iDP you ask? Well, that’s the new acronym you need to familiarize yourself with… it stands for “iDentity Provider” and in the world of OpenID, is akin to a credit card provider like MasterCard or Visa — since they provide you with a card and a network that accepts their plastic. Of course, Technorati was already a consumer, allowing you to claim your blogs… and now you can use your Technorati profile URL to log in at other OpenID enabled sites, like Ma.gnolia.
On the Net I am in control
Austin Hill designed and produced the copy behind an awesome ad campaign for a company he started some time ago called Zero Knowledge.
Given today’s IIW, this seemed an appropriate image to reflect the fact that the tide of identity is finally changing in our favor.
Synergy 3.1 released with Audioscrobbler support
I reported on this before, but Wincent today has launched Synergy 3.1, completing the addition of Audioscrobbler support. And, looks like he’s pulled a few ideas out of the beta cycle to put into 3.2. Nice.
LaCie Huby and the return of industrial design
I’ve been seeing an uptick in industrial design in computer and internet hardware lately… from this LaCie Huby device (via) to Chumby to Nabaztag to Meraki’s Mini.
So what else have you found in the wild that’s worth looking at this holiday season that’s really functional but reeks of craft as well?
Three days left on OmniWeb sale
Somehow it’s only come to my attention that OmniWeb is on sale this month for a mere $10, $20 off the regular price.
I know you’ve got a lot of free choices for Mac browsers, but the Omni folks are good people, make excellent products and, hey, OmniWeb is worth it.
So, before time expires, you really should consider taking advantage of this deal. Nothing’s in it for me, it’s just a really good deal for a really good piece of software!
Hotness: Civil Netizen redesign
I’ve been watching the Civil Netizen guys for awhile, since they’re one of the few apps besides Flock built on top of Firefox that I’ve found in the wild. Well, they’re getting close to one-point-oh, and the latest designs, by veteran buddy-o-mine Wolfgang Bartelme, are looking hot.
XING adds support for microformats
The popular-cum-controversial professional networking site formerly-known as OpenBC recently relaunched with a new name and design with wide support for hCard.
Tara first spoke with Daniela about implementing microformats ages ago and in follow up emails and blog posts, we encouraged and worked out various strategies (pro bono, mind you) around their microformats implementation. They’ve started basic with support for hCard and I hope that over time, they’ll add support for XFN, rel-tag, hCalendar and hResume.
Various extensions and web services can now detect private contacts in your XING account and add them to your address book or perform additional functions.
This work follows LinkedIn eventually adding support for hCard and hResume — work that, just maybe, we had something to do with as well. 😉
Hopefully XING’s support of microformats will make Sebastian happy for now, though it seems like he’s still a bit skeptical (though Google Translate didn’t help me much with his post).
Ben Brophy’s Linkwalla adds xFolk support
Ben Brophy‘s databaseless personal link aggregator, Linkwalla, has recently been upgraded to v0.9.7. Aside from Flickr and Ma.gnolia integration, the output is now marked up in the xFolk microformat.
Microformats in Drupal group formed
In a very promising step, it looks like that venerable CMF Drupal is beginning to take on the process of becoming microformatted with the creation of the Microformats in Drupal group.
The original use of microformats came in the Upcoming.org module (I believe) but now it seems clear that there are many more places throughout Drupal that could benefit from microformats, including on the content creation side.
With word that OpenID support will be added to Drupal Core in version 6 (a module is already available for 4.7), if we see the addition of hcard for profiles and XFN for representing social relationships in Drupal, we may finally be moving towards a more decentralized, open-source network of socially adept web properties.
Post-Thanksgiving Purge
Well, it took me a long time, but I decided it had to be done… and it’s not even the New Year quite yet, but I’ve resolved that, at least into the foreseeable future, getting on top of my inbox is close to, if not, priority number one.
So with that in mind, I finally took this advice and am feeling lighter already, if not a tad squeamish, having just archived more than 9,000 messages that had been collecting dust in my inbox.
Thus, if you sent me email in the past month or so (or in the past year!), I might get to it someday (though chances are slim), so if it’s really important, feel free to try again — I’ll be buffing up my filters to hide away all non-essential emails from now on, so do ping me if you don’t hear back in a more-timely-than-usual fashion.
Factory Joe 