Digg Joins Data Portability Group
Posted by James | Filed under Code, Future, Geek, Privacy, Semantic, Web
Digg made a post to the company’s blog yesterday announcing their officially joining the DataPortability.org Working Group. Digg follows Facebook, Google, Microsoft and many other companies in getting on board to discuss protocols that will make it easier for users to move their data around the web, whilst still protecting their privacy.
The company posted more specifics about its embrace of data standards than almost any of the other participating companies has. "Digg already supports many of the open standards that let you use your data on sites other than Digg, including RSS, OPML, and hCard," wrote Digg’s Steve Williams. "We use RDF to embed the Creative Commons public domain dedication into each page. Just this week, we added MicroID, a Microformat that lets you prove to other services that you own your Digg user profile. We’ll be adding more open standards, such as OpenID, APML, OAuth, and XFN, in the coming months."
Tags: data, dataportability, digg, open standards, Privacy, standards
Basics of Data Portability Explained
Posted by James | Filed under Future, Geek, Web
I’ve been reading a lot recently about data portability, and specifically the DataPortability.org Working Group. High level members of Google and Facebook staff joined the group about a week ago, key people from LinkedIn, SixApart, Flickr and Twitter joined a couple of days later, and Mozilla’s CEO said that his organisation is looking closely and will likely join the group.
That’s all well and good but does anyone actually know what we are waiting for?
Though it’s only been a week since Google and Facebook staff joined the organization, there’s been some key progress made this morning in explaining the aims of the movement. Whereas parts of Data Portability (like OpenID) have been plagued with foggy evangelistic efforts for years, check out the following video explaining the concepts. This strikingly well-produced work was made independently by screencaster Michael Pick of Smashcut Media.
DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.
I’m really impressed. The past week may have been more talk and hype than anything else - but talk plays an important roll in building pressure for change. Major vendors have come to the table, now advocates of change everywhere have one more useful tool in this video to make sure that the public doesn’t forget about the conversation that’s begun.
Though it appears that Data Portability has a long road ahead of it and that major vendors are unlikely to open up access to their users’ data, in fact openness has some important competitive advantages. The open and integrated vendor has far greater network effect and scale of access to data for their own purposes than the data hording vendor. The biggest challenge may be building a new social contract to protect customer privacy and control in this exciting new era of portability and personalization. You can join that conversation at DataPortability.org and elsewhere.
Michael Pick has chosen the easy-on-the eyes player from Vimeo to embed his video, the code to repost the video elsewhere is available with just a click or two from inside the player here.
Tags: dataportability, facebook, google, linkedin, mozilla, openid, portability, sixapart, twitter, video
Sun Gets Into Database Market: Buys MySQL
Posted by James | Filed under Web
Sun Microsystems announced yesterday that it had entered into an agreement to acquire open source database company MySQL AB for $1 billion in cash and assumed stock options. MySQL is used by many of the web’s largest sites, including Google, Facebook, Digg, Wikipedia, and makes up the "M" in LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), one of the most popular open source web development stacks utilised by web sites today.
"Today’s acquisition reaffirms Sun’s position at the center of the global Web economy. Supporting our overall growth plan, acquiring MySQL amplifies our investments in the technologies demanded by those driving extreme growth and efficiency, from Internet media titans to the world’s largest traditional enterprises," said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and president, Sun Microsystems in a press release.
On his blog, Schwartz revealed that Sun would soon be announcing a new set of MySQL support services. "Though many of the more traditional companies use MySQL," he wrote, "many have been waiting for a Fortune 500 vendor willing to step up, to provide mission critical global support." Previously, Sun sold support for competing open source database, PostgreSQL.
Schwartz also talked about having "assembled all the core elements of a completely open source operating system for the Internet." Sun’s open source development stack now includes Java, OpenSolaris, MySQL and GlassFish. It would appear that Sun is hedging its future on open source (though the acronym is harder to pronounce than LAMP).
Though many industry watchers see the Sun acquisition as a smart move and a great fit, some point out potential difficulties moving forward. Raven Zachary, an analyst at The 451 Group, thinks the purchase of MySQL "raises a whole bunch of issues concerning Sun’s close ties to Oracle, as well as their investment in PostgreSQL." And Larry Dignan wonders, "if Sun makes MySQL more enterprise acceptable does that diminish its mojo with startups?"
Tags: acquisition, business, mysql, Open Source, open source database, sun microsystems
Welcome to Jimmahdigital.com, personal blog of James Simm, Wigan/Manchester-based .Net developer.
