Metaverse Interoperability
True Metaverse interoperability involves: protocol, locator, identity, currency standards; http://eicker.at/MetaverseResearch
Tagged: Protocols Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Account Chooser
OpenID Foundation goes Account Chooser: an open standard for the next generation of web sign in; http://eicker.at/AccountChooser
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Gerrit Eicker
Apache Wave
Google introduces Apache Wave: Wave in a Box (WIAB) enters the ASF‘s incubator program; http://eicker.at/ApacheWave
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Gerrit Eicker
Web Defence
Berners-Lee: The Web is critical to the digital revolution, prosperity, liberty. It needs defending; http://eicker.at/TheWeb
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Gerrit Eicker
Berners-Lee: “The Web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its capabilities based on those principles. – The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. … Why should you care? Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend. The Web is also vital to democracy, a communications channel that makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation. … The primary design principle underlying the Web’s usefulness and growth is universality. … Decentralization is another important design feature. … Decentralization has made widespread innovation possible and will continue to do so in the future. … Social-networking sites present a different kind of problem. … Each site is a silo, walled off from the others. Yes, your site’s pages are on the Web, but your data are not. … Open Standards Drive Innovation – Allowing any site to link to any other site is necessary but not sufficient for a robust Web. The basic Web technologies that individuals and companies need to develop powerful services must be available for free, with no royalties. … Keeping the web universal and keeping its standards open help people invent new services. But a third principle – the separation of layers – partitions the design of the Web from that of the Internet. … Electronic Human Rights … A neutral communications medium is the basis of a fair, competitive market economy, of democracy, and of science. Debate has risen again in the past year about whether government legislation is needed to protect net neutrality. It is. Although the Internet and Web generally thrive on lack of regulation, some basic values have to be legally preserved. … Free speech should be protected, too. … As long as the web’s basic principles are upheld, its ongoing evolution is not in the hands of any one person or organization – neither mine nor anyone else’s. If we can preserve the principles, the Web promises some fantastic future capabilities. … For example, the latest version of HTML, called HTML5, is not just a markup language but a computing platform that will make Web apps even more powerful than they are now. … A great example of future promise, which leverages the strengths of all the principles, is linked data. … Linked data raise certain issues that we will have to confront. For example, new data-integration capabilities could pose privacy challenges that are hardly addressed by today’s privacy laws. … Now is an exciting time. Web developers, companies, governments and citizens should work together openly and cooperatively, as we have done thus far, to preserve the Web’s fundamental principles, as well as those of the Internet, ensuring that the technological protocols and social conventions we set up respect basic human values. The goal of the Web is to serve humanity. We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine.”
Ingram, GigaOM: “Not everyone agrees, however, that Google or Facebook are actually monopolies in any kind of legal sense, although they are definitely dominant players. And while Google is clearly a web giant, Yahoo and AOL were once web giants too, and they are shadows of their former selves now, displaced by completely new players. Even Facebook, which is now seen as one of the companies to be afraid of, is threatened in many ways by Twitter – a startup that barely even existed a few years ago and is now reportedly valued at close to $3 billion. … That said, it’s worth being reminded that large players often see it as being in their interests to restrict the freedom of their users, and that – as Berners-Lee warns in his Scientific American piece – this can chip away at the web’s core principles, which he says revolve around ‘a profound concept: that any person could share information with anyone else, anywhere.’ … More critical to free speech than any other medium? That’s a strong claim – but there’s certainly an argument to be made that the web fits that definition.“
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Gerrit Eicker
Google Wave Survives: Wave in a Box
Google: We will expand upon the 200K lines of code we have already open sourced. Go Wave in a Box! http://j.mp/alMzSm
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Gerrit Eicker
Google: “Since the announcement that we will discontinue development of Google Wave as a standalone product, many people have asked us about the future of the open source code and Wave federation protocol. After spending some time on figuring out our next steps, we’d like to share the plan for our contributions over the coming months. – We will expand upon the 200K lines of code we’ve already open sourced (detailed at waveprotocol.org) to flesh out the existing example Wave server and web client into a more complete application or ‘Wave in a Box.’ … This project will not have the full functionality of Google Wave as you know it today. However, we intend to give developers and enterprising users an opportunity to run wave servers and host waves on their own hardware. … While Wave in a Box will be a functional application, the future of Wave will be defined by your contributions. We hope this project will help the Wave developer community continue to grow and evolve.”
RWW: “The release of Wave as an application could be a big deal for developers, especially at businesses that want to take advantage of Wave for real-time collaboration and discussion. – Wave was always intended for people to run on their own machines, but this release will make the process much easier. Developers and enterprise users that have been eyeing Wave will be more likely to take the technology into their own hands and build things like feature-rich Web forums, productivity tools and apps to facilitate collaborative projects.”
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Martin Seibert (TwentyFeet)
Cool. That’s what we want to see! :-)
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Gerrit Eicker
Indeed! The doors are wide open again. Who needs Google anyway? ;)
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Martin Seibert (TwentyFeet)
We seem to need their innovation, huh? :-)
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Gerrit Eicker
Probably they need our innovation to succeed – finally? ;)
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Martin Seibert (TwentyFeet)
No. The only thing they need is us to embrace Wave. I will try hard. :-)
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Gerrit Eicker
I do still believe it’s all about (innovative) communications. That is what Wave needs badly. A clear purpose at first. The embracement will follow…
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Gerrit Eicker
The Internet
Naughton: 9 key steps to understanding the most powerful tool of our age, the Internet; http://j.mp/b7puKP
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Gerrit Eicker
Naughton: “The strange thing about living through a revolution is that it’s very difficult to see what’s going on. … We’re living through a radical transformation of our communications environment. … Often, these interpretations are compressed into vivid slogans, memes or aphorisms: information ‘wants to be free’; the ‘long tail’ is the future of retailing; ‘Facebook just seized control of the internet’, and so on. … Here’s a radical idea: why not see if there’s anything to be learned from history? … So let’s conduct what the Germans call a Gedankenexperiment – a thought experiment. Imagine that the net represents a similar kind of transformation in our communications environment to that wrought by printing. What would we learn from such an experiment? … The most common – and still surprisingly widespread – misconception is that the internet and the web are the same thing. They’re not. … Disruption is a feature, not a bug. … The internet’s disruptiveness is a consequence of its technical DNA. … Think ecology, not economics. … Complexity is the new reality. … [Common] strategies are unlikely to work in our emerging environment, where intelligence, agility, responsiveness and a willingness to experiment (and fail) provide better strategies for dealing with what the networked environment will throw at you. … The network is now the computer. … The Web is changing. … Huxley and Orwell are the bookends of our future. … Our intellectual property regime is no longer fit for purpose. … The sad fact is that if there is a ‘truth’ about the internet, it’s rather prosaic: to almost every big question about the network’s long-term implications the only rational answer is the one famously given by Mao Zedong’s foreign minister, Zhou Enlai, when asked about the significance of the French Revolution: ‘It’s too early to say.’ It is.“
Gerrit Eicker
OExchange
The OExchange is an open protocol for sharing any URL with any service on the web; http://j.mp/OExchange (via @Mashable)
Gerrit Eicker
OpenID Connect
An interoperable identity interchange protocol for the Web: OpenID Connect, OpenID on OAuth 2.0; http://j.mp/bSuacG
Gerrit Eicker
F8: Facebook to Become the Social Net?
Facebook F8, where the default is social: Open Graph, Social Plugins, Docs, Credits, Insights; http://j.mp/f8OpenGraph
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Gerrit Eicker
NYT: “On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, lifted the curtain on the company’s plan to spread itself across the Web. I previewed much of the company’s plan in a New York Times article on Monday. It includes a number of new features for users and developers that will make it easy for Web sites to provide ‘social experiences.’ And it will allow users to bring some of their interactions with Facebook friends to the sites they visit. … ‘We are making it so all Web sites can work together to build a more comprehensive map of connections and create better, more social experiences for everyone,’ Mr. Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post introducing the new features. … In a news conference after the speech, Mr. Zuckerberg said the new features would not change Facebook’s fundamental business model, which is based on revenue from ads on the company’s faceboook.com site. He said the plug-ins would not carry advertisements. But he said that as Facebook features spread across the Web, people’s connection to Facebook would strengthen, making the site, which has more than 400 million users, even more popular.”
TC: “Today at Facebook’s F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg laid out his plan to turn the Web into ‘instantly social experiences.’ – The building blocks to this super-social Web are Facebook’s new Open Graph and Social Plugins, which include new ‘like’ buttons everywhere on sites outside Facebook.com, auto-login capabilities for those sites without clicking on Facebook Connect, and even a Facebook social bar which includes several of these plugins plus Facebook chat (goodbye, Meebo).”
VB: “Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized a different philosophy for how the Web should be organized today at the f8 conference in San Francisco. – ‘The Web is made of unstructured pages linked together. The open graph puts people at the center of the Web. It puts personal and semantic meaning behind the Web – I like this band. I am attending this event,’ he said. ‘We think what we will show you today is the most transformative thing we’ve done for the Web.’ … The company said it had rearchitected its entire structure around this strategy and was releasing a graph application programming interface. – With the new open graph approach, Facebook is launching a series of social plugins. Zuckerberg showed a demo of a CNN-Facebook integration. When a user logs on, they can see other friends or people who enjoyed the same content. There will also be a plug-in that shows the activity of friends on CNN’s website.”
VB: “These ideas are pieces of what Facebook says is a fundamentally different thesis about how the web should operate. – ‘The web is at a really important turning point right now. Up until recently, the default on the web has been that most things aren’t social and most things don’t use your real identity,’ said chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. ‘We’re building toward a web where the default is social. Every application will be designed from the ground up to use real identity and friends.‘”
RWW: “Is the New Facebook a Deal With the Devil? – Facebook blew peoples’ minds today at its F8 developer conference but one sentiment that keeps coming up is: this is scary. … This is so much new technology and it’s tied in so closely with one very powerful company that there is big reason to stop and consider the possible implications. There are reasons to be scared. The bargain Facebook offers is very, very compelling – but it’s not a clear win for the web. … This is why Facebook did a 180 degree shift on privacy last December: because it wanted to use that formerly private user data to make the web social. Privacy remains a major concern in the new scenario, but it also got a couple of nods in the use of iFrames on 3rd party sites and the big support for the OAuth password-free log-in system. … At first blush, it’s hard from a user’s perspective to find anything to criticize Facebook for in today’s announcements. Those criticisms will no doubt start to form once people wrap their heads around all the particulars. On principal, though, there’s going to be so much more Facebook around the internet that it feels like a real cause for concern. Centralization is a dangerous thing and Facebook is a young company that’s proven willing to break its contract with users in the past (see Facebook’s Privacy Move Violates Contract With Users).”
TC: “I Think Facebook Just Seized Control Of The Internet. … In my opinion, Facebook still has a ways to go towards improving its actual site if it’s really going to be the long-term center of the web. (As in, the place you go to rather than Google.com.) But its claws for pulling in outside content are now razor-sharp. It’s going to be very hard for anyone to escape. – Over the next several days and weeks, we’ll undoubtedly hear why that’s a bad thing. Maybe it is. But maybe, if Facebook plays its cards right, the web will be a bit better because it will be more connected. Of course, that’s a lot of power for a still-private company to have. Let’s hope they know what they’re doing, and aren’t evil.“
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook Open Graph
The Open Graph protocol enables the integration of web pages into the social graph across Facebook; http://j.mp/bIBGzE
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Gerrit Eicker
Facebook: “The Open Graph protocol enables you to integrate your web pages into the social graph. It is currently designed for web pages representing profiles of real-world things — things like movies, sports teams, celebrities, and restaurants. Once your pages become objects in the graph, users can establish connections to your pages as they do with Facebook Pages. Based on the structured data you provide via the Open Graph protocol, your pages show up richly across Facebook: in user profiles, within search results and in News Feed. … You can also add any of a number of social plugins to your site with a line of HTML.”
Facebook Developer Blog: “We’re hosting our third f8 conference in San Francisco today. There are two important themes behind everything we’re delivering today. First, the Web is moving to a model based on the connections between people and all the things they care about. Second, this connections-based Web is well on its way to being built and providing value to both users and developers – the underlying graph of connections just needs to be mapped in a way that makes it easy to use and interoperable. – Today we are introducing three new components of Facebook Platform to make the connections-based Web more real: social plugins, the Open Graph protocol, and the Graph API.”
TC: “With Open Graph, Facebook Sets Out To Make The Entire Web Its Tributary System. … Basically, the Open Graph API is a way for Facebook to allow other companies, sites, services, etc to interact with Facebook without having to create a dedicated Facebook Page. Big deal, you might think – isn’t that what Connect is? Yes, to an extent, but it would seem that the idea here is to go way past that. – With the Open Graph API, Facebook wants to allow anyone to take their own site and essentially wrap it in a Facebook blanket. This doesn’t necessarily mean in a visual way, but rather that these sites which use the APIs will be able to replicate many of the core Facebook functionality on their own sites. … The idea is to keep expanding Facebook’s social graph, and more importantly, it’s social reach. … (Facebook) Connect doesn’t go far enough. If Facebook truly wants to be the main hub of social data on the web, it needs more data coming in from more sites, and Open Graph can provide that. … As Yammer founder David Sacks tweeted tonight, ‘Now that Facebook is willing to share user emails, Facebook Connect will become default signup for most websites.‘”
TNW: “Ignore Facebook Open Graph at your peril – this is Web 3.0. … The importance of Facebook’s Open Graph announcement cannot be overstated. … There’s only one fly in the ointment: Facebook itself. That name ‘Open Graph’ is a bit of a misnomer. With Facebook at its heart it’s not truly open and that could be its downfall. Open Graph is Facebook’s baby and Mark Zuckerberg and friends are ultimately in control of how it is used. … A new age is dawning, welcome to Web 3.0.”
eMarketer: “The open graph will attempt to make the Web more social. The intent is to bring together social actions from all over the Web and allow for a rich depiction (and semantic memory) of what people are liking, reading, reviewing and rating. Using the examples of Yelp and Pandora, each of which are businesses with vast quantities of information about what people like and don’t like in the realms of local businesses and music, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the Open Graph would make the Web a richer, more connected experience. … Overall, the success of Facebook’s plans depends directly on Web firms’ willingness to add the social features announced today – along with consumers’ willingness to click a ‘Like’ button frequently, or ignore it. Judging from the number of press releases I’ve received today about ‘Like’ from Facebook’s business partners, I’d say that at the very least, brands are fairly excited to see what happens.”
OpenID: “The OpenID Foundation is launching its third OpenID Summits for 2011. … This OpenID summit gives web site developers and technologists a closer look at the OpenID Connect protocol, its use cases and adoption plans by leading companies. We will introduce ‘Account Chooser’ its implementation and user experience and provide interop testing and feedback for next generation OpenID adoption. – Please join us on Monday, September 12, 2011 from 12:00 Noon until 5:00pm PDT and Tuesday, September 13, 2011 from 10:00am to 5:00pm PDT.”
Account Chooser: “[is an] open standard and user interface guidelines for the next generation of web sign in. – If a user has been logging into a website for a long time with a password, then the account chooser experience makes it easy for the website to upgrade them to use an identity provider. … The use of identity providers not only makes it easier for people to use websites, but also makes their accounts more secure. With traditional websites, people tend to reuse password across sites. If hackers are able to compromise even a single website, they can then use that password to break into the person’s accounts on other websites. Unless a user’s password is extremely complex, there are unfortunately very simple techniques, such as dictionary attacks, that hackers can use to identity a person’s password on almost any small to medium website. Fortunately identity providers can be certified to confirm they offer protection against those types of techniques.”
Google: “In July 2011 Google started allowing limited access to a new layer on top of our login box using an industry approach called an Account Chooser. Our goal is to gather feedback to decide whether to roll this out to all users, and what modifications to make to the design.”
TC: “Essentially, Account Chooser appears to be a way for website owners and publishers to alter their traditional username/password-based login systems to one that supports multiple identity providers. – Such a system would also allow people to easily switch between accounts. – For a website owner or publisher, the system could increase sign-up and login rates, as well as reduce costs from hijacked accounts and users who have trouble logging into their account for whatever reason. To deploy Account Chooser, they can use a SaaS vendor such as the Google Identity Toolkit and Janrain Login Helper – or simply build their own.”
TR: “Ein neuer Dienst, der unter anderem von Google unterstützt wird, soll beim Nutzeraccount-Management im Web endlich den Durchbruch bringen. … Account Chooser, ein neuer Dienst der OpenID Foundation, der unter anderem Google, Facebook, Microsoft und Yahoo angehören, ist der jüngste Versuch, das Anmeldeproblem zu lösen. Dabei kann der Nutzer einen Account auswählen, mit dem er sich künftig identifizieren will – mit dem Log-in von Google Mail oder Facebook, beispielsweise. Damit lassen sich dann zahlreiche weitere Internet-Angebote nutzen. … Die Technik wurde von Eric Sachs entwickelt, einem Projektmanager bei Google, der im Verwaltungsrat der OpenID Foundation sitzt. Google unterstützt das Projekt und unterhält den Code auf seinen Servern. Account Chooser unterscheidet sich deutlich von früheren Ansätzen – darunter auch von der ursprünglichen Methodik der OpenID-Foundation selbst, deren Technik sich inzwischen als zu kompliziert erwiesen hatte.”