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Pulling personal data out of OpenSocial containers and into a standalone website

I’ve been struggling with the OpenSocial docs and various samples,
trying to find a way to pull my personal data out of my Orkut profile. First I tried out the OpenSocial Python Client library samples and the
Google Friend Connect Chow Down sample. I didn’t fully understand
what was going on, but I saw that I’d need a consumer key & secret.
(I just learned about GFC yesterday and am still trying to figure out
what it can and can’t do.)

I created my own gadget.xml, uploaded it to a server, and added it to
my Orkut sandbox profile page. I verified my ownership of gadget.xml
with Google’s “Gadget Ownership Verification” tool, at
https://www.google.com/gadgets/directory/verify. That gave me my
Orkut gadget consumer key and secret. Then, I discovered some interesting info here:
http://sites.google.com/site/oauthgoog/2leggedoauth/2opensocialrestapi
1. Orkut only supports 2-legged OAuth.
2. A 3rd party site containing no gadget needs to use 3-legged OAuth
to retrieve a user’s Orkut profile data.

What is 3-legged OAuth? For example: your website has a “Login with
Twitter” link that sends you to Twitter for approval, upon which
Twitter sends you back to your website with an access token. In contrast, a 2-legged OAuth example: your Orkut (or Hi5, Ning,
MySpace, whatever) gadget requests data from your own personal API
server, for use in the gadget itself. In this case, your gadget uses
a shared secret from the OpenSocial container to sign its requests.

I guess I have 3 options now:
1. Give in and have everything live inside of an Orkut gadget
2. Create an Orkut gadget that pushes my profile data to my server and
then sends me to my website
3. Switch to another OpenSocial container that supports 3-legged OAuth
(if any exist) or to another social media site that has it (Twitter?
maybe Facebook Connect?) To be continued…

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{Filename?} Price It By Phone, and the Twilio API

I won the Twilio+AppEngine contest with Price It By Phone, an app that lets you look up Amazon.com book prices by touch-tone phone.  Right now it’s up and running at http://price-it.appspot.com.

If you try it and run into problems, please let me know!

My interview with Twilio is here.  I like the Twilio API a lot.  It’s the easiest-to-use API imaginable.  You set up your Twilio phone number with a URL to post to.  Then, when you call the phone number, Twilio sends a POST request to that URL with the caller phone # and the digits entered as parameters. 

They have a Twilio-AppEngine sample among their demo apps.  This is awesome.  As you can see, I’m back to really liking GAE again, a lot.I’m putting a bit more time into Price-It and hoping to launch v2 soon.  Features that I want to put into it for sure:  support for ISBNs with Xs and any other chars that appear in them, user accounts, verifying your phone # before you’re allowed to see your book lookup history, being able to delete your history.  Possible features to be added: integration with Amazon wish list, FB connect. 

Also, I want to make it look web2.0 shiny, with cute illustrations and bright, designed gradients.  Yes, I know that the dark, trippy background doesn’t have mass appeal.  Sometimes I make art for the sake of making myself happy :)  View the page’s source code to see how it’s done. If you have other feature ideas, I’d be interested in hearing them. 

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The librarians & library students in Seattle know how to party. 3 librarian parties in 2 nights thx to my UW friend, so much fun

At brunch with @yush and @kintan. We’re all sitting quietly and tweeting right now.

Stop multitasking! It makes your brain messy: http://bit.ly/hgREG (via @NewPsychologist)

This looks cool. RT @juliangay: django-lean open src’d at http://bit.ly/MS57q #leanstartup #django

At a cafe in Seattle’s U-District drinking white coffee. It’s made with under-roasted beans, amazing stuff

For the record, I’m not taking new jobs. Freelance illustrators, designers, developers: DM me & I’ll refer current/potential clients to you.

Snuck into 2 closed art museums this afternoon. Got kicked out of only one

The OpenSocial v0.8 API is like spaghetti, all tangled and noodley. I’m pretty determined to push forward, though, mmm

3 online/social media accounts that I daydream about deleting but never do: LinkedIn, Facebook, Gmail.

OAK✈SEA for a week. Catching up with my Microsoft alum best friends, some of the coolest people I’ve ever met. #internz

Jeremiah Teipen & Benjamin S. Jones at Satori Gallery, New York

Earlier this week I had the chance to visit some of the galleries in Manhattan’s East Village/Lower East Side.  

My favorite by far was Gallery Satori.  They have a main space and a project space (i.e. a side mini-gallery).  The main space is currently filled with large mixed-media sculptures by Benjamin S. Jones.  I was instantly drawn to these pieces, which look like exploding, radiating architectural models.  One piece has graphic foam arrows flying out of it, and another is like a sea urchin of high-rise and smaller buildings.

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In their project space is a series of “found-media” videos by Jeremiah Teipen.  The videos are extravagant collages of bits and pieces of video and animation from the web.  Teppen’s biography refers to his pieces of “pure visual gluttony,” a description that I thought was vividly perfect.  He takes the most gluttonous parts of the web (e.g. MySpace comment “bling” graphics) and scrolls them across his video pieces.  It is a bit hard to describe.  The videos remind me of Jeff Koons’ work.  You really should see them while they’re up at Satori if you can.

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I like how Gallery Satori shows artwork that teeters on the edge of being too uncomfortably experimental.  In contrast, for the most part the other Lower East Side galleries were either too conservative or over the deep end of experimental.  I was also very impressed with the artwork’s presentation, in a way that I don’t know how to explain.  It just felt right.

 

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