The open web

Does OpenID need to be hard? [factoryjoe.com]
Chris considers “the big fat stinking elephant in the room: OpenID usability and the paradox of choice” as usual it’s a good read.

I wonder whether restricting the OpenID providers displayed based on visited link would help? i.e. hide those that haven’t been visited? It clearly wouldn’t be perfect – Google isn’t my OpenID provider but I visit google.com lots, but it should cut down some of the clutter.

Security flaw leads Twitter, others to pull OAuth support [cnet.com]
The hole makes it possible for a hacker to use social-engineering tactics to trick users into exposing their data. The OAuth protocol itself requires tweaking to remove the vulnerability, and a source close to OAuth’s development team said that there have been no known violations, that it has been aware of it for a few days now, and has been coordinating responses with vendors. A solution should be announced soon.

Twitter and social networks

Relationship Symmetry in Social Networks: Why Facebook will go Fully Asymmetric [bokardo.com]
Asymmetric model better mimics how real attention works…and how it has always worked. Any person using Twitter can have a larger number of followers than followees, effectively giving them more attention than they give. This attention inequality is the foundation of the Twitter service… The IA of Facebook does not allow this. Facebook has designed a service that forces you to keep track of your friends, whether you want to or not. Facebook is modeling personal relationships, not relationships based on attention. That’s the crucial difference between Facebook and Twitter at the moment.

When Twitter Gets Weird… [Dave Gorman]
“The difference between following someone and replying to them is the difference between stopping to chat with someone in the street or giving them a badge declaring that you know them. One is actual interaction. The other is just something you can show your friends.” Blimey – Dave Gorman clearly has a much better grasp of life, the web and being a human than the two people who attacked him for not following them on Twitter. As Dave points out he hopes that Twiiter doesn’t descend into the MySpace “thanks for the add’ nonsense”. Me too.

Google profiles included in search results [googleblog]
A new “Profile results” section will appear at the bottom of a Google search page, when it finds a strong match in response to a name-based search. But only in the US. To help things along remember to use rel=me elsewhere (here’s how).

Shortlisted for a BAFTA, launch of clickable tracklistings and the start of BBC Earth

Look, look clickable tracklistings, w00t!
Few will every know the pain to get this useful little (cross domain) feature live.

We’ve been shortlisted for an Interactive Innovation BAFTA
The /programmes aka Automated Programme Support project. So proud.

Out of the Wild [bbc.co.uk]
Our first tentative steps towards improving the BBC’s online natural history offering. Out of The Wild seeks to bring you stories from BBC crews on location. Eventually this should all form part of an integrated programme offer.

Stuff

Biological Taxonomy Vocabulary
An RDF vocabulary for the taxonomy of all forms of life.

On url shorteners [joshua.schachter.org]
Joshua Schachter considers the issues associated with URL shortening. Similar argument to the one I put forward in “The URL shortening antipattern” but with some useful recommendations: “One important conclusion is that services providing transit (or at least require a shortening service) should at least log all redirects, in case the shortening services disappear. If the data is as important as everyone seems to think, they should own it. And websites that generate very long URLs, such as map sites, could provide their own shortening services. Or, better yet, take steps to keep the URLs from growing monstrous in the first place.”