MySpace Data Availability Live Now
Posted by James | Filed under Data Portability, Privacy, Web
MySpace is set to roll out the first set of APIs for developers to implement Data Availability (an initiative in partnership with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket and Twitter allowing users to share their profile data across sites). The company is expected to push documentation and specifications to their developer site soon.
Initially, users will be able to port their basic profile information, photos, and friend lists to supporting sites. It’s completely opt-in sharing, meaning that users will have to specify that they want third-party sites to have access to this data before it can be ported over. Specifically, MySpace says in a post announcing Data Availability:
You will find a new 3rd party site privacy dashboard located in the account settings of your MySpace profile. Just look under Linked Sites to view it. From here users can manage the relationship between their data and individual 3rd party sites. Any revocation of access to data from within MySpace takes place immediately at the external site as well. This ensures users won’t have their data floating around the internet without them being aware of it.
At the moment, this page is blank for me, since I’m yet to come across any implementations of Data Availability in the wild. Nonetheless, it appears MySpace has beat Facebook to a tangible implementation of data portability. If you’re a developer and plan to implement Data Availability on your site, give me a shout so I can check it out!
Tags: Data Availability, Data Portability, facebook, MySpace
Fring API Could Shake Up The Mobile Web
Posted by James | Filed under Geek, Mobile, Web
Popular mobile IM and VOIP service Fring just launched an Application Programming Interface that could bring some awesome new applications to mobile phones around the world. The new API offers the Fring mobile interface, IM, presence indication, file transfer and other features to developers seeking to build apps in standard server-side languages. Fring ties in to users’ Google Talk, MSN Messenger, ICQ and Skype IM accounts.
While the iPhone App Store will open some day soon, will be available around the world and will be usable on more affordable handsets than is the case today - Fring may still be more globally accessible than iPhone apps will be.
At launch the API is only available for Symbian S60 9.2 phones and there are no working examples of apps yet. The platform should expand and a catalog of applications open by the end of July.
What would you like to see tied into Fring? I’d love to see some FriendFeed integration, perhaps Qik and I imagine interesting things could be done with VOIP and Yelp and Fring presence and Fireeagle location tracking. How about a notification when I’m near a contact’s physical location and they are available online for IM contact? That would be great.
The company is well funded, has an app for the jailbroken iPhone and reports that it’s seeing more than 100k new downloads every month around the world. Presence data, knowing when contacts are online and off, adds a particular exciting dimension to any application - mobile apps leveraging presence could prove wildly useful.
Tags: Application Programming Interface, Google Talk, ICQ, iPhone, Mobile phone, MSN Messenger, Skype
How did Firefox 3 do?
Posted by James | Filed under Geek, Web
This morning it looked like Mozilla was on track to set a world record by serving up 5 to 7 million downloads of Firefox 3 within 24 hours of the web browser’s release. But by day’s end, (well, 24 hour’s end anyway), you all smashed that number and downloaded Firefox 3 over 8 million times.
Mozilla is still waiting to get confirmation from the folks at the Guinness Book of World Records before proclaiming the official number, but Mozilla Links pegs the number at 8,290,908, give or take a few. And NetApplications says that Firefox 3 went from less than 1% of the browser market this morning to almost 3% in a matter of 13 hours.
No matter what, Mozilla will have set a world record though — since they’re competing in a brand new category.
Tags: firefox, Firefox 3, Guinness World Records, mozilla, Mozilla Firefox
Welcome to Jimmahdigital.com, personal blog of James Simm, Wigan/Manchester-based .Net developer.
