When we first introduced you to Elgg two years ago, it was a new social networking platform whose focus was on e-learning. Since that time, the software has been rewritten and it has moved away from being strictly for educational use only. Today, the award-winning Elgg is one of the top open source social networking platforms available on the internet.

A little over a month ago, Elgg 1.0 was introduced to the world. In this newest release, several years in the making, the software has been improved from the inside out. It has a more attractive UI and design, for starters. But under the hood you’ll find more changes like better plugin support, RSS and OpenDD views, and a new database schema.

We may have said that the next social networks would be powered by blogging CMS platforms like WordPress and Movable Type, but what we’re really seeing is a shift towards making all web platforms more open and social experiences.

To that end, Elgg can help form the basis of a new generation of social networks. But their platform goes beyond just delivering a solution for the next web 2.0 hangout or social site, although that it a popular use for their software. The Enterprise 2.0 movement is also aided by Elgg as companies wanting to build and customize their own intranet-based social networks have begun to adopt the platform as well.

The Interview

We recently had the opportunity to follow up on our original interview with one of Elgg’s founders, David Tosh. We talked about where Elgg stands today and what plans they have for the future.

How would you describe Elgg to someone who didn’t know what it is?

Elgg is an open source social networking engine started by Ben Werdmuller and myself back in 2004. Elgg can be used by developers as a starting point from which to build out their own social applications (it handles common back-end functionality and has an extensive programming API), and out of the box as a useful social utility. This year, it was voted by a panel on InfoWorld as the best open source social networking platform 2008.

What’s new with Elgg since we first spoke?

We have completely rewritten the Elgg core. This was necessary in order to future-proof the project, improve scalability and allow for greater customization. Over the past four years, we have found that one size really does not fit all, so we had to make sure Elgg was flexible enough to handle new demands being thrown at it, both now and in the future. The era of the monolithic social network is coming to a close; we want to make it easy for people to add social functionality into all kinds of applications.

Why did you move away from being a platform focused on education?

Although we’ve always had an educational base, a lot of users from other fields began picking up on Elgg. As a result, we were securing contracts to build custom networks on Elgg for groups that were not part of the educational circle, and feeding those developments back into the product. Gradually, interest in Elgg became greater outside of education, so we adapted to that change.

How does Elgg compare to its commercial competition?

With its new architecture and open standards at its core, we feel it is best placed to handle changing expectations in the social arena. It’s a very competitive space, but a lot of products have just bolted social features on top of their existing systems - Elgg has social functionality built into the core and was designed from the ground up to support it. That allows us to create deeper features, and also plan ahead for new kinds of social applications. As the types of social applications and uses for them grow, we feel our approach will pay dividends.

Some employers are letting employees use Facebook at work now. Do you worry that will affect the number of potential customers for your product?

Not really. If anything, I think this increases the potential and opportunity. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc play an important role in bringing the concept of social technology to new audiences. For groups like us, who provide niche services, this is great. For example, companies try out Facebook and then start releasing that they want to improve their internal communications to be more Facebook-like; we can help them with that.

Why should someone consider Elgg for their network?

I think there are three main reasons: simplicity, extensibility and openness. The basic version of Elgg is deliberately very simple and clean. Our architecture allows you to easily extend Elgg’s functionality to meet your specific requirements. Lastly, we fully embrace open standards such as OpenDD, FOAF, RSS, Open Social and OpenID, allowing you to interact with other applications.

Who is using Elgg today?

Elgg users range from sports networks to corporate companies, university intranets to school districts. There is a wide cross section picking up the software and applying it to their own niche. Increasingly, companies are also using Elgg to build social sites for their clients; we’re keen to promote and support this.

What’s in store for Elgg’s future?

We have a couple of things in the pipeline:

• Firstly, we’re going to launch an Elgg supporter scheme. This will give companies who are providing Elgg-related services the chance to form closer links with the core project.
• We are working on a new mobile intranet platform, powered by Elgg, that allows users to share status updates, photos, documents and media via MMS, SMS, email or the web. It also handles simple notes and shared tasks.
• We decided we needed a system within Curverider to improve our communication while on the move, and built it for our own use; it’s been so successful that we thought other companies and organizations might find it useful as well. So far, the reaction from people we’ve shown it to has been extremely positive.
• All Elgg-powered services have the Open Data Definition built into their core, which allows for full import and export of users, content and connections as well as the ability to syndicate friends’ activity in a distributed way.
• Lastly, we have just announced an advisory board that is packed with experts with excellent track records, in order to ensure Elgg and Elgg-powered services continue to develop and grow.

Discuss

On Monday, Facebook released a sample site that demonstrates how Facebook Connect (previous coverage), their new authentication methodology for logging into third-party web sites, will work. On the demo site, instead of registering for an account, you’re presented with an option to use Facebook Connect instead. The Facebook team built the site so developers interested in using this technology could see how it works. The source code was provided as well.

The sample site is called The Run Around and it’s just a simple site that lets runners log their runs and chart progress on their workout routines. From the homepage, you’re presented with two options: on the left, you can login with a username and password and on the right, you can click the Facebook Connect button.

Of course, before you can login, you have to register. When you click the link to register, you have the option of filling out the fields to provide your username, password, name, etc. Alternatively, you have the option of clicking Facebook Connect.

When you do so, a dialog box appears and all you need to do is click the “Connect” button to authenticate with the site (assuming you’re already logged in). Note there’s also a checkbox that you can leave checked (the default) or uncheck. It reads: “Let this application publish one line stories without my approval.”

Click the button and you’re in.

Once you’re logged in, you’ll see that your Facebook friends already using the site will already have been added for you. Although you know that’s one of the main purposes of this technology, it’s pretty amazing to think that at last, the tedious process of finding and adding friends will finally be over.

You’ll Never Have To Add Friends Again - You Just Have To Add Them To Facebook

Let’s assume for a minute that Facebook Connect really takes off and is available on every social web site you can think of. If that’s the case, then the only way to really make that friend graph of yours portable and easy to use is to add all of those friends to Facebook…does anyone have a problem with that?

Not long ago, Facebook established itself as a place to share your personal activities on the web. Here, people share family photos, videos from social gatherings, and post personal comments on each other’s walls. Facebook, at least back in the beginning, was a social hangout - not some place where you would want to “friend” all of your colleagues, or heaven forbid, your boss. In fact, people using Facebook tended to use it for personal - as in “real life” - friendships only. Not a place where they friended everyone under the sun. (That was MySpace, if you’ll recall.)

But on the new social web, nothing is really private anymore. People are lifestreaming their every action and friending complete strangers on sites like Twitter and FriendFeed solely because they share the same interests. If those relationships are valuable enough to you that you want them to be portable, then you’ll need to start friending everyone on Facebook, too. Since that’s the case, it looks like you might want to dig into those privacy settings after all.

If you’re a developer who loves to build mashups - especially map mashups - then you have to check out the library provided by Mapstaction. (And if you’re end user, wait until you see the demos!) Mapstraction is library that provides a common API for various mapping APIs already in existence. This allows developers to use the Mapstraction API to build a mashup that supports nine of the major mapping providers including Google Maps, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, Yahoo Maps, and more.

There are several reasons why a developer might want to use the Mapstraction library to build a mashup. For one, they would only need to code their apps once and then they could switch the mapping provider as necessary when their project’s needs changed. A ProgrammableWeb post points to another possibility, which is that Mapstraction allows for building a map where the end user could select which mapping provider’s base they want to see.

In addition, Mapstraction “fills some holes each provider’s current offerings” - meaning if a certain mapping provider doesn’t offer a particular feature that another one does, Mapstraction turns to open source solutions (for the most part) to provide the feature needed.

Those are the technical details, but what’s really impressive about Mapstraction are the demos. Take, for example, this demo, a single page showing several maps. As you move around in one map, the other three also move simultaneously to reflect the changes that take place in the map you’re using. This is a great way to view comparisons of the different mapping systems side-by-side.

Another feature of Mapstraction allows for tile layer support. This feature lets you toggle different overlays on top of a mapping provider’s map, like this one. Clicking the links below this map let you toggle different overlays on top of the Google Map to see maps from 1950, 1912, and 1877.

This demo takes you to a full screen map where you can switch from mapping provider to mapping provider by selecting the name in the box displayed in the bottom-left corner. (Note: to exit the demo, you’ll need to know your browser’s keyboard shortcut to go “back”).

Mapstraction isn’t exactly new, having debuted back in 2006. It’s currently in use in places like the UK’s Nestoria, Mapufacture, Reuters Labs, and even powers a WordPress and MT plugin called GeoPress, which adds geo-tagging to your posts and pages.  However, we would like to see some more Mapstraction mashups - so if you've built one, let us know in the comments.

Sometimes you stumble across something that really makes you say “wow” and reminds you that there’s so much more to this internet thing than just the latest web app. Case in point is this article describing some of the visual resources available on the web. The deep web. These images won’t show up in search engines’ image searches or on Flickr (save one exception), but instead can only be accessed via the links below.

The images are a part of online collections created by institutions in the U.S. Some of the images may be a part of the public domain, but many will require permission or accreditation in order to use. So, no, these aren’t necessarily images you can use in your next blog post, but that doesn’t mean they’re not useful. Instead, if given permission, these images could be used in the classroom, in private study, or even included in a media project or publication.

Collaborative digital collections

• Alabama Mosaic: Thousands images that can be searched by keyword. Images are from historical collections featureubg content from libraries, archives and museums from across Alabama.
• Alaska Digital Archives: More than 5,000 quality digital images of Alaska’s heritage in a searchable online database.
• Calisphere: A free online collection of more than 150,000 digitized primary materials contributed by libraries, archives, and museums from all over California. Search for content by keyword, by browsing the alphabetized subject list and exploring theme collections, such as the Gold Rush Era and World War II. Lesson plans are also available for elementary and secondary schoolteachers.

Calisphere

• Library of Congress American History and Culture Collections:  These collections began as a pilot project in 1990 to provide middle school as well as high school teachers and students with digital surrogates of collection material on CD-ROM. Over the years, the collection has become a "National Digital Library" with diverse institutions from all across the United States contributing content. Search or browse alphabetized subject lists, time periods, and geographical locations. American Memory Historical Collections features more than 100 thematic subjects ranging from advertising to maps to women's rights.
• Library of Congress International Collections: Access content from American Memory Historical Collections as well as international visual resource collections, such as the Abdul Hamid II collection of photographs of the Ottoman Empire and the Prokudin-Gorskii collection of photographs of the Russian Empire. Additionally, through partnerships with national libraries in other countries, you can access collections that highlight the history of the United States in relation to other nations, such as “France in America” and “The Meeting of Frontiers: Siberia, Alaska and the American West.”
• University of Washington Digital Collections: Access to tens of thousands of digital images covering a wide variety of subjects, but with an emphasis on the Pacific Northwest. The digital collections include image-heavy resources, such as the J. Willis Sayre Photographs of actors, vaudeville performers, and movie stills; the Washington Women’s History Consortium Fashion Plate Collection; the Dearborn-Massar Photographs of Architecture; and the Seattle Photographs Collection.
• Photomuse: A research resource for the history of photography. Features online exhibitions, a chronology of the evolution of photography complete with visuals and historical information, as well as an image database.

Photomuse

University digital image collections

• Duke Digital Collections: Featured collections are freely available on the Internet and include the Emergence of Advertising in America, Ration Coupons on the Home Front (1942-1945), and the 50,000 item William Gedney Photographs and Writings collection.
• Yale University Library Digital Collections: More than 100,000 digital images are searchable and viewable by the public.
• Harvard University Library: A Selection of Web-Accessible Collections: A list of visual resource collections that are unique to Harvard University, but reside in different repositories on the Harvard campus. Collections include the Harvard Daguerreotype Collection, the Hedda Morrison Photographs of China, Immigration to the United States (1789-1930), Legal Portraits Online, and the Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection.

Harvard

Digital image collections at public libraries and archives

• Historical Photograph Collections at the Arizona State Archives: 33,000 digital images of primary materials from the historical photograph collections. Most of the photographs available through the public online database date to before 1940 and include examples of all types of photographic processes, including tintypes, glass lantern slides, and photographic postcards.
• Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog: Get access to more than 1 million digital images via one of the largest digital image databases in the world. Search for images by keyword, by browsing lists of alphabetized subjects, or by choosing a collection and looking through individual image records.
• Los Angeles Public Library: More than 60,000 images featuring the work of many notable photographers active in the Los Angeles area over many decades, including some contemporary photographers. Search by keyword or photographer.
• New York Public Library Digital Gallery: One of the largest open-access image databases available on the Internet featuring more than 600,000 digital images, including all kinds of primary materials, such as manuscripts, maps, photographs, prints, restaurant menus, sheet music covers, and much more.

NY Public Library

Digital image collections at historical societies

• Indiana Historical Society: An extensive collection, covering topics ranging from architecture to railroads to sporting events.
• Wisconsin Historical Society: A visual resource for Wisconsin history containing 35,000 photographs. Of special interest is the Wisconsin Historical Museum’s Children’s Clothing Collection where visitors may browse images of more than 2,000 articles of children’s clothing dating back to the 18th century.

Other

• Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS): Through this database, it is also possible to carry out federated searching across the hundreds of digital collections that received support from IMLS. Adding “image” to the keyword search will retrieve digital images and their corresponding metadata.
• OK, not exactly “deep web,” but you can’t leave this one out. The Library of Congress Photostream on Flickr: More than 3,000 images on Flickr. The Library of Congress is the flagship partner for the site’s project known as The Commons, which aims to increase exposure to public image collections housed at civic institutions around the world and to facilitate knowledge about the collections.

Library of Congress

You can learn more about the history of these collections and get details on how to search them from the article here.

Today, a story on Techmeme caught our eye. It was entitled "We Need a Wikipedia for data," and the article, written by X-Googler Bret Taylor, discussed the difficulty of finding open data sets on the internet, something which could spur innovation, allowing programmers to build new applications the likes of which have never been seen before. What was interesting about this story, in addition to, obviously, the concept of a Data Wiki itself, was the amazing and insightful commentary around this concept, not just on the blog, but all over the net, something which led to the discovery of some pretty good data sources that are already available.

In Bret’s story, he mentioned some of the common data sources currently available, like the US Census Bureau’s map data and the Reuters corpus, but his commenters came up with a few more. (See? This is why blog comments matter).

In addition, as CNet and Ryan Stewart’s blog spread the story, more people chimed in with suggestions. And of course, the Hacker News guys had some more ideas themselves.

So what did everyone come up with? A lot of data sources are already freely available on the net, as it turns out, if you just know where to look. Here’s a summary, do you have anything to add?

CKAN (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network)

The CKAN site is a registry of open knowledge packages and projects. Here, you can find open knowledge resources or register one of your own. What kind of stuff can you find at CKAN? They mention a set of Shakespeare’s works, a global population density database, the voting records of MPs, or 30 years of US patents as some examples, but they also point you to some useful URLs, like flickr’s Creative Commons page, where photos can be searched by license type.

CKAN

Infochimps.org

This project is attempting to assemble and interconnect the world’s best repository for raw data - like a giant, free, open almanac. The best way to describe it comes from MetaFilter, where the project was spotted recently: "Just as Wikipedia will help you find out something about everything, infochimps.org will help you find out everything about something." What can you find there? Every wikipedia infobox, each infobox type in its own table, 50 years of global hourly weather data, all the tables from the US Census Statistical Abstract, oh and 100,000 official crossword words, too.

Infochimps.org

OpenStreetMap

Not a data set in the traditional sense, but definitely a useful tool, OpenStreetMap is a free, editable map of the world where you can view, edit, and use your own geographical data. The project was started because most maps actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use.

OpenStreetMap

MusicBrainz

A user-maintained community metadatabase site which collects music "metadata" like artist name, release title, list of tracks, etc. You can browse through the site or you can use a client program, like their own taggers, to help identify music collections. 

Musicbrainz

Jigsaw

Dismissed by the blogosphere as a bad idea, if not downright evil, Jigsaw, the marketplace that pays you to give up other people’s contact info now boasts 7 million complete contacts for the taking.

DBpedia

This site is a community effort to extract structured info from Wikipedia and make that data publicly available on the web, essentially turning Wikipedia into a database you can query. Is this the beginnings of a semantic web? Check out their downloads section for the datasets and then scroll to the bottom for even more links to data sources on the web.

DBpedia

flickr wrappr

Where DBpedia takes Wikipedia and makes it semantic, flickr wrappr extends DBpedia with RDF links to photos posted on flickr. Here’s an example. Here’s another. This is pure geek hotness.

Freebase

Freebase, an open, shared database of the world’s knowledge, received a lot of mentions in the comments, so this must be a good one. Community built and maintained, it pulls from open data sources like Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, and the SEC archives to create structured information on many topics, including more popular ones like movies, music, people, and locations. The site, unlike some of the others in this list, is also easy to navigate and well-designed, which makes it that much better to use.

Freebase

Opentick

Perhaps one of the less interesting items due to its dry subject matter - financial data - it’s certainly worth a mention because a free database of real-time and historical market data for trading systems and platforms is the kind of thing that really floats some people’s boats.

ThingISBN

Thanks to LibraryThing, ThingISBN is the site’s first API, and even though its competitor became a paid service, ThingISBN is still free for non-commercial use. The API doesn't just return the usual book data, but also something called "edition disambiguation," meaning it also returns a list of "related" ISBNs—other editions, other media, and translations.

Numbrary

Like the title suggests, Numbrary is a library for numbers. This free service helps you find, use, and share numbers from public record data sets, like census data or the CIA World Factbook.

Numbrary

theinfo.org

This site isn’t just a place to build or collect data sets, of which they have quite a nice list, but a place where you can interact with other number-lovin’ folks like yourself.

theinfo.org

The Data Wrangling blog

This blog post lists a bunch, and I mean a bunch, of open datasets on the web, which just goes to show how much of a cursory list my post really is.

You’ve heard a lot about OpenID, the decentralized framework for authenticating users across the web. OpenID is convenient for end users, allowing them to login to numerous web sites using one set of credentials - their OpenID. But how is OpenID doing today? Where can you get one? And more importantly, where can you use it? We took the pulse of OpenID to see how it’s currently faring.

Where To Get Your OpenID

Mainstream Sites:

Many people still don’t realize that they don’t even have to go get an OpenID - they already have one. Several mainstream web sites function as OpenID providers. If you have an account at one of the following, then congratulations - you already have an OpenID!

•  AOL - openid.aol.com/screenname
•  Blogger - username.blogger.com
•  Bloglines - d.bloglines.com/username
•  Flickr - www.flickr.com/photos/username
•  LiveDoor - profile.livedoor.com/username
•  LiveJournal - username.livejournal.com
•  Orange (France Telecom) - http://openid.orange.fr/
•  SmugMug - username.smugmug.com
•  Technorati - technorati.com/people/technorati/username
•  Vox - member.vox.com
•  Yahoo - http://openid.yahoo.com
•  WordPress.com - username.wordpress.com
•  Ziki.com

Well-Known Providers:

You can also pick up an OpenID from these providers.

• ClaimID - free OpenID providers
• Clickpass - OpenID provider that makes OpenID easier for developers to install and users to understand 
• myID.net - free OpenID provider with support for groups and Korean language
• myOpenID - free OpenID provider
• myVidoop - free OpenID Provider that eliminates passwords with security features, customization, and browser integration.
• VeriSign’s Personal Identity Provider - free OpenID provder with support for multi-factor authentication

Other Providers:

• AlwaysKnownAs.com - OpenID provider, plus user-centric contact management system with address book plug-ins wrapped around OpenID
• Beemba- Supports Information Cards as well as traditional forms-based authentication
• certifi.ca - Browser-certificate-based OpenID service; free; no passwords, no phishing
• gpgid.box43.net - OpenID provider using PGP/GPG public key authentication
• id7r.com - Id7r turns every email address into an OpenID identifier. No registration is necessary
• Identitude - An OpenID Provider backed by Facebook Accounts and profile information
• IDMobs.com First OpenID provider for mobile phones. Free, light, secure
• idproxy.net - lets you use your Yahoo! account as an OpenID
• My vAuth ID OpenID IdP supporting speaker verification for strong authentication offered by VxV Solutions
• openid.35.com OpenId.35.com is a FREE,Secure SSL-enabled OpenId Service provider, combined with some social network features that let users connect with each other
• openid.nabber.org - Free proxy that translates your existing e-mail address into an OpenID URL and authentication service
• OpenID.org.cn Free OpenID server and authentication service with multiple credentials such as single password, Google Account etc.
• OpenProfile Extends OpenID to maintain and serve profile information via hcard and vCard
• Own-ID - free service that lets you use your own domain name as your OpenID
• prooveme.com - Certificate based OpenID; Strong authentication without passwords
• ProtectNetwork OpenID, Shibboleth and SAML standards compliant identity server by 9Star Research, Inc 
• SignOn.com - OpenID Provider with support for Information Cards
• SmartCom
• StartSSL- Uses only client-side SSL certificates for authentication and SSL/TLS encryption for transport.
• sxipper - Firefox plugin for OpenID
• Typekey - and here’s how to make TypeKey your own OpenID server
• Videntity.org
• tiny.id7r.com - provides short URL as "alias" of long OpenID URL
• TrustBearer OpenID- Uses smart cards, security tokens or biometric readers to authenticate users

Providers Outside the U.S./Foreign Language Support:

• Anonymous OpenID - Free, Anonymous OpenID Provider. No signup required. Also the First (free) Indian OpenID server
• Daum OpenID- Korean OpenID provider by Daum.net
• fcid.net - a chinese OpenID provider.
• IDtail.com - OpenID provider for Korean (by Hedgeplus.net in AhnLab.com; English planned)
• isOpenID- Russian OpenID provider
• netliberty.ru is an identity provider that includes OpenID server
• OpenID.cn Free OpenID server and authentication service in Chinese
• OpenID.cz Free OpenID server (Czech)
• openid.blogs.es - First Spanish OpenID server; free
• opendaumid.net Lets you use your DAUM account as an OpenID.(korean)
• openid.com.gr - The first greek openID Provider
• OpenID.ee - Ultra-secure OpenID provider using smart cards - requires no registration nor passwords and uses Estonian eID card and GSM SIM cards for strong authentication
• OpenID Espa, Spanish free OpenID provider
• OpenID France - First French OpenID server; free
• OpenID in Estonia
• OpenID Italia, OpenID Italia, free OpenID provider
• OpenID.LT - Lithuanian OpenID provider.
• OpenID.me.uk First United Kingdom OpenID provider with strong authentication. (2008/02/05 - not yet currently live)
• OpenID.ne.jp - First Japanese OpenID server; free
• openid.net.in Free Indian OpenID Provider
• openid.openminds.be - First Belgian OpenID provider; Free, uses Strong authentication (SSL); Vraag je gratis OpenID account vandaag aan
• OpenID.ph - OpenID Philippines (English and Tagalog) is the first Filipino OpenID server (free)
• OpenID.PL - first Polish OpenID server; free
• OpenID Portugal, First Free portugal OpenID provider
• openidprovider - A new Open ID Provider Based in the netherlands.
• openid.xmpp.za.net - The South African XMPP Federation OpenID Server (uses XEP-0070 to authenticate any jabber/xmpp account)
• MeinGuter.Name Secure German OpenID provider with focus on reputation building
• mi OpenID - Spanish free OpenID provider with strong authentication and hostname as OpenID (user.miopenid.es)
• Mi ID.es- First OpenID provider with activity stream from several web services.
• MijnOpenID.nl First Dutch OpenID server. Is controlled by the OpenID Europe Foundation. Each OpenID user own a part of the Foundation
• MoiKrug.ru - Free OpenID service with profile in the largest professional social network in Russia
• mojID.com, First Slovenian secure OpenID provider.
• myID.net - First Korean OpenID server; get Free
• myID.pl - Polish OpenID server; free. The shortest URL.
• mysecond.name Free OpenID server and authentication service in Chinese , also support internet account management and open icon functions
• my.xlogon.net Free german OpenID provider, T&C according german laws, multiple Identity, multiple Personas, SSL only.
• regged.de provides a free OpenID server in German, now has IPv6 support
• ThaiID.net- The first free OpenID provider for Thai people
• Wong Cyber Wong Cyber - Indonesian first OpenID server
• www.hkopenid.com, Hong Kong OpenID , Hong Kong free OpenID provider, targeting on providing extra localized service.
• www.ohmyid.com - Free OpenID provider for Korean
• www.openid.hk, OpenID Hong Kong, free OpenID provider
• www.tunnnus.com, Finnish OpenID provider. (Also homepage forwarding from your OpenID-url)

Feeling Geeky? You can make your own OpenID

• phpMyID is an open source PHP script that lets you host your own provider.
• OpenID's page "OpenID for Developers" gives you some more options
• Wiki on how you can

act as your own provider

OpenID Resources

• BotBouncer - CAPTCHA service for OpenID—
• OpenID official site
• OpenID Community Wiki
• OpenID Europe - Non-profit organization to help promote and deploy the OpenID framework in Europe
• OpenID Asia - organization to promote OpenID in Asia
• OpenID Russia - OpenID provider in Russia
• OpenID Source (OIDS) = OpenID Source Initiative is a Community in the OID community to grow OpenID
• OpenID Enabled - resource for OpenID users and developers
• Directory of OpenID enabled Websites (Consumers)
• Spread OpenID - helping to spread OpenID to not so tech-savvy users

Where You Can Use OpenID (Major Web Sites Only)

• 37signals
• CNN Political Market
• Creative Commons Wiki
• Drupal
• Feed Each Other
• FeedHub
• Ficlets
• LiveJournal.com
• Ma.gnolia - they now require an OpenID to create an account (our coverage)
• Mixx
• Movable Type Weblogs
• myOpenID Site Directory
• pbwiki
• Plaxo
• Propeller
• Skitch.com
• Simpy
• Snipperoo
• springnote
• The OpenID Directory
• Technorati
• twitterfeed
• Wetpaint
• wikiHow
• Wikispaces
• Zooomr

Other websites:

You can find a more complete list of sites supporting OpenID logins at the OpenID Site Directory.

Conclusion

It seems that there are currently many more places you can get an OpenID today than there are places to use one. We covered some of our concerns about the adoption rates previously in this post: “The Troubles with OpenID 2.0.”

Right now, everyone is still counting on Digg to be the next big player supporting openID, thanks to this January, 2008 blog post, mentioning their plans to support more open standards.

Despite its benefits, OpenID still remains too hard to add to your site and logging in is not always a smooth process. That’s where a company like Clickpass has a real edge. Clickpass, which is powered by OpenID, wants to make OpenID easy to use in order to bring the benefits of single-sign-on to everyone. Currently, only a few places support Clickpass - Disqus, Ma.gnolia., Plaxo, TrustedPlaces, and Wordpress (via a plugin) - but they promise there are more to come. I certainly hope so because using Clickpass was just as easy as they promised, so I really hope it takes off.

Have you heard about Toluu yet? This new RSS-based service, currently in private beta, lets you share your OPML with others in order to discover new feeds, see what your friends are reading, and even discover new people who share your same interests. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because Toluu is very much like the reincarnation of the once-popular site, ShareYourOPML (now defunct), which used to do the same thing. But Toluu not only revives that site’s spirit, it does so it a much better fashion than ShareYourOPML ever did.

Toluu is the latest newcomer to the RSS scene, joining a crowded space dominated by online readers and communities like Google Reader, Shyftr, Bloglines, and aggregators like RSSMeme, the soon-to-return Readburner, and the everything lifestream of FriendFeed. Unlike those sites, however, Toluu doesn’t aim to take you away from your current RSS reader. Instead, what Toluu offers is a way to share your feeds with others in a quick and easy way.

So why does this feed sharing service have so many other bloggers talking? And why should you bother with yet another RSS service? Here are 10 good reasons why you should give Toluu a look:

1. You can sign up with OpenID: Toluu starts out on the right foot by letting you sign up for the service with your OpenID. You can also choose to save yourself some typing by letting them import your profile using the hCard microformat on your profile at flickr, twitter, Technorati, Last.FM, or Upcoming. Not into OpenID yet? A regular sign-up form is still provided.
2. It’s Easy: There’s not a whole lot to it. Sign up, login, and upload your OPML. You don’t have to find your friends or fill out a big user profile.
3. You don’t have to do anything: Besides uploading your OPML, there isn’t anything else you have to do to benefit from the service. Although you can go through your feeds and mark your favorites, those of us with hundreds of feeds won’t take the time and we don’t have to. Toluu can make recommendations based on your feed list alone.
4. Collaborative filtering helps Toluu learn: As activity on Toluu increases, what you and your friends read and tag as favorites will help you discover new feeds that you may enjoy reading. The recommendation engine is right on target. It shows your matches, what percentage compatibility you have with them, what feeds you have in common, and which ones you like. This is much better than anything ShareYourOPML ever offered.
5. You won't be recommended "one-hit wonder" blogs: Remember that one guy who wrote that one post that one time? The one that hit Techmeme and then you never heard of him since? That feed wouldn’t be recommended to you, unless you showed interest in actively reading the rest of his feed on a regular basis.
6. The Toluu bookmarklet helps you add new feeds with ease: Because re-importing your OPML after ever new feed added would be a pain, Toluu offers a bookmarklet that lets you add a feed to both Toluu and your preferred feed reader which will first add the feed to Toluu before continuing on to add it to your RSS reader.
7. It’s not trying to replace your RSS Reader: If you wanted to, you could use it as an RSS reader, but that’s not what it’s designed to do. So it’s not a matter of you having to switch readers to enjoy using this service.
8. The Feeds! No matter how many feeds you currently subscribe to, you’re bound to find more that you didn’t know existed. Plus, you can spy on the shared feeds of anyone, provided you know their username, which is a great way to find out what people read.
9. The Activity Stream: The Toluu activity page gives you a quick glance at what your friends have been reading and doing on the Toluu service.
10. The Potential: Granted, this, like most services today rely on having a decent userbase to find success. However, based on ShareYourOPML’s former popularity, Toluu has a great shot at filling the void that was left behind when that site disappeared.

A Toluu Profile Page

All that being said, the site still needs a bit of work before it can really take off, but since it’s still in private beta, they have the time to work out the kinks and maybe even add a couple more features, too.

For example, a search feature to find other Toluu users would be a big help, especially as they grow. Also, the notification preferences are all switched on by default, which means you’ll get emails whenever someone adds you as a contact, adds or removes a feed, or recommends a feed, and you’re automatically subscribed to the newsletter. That’s a bit much.

If you’re interested in joining Toluu, you can request a beta invite or you can comment here. I have seven to give away, so first come, first serve.

UPDATE! There are 100 invites available now. Comment here for yours!

When researching FuseCal this morning, one of the things that made it so appealing to try was the fact that you could just enter in a URL and see the service in action right away. No sign-up forms, no logins. This got us thinking about UI design as it applies to today’s web services. Lately, it seems that less and less services are using sign-up forms…at least, they aren’t requiring you to sign up right away in order to try them out. Instead, the trend seems to be to let you jump right in and get to work. This is definitely a good move, in terms of usability of the site, and it’s not the only UI trend we’ve noticed lately.

Trend #1: Try It Now!

An excerpt from an upcoming book by Luke Wroblewski, "Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks," posted on A List Apart helps to point out the issue with sign-up forms on the web. When you're recommended a new web service to check out, Luke writes "you arrive eager to dive in and start engaging and what’s the first thing that greets you? A form. We can do better."

Instead of forcing users through a dreadful sign-up process when really they just wanted to take a look, he promotes the idea of "gradual engagement." After you play around with a web service and get an idea about what it does, you can then choose to take the path to complete your profile in order to create an account, save your work, share the results of your creation, etc.

Luke uses a few examples to make his point: one, Geni, an online family tree creation tool lets users make a family tree as soon as they visit the web site. Of course, as you fill out your name, you also enter in your email, so while you're busy building your tree, you're also being sent an email from the service, reminding you of your account details if you ever want to return to work on your tree. However, this vague "did I just create an account?" design may have worked for Geni, who generated 5 million profiles in 5 months, we would argue that it should be more obvious whether you are creating an account or not.

Geni’s “Sign Up” Process

Another example of gradual engagement came from TripIt, a service which lets you plan your trips. The interesting thing about TripIt is that the service also ditches the sign-up form for a more interesting option: you just email plans@tripit.com when your travel plans, be them airline confirmation email, hotel confirmation emails, whatever. TripIt extracts your name and email from the form instead of forcing you to enter these details yourself.

Personally, I recall Twiddla (our coverage) an online whiteboarding service, as implementing the "try-before-you-buy" option really well. Upon visiting the Twiddla homepage, a big button "Try it now in the sandbox," lets you test out the service along with other users in a public sandbox. This way, you can not only try it out for yourself, but you also might see someone else testing a feature you would have otherwise missed. You could also just click "Start a New Meeting" from the homepage and instantly use the Twiddla app with the others who you invite via email, no signing up required.

Twiddla’s Buttons

Trend #2: We Really Care

Another trend spotted in the wild is UI design that shows customers that the company cares about them. Take Samatha Warren’s experience with Wufoo, an app that helps you design and build online forms. After finding herself in need of tech support, she noticed an odd form field on the Support Request page: "Emotional State."

The drop-down included choices like excited, confused, worried, upset, panicked, and angry. Samantha chose the feeling that best described her mood ("worried", by the way), and then made a startling discovery:

"As I made my selection and moved the curser to hit the submit button a feeling washed over me that was unlike anything I had ever felt with a webservice online. I felt like they cared. I felt confident that my problem would be solved. I felt like I was contacting PEOPLE who have beating hearts, and families, who had felt worried about their missing contact e-mails too. How very humane of them!"

WuFoo’s Support Form

Some say this is cheesy, others find it annoying, but WuFoo isn’t the only service to utilize this idea.

Xobni (our coverage), the "social network in your inbox," also asks for user feedback by asking you how you feel. They built the "Are You Happy?" box. From a Xobni employee’s blog, Gabor Cselle describes why:

Instead of a popup, we add a little box on the bottom of the sidebar every couple of weeks and ask: "Are you happy?" There are two buttons, Yes and No, and an optional comment field. This is the most lightweight method of collecting user feedback. Note that:

1. We’re not popping up an annoying window.
2. We ask a simple question.
3. There are only two options – "yes" and "no" - and no Send button.

Xobni’s Emotional Feedback Pop-Up

While an argument can be made that opting out of the happiness check should be more readily available, apparently most of their users don't seem to mind. The feedback is 90% "Yes."

A more obvious place to find "emotional feedback" form fields is on people-powered customer service site, GetSatisfaction.com, (which, by the way, also forgoes a long sign up process by allowing you to fill in a basic form - name, email, CAPTCHA, with further profile information optional.)

Company feedback, ideas, and questions can tagged with a smiley/frowny face depicting how you feel. After you select the face, a box pops up to allow you to pick out a related word like "happy," "anxious," "indifferent," or "unsure."

GetSatisfaction’s Emotional Feedback

While emotional feedback doesn’t work for everyone - some find it patronizing, especially when they’re reporting a critical issue - an opt-in emotional feedback box could at least gather information about requests/complaints and help a company analyze and prioritize their incoming feedback.

Conclusion

Gradual engagement and emotional feedback are only two of many UI trends seen lately, but two that stand out as they seem to be ramping up in terms of usage by web companies. Hopefully, more companies will take note that there are a number ways to generate accounts for their service besides the traditional, boring sign-up form, or at least start supporting OpenID as an alternative.

As for emotional feedback? It’s a more risky choice since some users detest it, but done right, it could bring a new level of information about to product feedback while making users feel valued by the company.

Do you have any examples of either of these trends that you want to share? And…how does that make you feel? 

Last month we showed you some of the more popular and useful Adobe AIR applications (see "6 Adobe AIR Apps to Check Out"), but there are so many great Adobe AIR applications currently available, it would be a shame to stop at just those six. As we delved through he Adobe AIR directory, what became apparent to us is that there are a lot of AIR applications that will appeal to our fellow bloggers. So many, in fact, that it was worth putting together a list of our favorites. Here are the top ten AIR app that bloggers will love:

Tumbleweed: The Tumbleweed AIR application is a desktop application for posting to your Tumblr blog. With this app, you can quickly post text, photos, videos, links, audio, and chats from your desktop to your Tumblr blog, without ever having to open a web browser.

Flickr Flipper: Looking for an image to go with your post? The Flickr Flipper app lets you browse through Flickr for photos. You can also search for photos from a specific user by typing username: followed by a Flickr user’s username.

Digg RSS Reader: Did your post just hit front page? You’ll know right away with the Digg RSS Reader. You can keep tabs on all the top stories, or filter them by choosing to view only the News, Videos, or Images. Clicking the links will open the Digg story in your web browser so you can vote for your favorites.

FotoBooth: Ustreamers will like FotoBooth, an AIR app that lets you use your computer’s webcam to snap pictures of yourself, add filters or distort them, and then upload them to Flickr with just one click.

Websnapshot and WebKut: Let’s call it two for the price of one: Websnapshot lets you quickly take snapshots of a web site by entering in the URL or dragging-and-dropping it from your browser to the app. You can specify whether you want a thumbnail, a browser-sized pic, or a full page snapshot. An auto-save feature lets you save the pictures to the location of your choosing. Webkut goes a step further - you can enter the URL or you can Google for it right within the AIR application, a nice time-saving feature.

Color Browser: Get inspired to re-design your blog! With the Color Browser app, you can create and organize your favorite color palettes. If you’re a blog designer, this is a must-have app.

Joomedit: Are you using the open source content management system from Joomla? Then you need Joomedit, a desktop editor that lets you edit, upload, and publish to your Joomla CMS.

SHIFD: Doing research? The SHIFD desktop app lets you save notes, places, and links from the web into the SHIFD AIR application. This content is then available on any device with internet access - whether your desktop, laptop, or mobile phone.

Apprise: The Apprise application is a sample AIR app, which means you can download the source code too. Apprise is an online/offline RSS reader which features importing and exporting of feeds, search, and support for RSS and ATOM.

We would add Google Analytics to this list, but it was covered in our previous post (and besides, isn’t everyone running it by now, anyway?). We would have also loved to include AirPress, but sadly, this desktop blogging AIR app has not been kept up-to-date.

An honorable mention goes out to Userplane Desktop, a brandable Adobe AIR app for bloggers in the big leagues. This white label solution can keep your users informed as to your site’s news, keeping them engaged even when they’re not on the web site itself.

Visualization is a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data. Here are some of the best:

Visualize Social Networks

Last.Forward: Thanks to Last.fm’s new widget gallery, you can now explore a wide selection of extras to extend your Last.fm experience. The gallery hosts widgets for your desktop, for the web, for social networks, and much more. One of the better tools in the gallery, last.forward, is open source software that lets you map out any last.fm user and their connections. The web site for the software appears to be in German, but the "Download" button still works. And once it was downloaded and installed, I had no trouble using it myself.

Last Forward

Friends Sociomap: Friends Sociomap is another Last.fm tools that generates a map of the music compatibility between you and your Last.fm friends.

Fidg’t: Fidg’t is a desktop application that gives you a way to view your networks tagging habits. You can see what kind of music your network is into, or what kind of pictures they are taking. The Fidg't Visualizer allows you to play around with your network. To use Fidg't, you interface with the Visualizer through Flickr and LastFM tags, using any tag to create what they call a "Magnet." Once a Tag Magnet is created, members of the network will gravitate towards it if they have photos or music with that same Tag. You can also search through the network for certain users, and see their recent photos and music. The Fidg't interface is beautiful, too.

Fidg’t

The Digg Tools:

Digg.com has some of the best web-based visualization tools on the net, so they’re a must for any visualization list.

• Pics: Digg Pics is the latest tool that tracks the activity of images on the site with images that slide in from the left as people submit them and digg them.
• Arc: Digg Arc displays stories, topics, and containers wrapped around a sphere. The more diggs, the thicker the arcs.
• BigSpy: Digg BigSpy places stories at the top of the screen as they are dugg. Bigger stories have more diggs.
• Stack: Digg Stack shows diggs in real time, with diggs falling from the top of the screen. As stories get more diggs, they’re shown in brighter colors.
• Swarm: Digg Swarm draws circles for stories as they’re dugg. Diggers swarm around stories which makes them grow and get brighter.

One more: Digg Radar. Although this is an unofficial visual aid, Digg Radar is worth a look too. With Digg Radar, you wait and watch for buttons to appear on the map which indicate that a person has Dugg a story. Hover over the button to see their username. Click it to see details about the story, with links to the Digg page or directly to the article.

YouTube:

You can discover related videos using YouTube’s visualizations. To use this feature, go to a YouTube video, click on the full-screen button, and then click on the small button that shows a network. You’ll see a lot of video balloons appear and the configuration will change when you hover over a button.

Visualize Music

• Liveplasma and Musicovery let you discover new music.
• Tuneglue music map is a "relationship explorer," similar to LivePlasma. Using data from Amazon and Last.fm, Tuneglue explores relationships between musical artists.
• Moody lets you tag your music collection with colors. They also have a