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Scott Kveton

February 22, 2010
20:28
Urban Airship announces $1.1 mil in Series A financing
» ‎ Scott Kveton

My company Urban Airship just closed a round of venture financing. We’re pretty excited about it.

(Note: I needed this post here to force an update to Google search results – long story … I’m not navel gazing here)
November 16, 2009
1:01
The funniest thing on the Internet
» ‎ Scott Kveton

Wordpress keeps resurrecting this friggin’ post because its in draft and if you don’t keep your install up-to-date (like by the second) awesome spammers come along and use it as a link-spam farm. Sweet. In any case, people keep coming to this link so I thought I should put something here.
June 17, 2009
12:50
Launching the Urban Airship
» ‎ Scott Kveton

I’ve been a busy guy in 2009. Launching Bac’n, joining the SAO and now today, launching
June 02, 2009
19:14
The Funniest Thing on the Internet
» ‎ Scott Kveton

If you’re looking for the funniest thing on the Internet, move along. Just like you, I couldn’t find it either.

I used Google to try and find it. Guess what happened? I got a bunch of crap.

I don’t blame Google. I love Google. But not when I want to find something subjective like the “funniest thing on the Internet” or “the most awesome burrito in Portland” or “the best membership management software for a non-profit”. Nope. I’m using Twitter for that now.

Blah, blah, blah. This isn’t another one of those ra-ra-ra stories about Twitter. Twitter’s got issues. I’m pretty sure we all know that. But it works. In the immortal words of Biz Stone, its not about a business model, its about creating value.

* mostly instantaneous
* need lots of “followers” to work
* twitter now has “real” celebrities joining the club
* dave morin and garyvee are at $160k followers … err … 160k followers
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May 14, 2009
20:38
Software Association of Oregon: We need your help
» ‎ Scott Kveton

I’ve been lucky enough to be actively involved with the Software Association of Oregon (SAO) for close to 6 months now. First, I joined the board of directors in January and then just last month, stepped in as the Interim President.

The SAO is in its 20th year of providing great programs, events and benefits. We need a favor. The SAO is working to develop a clearer strategic vision of where the organization should go. This process involves thinking about the role of the organization in a new ways, using new organizational tools.

Please give us a few minutes of your time to share your thoughts and vision for the SAO: [bit.ly]

After completing the short interactive survey, could you please forward this note onto others who might be interested in this conversation? There are about 50,000 people involved in the software industry in Oregon. We want to reach as many of them as possible. And for this we also need your help.

I’ll be publishing the results of the survey next week and will be sure to share them in as many places as possible.

Thank you.
April 14, 2009
21:55
Innotech Interview: Peter Coffee of Salesforce talks about the Cloud
» ‎ Scott Kveton

I’m excited to be Chairing Innotech 2009 here in Portland, OR. With the event only a week away, I thought I would do a few blog posts about speakers and interesting events and tracks for people that will be attending. You’ve registered, right?!

First up, I’d I thought I would share a Q & A we recently did with Peter Coffee of Salesforce.com. Peter is the Director of Platform Research at Salesforce and he’s going to be speaking next week on cloud computing with his talk entitled Code for the Cloud.

Let’s get to it:

Q:: Almost everyone has heard of “cloud” computing. Yet, few of us truly understand it. What is the impact of cloud computing on the average user?

A:: If you look at where the real excitement has been in personal computing during the past several years, it has not been on the desktop or the laptop: it’s been in the cloud, with tools like Google Calendar and Facebook and Flickr and with access devices like the iPhone and other Web-capable handhelds. The fastest-growing segments of the end-user hardware market are those that come closest to being no hardware at all: the handhelds and the netbook-class PCs, whose primary function is convenient connection to the cloud. That’s where people are finding the most compelling end-user experience available, today and even more so in the future.

Individual users, small and medium business users, and even the largest enterprises are discovering the massive economies and the far more rapid pace of innovation and adoption that the cloud computing model can provide. That applies to both the best practices embodied in packaged (and customizable) applications, like Salesforce CRM, or the open-ended development opportunities of cloud platforms like Force.com. Personal communities, customer and partner ecosystems, and modern business processes are all being built, and expanded and refined, at Internet speed.

Q:: Do you see interest in the cloud exploding internationally now as well? Which countries have really picked it up?

A:: In the past year, I’ve made multiple visits to Europe, Central/South America, India and the Pacific Rim. In all of those places, I find enormous interest among business stakeholders in modernizing their systems and building their customer and partner ecosystems without capital investment and without high-risk, long-delay software development.

Countries like India, with enormous growth in their mid-market sector and without large legacy investments in older technologies, are growing their use of cloud resources at twice the pace of the rest of the world. For software entrepreneurs in these countries, the cloud represents far more rapid entry at far lower cost to a global market of customers in every sector of business and industry. Brazil and China are other notable centers of cloud adoption, but the cloud is the focus of new IT projects in every market that I visit.

No one, in any part of the world, is planning major new initiatives based on the on-premise model. The cost and complexity burdens of that aging model are clear, and are still growing, while any remaining concerns about the cloud are rapidly being addressed by enterprise service providers like salesforce.com.

Q:: If I were shopping for a new computer system, how should I evaluate the storage merits of a hard drive if I’m wanting to embrace this new concept of cloud computing?

A:: The old model of PC purchasing treated the hard drive as part of the PC system. As you get more accustomed to having anywhere/anytime access to all of your information assets, you’ll start thinking of your personally owned storage devices as just one part of the pool of storage that’s available to you.

You’ll start thinking of the hard drive on a PC or laptop as mainly the boot-up device and the local cache for things you want to use on that 14-hour trans-Pacific flight, at least until next year when in-flight Internet starts becoming common on every route. Going forward, personal storage purchasers should start to think about network-connected storage units, with their own preferred level of security measures such as full-disk encryption, that they can attach to their home network hub and use — or share, selectively — throughout the cloud, wherever the Net can reach.

Q:: I am sure you get a lot of concerns from customers about the security of data in their cloud. What is the salesforce.com attitude on security?

A:: Almost every real-world incident of data theft, breach, or loss turns out to involve someone who was authorized to have access to that data — and who misused that access, either by ignorance or carelessness or with deliberate intent. That risk has nothing to do with where data is stored, but it has everything to do with who has access privileges and how people actually interact with information resources.

An enterprise cloud environment gives the owner of an IT asset far more visibility into who’s using what information, when, from where, and can enable far more precise control of who’s allowed to use which resources in which ways. The cloud model reduces the tendency for desktops, laptops, USB keys and other user-managed devices to wind up holding data that’s not being used, but is all too easily lost.

A simple flush of the browser cache can eliminate any residual data from a cloud-computing session: if a laptop gets lost or stolen, it’s annoying, but it’s no longer catastrophic. If a user’s machine crashes, logging in from any other machine gets the user back to work right away, without losing even a minute’s worth of current work or task history. Meanwhile, data that’s stored in an enterprise-grade cloud facility gets the affordable protections of world-class physical security, robust facility construction, and professional system management at levels that few companies can cost-effectively provide for themselves.

Q:: What kind of technology and development applications does cloud computing bring to the developer community?

A:: During the past two years, there’s been a massive shift in developer interest from the desktop to the cloud. Developer surveys for almost the past two decades found developers mainly focused on a single dominant desktop computing platform, but lately that platform has dramatically slowed its pace of creating new developer opportunities — while the Web application market has been surging at a tremendous rate. Current surveys find developers mainly interested in understanding the skills required to combine a rich user experience with the convenience and the collaborative power of the cloud.

Fortunately, the same low cost and immediate access of the cloud that developers want to provide to application users are also empowering the developers themselves. Free tools, free documentation, and free access to a community of skilled professionals are no longer exclusive to the world of open-source software: they’re also part of the core value proposition for cloud-based development on Force.com. We offer developers free Eclipse-based tooling, and a free Developer Account environment (with sign-up at http://developer.force.com) for learning, building, and even showing an application to prospective customers: there’s no money charged until the developer has real customers who want to log in and get to work.
April 13, 2009
18:28
Joining the SAO
» ‎ Scott Kveton

It was only last week that I was talking about what I was going to be up to next. I’m excited to announce that as of today, I’ll be serving as the interim President of the Software Association of Oregon (SAO) for the next 90 days.

In January I joined the SAO’s board of directors with a very large freshman class of board members. When then-President Harvey Mathews recruited me to join the board last year, he was doing so because of my engagement with the local independent developer and consulting groups here in Portland. I was excited to bring a growing segment of software developers perspective to the board and my first few months on the board have been quite enjoyable as the organization continues to expand its programs.

With Harvey stepping down and me spinning up my own consulting business, the timing seemed right for me to interview for the interim President role and the search committee agreed. I firmly believe there is a great opportunity to link up the experience of current SAO members with that of the entrepreneurial spirit and drive of the independent developer community here in the Northwest.

I’m really looking forward to working with the amazing staff of the SAO to continue its fantastic mission. More to come.
April 09, 2009
6:03
Bac’n and a Business Model
» ‎ Scott Kveton

Update: Bac’n has been acquired. Look for the book “Makin’ Bac’n: From Idea to Startup in 21 Days” coming to bookstores in April 2010.

I’ve been in the technology space for awhile now. I started as a system administrator/engineer almost ten years ago and that morphed into a novice developer then open source participant/helper then open web evangelist then leading an engineering team building great products and finally, to selling bacon on the Internet.

“Wait, WTF?!” you say? “You sell bacon on the Internet?!”

Yes. Yes I do.

Its really hard to explain but selling bacon is honestly one of the most interesting/fun things I’ve ever done. Its not just technology-for-the-sake-of-technology. Jason, Michael and I created something out of nothing using off-the-shelf tools to make a solution that delivers real things to real people. And we did it all in less than a month.

While meeting with one of our Bac’n advisors (and hopefully future partner) this past week she summed it up best. After years selling and building technology, she was kind of over with it. “I’m tired of technology. I like solutions and business models that can be affected by technology.” You can see why we’re talking to her.

In any case, for about the last two weeks I’ve been flying solo. Doing Bac’n and putting a few feelers out to close friends and colleagues to see what there is to see that better fits my new found love of technology and a business model. I’ve been astounded by the response and there are quite a few interesting opportunities out there.

I’m still going to participate in open web work and helping to develop technologies that keep data free and put the consumer at the center. That’s something that I think is just too much a part of me not to do. However, my journey henceforth will be rooted in figuring out how building a community can be a good thing for your business.

(Note: I resisted the urge to title this post “Ship it” because I knew there would be some serious twitter hate happening – and rightfully so … hahaha)
December 16, 2008
1:30
Why I’m running for the OpenID Foundation BOD
» ‎ Scott Kveton
I’ve been on the OpenID Foundation (OIDF) board of directors since the organization was founded. I was also lucky enough to serve as the Chair over that time and I would love to continue to serve the community in some fashion on the board of directors again.

There have been several questions asked to the OpenID general mailing list and so I thought I would take the time to answer some (all?) of them here. I’m sure I’ve missed some so I’m sorry for that. If you have follow-up questions, feel free to post them here for me.
What would you have done differently if given the chance?
I’d love the benefit of hindsight but the reality is, I wouldn’t change a thing.

When I first got involved with OpenID it was because I had seen the benefits of how open source had affected traditional software and I saw some of those same themes being applied “up the stack” to OpenID. I was excited to see a simple, open effort to start tackling the issues of on-line identity. Back in 2006, there were still a lot of competing technologies in this space; XRI, Lid, Sxip, etc. It was quickly apparent that we needed to get to convergent on light-weight identity lest we miss a chance to build something great for the Internet. It took a few months but by the end of 2006 we had convergence and a small, focused community that had come together to develop and promote OpenID.

By this time we had a lot of the bigger companies out there looking at this technology as well. Their biggest concerns (privately at the time) were the IP ramifications around the technology. The big guys didn’t want to jump into the fray and then have somebody sue them because they had deep pockets. This was one of the primary drivers of the OIDF in the beginning and it was probably the most unsexy work ever. But it had to be done and it continues to this day.

We knew that we wanted to build an organization that could support both the community and the large players that would use the technology. We looked at a lot of different models and even flirted with moving OpenID into the Apache Software Foundation for a time. In the end, we developed a hybrid approach with community and corporate board members for the OIDF. It hasn’t been easy; it was a difficult process to develop on our own but its one that has built in sustainability into the organization while still allowing autonomy for the technology and the community as a whole. Only time will tell if we made the right decisions.
What’s your vision for OpenID and what role does the OIDF play in making it a reality?
I’d like to see OpenID evolve into a solution that makes social networking a feature on the Internet (and not just a site you go to). Today, OpenID is a technology that solves a specific thing and does it with a few shortcomings like security and usability. To get beyond this and take it to the next level, its going to require working closely with the communities developing technologies like OAuth, XRD, Portable Contacts and the like. Fortunately, most of the people developing these technologies are a part of the OpenID community already.

The best thing the OIDF can do to help make this a reality is to stay out of the way. By that I mean, the technology continues to evolve and its the details like IPR, trademarks, etc that need to be sorted out (by the OIDF) but that can hinder adoption if not taken into consideration. I’m all for workgroups to help with usability and security but I think a lot of these things are already happening in the community.

Facebook Connect is a great example of what this could look like. The benefit that Facebook has is that they can enforce the look-and-feel; if you don’t do it the way they say, they can pull the plug on you. This isn’t the case for the solutions we’re building so we have to get to consensus and then worry about distribution. This is a slower model but I do think its a better one. Facebook Connect (and derivatives like Google Friend Connect, MySpaceID, etc) will continue to gain market share and momentum while we figure out the details of how all of this is supposed to work. Slow-and-steady-and-open “wins” the race.
What is the role of privacy as it relates to OpenID and how does the OIDF help/hinder that?
I don’t believe in privacy; not because I’m against it but more because I believe its impossible to achieve. Don’t vote for me if you’re hoping I’ll help drive this technology to be more “privacy” friendly. I won’t. My goal is to help develop OpenID into a solution that can help you share and participate across the Internet as you (not some ‘anonymous coward’). I put myself in the Esther Dyson camp on privacy these days:

I was a much bigger fan of anonymity then than I am now. I thought it was cool. And it is, but it turns out anonymity really encourages bad behavior. I’m not in favor of the government tracking everybody and so forth, [but] at least persistent pseudonyms and communities and stuff like that makes everything a nicer place.

It’s like a lot of things. I’m pro choice, but I think abortion is an unfortunate thing. I think the same thing about anonymity: Everybody should have the right to it, but it’s not something one wants to encourage. And that’s not weasel words, that’s the reality of it.

– Esther Dyson, Veteran tech investor looking back on the evolution of the Net
What are your thoughts on organizational transparency?
Easy: everything should be done in the open that can be. The only times for private conversations are for legal or other sensitive matters (like the hiring of an ED who hasn’t given notice to his current employer). Other than that, financials, technology, board and any other discussions that are happening should be done so in a completely transparent nature.
If elected, what would be your first order(s) of business?
The OIDF has some hard questions to answer about itself. In the first 90 days, the board needs to tackle the following:
1. Determine the role of the foundation wrt the technology; is OpenID a building block technology or a full-blown solution?
2. Define the mission/vision for the organization based on (1).
3. Define clear goals and milestones for “success” based on the mission/vision from (2).
4. At this critical time with OpenID, I believe the OIDF should hire an executive director to help drive initiatives that speak to the mission/vision and goals outlined in (3).
5. Engage developer communities building technology and start to get real-world demos of this “open stack” playing together. We can’t learn anything by talking about it; we need to lead with code. I would see this manifest itself as some sort of developer gathering a la the UX Summit at Yahoo! earlier this year and would be focused on usability and security.
6. Take action on the results from the CRC committee work; what does the industry need/expect from the OIDF? Let’s get a plan of attack together and execute on it.
After the first 90 days the board should come back and evaluate how they have done, determine what needs to be changed and then iterate again.
In Closing
I’d love to continue to serve on the OIDF board of directors and hope you’ll vote for me. Thank you.
July 24, 2008
18:42
Announcing the Open Web Foundation
» ‎ Scott Kveton

This morning on stage at OSCON, David Recordon announced the formation of the Open Web Foundation (OWF). I wanted to take a few minutes to say congrats to a fantastically diverse and committed bunch of people that have made this possible and tell a little bit about how it came to be.

In May 2008, the OpenID Foundation (OIDF) board had a face-to-face meeting at Google where we were planning for the next year. During that meeting we started to discuss focus and scope of the OIDF and realized that there was a much bigger need in the community of developers creating light-weight, open specifications for the web. Ironically, there were several other people visiting Google that day and over lunch, we hatched an idea that has finally been formalized today.

As a bit of history, when we created the OIDF, we learned quite a bit about what it takes for individuals and companies to come together within a community to develop and open specification. Out of this work, we developed a process for managing IP and copyrights as well as built a strong relationship among a good portion of people working on these problems across the web. It wasn’t all easy and many communities developing other open specifications learned quite a bit from us. We wanted to find a way to make it so others wouldn’t have to go through this hassle ever again.

To answer several of the pain points around getting an open specification to be able to be used in the marketplace and keep community members writing code and specs and not legal documentation, several of us came together to create the Open Web Foundation. I’d talked about this in Februrary at the Social Graph FooCamp and DeWitt has been talking about it for years … :-)

The most up-to-date information about the OWF can be found on the website but there are a few things I’ll mention here. The OWF is an organization modeled after the Apache Software Foundation; we wanted to use a model that has been working and has stood the test of time. The OWF will only focus on specifications; we won’t touch code. There are plenty of other places to do that.

The hard part is yet to come. There is a lot of work to do here but I’m excited to be a part of such a fantastic group of people. I have never seen so many people come together to make something so fantastic happen so quickly. Congrats again, and let’s roll up our sleeves folks.
Supporting The Open Web – OSCON 2008 view presentation (tags: oscon)
July 23, 2008
6:24
Congrats to Chris Messina
» ‎ Scott Kveton

Tonight Chris Messina won a Google Open Source Award as “Best Community Amplifier” for his tireless work spreading “open” everywhere.

I’ve known Chris for several years now and its been an absolute pleasure not only to be in the same space but now I get to work with him at Vidoop on a daily basis.

Chris has been an inspiration to me and he truly personifies “open”; I don’t know anybody that has it running through their veins more than he does.

Congrats to you Chris. Its greatly deserved!
June 06, 2008
23:33
I’m for the Open Web
» ‎ Scott Kveton
I’ve been struggling with the relevance of Data Portability for the last few months now. The ideas around Data Portability have been a work-in-progress for several years; the technologies and communities building them are mature in every way. In this post, I want to try to explain my reasons for leaving the Data Portability project and why I think the Open Web is significantly more important.

I know when I was first introduced to Data Portability I was skeptical but when the ensuing media circus flooded the blogosphere, I had no choice but to jump right in. Many of the people developing the open protocols co-opted by the Data Portability project have hinted (both publicly and privately) at leaving. Others have just outright left.

I don’t have a problem with Data Portability as a whole as much as I do with its leader, Chris Saad. The lack of clarity of vision, the delusions of grandeur and blatant pandering are so frustrating to someone such as myself that has worked so hard to actually do something in this space. I know I’m not alone here, but this week, I reached a tipping point.

First of all, a little history.

David Recordon and I made a point of inviting Chris Saad out to the Social Graph FooCamp in February 2008 as Data Portability was really starting to take the main stage. On the last day, at the eleventh hour, Saad led a talk on Data Portability that got rather heated. Chris Messina, Joseph Smarr, Jeremy Keith, Tantek and many, many others were there saying the same thing: we’re already having these discussions, why do we have to do it now at dataportability.org? We left Sebastopol that afternoon hoping to have Chris Saad really carry on the conversation with the wider audience he had brought to the table. Instead, we continued to hear more calls of “come join the conversation on dataportability.org” coupled with empty press releases instead of real leadership.

At the Data Sharing Workshop where Marc Canter put it all into context for me (and then he prodded me again yesterday). Data Portability is about APML riding along with the rest of the well-known and established Open Web protocols.

Marc and I have had our differences in the past, but on this we both agree.

I’ve always been in the Chris Messina Don’t-stab-babies-in-the-face camp with respect to data portability. Lower-case data portability embodies many of the same ideals around the Open Web. Many small open building blocks, loosely joined helping to enable data exchange and control for users. How can you not like that?!

My reasons are particularly personal for not wanting to participate in Data Portability anymore. I’ve spent close to the last two years chairing the OpenID Foundation board. I’ve seen a fantastic community coalesce out of nothing to create a technology that has been widely adopted. When Data Portability pulled OpenID into its technology stack, I was actually really excited. However, with the expectations set by the media around Data Portability and the lack of follow-through has the potential to negatively impact all of the hard work by these existing communities have done.

My tipping point about this came earlier this week when Jive Software joined the Data Portability group. I love the folks at Jive, have known them for years and always wish them well. However, its a bummer that even folks from my hometown can be misled by this DP media hoopla. When I read Sam Lawrence say:

In the meantime, we’re interested in working with the Data Portability group to help contribute to these standards as well as new ones as well. Hopefully, the organization is now at a point in its evolution to proceed with formal and elected leadership, a standards body, voting process and the rest of the stuff that makes organizations successful.

I realized even Jive had been fooled by the hype around Data Portability. DP is not about creating new technology:
Some things that The DataPortability Project is not:
- We are not a group focused on creating new technologies. DataPortability intends to work with tools that already exist today.
- The group is primarily focused on consumer facing technologies and not those aimed at corporate internal use.
Chris was quoted in Jive’s press release. He knew about this announcement. And yet, as he did with the “Data Availability” release that MySpace did, he opted to “take-all-comers” instead of stay focused on the specific mission of the Data Portabililty project.

More importantly, its not where the discussions about these protocols are happening. They are already happening on openid.net, oauth.net, microformats.org and many, many others. I’m excited to see people talking about OpenID within the Data Portability project, but I feel like they are actually taking away from the existing communities and misleading the new members of the Data Portability community.

I put the blame for this type of messaging and lack of clarity squarely on the back of Chris Saad. I’m actually really amazed at the quality of people that have joined the Data Portability community. They are well-spoken, understand the meaning of collaborative discussion and are very passionate about the project itself. But Chris hasn’t shown the ability to stick to the goals and mission of his organization and community. In fact, the DP community does a better job of staying on point than Chris does.

David Recordon is on the right track; how do you support the Open Web? To me, the Open Web is what this is all about. The Open Web is the key to the centralized me or citizen-centric web we hear so many people talking about. Without interoperable formats and protocols, all of this stuff will be a pipe dream.

Instead of just complaining, I’m going to continue focusing my efforts where I think I can make the most impact. I’m going to continue working hard to promote and enable the OpenID community, I’m going to continue to encourage and engage in discussions with projects like OAuth, microformats, DiSo and others and I encourage everyone to join me in doing the same.
May 14, 2008
7:30
Solutions: more than technology
» ‎ Scott Kveton

When I first started using Open Source back in 1997 I thought for sure; this is the thing that’s going to change the world. And for the most part, that’s how it has played out. The software industry has been transformed because of the innovations of communities of people across the globe. This kind of collaboration had to move up the stack.

I discovered OpenID in February of 2006 and I knew it was the seed of something fantastic. Collaborative software development had given us the operating system, desktop applications and pretty soon we were starting to talk about the implications of the Open Web.

The Open Web was a nebulous concept but once the realization became that it was about the data, things really started to make sense. After the data was in the cloud, a whole host of issues arise on how to describe, share and control that data. There were missteps and half-attempts at how to do it and even today we’ve got some of the biggest players on the Internet “opening up”, but really only part-of-the-way.

It dawned on me in early 2007 that we needed to do something more if OpenID was going to take off. People weren’t going to the Internet saying “Please give me OpenID!!” Users want things that work. Users want solutions. OpenID is a fantastic technology, but the reality is, my mom got email, she didn’t get SMTP. The same will be true of OpenID.

I didn’t realize that as we moved up the stack, so too would the complexity and needs of the users. Its not about geeky things like how do I open a Word document or serve HTTP requests. Instead, how do I collaborate with many like-minded people? How do I move my data between devices and services? How do I organize quickly into an ad-hoc group? These are real problems looking for real solutions.

Around about this time new technologies started to emerge solving similar but different problems that OpenID had solved. Defining the data (microformats). Enabling access (OAuth). Enabling communications (XMPP). All of these technologies existed and were immensely open but completely decoupled. Slowly but surely a lot of people (and I mean a lot of people) started to connect the dots. In the immortal words of my Father-in-law: “We have the technology.” It just wasn’t a full-fledged solution yet.

We needed small pieces that were loosely joined to get where we were going.

I’ve been watching the work of Google, Facebook, MySpace and Yahoo! closely as they all have a vested interest in “social networking”. Its only Google today that understands that social networking is a feature of every site and not the function of a site. Even there, I think Google is missing the point that we need to make this user-centric and not site-centric. In any case, these big companies are working hard to open up. They are headed towards something the people working on the Open Web have already discovered.

One of the most interesting projects to me as of late has been DiSo. DiSo is short for Distributed Social Networking and is the work of several developers working out in the open, developing real solutions for real users. The mantra of the DiSo team has been one that I can relate to coming from the open source world; lead with code. This touches me right where my Open Source roots come from and I love it.

The reality is the solution for users that makes social networking a feature on every site has OpenID as a foundational component but its not the one thing. Now don’t get me wrong, I love OpenID. Its been an amazing ride for me and I will always continue to support it. However, I firmly believe that OpenID is but a building block (albeit an extremely important one) in the grand scheme of things. This building block needs to be crafted, tweaked and modified over time to work well and fit nicely with the other building blocks that make up the Open Web.

Getting to where we’re heading it going to take time and the right people. Since I’ve joined Vidoop in February of this year I’ve known that this is an amazing team on a path to change the Internet. That’s why I’m really excited that Chris Messina and Will Norris are joining the fantastic team at Vidoop. I’ve known both of them in different capacities over the past few years and I’ve always wanted to work with them on real solutions for real users.

In the coming months, you’ll be seeing myVidoop evolve around some of the work that they have been doing as well as the introduction of some new products that solve real problems with open technology. I’m excited to see what they can contribute to the DiSo project when they are fully focused on it.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … the best is yet to come.
April 14, 2008
16:30
Innotech ‘08 in PDX
» ‎ Scott Kveton
Did you know that Innotech is this week? This is a great local conference that draws people from the whole region with some fantastic world-class speakers. Sean Lowery has done another amazing job lining up speakers and building out several new tracks. Highlights include:
- eMarketing Summit: Two full days of Online Marketing presentations focused on “How To” & real-world business to business scenarios.
- NW CIO Summit: An exclusive Special Event @ InnoTech, the NW CIO Summit is open only to executive level IT professionals.
- Open Source Summit: A full day of dedicated Open Source presentations – Open to All Attendees
- Clean Technology Track: A full day of Clean Tech presentations, on Wednesday, 4/16, presented by SAO’s Clean Tech Forum
- Non Profit Technology Summit: The Non Profit Technology Summit features seminars specifically focused on technology issues of nonprofits.
I hope to see you there. I’ll be presenting at the Open Source Summit for the ‘Open in Oregon Lightning Talks’ and the CIO Beta Summit Demo. Amazingly these are at the exact same time so that should be interesting; you’ll get to see me in a dead sprint between session rooms. :-)

You should really make time to attend this event; its a fantastic place to network and catch up with all of the latest things happening in Portland and the Northwest. If you’re around make sure to Twitter about it and let’s connect!
April 02, 2008
4:16
Are you ready for some Data Sharing?!
» ‎ Scott Kveton

When we look back at 2008 it will be the year that we saw as the start of something great with freeing users’ data and putting it in their control. We’ve already seen some great momentum around the Data Portability project and seen some great events (such as SG FooCamp ‘08). Several more events are just on the horizon and you should make sure you attend.

The first event is the Data Sharing Workshop happening April 18th and 19th in downtown San Francisco. This is happening on a Friday and Saturday so as to best accommodate the needs of attendees and with it right in the city we should see a larger audience for something further down the peninsula.

Directly following IIW 2008a we’ll be having the Data Sharing Summit. This will be a chance for stakeholders across the entire data portability eco-system to come together and talk brass tacks about what we’re trying to accomplish and how to make it a reality. We’ll be focusing on specific technical details and how we’re going to get from point A (today) to point B (tomorrow).

Why two events so close together? Well, we’ve got a lot of work to do and we’re already a quarter of the way through 2008. If you’re at all interested in participating in the data sharing/portability conversation these are the two events to attend without question.

I hope to see you there!
March 30, 2008
17:32
Startupalooza or Bust!
» ‎ Scott Kveton
Through snow, sleet, hail, rain and of course a fair mix of sun yesterday’s Startupalooza was a fantastic success. Organized by Todd Kenefsky with a whole host of volunteers and the rest of the Legion of Tech pitching in as well it was a great event and I got a chance to put a lot of faces with (mostly Twitter) names.

Highlights for me included:
- Hearing the Jive Software story (complete with embarrassing photos)
- Meeting Matt King and Jason Glaspey (the Unthirsty guys)
- Seeing @ahockley totally decked out with a lot of photo gear I wish I had
- Buying drinks/food for folks at the Side Door afterwords thinking the bill was huge only to have it be $360
- Realizing that Garage Games is actually a ginormous endeavor
- Getting to meet the Toonlet guys
- Realizing that gamers and people with connections to NYC seem to do well in Portland
And, as is the case at any event in Portland, there were the seedlings hatched for new events. One was an impromptu idea that Paul Biggs (aka @techpaulogy) had called #drunkgeeking. Say you’re married, with an SO, etc and they have gotten tired of your inebriated ramblings about technology. Wouldn’t it make sense to find a couple of other nerds you could get your drink on with and then talk about geeky topics? Instead of trying to organize it on a regular basis, why not just use Twitter + the hashtag #drunkgeeking to coordinate on-the-fly events. For example, you could couple this with Unthirsty and find a good happy hour, Tweet “#drunkgeeking in 15 minutes at the Side Door” and see what happens. I love it and am looking forward to it after Paul gets done with his three day pantless bender. :-)

While at Startupalooza, Matt King demoed a new application he’s working on for a few folks that were there. Its in the Alpha stage but he wanted to get the take of some folks that could take a hard look while drilling down into the actual details of the application. This could be really handy for folks if we formalized it. Pick someone’s office, an afternoon and choose 2 or 3 applications to critique. To participate you have to have something you’d want looked at in the coming weeks/months. You’d want high quality participation and it would be great to have a mix of devs, designers and (*gasp*) even a marketer or two … :-)

All in all I was amazed at the vibrance of the Portland startup scene … clearly there is something here, clearly we’re just starting to pick up the pace here … I can’t imagine anywhere else on earth I’d rather be working and living.
March 29, 2008
1:22
Beer and Blog: OpenID enabling your blog
» ‎ Scott Kveton
I did the Beer and Blog tonight on how to OpenID enable your blog. Thanks to Justin Kistner for inviting me and thanks to everybody for showing up to hear me talk about OpenID (again and again and again) … ha!

The gist of tonight was to show folks how easy it is to OpenID enable their blogs. With most folks using Wordpress these days, I did a basic install of Wordpress 2.5 RC1 with the wpopenid plugin that Will Norris has built. From a couple of zip files to a full-fledged blog its about 5 minutes total work if you know what you’re doing.

If you want to use your own domain as an OpenID, check out Sam Ruby’s post about OpenID delegation to learn more. (Note: see here if you want to do delegation with myVidoop - yes, shameless plug).

Now, some folks don’t necessarily want to use Wordpress. No problem, there are plenty of other OpenID enabled blog platforms and content management systems. Here are a few more (feel free to leave comments if I missed anything):
- Moveable Type 4.0 - This is a great alternative to Wordpress and Six Apart has really started to put some extra work into making this a great platform for your blog.
- Drupal - Drupal is one of the premier content management systems out there and starting with Drupal 6.0, OpenID (both consumer and producer) is built-in by default. This is a CMS that has really started to mature into a fantastic piece of software with an amazing community.
- MediaWiki - MediaWiki is the defacto leader in wiki applications out there. With the OpenID extension you can make it even easier to create and manage your own wiki with ease.
- Joomla - Another CMS, Joomla with its OpenID extension allows full-integration.
- dotnetnuke - As hard as it is for some folks to believe, people actually build some cool applications on .NET. One of those (and that has native OpenID support), is dotnetnuke which is a content management system for Windows.
- Roll your own - You might want to roll your own applications. If so, check out OpenID Enabled which is a great resource for specific OpenID libraries.
These are just a few of the many applications, frameworks and libraries that are available for OpenID-ifying your sites. Now, Go forth and implement OpenID today!
March 27, 2008
22:35
Ma.gnolia goes OpenID only
» ‎ Scott Kveton

Marshallk talked about it and David Recordon did as well and Kevin Fox wrote about it yesterday but I thought I’d mention something about it as well.

Yesterday, Ma.gnolia deployed new login infrastructure that is 100% OpenID only. You don’t create a Ma.gnolia account anymore, you come with your OpenID, Facebook account or some other means of login.

Why is this a big deal? Well, it turns out spammers like to create accounts for bogus link love on Ma.gnolia. This stinks for Larry and his crew but also for the community that has grown up around this great site. By pushing this off to other sites, now the Ma.gnolia folks can focus on what makes their site great; not stopping spammers.

This is a really interesting trend and I think something is going to bubble out of this; reputation. We need to be able to take advantage of the fact that a) I have lots of accounts and b) I can link them to one OpenID to prove that this-is-likely-a-real-person.

Props to Larry and his team … well done guys.
March 05, 2008
0:41
SXSW-bound?: Let’s talk
» ‎ Scott Kveton
One of the most lively discussions at SG FooCamp was the Data Portability talk. Chris Saad was the host and a bevy of folks (Chris Messina, daveman692, Eran Hammer-Lahav, jsmarr, Tantek, Adactio, John Panzer, Eran Sandler and many others) were there talking about how to turn all of the Data Portability energy and excitement into something tangible. One of the ideas was for Chris Saad to turn DataPortability.org into the place for the discussion about how all of these technologies can work together and hopefully relate the conversations happening in each of the communities.

I know Chris has done a few of these videos already:
This is a great start and I want to do my part. I like the ideas, momentum and people that have come around the Data Portability Workgroup, so this weekend at SXSW 2008 I’m going to actually do something instead of just listening quietly on the mailing lists … :-)

Myself (look for me in some sort of Portland/Bacon themed t-shirt) and fellow Vidoop partner-in-crime Luke Sontag will be prowling walking the expo floor, taking in sessions, attending pre/post events, raiding BarCamp Austin III and everywhere in between seeking out your thoughts on Data Portability, the Open Web, portable social networking, DiSo, whatever. These topics mean a lot of things to a lot of people and most importantly to those of us in each of our communities (OpenID, OAuth, microformats, etc). The goal is to simply document thoughts from people in the space (and not just the “leaders” either) and make it accessible to everyone wanting to participate in the conversation. Hopefully this will increase awareness and help people come together more effectively on the problems at hand.

A few of the questions I’d like to pose:
- What has the impact of the Open Web been for you, your work or the applications that you use?
- What does Data Portability mean for the work that you’re doing today? For the applications that you use?
- Is portable/distributed social networking/DiSo possible and what are some steps to move it in the right direction today? Where should we be by 2009?
- Every web site seems to have a life streaming component now, does it matter? Is it relevant? What are your thoughts on life/action streaming?
- OpenID and OAuth both have the concept of an end-point that does interesting things for the user. What are some possibilities for this end-point with relation to the work you’re doing? The applications you’re using?
- Google announced the beta of Google Health and its inevitable that more and more of our data will be ending up on-line. Is this a good thing? How can you better manage and protect this data?
These will be short, bite-sized interviews (hopefully under 5 minutes or so) and we’ll get them on-line as quickly as our crack video team can get them up. I’ve already lined up a few really great people to chat with so far and am looking for more. Would you like to weigh in on the questions above? Do you have other questions you’d like to ask? Comment below and I’ll either work the question in or find you at SXSW. See you all in Austin!
February 09, 2008
3:23
SG FooCamp ‘08: Where do we go from here?
» ‎ Scott Kveton

What a week its been. This past weekend was SG FooCamp ‘08 (more on that below), on Tuesday I got a new job and then yesterday we made the long-awaited announcement around Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo! joining the OpenID Foundation board. Add to that trying to get a house ready to sell, moving, finding new office space in Portland and speaking at Ignite Portland 2 this has easily been the craziest (and most fun) week I’ve had in years. I really wish I’d had time to write this post earlier in the week.

What I really want to talk about here is about where we’re at now that the dust has settled from SG FooCamp ‘08. When David and I cooked up this event we had one thing in mind and it quickly morphed into something else. The outcome from my perspective was an entirely positive one. Lots of amazing people got to make some really great connections, people hacked on code, discussions (heated and otherwise) were heartfelt and engaging all weekend long.

That said, I’ve certainly taken my fair share of abuse for organizing the event. It was invite-only and for that I’m more than willing to take some heat. David and I chose the invite list and the reality was, there was a finite amount of room (we somehow crammed 105 people in over the weekend and a good chunk of those slept in tents in 30F+ weather). Okay, so where does that leave us?

In my travels this past week, in blog posts I’ve read, in people I’ve seen (even at Ignite Portland) it was clear that everyone wished they could be at SG FooCamp ‘08. People want an open discussion about these things. Me too. And even more so now that we had this event last weekend. Social graph/data portability/distributed social networking/etc … this is as much of a technical problem as it is a policy and best practices one. The weekend showed to me the passion that a small group could have around this space. What if we expanded the scope significantly?

We already have the Internet Identity Workshop as well as the Data Sharing Summit. Both of these are open-space style events and both are really well attended and organized. I think there is room for something combined or even expanded in scope.

I can foresee two tracks to an event like this. One would cover the hacking pieces. How can we use XMPP? What does Google’s Social Graph API reveal? What are the hard problems devs are dealing with? The other track would cover the policy and best practices components. How do we put users in control of their data? What should be the rules/best practices around scrapping? Who owns my data? Yes, I’m suggesting that we bring together a cross-section of people to discuss this. This could/should even be an extension of the DataPortability work going on. Its not a contest and its not about size, but I could easily see 1000 people coming to an event like this and I can only imagine the intensity and camaraderie being 10x what we had at SG FooCamp ‘08.

Okay, so … who’s going to do it? I was really hoping to hear word of a another Data Sharing Summit from Marc and Kaliya. I think its a great basis for this event and I’d love to help make it a reality. The sooner the better in my opinion. People are hungry to discuss this and with the maturation of technologies like OpenID, OAuth and microformats we have the building blocks we need to make it happen. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves, anybody else?
February 07, 2008
16:53
Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo! join OpenID Foundation Board
» ‎ Scott Kveton
Its been a long time coming and certainly a huge milestone for OpenID. Everyone on the board is really excited about this news. Here are a few snippets of the coverage:
- O’Reilly Radar - OpenID Foundation - Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo
- ReadWriteWeb - OpenID News: Big Co’s Put Money Where Their Mouths Are
- Dick Hardt - Industry Giants join OpenID Foundation Board
- VeriSign Innovation - OpenID Foundation: Does the world really need yet another identity organization?
- TechCrunch - OpenID Welcomes Microsoft, Google, Verisign and IBM
- Mike Jones of Microsoft - Microsoft Joins the OpenID Foundation and its Board of Directors
- Mashable - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM and VeriSign Join OpenID Foundation
- TechCrunch UK - Google, Microsoft, Verisign and IBM join OpenID
(links courtesy of daveman692)

As always, the best is yet to come … :-)
February 04, 2008
2:29
SG FooCamp ‘08 wrap-up
» ‎ Scott Kveton
I’m at SFO on my way back to Portland after a fantastic weekend in Sebastopol, CA at SG FooCamp ‘08. A really, really huge thanks to Tim O’Reilly, Sara Winge, Tony and the rest of the O’Reilly staff for providing a fantastic venue for this event. Also, we had some great sponsors in BBC, Google, MyStrands, Six Apart and Yahoo! We couldn’t have done it without you.

As a little background, David Recordon and I came up with the idea for SG FooCamp literally 44 days ago. The original idea was to get a bunch of hackers together, lock them in a room for a weekend and see what happens with respect to distributed/portable social networking, data portability, etc. Slowly but surely the invite list went from 10, to 25, to 30 … then David mentioned it to Tim and the idea was hatched to turn it into a FooCamp style event and host it in Sebastopol. Sweet. Now we can go all the way up to 70 people. We blew through that about an hour later and by the time all was said and done, we had over 100 people show up for the event.

It rained most of the weekend in Sebastopol (I must have brought it from Oregon with me) but the rain actually forced folks to stay inside and participate … the sessions were fast and furious and some of them pretty intense. It was cramped inside the O’Reilly facility but it sort of reminded me of the old school OSCON events hosted in the basement of the Portland Marriot; small spaces led to so many great conversations (and the booze helped to lubricate things).

Some of my favorite moments:
- Putting names with faces for just about everybody else I follow in Twitter
- Chris Mocko amazing us with his statistical prowess (”I’m less likely to be a werewolf this round”)
- Drinking the XMPP koolaid - XMPP may be the killer app that drives things like OAuth and OpenID … its the data stupid. Really cool stuff Twitter is doing in this space.
- Great OpenID/OAuth discussions
- Portland representin’ with Matt Tucker, Renny Gleeson, Brian Ellin and myself (and technically Brad and David)
- Watching Brad and Eran figure out OpenID Email identifier specification in a matter of minutes.
- Discovery, discovery, discovery.
- Talking about OpenID as a URL (why is that interesting?) as well as UI.
- Realizing that Joseph Smarr is not only a great developer and evangelist for Plaxo, he’s also a great entertainer and tequila provider … err enabler.
- Fantastic Open IPR discussions (yes, this can be fantastic) … I’m always drawn finding an end solution and the idea was hatched for an administrative org like “The Open Web Foundation” to help technologies like OpenID, OAuth and others … who knows if it makes sense … hoping to talk more about this.
- Quality time with Chris Messina.
- Renny Gleeson coining the term “ebrandgelist” and thinking he actually coined it … :-)
- Making Sara Winge laugh and doing my video interview after far, far too much cider.
- Endless games of werewolf until late, late, late into the night.
- Getting to meet Chris Saad and talk seriously about Data Portability (have a whole other post to share on this).
- Sleeping outside both nights while the temperature was in the 30’s … I knew I kept that +15 bag for a reason.
I took about 500 pictures over the weekend and will be posting them on Flickr soon (its going to be tough; Ignite Portland 2 is on Tuesday and I’m not ready!)

What started as a weekend of hacking turned into a chance to bring together a bunch of different folks that don’t necessarily know each other. The biggest thing I’m taking away from this weekend is the direct connection to so many fantastic people. Now when I see their tweets, I’ll hear their voices and see their faces. I don’t know if we’ll do this event again. There was so much interest and we could have done a Social Graph conference on this (easily I think). Hopefully we can weave some of those themes into upcoming events like the Data Sharing Summit or even IIW.

Thanks everybody for participating and I can’t wait to see everybody again soon.
January 24, 2008
2:00
High-bandwidth Twitter Tools
» ‎ Scott Kveton

I follow 702 people and its a lot of information to process. Raven Zachary asked me the criteria I use to follow people. Its pretty simple; if you’re interesting and I’ve found you, I let serendipity reign and follow. I’ve also very recently taken to following every person I can find in Portland, OR (more on that in a moment).

Okay great, now I’m following all of these people; how do you sort through it all? The first tool I use is Tweetscan which is a real-time Twitter search engine. Yes, its really real-time. I can search for my name and see who has tried to @message me. I can also look up interesting memes like Heath Ledger and OpenID. My favorite feature is the email alerts for specific search strings delivered to you daily. Again, I do this for my username to make sure I didn’t miss something directed at me and then can reply accordingly.

Now a lot of these features can be done with Twitter’s mobile features but honestly, I don’t use SMS with Twitter (thankfully I’m a faithful m.twitter.com user) and with the new limit on 250 SMS messages, it wouldn’t make sense anyways.

Another application I use to find what’s what in my area is Twitterwhere (the other one). This is a cool application written by Matt King that gives you tweets within a certain mileage of your listed location in Twitter. There are RSS feeds along with a slick Adobe AIR app to go along with it. I’ve used this to stalk … err … find all of the people I’ve been following in Portland. It was also the application that got me thinking about starting pulseofpdx.com.
January 16, 2008

5:00

Portland in a word

» ‎ Scott Kveton

Go ahead. Just try and describe the great city of Portland in a word. I dare ya. I double dog dare ya.

Here’s the problem; you just can’t do it. Its impossible.

I’ve been working with a few folks on pulseofpdx.com and one of the things I wanted to do was whip up a t-shirt (how can you not have a t-shirt for an as-yet-completed website?!) that would help get people fired up at the next Ignite Portland. I figured a few words on the back, maybe 4 or so, in big, bold letters and then on the front something like “Follow the pulseofpdx.com”. (Bear in mind I’m open to suggestions on this). Where else would I turn for the pulse then to Twitter? Here is what I found (newest first):

	voiceofra : @kveton liberal neohippies are more PDXer terms << (2008-01-15 20:08:02)
	Zolotkey : @kveton Diversity is what PDX in one word could be. :) << (2008-01-15 19:26:56)
	RobHayes : @kveton microbeer, gore tex, quadrant-ed, slow food, self-evangelizing, voodoo doughnuts << (2008-01-15 19:15:49)
	aziari : @kveton my contribution to add to the mix: progressive. eclectic. sustainable. << (2008-01-15 19:09:13)
	JefftheGreat : @kveton: silicon forest, liquid sunshine, non-californians, Idaho’s Portugel, flanel, tree, ducks, subaru, medical mary jane, liberal, etc << (2008-01-15 19:07:26)
	bryce : @kveton webfeet? << (2008-01-15 19:05:17)
	slyness : @kveton keep it simple, ‘local geek culture’ is enough. what if nongeeks in pdx what to be part of the pulse. local tweet culture? << (2008-01-15 18:59:10)
	jabancroft : @kveton Not all Portland geeks are tree hugging greenies. Just be careful with that brush you’re painting with. ;-) << (2008-01-15 18:58:36)
	Seeger : @kveton open source, bike-friendly, fleece-and-gortex fashion, left-leaning, latte-swilling… Looking forward to drinks Thursday! << (2008-01-15 18:55:37)
	sparkwatson : @kveton DIY? Grass Rootsy? << (2008-01-15 18:54:20)
	Zolotkey : @kveton independent << (2008-01-15 17:26:36)
	metafluence : @kveton pioneers << (2008-01-15 17:26:11)
	spinnerin : @kveton I like ‘hippie geek’ to describe Portland, personally. << (2008-01-15 16:59:24)
	sarahgilbert : @kveton: community. definitely not ‘weird,’ because the whole ‘keep pdx weird’ thing originated in austin, which makes it seem like cheating << (2008-01-15 16:38:08)
	cookingupastory : @kveton idk if one word can do it. bliss? pdx has it all. << (2008-01-15 16:35:26)
	windley : @kveton wet << (2008-01-15 16:31:54)
	samnagle : @kveton organic, green, autonomous, natural, Innovative, Original. I guess that wasn’t one word. << (2008-01-15 16:30:29)
	slyness : @kveton “local geek culture” could be Twitter LGC or just the fact that three words are better than four. kick that hippy to the floor. << (2008-01-15 16:12:40)
	JefftheGreat : @kveton drop the word “hippy” << (2008-01-15 16:12:12)
	slyness : @kveton pdx’ers are weird not hippy. << (2008-01-15 16:10:29)
	mtrichardson : @kveton @samnagle or maybe just ‘portland geeks’ - doesn’t portland connate hippie well enough already? << (2008-01-15 16:02:05)
	sarahgilbert : @kveton: ‘local free-range geek culture’? << (2008-01-15 16:01:44)
	slyness : @kveton drop the word hippy << (2008-01-15 16:01:37)
	samnagle : @kveton maybe just “hippy geek” << (2008-01-15 16:01:00)

Okay, so if you’re still reading … wow … bravo to you. That’s a lot of dialog. Here’s the thing … I can’t figure out 4 words that describe Portland. I can find 4 words that do it for me (if you’re playing a long from home they are “local hippie geek culture”) but what about everybody else?! Not everybody wants ‘ducks’ or ‘hippie’ or even ‘geek’ for their 4 words. Darn it. What then is the Pulse of Portland?! Well, that’s easy. Its something different for everybody. That’s what makes Portland such the independent, free-range, local, hippie, geek, culture, art, eclectic, progressive, sustainable, silicon forest, liquid sunshine, non-californians, Idaho’s Portugel, flanel, tree, ducks, subaru, medical mary jane, liberal, microbeer, gore tex, quadrant-ed, roasted, distilled, brewed, slow food, self-evangelizing, voodoo doughnuts, webfeet, wet, organic, green, autonomous, natural, innovative, original and blissful place that it is.

The solution? Look for a feature on the site in the near future that lets you choose-your-own-adventure when it comes to your Pulse of PDX t-shirt. Your color of shirt. Your 4 words. All of it the Pulse of PDX. As my father-in-law is known for saying: we have the technology.

Man I love this city.

January 13, 2008
4:00
What can/should you do with an OpenID end-point?
» ‎ Scott Kveton

One of my favorite discussions of day 1 at the OpenIDDevCamp was around what you could do with an OpenID end-point. About 15 people showed up to whiteboard and talk first at high-level and then drilling down into the details.

Now, a bunch of folks have been talking about this idea of moving to URL’s as identifiers in recent weeks (even me). The idea is simple; your OpenID is an unique end-point that can act to describe for sites where you get specific services from. For example, if I prove that I’m scott.kveton.com then a website could feasibly query that URI and ask “hey scott.kveton.com, you just logged into my site, can I have your friends list?” or “where can I find your calendar?”

We did our best to try to keep the discussion simple first and then drive into the details of the existing technology. Some basic service types we might want to describe included personal contact information, address book (aka social network or friends list), bookmark service, calendar, photo service or instant messaging. Defining them opaquely we get “my photo service is provided by Flickr” or “I use Google for my calendar”. That’s the easy part.

We had two problems to contend with after we’ve described the types of services we want to expose: privacy and ability to query in or out-of-band. How much information do I want public? How can I share it if I want it to be private for only a few people? Since OpenID works within the browser (consider this “in-band”), what if I want a service (like my photo or calendar service) to update something of mine with my permission when I’m not in front of the computer?

When talking about privacy, it looks like we have the components we need already. In the case of the public data, we can accomplish this with microformats or XRDS right at the OpenID URL. My contact information in hCard, my friends in XFN, etc. Using XRDS you could share where you get specific service types. If you want to lock this up a bit, you can use Attribute Exchange. It allows you to share only what you want to who you want. Ideally you’d be using the same URI’s for both in this scenario.

To deal with the in/out-of-band data problem the idea was floated to leverage OpenID + AX for in-band and OAuth + AX for out-of-band. If I’m logging into a site via OpenID with my browser, I could use Attribute Exchange (AX) to move my private (and public if I want) data. If the web service wants to update something for me or my OpenID provider wants to update something on a service, it can use OAuth which ideally would be automatically setup when the user logs in for the first time to the service.

In the future, we could even consider having an XRDS entry to describe how to add or remove entries into my list of services I use. Now you could have a web service ask you if you’d like to use them as your default photo service or calendar. Very cool stuff.

Now, we have the pieces described for what we want to do. The best part is we’ve been able to turn our OpenID end-point into the choke point for our public and private data. I can see all kinds of applications for other types of information you might want to land there as well (can you say your lifestream?). Looks for some folks (maybe those attending OpenIDDevCamp?) will implement these features in the near future. Let’s get some code out there and start playin’ with it!! Yeah! :-)
January 12, 2008
2:39
Iz been haxx0rd!
» ‎ Scott Kveton

This is what I get for not listening to the Twitterverse and upgrading my Wordpress install. Woke up this morning to find a comment (and some Flickr photos to immortalize it) showing that I have indeed been hacked. Looks like only a few posts were affected (love the link spam) and I’m upgraded but comments and a few other things will have to wait until tomorrow to be fixed.

Because you all were so curious … ha!

Update: I should give props to Pascal Van Hecke for pointing this out and for not doing anything mean … thanks Pascal!! :-)
January 11, 2008

Permalink for 'Scott_Kveton/2008/01/11/Power_of_PDX_Twitterverse'

0:26

Power of PDX Twitterverse

» ‎ Scott Kveton

Dear Portland: Twitter is cool and I love following all of you. There is something fascinating here and I’d love to work with some (all?!) of you to take it a step further.

I was reading Rick’s post from Friday about Twitter and Portland as well as getting added to Planet PDX (thanks Audrey!) and it got me thinking. These tools are just fantastic for a city like Portland. We’ve got a diverse group of people here, plenty of geeks but also technically savvy people from all walks of life. That diversity is what gets me so excited when I walk down the street, head out to the amazing restaurants or drink that fantastic coffee. When I’m in the Bay Area I only hear “blah blah blah dot com blah blah blah” and honestly, its tiresome. Now, I love the conversation and I’m addicted to it. How could we facilitate this conversation across an even broader group of people in Portland? Why even do this?

Example: today I mentioned something about bacon on Twitter. No biggie. I mentioned wanting to open a restaurant called “Wrapped in Bacon” where you’d be able to get anything on the menu, wrapped in bacon. Now, this was something I’d heard Dave Hersh mention before and today just seemed like a good day to mention it (when isn’t bacon on the brain?!).

Out of it came no less than 12 Tweets from fellow Portlanders curious or with things to share. Some of the highlights include (starting with the most recent):

	davidcosand : @kveton: “Wrapped In Bacon” is a hit in my school’s staff room today. We were going on it for 20 minutes. Thanks! << (2008-01-10 14:57:12)
	rebeckylee : @kveton You’ve probably seen this video then? [tinyurl.com] << (2008-01-10 14:13:34)
	fiveforefun : hmmm… i wonder if cafe yumm has any dishes that include bacon? (thanks A LOT @kveton and @Seeger!) << (2008-01-10 14:10:32)
	stadler : @kveton http://blog.cockahoop.com/e… — My experience with bacon chocolate chip cookies. << (2008-01-10 14:08:42)
	mattg : @kveton Thanks. Now I’m hungry. << (2008-01-10 14:07:10)
	samnagle : @kveton “Wrapped in Bacon” best idea I’ve heard so far in 2008 << (2008-01-10 13:52:54)
	cshields : @kveton nom nom nom [tinyurl.com] << (2008-01-10 13:38:58)
	huslage : @kveton AMEN! << (2008-01-10 13:37:04)

Okay, so big deal, right? A bunch of people just talking random things about bacon. I think this is a big deal. What’s fascinating to me is that I currently follow 637 people most of whom are right here in river city. I also have 379 followers. Now, it was interesting that because of the wide number of people I follow, I was able to see a number of responses that didn’t over lap for other people. I was able to help unify the conversation by sharing and republishing interesting comments (like the ones above) back out to the people that follow me.

I’ve taken it upon myself (for no real reason really) to start following as many folks in Portland as I can find. I’m using Matt King’s TwitterWhere application to make it happen. Now, I’m wondering, can we take this a step further? I want to follow everybody in Portland and also give the tools for others to do the same. Maybe a web page with a feed of all of the latest updates within 50 miles of Portland as well as a button that allows me to “Follow Portland” that adds everybody in Portland to my “Following” list (note: I’m not sure Twitter is too keen on this). Could we just have this be a part of a really, really noise Planet PDX?!

Well, I’m going to ante up the domain pulseofpdx.com as a place to host something like this. I have no idea if folks would be interested in doing something like this but I’d love the help to make something really, really unique … heck, as unique as Portland itself. You know where to find me if you’re interested!

January 03, 2008
19:35
URL’s are people too … and service end-points
» ‎ Scott Kveton

Interesting morning today. Did a podcast with Brian Oberkirch on trends in ‘07 and what to look for in ‘08 with respect to digital identity, portable social networking and activity streams. While I’m on the call, I get a twitter (see insert) from @dan_mcweeney saying “Why won’t the OpenID guys just add onto their server the ability to ‘friend’ other OpenIDs?” This I get at the same time as seeing a tweet from @kevinmarks talking about URL’s are people too. Moments later I see another tweet from Kevin talking about Scoble and his recent run-in with Facebook. Talk about the perfect storm for data portability.

I said it on Twitter this morning and I’ll say it again:

@jkuramot i still hold that the single most interesting thing about OpenID is that you prove you own a possible service end-point.

Yes, I just blockquoted myself … ha! None of this stuff is going to proliferate because its open, because it has an awesome community, etc. Its the data stupid. If I can prove that I own the URL (and guess what, its actually me and I’m a person) now I can do all sorts of interesting things there. Put my friend list there. My activity stream. My updates. Contact information. You name it. Plug in a little OAuth love and now I can start talking about having sites talk to me when I’m not in front of my browser. Wowzers.

The fact is, data wants to be free. It doesn’t care about Google or Facebook, etc. Users will do interesting things with their data and trying to stop them is like trying to catch a fly with a set of chopsticks. My lord 2008 is going to be fun.

Update: I’m not the only one thinking along these lines.
January 01, 2008
0:04
Almost Famous in ‘08
» ‎ Scott Kveton

I’ve been pondering a “Predictions for 2008″ post for most of the month. I had all kinds of ideas for crazy things I could predict (for example: giant Internet crash leaving millions without Twitter updates leading to mass riots and utter chaos) but with my record for this year, I’d be afraid they would all come true and then I’d be held responsible. Instead, I wanted to talk about trends in 2007 and what they will mean for 2008. Boring, I know … :-)

Almost Famous

Originally uploaded by seminomad.

We’re at a crossroads right now on our march to the “open web”. If you’ve ever seen the movie Almost Famous you might know what I’m alluding to. There is a great scene with Philip Seymore Hoffman (playing Lester Bangs) and Patrick Fugit (playing William Miller):

Lester Bangs: Your writing is damn good. It’s just a shame you missed out on rock ‘n’ roll.
William Miller: It’s over?
Lester Bangs: It’s over. You got here just in time for the death rattle. Last gasp. Last grope.

What Lester is referring to is the fact that rock n’ roll was already a big business. It wasn’t a place any more for the romantic rockers fighting the system. It was the system and it took a visit from Jimmy Fallon’s character to make that clear to William Miller during the movie.

I’ve always been curious about what happens to an industry as it matures. We saw it with newspapers, the telephone, railroads, etc … you name it. Disruptive technologies always cause a proliferation of new businesses but over time we see massive consolidation leading to just a few big entities that decide how things happen and when. The barrier to entry in the market grows and competing with these big companies becomes virtually impossible as competition melts away. The Internet and web are no different.

We’re at the same crossroads that Lester Bangs talked about that rock n’ roll ended up at. The Internet has already seen massive consolidation in 2007 and its clear that the trend will continue. Even more, the US government’s ears have finally perked up and the possibilities (network neutrality - what an oxymoron) by people who think the Internet is a series of tubes is chilling. We’re on the verge of this whole thing being owned by a few companies and regulated by their proxies in public office.

But there’s hope.

If there is one thing we’ve learned in 2007 its that the power of the user is growing. Power to the people and all that. Users want control, they want their privacy if they ask for it and they are voting with their feet. We’ve also seen the emergence of and the realization of a lot of technologies that are helping to define the “open web”. Its these technologies that are helping to answer the needs of users by allowing them to maintain control and manage their privacy. We have to see more of this in 2008 or I’m afraid we go the route of rock n’ roll.

OpenID, OAuth and microformats emerged as the key building blocks to the open web. Everyone jumped on the “open” bandwagon. OpenSocial, Android appeared from Google. Verizon got in on the action. Facebook. You name it. But things are still pretty darn painful. We have some of the pieces for helping make sure the web and the Internet stay open for good, but we have a ways to go.

Looking across the social networking world, I’m still of the opinion that its not something you just do. Your social network is a tool and it should be available everywhere you go. Social networking should be a feature sites, not a destination.

Of course, I’m not alone in thinking this:

The future of social networking is coming into focus and it looks like Facebook-ish features will be increasingly be integrated into your everyday applications.

- Larry Dignan, Social networking: Quietly being subsumed by your everyday apps, 11/14/2007

and of course:

Now it’s practically a given that your time online is social time. Between commercial and peer pressure, you’re expected to maintain both a public presence for general interaction and a semi-private sphere for friends and family, both updated in real time with your activities, opinions, latest interests, location, and cultural tastes. The vehicles for this presence were homepages at first, then blogs, and now the widget-laden profiles on the social networking sites, along with an endless flow of pinging, poking and tweeting. It’s sort of funny that a system built by notoriously socially awkward geeks has turned into a mammoth, never-ending cocktail party. But that’s where we are, and right now, billions are being bet on monetizing the world of constant acquaintanceship.

- John Murrell, Good Morning Silicon Valley - SiliconValley.com

2008 to me will be about building the final pieces of the open web. I don’t see a world with one or two winners in the social networking space. I still don’t believe social networking is a destination; its a feature. How do we make that a reality? Well, we have to be able to interoperate among sites. Users need control of who they are and what relationship they have and those have to work everywhere they go. We need standards and protocols that are open to do that. 2008 will be about creating the final pieces of technology we need to make this reality and then it will be a mad dash to see it all come together.

I for one, will be working hard to make this happen … looking forward to a fruitful (and not Almost Famous) ‘08 … peace out!
December 28, 2007
1:13
phpMyID extensions on the loose
» ‎ Scott Kveton

Marcel Bokhorst sent me a note about Yahoo! and Microsoft CardSpace extensions for phpMyID stand alone OpenID server.
December 22, 2007
1:18
OpenID 2007 Prediction Wrap-up
» ‎ Scott Kveton

I made some pretty lofty predictions way back in January 2007 about where OpenID would be by now. Not everyone thought I was of sane mind. Let’s see how I did … predictions for 2008 are forthcoming … :-)

1. OpenID 2.0: First and foremost, OpenID 2.0 will get out the door. Not only will the spec be completed, but we’ll get the libraries out the door as well. I know I’ve been saying this for six months but I feel pretty confidant of it now. :-)

Wow. This was closer than I thought it would be. On December 5th, 2007 the authors of the OpenID Authentication specification got up on stage at IIW 2007b and announced OpenID 2.0 final. By the skin of our (my?) chinny-chin-chin.

2. 100 million users with OpenID’s: Yep, I’m going to say it. By the end of 2007 there will be 100 million OpenID enabled users out there. We’re at 16 million right now. Only 84 million more to go!

Depends on who you talk to about this but the ballpark figure (see slide 10) right now is 150 million OpenID’s enabled out in the wild.

3. 7500 OpenID Enabled Sites: By the end of 2007 there will be 7500 OpenID enabled sites. As of today, we’ve seen over 750 OpenID relying parties come across MyOpenID and in recent weeks the pace is picking up. We’re seeing 10-15 new relying parties a day. I think we’ll hit 7500 by years end.

According to this article that came from interviews with the JanRain guys, we’re at over 8,000 and growing at 5% week-over-week. We’re still seeing the momentum and that’s fantastic. Running myOpenID gives them insight into that number better than just about anybody else in the OpenID eco-system.

4. Big player adopts OpenID: One of the big players will adopt OpenID. That could be Google, Yahoo!, Apple, AOL, Digg (yes, they are big like it or not), etc. I don’t have one single data point on this; its more of a gut feeling. When one goes, I think more will follow there after.

So far we’ve got Google, AOL and Digg that have adopted this. Digg has announced support for it but is still on somebody’s sh*tlist for not following through.

5. OpenID Community formalizes: The OpenID community will formalize itself in some sort of trade organization or non-profit foundation. This will be a place for things like IP (domain names, etc) and trademarks to land. It will help solidify OpenID especially as companies start to build businesses around this technology.

The OpenID Foundation was incorporated as a 501(c)3 non-profit in the State of Oregon in May of 2007. Look for a membership drive coming in January 2008 and lots of exciting announcements in this respect (note: I’m cheating on this one; I’m on the board).

6. OpenID Services: We’ll see some very exciting services emerge that take advantage of OpenID’s. Its more than just that one username and password. Its being able to take advantage of the fact that you are the same person from site to site. This has some amazing possibilities in the realms of reputation and communication that are the most obvious. The best part about this one is that the really, really killer service hasn’t even been thought of.

This is easily the most nebulous and thus most difficult to quantify. Arguably the most innovative service right now is Pibb from JanRain (full disclosure: I used to work there so of course I think its cool). Lifestrea.ms is very promising as well.

Well, there you have it. Worst case we’re looking at 5 out of 6 (considering my bias for #6 I’m willing to eat that one) … that’s pretty good for a year. Its been amazing to watch the committed community around OpenID keep plugging along against all odds. I for one know I have never heard more “you can’t do that” or “that’ll never work” in my entire life. Well folks, we’re just gettin’ started here. 2008 is going to be about blowing the doors off the “social web” and making “social networking” a feature on every single site you visit. But more on that later …

One thing I do truly believe about OpenID and 2008 is that continued adoption is going to be driven by applications that solve specific user pain and not the want for an “open identity platform”. We’ve got the ball rolling with OpenID, OAuth and Microformats in 2007 and as I always say; the best is yet to come.

Happy holidays everybody!
December 17, 2007
22:12
Activity Streams for the Open Web
» ‎ Scott Kveton

We’re seeing this proliferation of life streaming services in the Web 2.0 world. Lifestrea.ms, FriendFeed, Scope and readr just to name a few. These sites work by aggregating user feeds into one combined feed, known as an activity stream, that is then readable by the user who sets it up. With a glance, they can see what all of their friends are up to (assuming their friends are using their streaming services of course). While these activity streams are interesting from a user standpoint, they aren’t very machine friendly. While I can read these streams on a web page for via RSS, getting at the data in these feeds is near impossible.

I’ve been talking with Chris Messina about this for the last couple of weeks and he had a really good post to the DiSo (distributed social networking) mailing list this weekend about it:

One of the things that I think is critical for DiSo to work on is the distribution of activity streams (aka lifestreams or newsfeeds). As Marshall Kirkpatrick called them, these “Standards Based Nerve Centers” or “Open Aggregators” (Dave Recordon) potentially provide the value of DiSo, harvesting activities from across the web, from friends but also from our own actions, and, with some work, can begin to provide some smarts in terms of “accelerating serendipity” — introducing us to new people or to interesting things that we might not otherwise have come upon.

Chris goes on to describe a possible example of marking up an activity stream with microformats (just POSH - plain old semantic HTML):

Turn this:

“Chris listened to Smells like Teen Spirit.”
“Chris blogged about DiSo.”
“Chris added Steve as a friend.”

Into this:

"At 5:10pm, Chris listened to Smells like Teen Spirit.” “At At 5:15pm, Chris blogged about DiSo.” “At 6:30pm, Chris added Steve as a friend.

In the case of music, this might help considerably with the resolution problem that’s been discussed. I could pull out the bits of information from the activity stream that are relevant/interesting to me and do more with them like resolve them to my own catalog (in the case of music). Same could be true with books, movies, videos and other types of media. The aggregate of all of this could be used to build a users personal profile (with their permission of course) or even provide recommendations (note: MyStrands is in the recommendation business). If we could get sites starting to support this kind of format, we could really start to see some extra value applications emerge for developers and users alike.

Where this gets really interesting is when we talk about this within the context of OpenID. When you think about the fact that your OpenID is just an end-point that you have proved ownership of (”I am scott.kveton.com” for example) you can think about landing these annotated activity streams there. Sites and other users will know its “you”. Looking further, with service discovery and things like OAuth, you could feasibly provide private feeds to specific friends or group of people. The possibilities are endless and all of them take advantage of the fact that we’re using very simple building blocks (such as RSS/Atom, microformats, OpenID) to do the heavy lifting. These are the tools that will become the basis for the distributed social network that will be a reality soon enough. Social networks are not a destination; they are simply a feature of every site.

Chris and the DiSo community are starting to discuss these annotated activity streams

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Iz been haxx0rd!

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