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Barnraiser builds opensource OpenID servers and a collaboration package which uses OpenID, which install on Apache with PHP5 and MySql. Though many people already have OpenID identities at America Online, Yahoo, and Live.com, this gives organizations ability to create user identities on their own server, free from commercial sites, large identity providers, and even smaller providers.

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Tags: OpenID, social media, …

While writers write for their intended readers, an impressive array of software processes blogs. From ping distribution to trackback, from reply management to aggregation and resyndication, posts zip across the Internet to be found by all kinds of search tools and interested readers. This makes blogs different from other web pages, bulletin boards, and content management systems. In addition, readers can subscribe to and follow blogs using handy desktop feed readers such as FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, and browser-based feed readers such as Google Reader; they need not take time nor hassle to open another browser page to read the latest entries. See this Wired interactive graphic to see how cyberspace groks blogs.

Yahoo now supports OpenID 2. With http://flickr.com/photos/UserName Flickr users can also use their Flickr identity!

“Why OpenID? Are you tired of creating a new account on every web site you use? Do you avoid new web sites because they come with yet another username and password? Do you paste stickies with password hints all over your computer monitor?

“OpenID, an open technology standard that solves all of these problems, lets you use your many accounts and now Yahoo! accounts to sign into hundreds of web sites! And this list grows every day!

“Once you enable your Yahoo! account for OpenID access, you can simply tell any OpenID enabled web site that you are a Yahoo! user. You will be sent to Yahoo! to verify your Yahoo! ID and password and then signed in to the web site. It’s that easy.”

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tags OpenID, identity, social media, social computing, Flickr, Yahoo!

“We are not really a foundation [like the Gates Foundation]. It’s a bit of a 501(c)3, a bit of a C corp, and a bit of an academic environment. I can play more of the keys on the keyboard. A 501(c)3 can’t lobby. A 501(c)3 can’t invest in a company or build an industry. [From Google we get] 1% of the equity, 1% of the profits, and 1% of the people go into Google.org. The most important asset isn’t money, it’s people. One percent of the people means 60 or 70 of the smartest people in the world trying to solve some of the biggest problems in the world.” —Larry Brilliant, Google.org, in Wired

Tagged social enterprise, venture philanthropy, entrepreneurialism, technology, challenges, creativity, genius, Google

I’ve used Plazes on and off for maybe a year. I can see their reluctance to call themselves a calendar, a market segment filled with competitors and existing notions of what calendars can and should do. Instead they focus their platform around places. Recent feature updates there, though, refocus the site around activity, not place, and thus as a calendar, but only partially. Collaborative calendars such as Eventful and collaboratively-filtered event listings such as Last.fm do a better job.

Dropping support for semantics such as activity finish seems like a bad idea. Rather than pioneer a new format for now old and time-tested expressions, why not support existing calendar standards? Plazes now provides beta iCalendar feeds for past activity tracking. Extended full compatibility support for iCalendar and its XML equivalent hCalendar, with time-tested notions of time, place, activity and activity end, with roots in vCalendar, then makes Plazes and its database more useful, flexible, and valuable. Why must Plazes reinvent the calendar?

I first learned of this via the Burning Man Webteam. Hosted at Reclaiming, a site devoted to modern witchcraft and paganism, yet subtitled “No-Magic” and originating from the short classic by Berit Lakey of the Movement for a New Society, a reform movement within the Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers, this document may sound like a contradiction. Instead widespread adoption likely attests to the practical success of things that work. And what works for pagans and Quakers, and Burners and hackers, ought also work for many of us.

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Tags: facilitation, civics, consensus, meetings, agendas, social capital, Nash equilibrium, Quaker

Rather than let Myspace and Facebook create walled gardens and become killer apps in social networking, this group of developers have undertaken to solve the social network portability problem. Whether they succeed depends upon how easily folks can hook up their networks. In addition to this wiki, they also use a Ma.gnolia group to share linkmarks.

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Tags: social networking, social networks, social computing, microformats, protocols, software design, software patterns

Founded as a Berkeley-style residential cooperative and incorporated in 2006, the Ant Hill counts about half its membership as graduate and undergrad students and half as working professionals and dedicated cooperators. Elected director in May 2007 for a two year term, i now undertake our 501(c)7 filing, a neighborhood charrette, our house purchase, mortgage, finance, and challenges identified in our Vision committee.

A home away from home, a place to share hospitality and tell stories, where those who espouse the ideals and vision of Burning Man can exchange wisdom from the playa and Black Rock City, we also gather for events and to support each other’s projects.

Big business dumps billions of dollars into online social networking without understanding its true value. A recent study of an extended online network of two RIT professors reveals the way in which users derive value from their social computing activity. They explore the results.

Drs Neil Hair and Vic Perotti invite you to join them for a discussion of the business value of social networks: Faculty Scholars Series. “Their research examines the practices of over 100 social network users to try to understand what is driving the amazing growth (and investment) in these social web sites. Expect a fun, interactive and interesting conversation followed by time to relax, hang-out, and have a snack afterwards.”