. Notice the quick number of revisions to Internet Explorer the minute Firefox hit 15% of browser market share. And in the same way, this doesn’t mean you move from iMIS or Blackbaud or Convio tomorrow. Hey, over 70% of computers still use IE to browse the Web. However, it’s clear that the changing marketplace and concerted action by nonprofits have engendered a new environment where there is now more choice than ever before. And our choices shouldn’t be dictated to us by vendors who say that their application can’t do what we want it to do.

Indeed, no organization should continue working with a vendor who insists that a product "can't do what we want it to do." And certainly, the trend toward open development must be largely responsibile for this shift in mentality among those making buying decisions. ASI, for one, has always worked with a network of solution providers to develop specialized applications that integrate with iMIS - and has always offered their customers a software development kit for building upon iMIS' capabilities themselves. The surge in open platform and open source offerings for the nonprofit community have made this flexibility a requirement, rather than a differentiating factor. This can only be to the entire community's benefit, and should be applauded.

It is important, however, not to confuse software's degree of "openness" with how well it actually accomplishes the objectives of the organization using it. Allen's observations about the way the landscape is changing are spot on. What is exciting to consider is how nonprofits and vendors will relate to each other once being "open" is just par for the course. Organizations will consider: What does a mature API look like? Do we have the infrastructure and IT resources in place to wrangle raw code? What are our objectives at this moment, and how does working with an open API get us significantly closer to achieving those? Realistic answers to those questions will be key to making technology decisions long after the spectre of vendor lock-in has disappeared.

Some notable applications have come out of the course, namely KissMe and Share The Love, which are certainly large enough to be a profitable business.

The professors, however, do not cite revenue potential as the reason for teaching Facebook application development. The team, spearheaded by Dr. BJ Fogg of the Persuasive Technology Lab, is interested in what makes Facebook, and more specifically its applications, so persuasive. They call it the study of captology:

Our current focus on Facebook extends research we did in 2006 on how Web 2.0 sites motivate and persuade people. Our investigations last year showed that every successful Web 2.0 company followed the same persuasion pattern; we outlined this pattern and called it the “Behavior Chain of Online Participation” (a journal article should be out in October). By looking at what works in the real world, we contributed new insights to captology, the study of computers as persuasive technology.

We don’t yet know what new insights we’ll gain by focusing on Facebook. But that’s what makes research fun: You don’t know for sure what you’ll discover.

Apart from being great news for Facebook, this marks an important change in the way we learn software development. Facebook is a pre-packaged, viral network for launching applications, which makes the study of user engagement much more fruitful. Not to mention, Facebook is a website that students like to use and are willing to interact with to great lengths.

The teachings of the class are valuable for understanding how to manage the scale of the web. With Open API's becoming a standard now in online applications, it will become critical for developers to understand how best to capture an audience within a preexisting application. As distribution channels for content and software become more vast as time goes on and startup costs are driven down, the study of engagement and social patterns will become increasingly valuable in competing for users' attention.

The course is also a blessing for those of you out there who have noticed that the quality of the applications launched on Facebook is not of the caliber it should be. Quality is crucial because users are feeling inundated with requests, messages and updates they get from their various applications (hence, the Official "Ban Applications" Facebook Group) and claim it is harder to find information on peoples profiles due to overcrowding. Facebook has given users a way to reorganize their profile pages to exclude certain applications, which means that the lame software will get chucked.

Here is a list of other applications that have been developed and studied during the class.

I’m starting to resent some web services that allow users to find friends by entering their e-mail addresses. Why? That feature can be handy but Flickr and Twitter go too far and allow access to e-mail addresses that have not been explicitly marked public. Futhermore, any webcrawler can use those e-mail addresses to generate profiles of people by making a simple API call.

Spokeo crossed my radar this week after I read about it in Newsweek. I’m not interested in monitoring my friends’ activities across dozens of online communities and social networks but I created an account anyway and entered my e-mail address to see what information about me was freely available. I’d recommend periodically doing the same type of thing on Google. I’ve always called it “ego surfing” but the term never really caught on.

To my surprise, Spokeo listed all of my photos on Flickr and all of my tweets on Twitter during the past two weeks. That felt like a violation of my privacy.

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Веб 1.0 - мазмұнын оқуға арналған веб сайттар:

• Материалды онлайн жарыққа шығару мақсатында қолданылады
• Қолданушы сайттан қажетті материалын іздейді
• Тапқан мағлұматын оқып, пайдалана алады
• Қолданушы үлесін қоса алмайды
• Әр веб сайт тек өз ісімен ғана айналысады
• Көптеген сайттар қазір осы түрде

Веб 2.0 - оқып, мазмұнын молайтуға арналған веб сайттар

• Қолданушы сайтпен үздіксіз байланыста болады
• Қолданушы өз үлесін қосып, сайттың мазмұнын байыта алады
• Қолданушылар арасы өзара байланысы бар
• Сайттың жауап беру уақыты үнемделген (Мыс: Ajax қолданады)
• Сайттар өзара мағлұмат алмасып, байланыста болады.
• Жаңа технологиялары RSS, XML, Ajax, Веб сервис, блог және Уики
• Қазіргі - Flickr!, YouTube, Уикипедия, т.б

Веб 3.0 - оқу, жазу, істеу

• Веб сайттың веб сервисі болады
• Қолданушлар API (Application Programming Interface) немесе веб сервисін қолданып, өзіне сайт мазмұнының қажетті бөлігін қоя алады (Мыс: Widget істеу)
• Сайттың мазмұнын анықтай алады (Semantic Web + XML)
• YouTube, Google Open API, Flickr сайттары әлдеқашан осы қызметтерді бастап қойған
• Веб 3.0 ме әлде әлі Веб 2.0 ме? Бұл мамандар арасы тартыс үстінде.

Келесі атауы не болмақ, және не қосылмақ?

In a nutshell, Open Social is an open web API that can be supported by two kinds of developers:

• "Containers" -- social networking systems like Ning, Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, and Friendster, and...
• "Apps" -- applications that want to be embedded within containers -- for example, the kinds of applications built by iLike, Flixster, Rockyou, and Slide.

That is cool. It can expand the platform for social networking applications, sparked by Facebook's API. While reading Marc's blog, I also noticed that Ning has over 100,000 social networks (not applications, but actually networks). That is amazing.

The next few months will be very very interesting since the industry pundits all agree that it is a great idea.

Open Social Web

Google Open Social: The Third Place

Google to Out Open Facebook

Google Transforms into... from Dare

I just came off of a couple of days this week filled with meetings and discussions having to do with 3D virtual worlds. In fact, I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Melissinos, Sun Microsystems' Chief Gaming Officer on two occasions this week. I think Chris would describe himself as a gaming parent raising gaming children.

Chris Melissinos  

Chris' Avatar

In my attempt to understand the differences among the existing 3D gaming engines, I think I finally have a handle on what distinguishes Sun Mircosystems' new MPK20 (built on top of the Project Darkstar server infrastructure) from Second Life or the Croquet Project. Although the latter two are considered Open Source, whatever is built in those platforms, stays in those platforms. Conversely, Sun's MPK20 (geez, that's a techie name) will use open API's which means any assets you want to work with (e.g., objects, tools, buildings, your own avatar) will be importable and exportable.

One thing you will be able to do with MPK20 is use other applications right in it.  So distributed teams of people, for example, can gather 'round a kiosk showing a Visio flow diagram or a 3D engineering model. The team can then work on building the model together in this virtual space, talking to each other via VoIP. You might say, well, we can do this presently in existing Web conferencing tools which offer desktop or application sharing, so why do we need to do it in a virtual space? 

I'm not sure I can answer this yet, but Chris would say, the virtual world is a train with no brakes - you can either get on the train or stay on the tracks. That the developers are adding the functionalities we already value, I believe is a good thing. But whether 3D worlds hold positive prospects for you or not, one distinction is worth noting. Instead of being an observer of what's occurring in one dimensional software programs, with 3D worlds you actually become part of the environment momentarily forgetting about the physical space you occupy. People who are comfortable in these worlds likely will have a leg up on future careers.

The push of the 3D applications among other things, is proof that people are looking for a deeper means of approximating real connection with each other in the digital world. What's is likely to occur once practiced in multiple 3D spaces is a blurring between one's real self and one's virtual self, as people seamlessly use one of their "selves" to meet up with people, transact business, or teach or take courses. Die-hard gamers may already know this phenomenon.

Chris envisions that sooner or later, we will have access to virtual world (VW) identities where we only have to create one avatar which will be universally recognized after logging in. Applications will have layers of security, just as commercial sites have now via https (or the padlock) so we can choose when to render personal information or more importantly, when and how to share information and products such as course curriculum, that we build inside the VW.

Here's another Sun video, well-worth watching. It's their new MPK20 virtual workplace demo video, fresh off the virtual cutting floor. (October 2007).

You'll need Quick Time V7.0 to view it.

Als het over Flickr ging, kwam geotagging voorbij. Felix Petersen van Plazes was aanwezig in een gesprek met Jyri Engestrom van Jaiku. En Matt Biddulph van Dopplr - het sociale netwerk voor frequente reizigers - hield het publiek voor dat het zijn doel was een site te bouwen waar je nooit echt heen hoeft. Je moet kunnen meedoen door slimme integratie met third party sites&services.

Tom Coates is in al deze mooie nieuwe diensten de middleman. Namens Yahoo presenteerde hij een nieuwe service FireEagle, die ervoor zorgt dat jij niet meer bij elk van deze locatie-gebaseerde diensten je locatie hoeft door te geven. FireEagle is een nieuwe manier om je locatie te delen met vrienden, websites en diensten. Het is gebouwd op open API's, zodat ontwikkelaars allerlei diensten kunnen ontwikkelen die jouw locatie als uitgangspunt nemen.

Het nieuwe hieraan is dat de meeste locatie-applicaties twee kanten hebben: ze herleiden je locatie en ze delen deze informatie binnen de applicatie. FireEagle gaat overal tussenin zitten. Stuur je cell-ID naar FireEagle en die vertaalt dit naar je lokatie en deelt dit vervolgens met elke dienst die je via FireEagle authenticeert (Flickr, Dopplr, etc). Maar als je je laptop opent en Plazes ziet waar je bent, dan kan Plazes dit doorsturen naar FireEagle, zodat alle andere applicaties weer op de hoogte zijn.

En dat is pas het begin. Want er komt een moment dat alles een geografische tag meekrijgt, zodat je bij aankomst op een nieuwe locatie direct informatie krijgt over bijvoorbeeld de weersvoorspelling, de luchtkwaliteit, de tijdzone, nearby foto's, lokale radiostations, et cetera.

Voor het moment dat je even alleen wil zijn, of anders gezegd: anderen niet wil laten weten waar je bent, heeft FireEagle een grote knop bedacht: 'Hide Me!'

I still find FB's user interface hard to figure out, but I think I'm getting used to it. I recently had this conversation with a couple of friends and it seems like it is still the number one complaint.

For other apps that are this difficult to use, I normally would just dismiss it and move on to something a little more user-friendly -- you know, the whole I'm-the-user-make-it-work-the-way-I-like-it-or-I'm-gone Web2.0 mentality.

I still think that way but at the same time I'm also a little more tolerant of Facebook's shortcomings in the UI area. Facebook was designed for the student population and well...Facebook as it is today is based on preferences and tolerance of its original user base. And now generation X'ers and some Baby Boomers are using it and trying to figure it out. Age has nothing to do with it, but maybe generational experiences do. Facebook's original user base grew up with the Internet and all its applications thrived on figuring things out (Jeremiah Owyang posted about Generation Y's ability to learn) so just my personal theory, they are more tolerant of applications that aren't necessarily user friendly. Heck I'll even take that further and say they'd probably even prefer sites that aren't user friendly to make it even more difficult for their parents to snoop around their online activities but that's just a personal theory. On the other hand the previous generations learned social networking via LinkedIn (not to say it doesn't have its irks). So I guess when you consider where the comments (Facebook is the best) or complaints (I can't figure out the UI) are coming from, they make a little more sense.

Take it or leave it, I guess. And for a while there I've chosen the latter option. Facebook was just a database of profiles. You can search, you can connect, but beyond that you couldn't do much. But then Facebook opened up its API and just like that, Facebook simply became too powerful of a tool to ignore in my book. Facebook's open API transformed FB from just a database of student profiles into a bunch of other things:

1) It's quickly turning into a "control panel" for me, because from there I can: update Jaiku, Twitter, or whatever other microblogging service you use (not to mention FB's "status" updates works this way as well), even update your YouTube playlist. No need to go to three or four different sites just to reach your audience, making ubiquitious social media presence just a little easier, in my opinion. And speaking of reaching your audience, Facebook's "news feed" definitely makes this happen. Your "friends" don't need to add you or "follow" you on Twitter or Jaiku to get your updates. Heck they don't even need to be Twitter or Jaiku users to get 'em because they'll get them through the news feed. (In a way, I guess that's like force-feeding someone your updates but hey, I didn't build it).

2) On the receiving end, it's an aggregator. It hasn't quite replaced my Netvibes page yet, and that's probably because I just haven't found the Facebook apps (and I lack the skills to develop one) to replace them yet. But going back to Facebook's news feed function, I get relevant updates and postings -- links to useful pages and articles, who's connecting to whom, who joined which group, who added what application. There are a lot of groups that I am definitely interested in joining and I learn about them not from searching but by looking at my feed, my contacts joining groups. (In a way this has kinda kept me in line too. The news feed has definitely prevented me from joining groups like "David Hasselhoff is the Hottest Human Being Ever" or something embarrassing like that...I mean not that I would...nevermind).

Now as if on cue, there are talks that LinkedIn will open up its API as well. For those of us who prefer the professional, corporate-ey feel of LinkedIn this is definitely highly anticipated and a much welcome move. I love LinkedIn and it's a great source for leads but just the way Facebook was not too long ago, it's just a database of names. You can ask questions and answer them to show off your expertise but other than that there's not much else I can do there. Needless to say, I can't wait for LinkedIn apps.
Yay for open APIs!

Mark Bolgiano, President and Ceo XBRL US

Peter Campbell, www.techcafeteria.com

David Lawson, VP Market Strategy, ?????

Tom Practor, VP Product Management, Covio

Steve Wright, Director of Innovation, www.salesforce.com

recommended book: Wealth of Networks "you won't regret reading this book". I just bought the book on amazon - oh the power of recommendation... the "better together" was The Long Tail...

What is an open API?

- available to anyone without buying the product. ex: http://isbndb.com/ an open API for books ISBN.

- SOAP simple object access protocol

What would you do differently if you could with your integration right now?

- most of the participants answered better documentation, organizational buy-in,

What are the barriers to adoption of open API?

- cost

I just decided this is way above my head... directed to IT staff and something I don't have control over in my org... going to a web 2.0 session and maybe online video.

Oh well... I tried!