I received via the Issue Tracker for pytwerp 3 bug reports but also 3 patches from Decklin Foster who is using Twerp enough to start noticing bugs :)

Woo! Go Open Source!

Anywho, because the patches were mostly one-liners and fixed bugs, I applied them and rolled out version 0.2 which can be downloaded from either the pytwerp code.google site or from my code library page for Twerp.

Decklin and I are comparing notes and swapping patches on some other changes to Twerp, so more changes will be coming soon. I offered to add him to the project so look for that to happen.\

Listening to the various conversations people have been having about Social Networking sites and OpenID reminds me of the older TV commercial where two people walking, one with peanut butter and the other with chocolate, collide and the chocolate person finds their bar stuck into the peanut butter.

Anywho, you get the idea I hope – this is what I think of Open ID + Social Networks. The combination of the two is an improvement that allows growth for both.

Dave Cohen back in May had this to say:

But as these social networks proliferate, one thing that would be incredibly helpful would be a “write once, use many” centralized user profile. I would love to see OpenID go in this direction (or someone leveraging OpenID) by allowing users to create their base profile in one place rather than having to constantly enter it into every network they want to check out.

and Simon Willison calls this out in one of his Six cool things you can build with OpenID post:

Decentralised social networks

The problem with social networks is that you end up with profiles scattered across multiple different sites, and friend relationships that are duplicated in multiple places. The globally unique identifier offered by OpenID offers the basis for a decentralised social network, with profiles tied together across multiple sites and relationships easily portable between services.

Hopefully the above ideas explain why I am personally excited about OpenID, and why I’m dedicating so much time to encouraging its adoption. The more people there are that understand and use OpenID, the more interesting applications we can build with it.

Because all Social Networks are so web-centric and all of them have the same identity issues I don’t doubt the smart ones will be embracing OpenID as a way to enable cross-domain conversations. I just hope they all don’t sit behind their data walls hoarding information — kinda how Facebook is acting currently.

If you are curious about OpenID a great site to start with is claimID. They have an amazingly easy interface and are staying on top of all of the enhancements that are happening in the OpenID realm.

Back on the 13th I posted about some work I had done to figure out how the Pownce API works, this was all part of a Python module I was working on and, at the time, I didn’t want to post the code because, after all, the API was still hidden.

Well, I probably should have. :)

Later in the week I heard on Pownce about a Python library being worked on by Clint and when I read his post I thought immediately that we should probably get together and compare notes. Later Phillipe also sent some emails and then Clint sent some and pretty soon we had a huge CC list running and it started getting really complicated. :)

So much activity started happening amongst a crowd of interested API coders that I think the Pownce folks realized that if they didn’t start putting some “official” markings we were going to just run with it.

So by the end of yesterday a new google group was formed, PownceAPI, and after some conversations the decision was made to scrap our individual code.google sites and create a common PownceAPI code.google site and have sections for each language module.

All this in a matter of days – talk about Internet Time! Hmm, I’m going to need a new category now.

via anarchaia.org:

#ruby-lang
16:11 <evilchelu> there’s sh on windows
16:11 <evilchelu> even bash
16:12 <chris2> strap-on dildos exist as well. so what?

Being the always curious type, I couldn’t wait for the Pownce folks to release the API officially so with some cluesticks from some of the fellow ops at irc.wyldryde.org we narrowed down the nasty little details on the auth scheme used by Pownce :)

For a while we were just plain stuck until I went back and looked over my notes from the earlier sessions and then it clicked. It’s a slightly mangled version of WSSE and with some unusual url escapes. Probably why it’s still private :)

Now I’m working on a Python library for it – don’t really want to go too public with it, after all Pownce is still Alpha. Currently you can fetch your feed items, get the sets and friends list and also post Messages and Events.

stay tuned for more