Do you drink too much? Do you have what it takes to be a movie critic? Are you the Foursquare mayor of your own office? A new service, in its infancy, has emerged to find out the answers to those questions and others, by analyzing your Twitter stream, providing you with a score, per category, and pitting your results against those of other Twitter users from across the Web. In its undiscovered phase, the app doesn't have too many results, but if you run the service against your account (and so do your friends), you just might find out you're the biggest social media guru in the world (or the biggest drunk).


Start out by heading to http://howinterestingareyou.com/. You'll find the site has preloaded a number of questions, including whether you like to cook, whether you are a nerd (I only got 1 point and demand a recount!), or if you are a "real gamer".


Click "Find out", and after the service taps into your Twitter account, using OAuth, you gain a score, and can view the rank against your peers, in a leaderboard. If so inclined, you can add a comment to that score, which is placed on your result (and your profile). If you don't add a comment the first time, but want to later, just run the query again, and add or edit a comment later.


Your personal profile (and those of all who use the service) shows the total score you have received, your top 9 scores overall, and even shows the results in a pie chart. With 114 points as a "social media guru" (Boo! Hiss!) and only 38 elsewhere, that result dominates my chart. But if you are less one-sided than I am, you can probably fare better.

Give it a run at http://howinterestingareyou.com. You can find my profile at: http://howinterestingareyou.com/p/louisgray.

If you haven't seen a lot of applications built in the last few weeks that leverage the Google Buzz API, it's because there aren't any. In fact, Google hasn't yet rolled out any API for Buzz. According to the company, this isn't due to any backroom dealings where they plan to introduce proprietary code and hooks that tie activity to their platform, but instead, because they wanted to be sure they could first build a product that in fullness leveraged open Web standards, and start with that foundation to deliver an interoperable system that could continue to function even if Google were to "disappear off the face of the earth".

In a presentation to the Silicon Valley Google Technology Users Group last night, held at the Google campus, DeWitt Clinton, a software engineer for the company, talked to developers and other tech enthusiasts about the company's API strategy and approach to Buzz, and explained that Buzz is designed not to increase lock-in to Google, but instead, to leverage open technologies that will let data flow to and from sites without central ownership. While a Buzz API will eventually be released, it will leverage the same open standards that power it today.

"The first principle of Buzz is that we can build this on protocols that are open and free, but not centralized," DeWitt said. "Can Google disappear off the face of the earth and Buzz still works? We need to make this data federated and distributed."

On the day Buzz launched, I referenced much of the foundation for Buzz in a quick article about the open tools and APIs that "make Buzz hum". But last night, DeWitt expanded that story to include 9 major open APIs, briefly outlined below.

1. Atom

DeWitt called Atom "the lingua franca of the programmable Web today", explaining that Atom contains entries that are "well structured", and include source entry, GUIDs that enable deduplication, and specification of the content type. He said, "You are able to pass rich data in that Atom feed in a way that is more specific than other feed types."

2. AtomPub

DeWitt said AtomPub "has become the most popular paradigm for restful APIs on the Web." AtomPub expanded the original Atom format to include the ability to both create and update feeds, not just passively read.

3. ActivityStreams

ActivityStreams essentially watch users' activity and can specify rich verbs and actions within those feeds. This enables feeds for all comments posted on Buzz, all likes, or even alerts that one person following you on Buzz also follows you on another network. DeWitt's examples hint at future developments for the platform, as these specific feeds are not yet clearly visible.

4. Pubsubhubbub

Much discussed here on the blog, Pubsubhubbub reduces the need for sites to poll for updates, and powers real-time updates between services. DeWitt reiterated "the hub is decided on by the publisher" and "there is nothing Google-specific about that.", saying that the infrastructure and plumbing for Buzz has been laid for the last few years. Pubsubhubbub has been pioneered by Brad Fitzpatrick and Brett Slatkin, both Google employees.

5. MediaRSS

Developed by Flickr, MediaRSS syndicates rich media through both RSS and atom feeds, creating a structured namespace inside RSS for content and a thumbnail. Buzz leverages MediaRSS, letting you pull rich content, like Flickr photos, into the platform. Of course, PicasaWeb, a Google property, also supports MediaRSS.

6. OAuth

The product of engineers from all corners, including Twitter, OAuth was engineered "to solve a vexing problem in the industry," Dewitt said, explaining OAuth prevents the need to ask users for their name and passwords on third party sites, acting as a delegated authorization protocol that gives permission to the application. Google Buzz, like Twitter, leverages OAuth to provide authenticated access to your data.

7. WebFinger

A new-age version of the old command-line prompted, text responding Finger protocol, WebFinger aims to be a way to get public information tied to an individual, through their identity, assigned to an e-mail address. "We want people to identify themselves, and we want people to discover people," DeWitt said.

WebFinger is similar to the strategy of OpenID, but OpenID hasn't had massive adoption by end-users who have found it unwieldy. WebFinger, aiming to be less arcane, enables the independent nature of Buzz, helping to federate the data and distribute it by domain, owned by the end user. DeWitt said, "The profile lookup and notification mechanism can be in the hands of the user being addressed."

8. Salmon

Still in earliest stages of development, Salmon is an extension or replacement for the old PingBack model that had blogs informing the other about references or links. This "flawed" model only provided minimal data, and could not be verified, letting me send PingBacks anywhere I wish if I chose. Salmon's goal is to leverage what's being called "Magic Signatures", signed with a public key to prove and verify linkage.

The first approach for Salmon will be to migrate comments from aggregators to originating posts, as covered a few times on this blog. But DeWitt said that "Likes" are similar activities that could flow back with Salmon, or be used to notify users of "following" or other activity. DeWitt forecast that sites like Blogger and StatusNet would rapidly adopt and federate Salmon to transmit data updates.

9. Portable Contacts

Simply described, Portable Contacts show your information and that of the friends who you follow, providing users a secure way to get access to address books and friends lists without having to request credentials or scrape the data.

DeWitt also noted XFN, the XHTML Friend Network, and FOAF (Friend Of a Friend) as being key contributors to the Buzz technology stack today, adding that he was "glad smart people were working on this ten years ago because we are all benefiting from it now."

DeWitt, on his Buzz feed, has been talking a lot about open standards and their importance to the Google team at large. See @Jesse Stay A few points of clarification to your most recent post [1], because I believe getting the details right matters. and "The thing I find most attractive about Google Buzz is its stated commitment to open standards.", as well as his first post from February 21st, which thanked the standard developers: Standing on the shoulders of giants—a look at the people behind the protocols behind Google Buzz:

Given Google's size, there is a good amount of distrust on the Web from people who think they own too much of your data, know too much about you, or have goals that run contrary to your own ideals on privacy, communication and sharing. Not even DeWitt's detailed presentations and explanations and promises of openness and data portability will convince everyone that they are on the right path. But I personally believe the frankness and detail that is being shown here is not just promising a strong future for this individual product (Buzz), but also in extending the groundwork done for the entire Web, for products and services we haven't even seen yet.

DeWitt adds: "All of these protocols are open. They are literally also all free. They are intended to be used by everybody, with or without Google being involved. You don't have to ask us if you can use Salmon or Pubsubhububb. We have a liberal and permissive patent license."

Is Google going away? Not today, and not this year. Is Buzz perfect? No. Of course not. Can it do all the things I can do on other sites, like FriendFeed? No. Not yet. But it seems that the Buzz team has opted to make tradeoffs that favor fast shipping and openness over completeness and individual features. And if you don't trust Google, it sounds like you can do something about it.

"We are pretty adamant about not building this on proprietary technology," DeWitt said last night. "If any of you feel that it is not going in the right direction, you have the power to change its direction and Google will not stop you."

You can find me on Buzz here and can follow DeWitt Clinton on Buzz here.

Today, at the RSA conference, the Open Identity Exchange (OIX), aimed to increase trust in online identities, and backed by the OpenID and Information Card Foundations, announced its inception. In parallel, the U.S. Government is recognizing multiple technology companies as meeting federal standards for identity assurance, including Google, PayPal and Equifax, essentially securing users' ability to register and log in at federal Web sites with credentials from each of those services.

Goals of the Open Identity Exchange include building online users' trust and confidence in the exchange of identity credentials, standardizing these interactions and reducing hassle with online logins, registrations and purchases. As practically any Web user knows, frustrations with remembering scads of online user names and passwords, each corresponding with different sites with varying trust levels, can be a complete pain - no matter how much effort is taken to standardize, and the alternative, keeping one password for multiple services, which many do, has many more problems of its own.

OIX and its members are looking to reduce the problems with today's Web and move toward further highlighting open standards. Founding members of OIX, a non-profit corporation, include Booz Allen Hamilton, CA, Equifax, Google, PayPal, Verisign and Verizon.


Google's participation in the exchange follows the company's hirings of some of the more vocal advocates of OpenID and the open movement in general, including Chris Messina and Joseph Smarr. Earlier this week, a Google spokesperson wrote by e-mail that the inclusion of the company as part of OIX's launch should not come as much of a surprise.

"As you probably know, Google has long supported and contributed to the development of identity standards such as OpenID and OAuth, largely in order to increase online security by reducing the reliance on password use across websites." they wrote.

A white paper on the new OIX Web site, entitled "An Open Market Solution for Online Identity Assurance", explains how open identity technologies, including OpenID and Information Cards, serve to take closed user name and password systems deployed by most Web sites and expand them to accept identities issued by other parties, such as Google, PayPal and Equifax. Much of the paper, and OIX's mission, centers around the issues surrounding identity, including social, business, legal and emotional, such as trust.

This model of trust is explained in a second piece which defines a new "Open Identity Trust Framework (OITF)". The OITF paper shows holes in today's trust frameworks, and questions how people passing along personally identifiable information can be sure their data is protected with acceptable technical, operational and legal safeguards, while proposing a structured role for policymakers, providers, assessors, auditors, and dispute resolvers, to be sure that all participants are acting in a trusted manner. It may seem overly bureaucratic, but considering the Federal government needs to accept its findings, process is a good thing.

Lest you think this just yet another association or bureaucracy with talking heads looking to grease the skids of online growth, see the conclusion of the OITF model paper, where the authors explain a data utopia: "
Imagine 
that 
the 
OITF 
model
 takes
 off
 and
 identity 
aspects
 of 
all 
digital 
communications 
become
 reliant 
on 
this 
new
 layer 
of 
the
 Internet. 
Society 
could 
become
 dependent 
on 
this 
type 
of 
infrastructure 
for
collective 
action. 
The 
authors
 want
 to
 make
 it 
clear
 that 
trust 
frameworks
 for 
identity 
information 
portend 
to 
be
 so
 important 
for 
the
 future 
information 
society 
that
 they
 warrant 
extensive 
scrutiny, 
participation, 
and
feedback
 from
 a
 wide
 representation 
of 
stakeholders.
"

You can find out more on this new exchange at http://openidentityexchange.org. In addition, Google posted on the announcement on the company's online security blog: Federal Support for Federated Login

After changing the way many people watch television, by pioneering time shifting, season passes and the ability to pause live TV, TiVo has become synonymous with scheduled television recording, even under intense competitive pressures from cable provider clones. In recent years, TiVo's standard-bearer hardware boxes have evolved to include ever-larger hard disks, integration with wireless networking, avoiding pokey phone line schedule updates, and more additions to the machines' playlist - adding on music, photos and on demand videos from partners. Today, the company introduced a new top of the line product family with its Premiere and Premiere XL boxes, aiming to make the DVR the central entertainment box for your living room - including not just cable TV, but movies, Web content and music as well. Alongside the announcement, the company also introduced a new take on their trademark remote - with an integrated keyboard, as well as new partnerships with Pandora and FrameChannel.

TiVo's aggressive marketing materials call the new Premiere and Premiere XL DVRs "the one box to rule them all". The reason for the new messaging? A focus on integrating all these entertainment sources into one package, with improved discovery. As important to TiVo as the new boxes' 320 gigabytes of space for Premiere or a full terabyte for the XL model is a revamped search functionality that lets viewers find content from many sources at once - be they on cable, the Web or from partners.


For the last few months, TiVo has been running a search beta for its customers, and it looks like they have been watching the activity, as the new search shows the highly graphical interface, previously only accessible through their beta trial, including poster-like images for related programs, and hooks to BlockBuster, Amazon and Netflix. Searching the new Premiere line becomes even faster when one has access to the new remote control, which, when turned sideways, slides out to reveal a QWERTY keyboard, greatly easing the ability to type onto the screen.


Beyond basic search, TiVo is talking up its directory of programming and artists - saying you can now view actors' entertainment resumes and show's cast lists, much like an on-demand IMDB. TiVo also promised you wouldn't need to be constantly changing screens from menu to menu, moving to a more simplified UI, with double and even triple columns, built for today's larger HD sets.

Also announced today was a tie-in with Pandora, the popular music streaming service, letting you listen to your personalized radio stations through your TV set. This news not only is available to the Premiere line, but also to existing Series 3 and HD line customers, which means our home could tap into our music on the HD and XL boxes we have. While announced today, Pandora doesn't go live for a few months.

Interestingly, also debuting today is a relationship with FrameChannel, which promises to "bring the best of the Web directly to the TV, offering users access to nearly 1,000 content widgets of personal and commercial content, ranging from Tweets, photos and status updates to news, weather, sports scores and stock quotes." The FrameChannel tie-in is highlighted as your own personalized channel, much like a browser start page or PointCast from the late 1990s, but on your TV.

The new Premiere line carries on the TiVo tradition of getting ever thinner and more sleek from generation to generation, despite increased hard drive capacities. Also new to Premiere is an on-screen disk space meter to show how many more shows you can record, and a built-in 30 second scan, which no doubt makes it even easier to skip commercials.

The new TiVo lineup is available in a month's time - debuting in early April. The standard Premiere model is $299 and the XL is $499.