kevinfarnham1's blog

The release of AOL Open Authentication (OpenAuth) was announced during a presentation by AOL's Kevin Lawver and Gregory Cypes at the Web 2.0 Expo. Kevin applied the OpenAuth APIs in developing the Ficlets.com site. At the Expo, he said the implementation of OpenAuth in Ficlets took less than an hour!

Here's an overview of OpenAuth:

• What it is: an API that empowers web sites and applications to authenticate AOL/AIM users
• What it does: uses AOL's identity based Open Services to provide personalized services to AOL/AIM users
• The Goal: to be able to build web apps in less time without maintaining your own Identity Management Systems

What's this all mean? Well, it boils down to this: if you implement OpenAuth on your web site, you immediately have authentication for the entire 100 Million or so AOL/AIM users. Anyone who has an AIM screen name can log into your site, and their credentials will be authenticated by OpenAuth. This eliminates the need for you to install or invent your own user database and authentication service, letting you focus on developing your core offering.

More than a callable API, Boxely is actually a full-blown application development language which uses XML and Javascript as the interface to a rendering engine that performs the tasks denoted by the Boxely code. Boxely is similar in ways to Mozilla's XML User Interface Language (XUL).

While Boxely is still relatively new, it is already operational on millions of Windows PCs, since the standard AIM 6.x clients are built using Boxely. Customization of the AIM client's look and feel, or invention of an entirely new AIM client user interface, can be accomplished by applying the Boxely toolkit and the functions and features it provides.

The AOL Video Search Developer Center provides three different APIs for using AOL Video Search:

• XML API: delivers XML-formatted video search results that can be easily incorporated into your web pages.
• AJAX API: runs in the browser and lets client applications access video search results directly from JavaScript.
• Flash API: runs in Macromedia Flash and lets client applications access video search results directly from Flash.

The XML API was previously known as the "REST API" but the development team decided that "XML API" was a more correct designation because the API is not sufficiently "RESTful." The Flash API is new.

Userplane is unique among the AOL APIs in that it is a ready-made set of tools that online communities can easily integrate into their site with almost no programming required. For example, Ron Miller's recent article "Online Dating Site Finds a Match with Userplane IM" describes how the world's largest online dating site, PlentyofFish.com, applied Userplane's Webchat as its instant messaging solution, with very little effort, and with a highly favorable outcome.

I recently received an email announcing that MapQuest has launched Advantage API Version 5.1. Before I became Managing Editor of the AOL Developer Community, I had no idea that MapQuest was an AOL property. I'm sure there are a lot of people who still are unaware of this.

You won't find a link to the MapQuest Advantage API on the AOL Developer Network APIs page. The Advantage API is MapQuest's business mapping solution. I'm sure you've seen it in action many times. Whenever you see a web site that offers a MapQuest maps, there's a good chance that you're seeing a solution from the MaqQuest Business Solutions team.

WinAMP is among the lesser known AOL APIs, but it's clear that the project is active and work is ongoing. What's WinAmp? A media player -- essentially a music player for your Windows PC, that features a playlist editor, visualizations, skin options, color themes, etc.

So, what sets WinAmp apart from the mainstream MP3 players (Windows Media Player, Rhapsody, iTunes)? Well, if you're a developer, WinAmp belongs to you. You can't change anything about those other "interfaces" to your MP3 music. But WinAmp is entirely customizable. Hence, its inclusion on the AOL Developer Network APIs page.

AOL had a significant presence at Internet Identity Workshop 2007. AOL's Srinivas Lingutla presented an overview of AOL's new OpenAuth service and API, and also discussed a proposed extension to OpenID; John Panzer talked about work he's done involving extending HTTP support for authentication and authorization; and George Fletcher discussed a framework AOL has defined for its Open Services APIs. ClaimID's Fred Stutzman, who wrote the dev.aol.com article "OpenID and the Value of Connected Identity", also attended the workshop.

Tim O'Reilly wrote about the problems Microsoft has experienced in the Web 2.0 world in his recent O'Reilly Radar post "Web 2.0, Microsoft, and the Costs at Scale". This is an instructive lesson for every large company that faces the Web 2.0 world, starting from success in the pre-broadband Web world. Both Microsoft and AOL fit this definition. Microsoft ruled the desktop prior to widespread access to the Web; and AOL sort of "ruled" mainstream U.S. access to the modem-based Web 1.0 Internet universe.

Hence, what Microsoft is experiencing is certainly relevant for AOL. Few people recognize that, when you sum all of AOL's Web/Internet properties, AOL may actually have the largest Internet presence of any single corporation. I say "Internet" because AIM isn't what most people would call a Web property, but AIM is clearly a Web 2.0 entity. Then, when you add in Mapquest, Userplane, AOL Video Search -- well, you get the idea, I think. AOL's a very major player in today's Internet.

As I browsed the Twiistup site, wondering what title to give to this post, it struck me that the event was actually a kind of party. At first I was thinking of "unconference" but that didn't seem to fit. Then I was trying to work "twisted" into a phrase, but that seemed too negative. Just as "party" entered my mind, I saw the link to OKDork's blog post where he called Twiistup "the Tech Party of a Lifetime (for LA people)".

Well, I certainly hope that Twiistup One (which happened on the evening of May 9 -- Wednesday, a great night for a party, right? -- between 7 pm and Midnight) isn't actually the "the Tech Party of a Lifetime," never to be repeated. I'd much prefer future duplications of the Twiistup "party," perhaps in a locale where I could actually attend (like, maybe, Boston? hint-hint!).

The WWW2007 Conference in Banff National Park, Canada, wrapped up on Saturday. The last three days of the conference were centered on the broad topics "Mining the Web" (Thursday), "Weaving the Web" (Friday), and "The World Wide Web and You" (Saturday).

I thought it would be interesting to check back in with the blogs I highlighted in my coverage of days 1 and 2 of the conference, written by three conference attendees, to see their impressions of the final three days of the conference.