Blank (Media) Slate

Joining us in episode 6 of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast is Paul Trevithick, CEO of Parity and the Founder of the Higgins Project. Higgins is an incredibly well thought-out open identity framework that’s designed to integrate identity, profile and social relationship information across multiple sites, applications and devices.

We were excited to talk with Paul about Higgins, especially since they released version 1.0 of their complete identify framework in late February. As it’s been a few years in the making, it might seem like the system wouldn’t play friendly with latecomers like some of the solutions being promoted by the DataPortability Project. Not so, however, as Paul talks through how they’ll plug into OpenID and newcomers Project VRM.

We’re often asked what the DataPortability Project is doing to help the development community, and this is a prime example. We’re helping tie the pieces together of existing solutions and promoting their utility. To that point, I circled back with Joe Andrieu to get his take on VRM hooking in with Higgins:

Higgins plus CardSpace means we have both a soup-to-nuts, open source Identity stack and a built-in client application on every .Net 3 machine. With that breadth, it’s just a matter of adoption time before the Identity-enabled net, and THAT will make VRM possible across the board.

NOTE: For more about VRM, check out In-Motion episode 2.

Before getting into the meat of the podcast, however, we hit some relevant news points:

1. Yahoo! Rewires for the Social Graph and Data Portability
2. Microsoft Announces Live Mesh
3. SocialDevCamp coming up in Baltimore
4. DataPortability DIY Project for May: “rel=me”
5. New DataPortability Logo Challenged (again)

Episode 6: Listen | Comment
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Episode Length: 0:31:45

A couple weeks back, Keith Hopper tossed out a tweet asking me to fill him (and the Twitter crowd) in on the tools I use to produce the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast. Since it takes a bit more than 140 characters to list out the basic ingredients, though, I figured a blog post made more sense.

At this point I was going to launch into a diatribe about how I cut my podcast teeth 10 years ago as an Executive Producer for the New England Patriots. My thought was to provide some context for how I ramped that operation from humble beginnings to eventually producing 12 hours of audio content a day, contrasting the tools I used there and what I use now… but then I realized how incomparable the situations are.

So, without any more preamble, where’s what I use now:

• Skype (free account)
• Noise-Canceling Headset (US$25)
• HighSpeedConferencing.com Account (US$40/month)
• Acoustica Mixcraft 4 (US$65)

I use HighSpeedConferencing.com to record the shows because I’ve already got an account. I was turned onto it by Phil Wolff, Editor of Skype Journal, and have been pleased with it’s simple functionality (including Skype integration, call recording, unlimited participants, local and toll-free numbers around the world).

If you don’t need all the extra features, you could probably use SkypeCast, but then you’d need Skype call recording software whereas HighSpeedConferencing.com has an automatic recording feature.

Either way you go, once you’ve recorded your show (or individual segments), you’ll probably want to edit it. You might be able to get away with a cheaper MP3 editing tool, but I’ve been totally blown away by the simple, yet feature-rich, Mixcraft 4. While it is primarily a multi-track music mixing tool, it works just as well editing plain old podcasts. In fact, editing large audio files has zero latency - not true of other software editors I’ve used (but don’t take my word for it, give ‘em a try).

At the end of the day, you’ll have an edited MP3 file you want to share with the world. I then upload the files to my server and create the RSS formatted XML file (goosed with some specific iTunes tags). Finally, I registered the feed URL with FeedBurner.com so folks can subscribe to the feed with whatever podcatcher they support.

There’s a ton of nuances I’m leaving unsaid, but I hope it’s relatively helpful to see the tools I use. If you Google “how to podcast” you’ll find a zillion and one helpful tutorials, each with their own flavor.

Feel free to ping me if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions.

In addition to a spiffy new DataPortability Project logo, the fifth episode of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast explores data portability with Jonathan Vanasco. As the CEO of FindMeOn.com and founder of the Open SN interchange format, he brings an interesting historical perspective to the discussion.

His company was on the ground and selling the data portability vision in 2006, and met with significant resistence by the same players embracing the DataPortability Project today. He talks about the approach taken by the Open SN specification, touching on the unfortunate naming collision with OpenSocial (with which there is no relationship). Beyond the technical details how FindMeOn.com leverages the format (ie. key-signed trusted relationship sharing), the story itself is worth hearing from an early advocate.

Of note is Jonathan’s quote about the resistance he encountered back in 2006 and where we are today:

It was like this very weird cultural shift, where almost overnight people went from data portability is absolutely evil to we love data portability. Cultural shifts always happen, but I’m still absolutely amazed at how fast it happened. Usually people warm up to ideas like this over a year or two, but this was kind of like an overnight thing.

Update: Jonathan posted a follow-up to the interview expanding on the discussion. It’s a great augmentation to the conversation.

Leading into the discussion, we hit some top-level news:

1. DataPortability 6-Month Report
2. New DataPortability Logo
3. DataSharing Summit Recap
4. Web 2.0 Expo Update
5. Mahalo adds microformats
6. Forrester: Social network tools to drive $4.6B industry by 2013
7. NewsGator releases Inbox 3.0
8. MySpace Gallery Application is live

Episode 5: Listen | Comment
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Episode Length: 0:28:51

In the fourth espisode of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast, Phil Wolff, editor of Skype Journal, and Eran Hammer-Lahav, author of the XRDS-Simple specification join hosts Trent and Steve.

Leading the episode, we touch on a few news nuggets:

1. TechCrunch Donates $6,625 to the DataPortability Project
2. DataPortability Project Logo Competition Update
3. Will data portability be a battle like free software?

Flowing out of the news, Phil chats briefly about his discussions with folks about how data portability will impact advertising. Similar to VRM, as we learned in our previous discussion with Joe Andrieu, it seems clear that businesses and consumers will benefit from standardized portable data.

Working toward making data more portable, Phil also talks about the DataPortability “Do It Yourself” projects he and David Recordon bandied about at a recent meetup in San Francisco. While it’s still getting off the ground, he’s working to formalize a number of small projects that can easily be implemented.

Our feature discussion is with Eran Hammer-Lahav about the XRDS-Simple specification he recently authored. He leads us through the history from his time working on the oAuth specification, and how the simplification of XRDS is complementary to other easily-implemented discovery techniques.

Episode 4: Listen | Comment
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Episode Length: 0:51:37

Thanks to everyone spreading the word, we’re really starting to pick up some speed. In the third espisode of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast show, hosts Trent and Steve are joined by Christian Scholz (aka MrTopf) in a chat with Kevin Marks, Developer Advocate at Google’s OpenSocial project.

After the news, the conversation starts with presentations that Christian’s been giving on DataPortability at various meetups in Germany, London, and virtually as part of the Second Life OpenGrid Project.

From there we dive into the discussion with Kevin and what’s up in OpenSocial, and how developers can get on board. He also mentioned participating in small coding projects proposed by DataPortability Project members Phil Wolf and David Recordon (who we hope to have on soon to talk more about it). There’s also a brief discussion about Google’s OpenID support and how to test out the Social Graph API.

Leading the episode, a brief news update on:

1. RSA Conference 2008
2. TotSpot Embraces DataPortability
3. DataPortability Project Members and MyBlogLog FOAF

BTW - If you like this podcast, check out Christian’s TopfCast, too. He includes kewl tunes, for that full-bodied listening experience.

Episode 3: Listen | Comment
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Episode Length: 0:48:08