Recently I’ve been spending a fair amount of my work time working on WebISO (Web Initial Sign-on) and portal integration, specifically Pubcookie, which we’ve adopted as part of the NMI R3 recommendations, and uPortal [#4 in InfoWorld’s Top 100 IT Projects of 2003] integration (my preferred portal framework).

Unfortunately, previous Pubcookie integration efforts have stalled out, buton the bright side, uPortal’s security framework looks pretty adaptable…

• uPortal Authentication Options: Design and Applicability [PPT]
• uPortal Security and CAS [PPT]
• Internet2/WebISO & Pubcookie: Efforts in Web Authentication [PPT]
• University of Bristol IS: Blackboard – The Options – CalPoly has developed a Blackboard Access Channel w/ full authentication; may be adaptable to Pubcookie (or via the CAS module)
• Bristol also has a great resource list of Portals and Portal Frameworks

Here’s a great quote:

Middleware is the intersection of what the Network Engineers and the Application Programmers don’t want to do.

Some great links on 0xDECAFBAD today, including Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog on Fresh Air.

I skipped out on last night’s EDGE (Electronic Digital Game Expo) on campus last night; they introduced a new video game minor at USC.

Hey, it looks like I’m the ‘Feed of the Day’ over at Feedster. Just goes to show that you don’t need things like ‘regular updates’ or ‘finished templates’ or ‘permalinks’ and ‘date stamps.’

My Treo 600 finally got in yesterday. It feels amazingly tiny (good in the hands) and the keyboard is squished, but fairly usable. More review stuff later. Interestingly enough, although it feels much smaller, it’s actually not too much smaller than my co-worker’s Treo 300. Here are the dimensions as compared to my Sidekick:

Kevin Werbach made some observations on the size in his recent article in The Feature: The Triumph of Good Enough.

Hmm, so this is pretty interesting behavior. Been noticing that AIM’s been giving me a system message that I’m signed on in different locations instead of kicking me off when I log in from multiple systems. It doesn’t have a jabber-like presence, but instead duplexes all incoming messages. Wackiness.

Ahh: AIM: Instant Message Routing

When you are signed in more than once, messages sent to you will be
delivered to all locations. You can control which locations will
receive messages by setting your Away Message.

When signed into multiple locations:

• Your messages will generally be delivered to all locations not set as Away (or locations that have gone Idle).
   
• If all locations are set Away, then messages will be delivered to all locations.

Please note, that you will only receive these notifications from the screen name AOL System Msg.

• A visual guide to navigating blog comments
• CVS Commit + Weblog = Changeblog – yeah, Brad has a point though; I actually had a conversation w/ him about how they did character-based diffing in LJ at last year’s SXSW. Note, that LJ also has per-post access restriction; interestingly enough, I’ve noticed a couple of people moving off of LJ despite its features. Part of the garden wall syndrome? Or just a desire to settle on one’s own patch of the noosphere?
• Shibboleth and InCommon: Making Secure Collaboration a Reality [PDF] – good summary presentation; mostly of my thoughts on federated delegation has been strongly informed by my participation in Internet2 [MACE/WebISO] and NMI discussion and initiatives; specific tech: Shib, SAML, XACML (implementation-wise, GPG + mod_pubsub may be more realistic for bubblegum+duct tape bootstrapping, personally, I’m not complete comfortable tossing my hat in w/ SourceID, but that may be a personal bias. All roads lead to Johannesburg…)
• VoodooPad gets an XML-RPC wiki API
• Porn Sites Hiding Behind Blogs
• Silence is golden – asymmetrical information and the browser war
• Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution – a great history
• SCO/B5 metaphor – wow, this pushes the geek limits to 11
• ACM Queue: Reading, Writing, and Code – couple thoughts on style; related to the larger issue of programming literacy right?
• An Overview of MXML, the Macromedia Flex Markup Language – watching XULs development with interest, be sure to follow along via XUL News Wire, Richmond Post when time allows
• Phuse – The PHP Unified Search Engine
• War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal
• Wesley Clark isn’t going to take shit from Fox News [12MiB WMV] – and Fox News can’t cut him off because he’s everything they pay lip service to. If there’s one good thing about Clark’s lack of previous political ties, and his background, it’s that it should really resonate w/ the Fox demographic. Will it help them realize how ‘no-spin’ Fox’s coverage really is? I dunno, maybe it doens’t need to.
• GOOGLEHOUSE – brilliant piece
• FCC OET Exhibits for 08FBW (Treo 600 CDMA), via TreoCentral forums

I trucked out to the desert over the weekend to shoot my last short for my 519 class. I put a few pics online. Man, I can’t believe it was raining in the Mojave on Saturday.

Was randomly clicking through the Blogger site (finding the date created link Andy sent me a while ago) and saw suggestions on what to do when your mom finds out about your blog (also, less tongue in cheeck, how not to get fired because of your blog) in the knowledge base.

Good suggestions, but it also highlights the need for more fine grained publishing control (Towards Semi-Permeable Blogging), and (ideally), a concurrent wide adoption of some sort of federated trust infrastructure [this could help to alleviate the comment spam problem. implemented properly, this could retain privacy fairly well, pseudonymity is all that’s required])

Sorry guys, I think I have downtown nerdville covered.