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TIBCO + Silverlight May 1, 2008

Posted by James Webster in : web, finance , add a comment

TIBCO has put its support behind Microsoft’s Silverlight Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology, according to Infoworld (via TechMeme). Given that Reuters owned TIBCO in the past, and I presume still uses TIBCO technology extensively, I wonder if this means we might see a Silverlight-flavoured version of Reuters 3000 Xtra in the future?

Can OpenID solve the mobile web application login problem? February 25, 2008

Posted by James Webster in : web, mobile , add a comment

LinkedIn have announced LinkedIn Mobile (via TechMeme) available at http://m.linkedin.com. The ‘m.’ prefix has definitely become the defacto way to access mobile-specific versions of web applications; so much for the .mobi TLD then which is after all a pain to enter onto a phone keypad without the benefit of T9.

Anyway, having a mobile version of LinkedIn and Facebook and which-social-network-is-hot-this-month is all good but now I have the challenge of having to enter my username and password for the mobile version as well. See, since I use Johannes la Poutré’s Password Composer bookmarklet to generate a unique password based on a hash of the website’s domain and a strong password that never leaves my browser (see Jon Udell’s excellent screencast from 2005 on Simple Single Sign-On to understand more) I don’t really know what my password for LinkedIn/Facebook/etc is, at least not off the top of my head.

It has struck me that OpenID could provide a solution here. If my carrier offered an OpenID provider tied to my phone number I could authenticate to OpenID-compatible websites using my phone in hopefully a reasonably transparent fashion, once I had maybe used the main web interface of LinkedIn (or Facebook, etc, etc) to approve my OpenID on my mobile carrier’s provider.

OpenID has seen a growth in support from big players in the industry, with Google, VeriSign, IBM, Microsoft and Yahoo! all joining recently as corporate board members of the OpenID Foundation. Some of them have OpenID-access enabled to their web applications or OpenID-providers available as beta releases. Major mobile carriers are conspicuously absent however. To me, it seems like they missing a major opportunity to innovate.

Oh, and here’s a link to my LinkedIn profile :-).

ThoughtWorks in the Dopplr 100 November 8, 2007

Posted by James Webster in : web , add a comment

It is slightly old news but it appears that ThoughtWorks has been added to the Dopplr 100; hopefully those colleagues of mine who find themselves traveling frequently can make use of this service to bring more serendipity into their lives. More on the Dopplr 100 here and also the MBA 100.

What is Dopplr? In their own words…

How does Dopplr work? Dopplr lets you share your future travel plans with a group of trusted fellow travellers whom you have chosen. It also reminds you of friends and colleagues who live in the cities you’re planning to visit. For example, Dopplr might tell you that three of your trusted friends and colleagues will be in Barcelona when you are planning to be there.

Thanks for the invitation Dopplrs!