Many people post photos to Twitter via services like TwitPic. Unfortunately, most of those services require the user’s Twitter username and password. And while most users know that it’s not a good idea to give passwords to third party services, many do it anyway, just for convenience sake.

Today photo sharing and hosting site Flickr announced a beta implementation which allows users to post photos from Flickr to Twitter. The service is easy to set up if you already have a Flickr account.

1. Authorize Flickr to post to Twitter via OAuth
2. Add 2twitter to your Flickr email and save it to your mobile phone (or remember it). It should look like this: yourflickremail2twitter@photos.flickr.com
3. Take a picture, open your mobile phone’s email client, add a subject line – this will be your tweet’s text – and send to Flickr

It’s especially great to see Flickr supporting OAuth because FlickrAuth as part of Flickr’s API was certaily a blueprint for creating OAuth.

Well done!

Facebook users can associate one or more OpenIDs to their Facebook account. Just head over to the account settings and have a look at Linked Accounts.

Adding a Google Account

Most people will probably use their Google account as an OpenID. That’s fine and works smoothly. Facebook makes use of the OpenID User Interface Extension specification which is still a draft, though. Users don’t have to experience the redirect game of OpenID, instead everything works in a single popup.

Clicking Allow and the Google OpenID is associated with Facebook. Simple, really. However I don’t like that users can’t decide if they want their contacts imported or not. All or nothing, that’s not really user friendly. Also what happened to the contacts from my Google account? Where are they on Facebook? I don’t see them there. Or is there some matching between existing Facebook users and my address book happening behind the scenes?

Adding Another OpenID

While Google is an obvious choice for many users, I also tried to add my own OpenID, notsorelevant.com. Currently, it’s delegated to MyOpenID which is supported by Facebook. Actually, that association worked as well. But much to my surprise Facebook is not storing notsorelevant.com as my OpenID but the MyOpenID one. That’s different from all Relying Parties I know. What if I change my mind and delegate to another supported provider? That doesn’t make sense.

Automatic Login

Well, two OpenIDs are linked to my Facebook account now and according to the Facebook announcement I’m supposed to be logged in to Facebook automatically if I’m logged in to my OpenID Provider already.

This login method is possible due to a feature of the OpenID specification called checkid_immediate, which has to be supported by the OpenID Provider. Basically, this means that the Relying Party requests the OpenID Provider not to interact with the user but to send a reply that authentication was successful directly to the Relying Party. Hopefully, I got that right and didn’t risk my neck with careless talk here. Apparently, checkid_immediate is not supported by all providers, though. Anyone know if there is a way to find out?

OK, this was some technical explanation but did it work? Well, at first it didn’t. I was logged in to both Google and MyOpenID, logged out of Facebook, closed the browser tab, opened another one, typed in the Facebook URL but nothing happened. This was exactly the reason I didn’t write about this topic before.

By now it works, though. Well, it actually depends on the provider. If I remove Google from the linked accounts it’s not possible to log in automatically. Remember, MyOpenID is the only linked account left. Oddly, MyOpenID get requests from Facebook, though, and also seems to authenticate me but nothing happens. Below is a screenshot of the MyOpenID log.

I’m clueless what is wrong here. Is it MyOpenID or is it Facebook? If I associate my Google OpenID again, automatic login works.

According to Facebook it should be possible to register a new Facebook account with a Gmail address only (= with a Google OpenID) but I don’t see any hints on the Facebook start page, though. Anyone tried that already?

On Friday MySpace announced a MySpaceID WordPress plugin. The plugin allows users to comment on self-hosted WordPress blogs with their MySpace credentials and also share the blog on their MySpace page. Of course, this sounds a lot like Facebook Connect. However it’s nice to see a similar product based on open standards like OpenID and OAuth.

Difficult to Implement

Usually, WordPress plugins are quite easy to implement: uploading the plugin to the blog, activating it, and sometimes doing some settings. Ready. The MySpaceID plugin is more difficult, though.

First, blog authors need a MySpace account which I have. So that’s no problem. Second, authors have to set up a MySpaceID application. They will be provided an OAuth Consumer Key and an OAuth Consumer Secret which have to be added in the settings of the plugin.

If you thought that’s all, you’re wrong. Authors also need to install the OpenID and XRDS-Simple plugins for WordPress which are installed on my blog anyway (read all about setting up the MySpaceID plugin on the MySpaceID developer wiki).

I had all this set up, however, it didn’t work for me. I tried to comment with my MySpace credentials on my blog. The first steps worked as expected: clicking the MySpaceID button, a popup was shown (see below) and I was forwarded back to my blog. Though instead of being logged in, I saw my 404 page. I am not sure what went wrong, probably something wrong with the callback URL.

Also the plugin somehow interferred with the OpenID plugin, although that one is required. In the comment box the OpenID plugin shows some text indicating that the URL field is OpenID enabled. With the MySpaceID plugin installed that text was not shown anymore. Not a good idea.

So the MySpaceID plugin is certainly a good idea but it is not designed for ordinary blog authors like me, I guess. But maybe I just didn’t get it. Hm.

In February 2008 I happily joined the OpenID Foundation (OIDF). For the first time it was possible for individuals to join the OIDF and I was certainly among the first to join. While the annual membership fee of $100 was a little high, I thought it was only natural for me to join the foundation and support something that I believe in. This blog and Spread OpenID are document of that.

By the end of last year the membership fee for individuals was lowered to $25/year. So I was surprised when I got notified by PayPal in February 2009 that $100 were transferred to the OIDF for another year of membership, starting April 1 2009. I was a little confused since I wasn’t aware that it was a subscription model, that was probably my fault, and that I was charged $100 instead of $25.

So first I cancelled the subscription – the $100 for period April 2009 to March 2010 were paid, though – and got in touch with David Recordon and Scott Kveton who are both board members of the OIDF. Obviously, something was wrong with the subscription model and I wanted to make sure this didn’t happen to other members as well. Also I wanted to work out a way that I only paid $25 as well. Both forwarded my email to Don Thibeau, who was appointed the executive director of the OIDF in February.

Until March 21 I didn’t hear from Don so I got back in touch with him and asked about the matter. I got only a short reply, two short sentences without salutation or complimentary close (hey, he’s probably busy or that’s some cultural difference), that he was working on the issue with Marisa Kihlthau (of Inventures). Marisa got a copy of his reply as well.

Since I didn’t get another information until May 2 I emailed Don again. Well, something happened in between: the end of my membership status changed from April 1 to July 1. Don’t ask me why, though. As you can guess, I was rather frustrated by the time and I wrote to Don that I didn’t care about the OIDF anymore and that he should keep the $100 for whatever period of time my membership was good for.

Once again he replied that he was sorry and copied the email to Marisa. He wrote another email and asked if he could do anything else for me. I negated. Marisa also got in touch, explaining that the OIDF was under new management (wow, that’s news in May 2009 ) and that they were sorting the membership database, hoping things to be solved by the end of May. I should get in touch with her if I had any more questions.

Until today nothing happened. No way will I get back in touch with anyone about the matter. I don’t care anymore. However I want to make the story public because I think it is a bad example of customer service. I will no longer support the OIDF as it is unprofessional and won’t accomplish much if all issues are dealt with the same way.

I tried to support OpenID in many ways in the past and still think it is a great concept. But why should I waste more time, energy, and money?

Annoyed, frustrated, disappointed!

Yesterday Facebook made some significant announcements regarding the open web. They will make Facebook more open and users and developers can interact with the social network in greater depth than before.

Leveraging the News Feed

First, Facebook announced its Open Stream API which allows developers to build applications that interact with and make use of Facebook’s news feed. Part of this API is the Activity Streams standard, which MySpace is also using for MySpaceID. However, if I got things right, the Activity Streams support is read-only, the read-write part is Facebook’s own API. Don’t quote me on that part, though.

Anyway, Facebook also published a demo application, so you can test the new API right on your desktop (Adobe AIR is required).

I guess, it will only be a matter of time until we see more applications by third parties leveraging Facebook’s news feed.

Facebook’s OpenID Support

When Facebook joined the OpenID Foundation in February, it was unclear how the company would support OpenID. Yesterday it announced that it will become a Relying Party.

The interesting part of the announcement is, that Facebook will auto-detect the OpenID Provider if users are logged into it already before coming to Facebook. This will be a great improvement for OpenID in terms of usability and user experience (see also my post on Spread OpenID).

Facebook and Plaxo

Well, this is not an announcement by Facebook but by Plaxo. Anyway, Plaxo integrated Facebook Connect in quite an interesting way. Users can now add their friends from Facebook on Plaxo without re-friending them again. This could be a blueprint for other sites as well because it is absolutely annoying re-friending people again and again.

Also it’s possible now to automatically update users’ Facebook status when they update their status on Plaxo and vice versa.

And Ordinary People?

Though do our co-workers, friends, families, and other people want the same? Do you know how they are using the internet? Go and ask them.

Once I explained OpenID to a co-worker. He told me that he didn’t like any single sign-on system. His example was Deutsche Telekom where different services are accessible with a single password. Well, I’m not quite sure how it works and which services are affected because I’m not a Deutsche Telekom customer but I guess, it’s similar to Google where users have access to Gmail, Google Reader, and other Google properties with the same username and password. Anyway, he thought that single sign-on, even within the same company, was not acceptable. Also he thought it was a very bad idea that any webservice, e.g. Google Profiles, an OpenID provider,…, would store many personal information like addresses, date of birth and much more. He was horrified by the idea that this information was transferrable to other sites, that complete address books could be exchanged.

Other people I talked to shared similar sentiments. Basically, they feel rather uncomfortable with publishing personal information on the web. Also many of them are getting unwanted promotional mails and phone calls already. So they fear their data could be sold again. Are these just cultural differences to North American people? Don’t they get it? Or don’t we have ordinary people in mind when talking about the open web?

Facebook was pioneering popup style authentication with Facebook Connect and also set design standards:

MySpace followed with MySpaceID:

And now we have AOL’s Socialthing for Websites which went live this week. Socialthing for Websites is based on AOL’s OpenAuth API.

The benefits of those approaches are obvious. Users can easily recognize those windows and the authentication process becomes more intuitive for them. Authentication happens in one window, no distracting and often confusing redirects between sites anymore.

I am sure, also content providers will benefit from easier authentication as it has become easier for users to join sites, interact with other visitors and even their friends there.

Currently, Nambu only supports Twitter (multiple accounts) but forthcoming releases will also support Identi.ca, FriendFeed, and Ping.fm. At least those services are already part of the settings menu.

Well, here are some screenshots, so you’ll get a better idea of what Nambu looks like:

This is the standard view of Nambu. Clean and slick interface without much distraction. However the next view is currently my favourite one, the sidebar view:

I have added some descriptions, so hopefully they make sense.
As you can see tr.im (URL shortener) and pic.im (image upload) are integrated, groups are available, and even sent and received links are collected. If you click on hashtags a new search will be created automatically and if you click a member’s name you can view their profile in a separate window. From there you can follow them, see their tweets and followers.

If you are using TweetDeck and are already accustomed to its multi column view, well, Nambu has it as well:

I will test Nambu for a few more days. Maybe it will even replace TweetDeck. Although still in beta, it looks very promising already.

While I understand the criticism, it’s strange to see comparisons between OpenID and Facebook Connect like the one on the Kwiqq blog. By the way, Kwiqq is a British company building customized social networks.

The author shows some screenshots of logins via OpenID (the Relying Party is Dopplr) and Facebook Connect (the Relying Party is Brightkite). He concludes that there are four steps required until he is logged in with OpenID while there are only two steps required with Facebook Connect. Oddly, he has to log in to his OpenID Provider while he is already logged in to Facebook so he omitts that step in the second scenario.

Comparing apples and oranges? First, Dopplr’s login screen could be different. So there was no need for step one, an extra click deciding between username/password and OpenID login. Let’s compare Dopplr with UserVoice.

Dopplr:

UserVoice:

As you can see there is no extra step required! It just depends on the website’s implementation.

If I am logged in to my OpenID Provider already, like the author is to Facebook, there is also no additional step required. I am logged in to UserVoice with just two steps like he his to Brightkite using Facebook Connect.

Of course, companies can manage logins the way they want. If they prefer Facebook Connect they should use it. But blaming bad user experience completely on the protocol – OpenID – is wrong. Relying Parties are responsible for it as well.