Twitter Charts via Yahoo! Pipes and Google Charts API

(Via David S. on Babbledog)

Xefer has created an intriguing mashup using data from the Twitter API, a Yahoo! Pipe to some basic transformation, and the Google Chart API to display results:

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Google OpenID

(via David Recordon)

Ryan Barrett, one of the developers on the Google App Engine team, has released an application which allows you to use your Google Account as an OpenID.

Once you’ve logged in to your Google account, you just use:

http://openid-provider.appspot.com/yourgoogleusername

On any site which relies on OpenID for validation.

So now Yahoo!, AOL, and Google have (direct or indirect) mechanisms for providing OpenID (and Microsoft has committed to doing so in the future).

Combined with all the free, purpose-built OpenID providers (like ClaimID, MyID, MyOpenID, MyVidoop, and Clickpass) and it looks like 2008 could be the tipping point (assuming one hasn’t already occured in 2007).

(See OpenID Status Check for a recent, and more exhaustive list).

A Few Good Channels

Now that Miro 1.0 is out, I thought I’d share a few excellent video “channels” I’ve been watching lately - TED Talks, Google Tech Talks and Google engEDU, Pop!Tech, and Ask a Ninja!. Between them all, they may just get you through the writer’s strike.

(To subscribe to any of these in Miro, you can just use the “Add Channel” command in the Channel Menu and put in the RSS url below. Be sure to look at whether you want to download ALL the videos in that feed or just NEW videos added.
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Open Social is not Social Network Portability

I’ve been struggling since OpenSocial was announced last week to figure out how to put into words what exactly I felt was missing. I feel like I’m seeing lots of people reacting to the announcement describing what they want OpenSocial to be, not what it actually is.

(People I’m reading on this include my colleague Sebastian Wohlrapp, Marc Andreessen, Josh Catone, and Jeremiah Owyang - of course there are a gazillion others as well).

Did I miss something somewhere in the API documentation or the Campfire Video? (It has been a busy few weeks, and I would be happy to be wrong).

As I see it, in short: Open Social is not Social Network Portability. It’s social network widget portability.
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Free as in Libraries

An interesting front page article in yesterday’s NY times: “Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web.” The headline is a bit disingenious, since it implies that libraries are trying to prevent access, when in reality they are trying to preserve it.

The situation is really that the libraries are beginning to recognize the tradeoff Google offers in scanning:

Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.

Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services. Microsoft places a similar restriction on the books it converts to electronic form. The Open Content Alliance, by contrast, is making the material available to any search service.

So Google doesn’t charge for scanning the books, which is a huge benefit to libraries (who are not exactly known as the land where money runs free), but in exchange imposes restrictions on what libraries can do with the resulting digital assets.

The Open Content Alliance (founded by Brewster Kahle of Internet Archive fame), on the other hand, charges a fee for digitizing (though that can be supported by grants) but makes the content available to all. (See the principles outlined in their call for participation).

On a serendipitously related note, there’s a Webinar / Live event at the Berkman Center today with Aaron Swartz, who is the tech lead for the Open Library project.

Berkman events are webcast, have an associated IRC channel, can be attended in Second Life, and are archived at Media Berkman, in case (like me) you can’t get to Harvard Square today.