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I was dividing my attention between the Scrubs special on TV & Digg on my PC, when an article titled " Experts: Passwords May Not Be a Good Online Defense " caught my eye: well, couldn't agree more!:-) It turns out that the article is from the NY Times, and it's short & sweet hence there's no need for me to summarize it here: Mr. Stross manages to capture the problem pretty effectively, also thanks to some nice quotes from Kim . P.S.: I know, I know. I still owe you an RP post for completing the Zermatt intro series started with the STS and card issuance . Keep the faith, it's coming! ;-) Read More...
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I am now focusing exclusively on identity & services, true, but certain news about former interests of mine are just too good not to share. While evangelizing the web capabilities of WCF introduced in the framework 3.5, one of the most recurring questions was about hiding the svc extension for WCF services. That makes a lot of sense, since ideally a good RESTful URI (whatever that really means) should not give away the technology that is used to handle the resource and should not change when the underlying technology does change. Thanks to IIS7 architecture, it is very easy to write a URLrewrite module that does just that: if you recall the Mix session about MySpace's use of WCF in their REST API, you'll remember that they did demonstrate this (sample code here ). Now you don't need to write that module for the ground up anymore: we just shipped the technical preview of the "official" URLrewrite module for IIS7 . Give it a spin, and thanks to the IIS crew for listening to the REST community! Read More...
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Yesterday we finally had the session about the making of MySpace APIs . As you'll be able to see from the recording , it was a *great* session: extremely interesting and very informative. It had only one issue: Paul Walker , the architect behind the MySpace API efforts and the key person we worked with on the WCF components of the project, couldn't make it to the conference. Paul has a deep, deep understanding of the REST principles and was the one who envisioned how WCF could have been used and extended for meeting MySpace architectural needs. If you'll ever have a chance to attend a session from him or read anything he writes on this topic, I strongly recommend it. The session was opened by Aaron Sloman, who gave the business background. Back to the very first edition of Mix, MySpace demonstrated some Vista gadgets: the reaction it elicited from the audience was the request of opening the corresponding APIs. Well, just a couple of years later here we are, developer.myspace.com is up and running! Aaron then moved to give the list of requirements for the API of a juggernaut like MySpace, and hinted to the fact that the REST architectural principles and WCF were the solution they found fit for the task after much testing. The main technical delivery came from Haider Sabri , who was involved in the implementation of the project for the very beginning. I won't go too much on the details, since there is the recording of the session publicly available ; anyway, just for wetting your Read More...
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Few months ago I made a little tour of Europe , and (among various places I visited) I went to spent some quality time in Amsterdam. Here I had the pleasure of spending some time with Albert van den Broek , CGO of Figlo : Albert is an excellent host, and during a nice dinner at a typical Dutch restaurant he explained to me the vision behind one of their new products. I am not very deep in financial considerations, so I will probably explain this in the wrong way (for which I apologize in advance): in any case, you can always go to their website and take a look for yourself. The point is that personal finance is an incredibly important aspect of our lives, and yet a surprising amount of people (including me) knows nearly nothing about how it works (reminds me of the fact that I've learned the function of carbohydrates and proteins only when I was already at college. crazy!). This is bad, because without a sense of how you choices today affect your situation tomorrow it is very hard to get to your objectives. Their point is, it doesn't have to be like that! They believe that presenting the situation with the right tool, such as a streamlined process backed by the right UI metaphor, anybody can take informed decisions and make actual steps toward his wishes (early retirement, college funds, similar stuff). They also have a very catchy name for the procedure, HaWaNeDo (Have, Want, Need, Do), which always helps in end user products. The day after I met with part of their board and Read More...
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We just recently published a list of sessions for MIX08 . Among those, there is one that I hold especially dear: I had the luck to work with Paul, his team and the WCF team in the last months, specifically on how to leverage the web capabilities that WCF acquired in the version 3.5 of the framework. It was really a great experience! First, because I had a great time with the MySpace guys. Second, because it was the best way for me (fairly open minded, but still a WS-* veteran operating at WS-Trust level ) to approach the REST side of the house. The no-nonsense approach of Paul and his team, who wanted to use REST principles for getting the job done rather than for "religious" reasons, helped me to frame the principles behind REST and ROAs according to their actual usefulness. It basically helped me to cut to the chase, filtering out all the rhetoric (inevitable when things get polarized into camps). And you know what, I have to admit that I actually kind of like it :-) That's why I think that this session will be truly remarkable: you will see a paradigmatic application of REST design principles on a real world API, something so big that it needs to be well designed for working as expected. Can you find a better validation of the soundness of the REST principles? And of course, the fact that the web features of WCF supports all that is a source of huge pride for all the people that worked on it... Anyway: I won't give away any details here. My strong advice: if you go to Mix, Read More...
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On the Paris-Seattle flight, coming back after 2 weeks spent stuffing myself with all sorts of food with the excuse "after all, you can't find this in USA" :) Before hurling myself back in the vortex of daily work, and celebrate the end of the year with something crazy, I want to take some time writing down some hallucinatory (=vision without execution) thoughts about omnidirectional identities . Be warned, this may be just pointless rambling at this point. Few weeks ago I chatted about this in front of a microphone with John Udell , digressing along a crazy tangent instead of answering his questions about the book (I eventually came back to Earth and answered properly :)). I don't know if he'll deem those fragments publication worthy, but just in case I'll make a brain dump here. It's not that there's much more to do in this small seat anyway (just finished the latest Eco . He didn't mention underbite at all, I'm happy). Looking back at the activities related to identity in the past year, I am glad to report that amazing progress has been done. Something that makes 2007 very different from 2006 is the kind of work that was made: in 2007 the accent was on execution. The vision behind the metasystem is still being explored, sure, like Kim's series on linkage or the discussions about display token and first law demonstrate; and I feel that conjugating the metasystem and claims in enterprise environment is an area that still need focus (especially in fighting old forma mentis that Read More...
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