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Posts Tagged ‘Krikorian’

Tired of Logging In to Twitter? Seamless App Integration On the Way

It’s been just about a year now since Twitter started using OAuth as a solution for connecting with third-party applications, but to this day we still find situations where we are asked to enter our user name and password.

According to a blog post by a member of Twitter’s API/Platform team, we may not need to worry about this particular nuisance, and potential security hole, much longer.

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Raffi Krikorian, a self-professed “hacker, writer, and … tinkerer”, made some waves in the Twitter development arena late into last night with his blog post, which proposes a solution to a problem many developers have been keeping an eye on.

“We really want to get people to switch over and stop using Basic Authentication when talking to our API in a production manner,” he writes. “Why? Basic Authentication is, simply, horribly insecure.”

Here’s the problem, as Krikorian describes it:

You’re an OAuth enabled Twitter client, and you’ve already authorized your user. You user wants to use a media providing service like TwitPic. TwitPic, currently, asks for the username and password of your user so it can store the photo on behalf of the Twitter user. You don’t have that username and password, so how do you give the ability to TwitPic to verify the identity of your user?

Krikorian is proposing a solution he calls “OAuth identification delegation”, wherein the application your using, Tweetie in his example, passes along its OAuth authorization to TwitPic, which TwitPic can then use to verify its actions as authorized. Right now, using TwitPic requires you to enter your user name and password separately.

For now, he says the idea is still in development, writing “once I think we’ve come upon the best solution, I’ll write this up more formally, as well as port it to OAuth WRAP/2.0 (where Twitter is headed).”

Krikorian included a diagram of his solution and is soliciting feedback on his blog.

OAuth Identity Verification Delegation Example Workflow v0.2

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Clicker Media launches a programming guide for Internet TV

Video web site Clicker Media is formally launching its service today which gives online users a real TV Guide-style search engine for television content online. The goal is to give users access to a massive playlist of TV to watch on the web.

The Los Angeles-based company indexes all available video online, from Netflix movies TV shows to Amazon film downloads. There are more than 400,000 episodes indexed online, all available as legal content. It lets you discover what’s available to watch and where to view it on the web. The site draws from 1,200 sources and categorizes shows into 1,200 areas.

There are 30,000 movies available fro Netflix’s Instant Streaming service and Amazon’s Video on Demand service. It also catalogs more than 50,000 songs from 20,000 artists. If you want to share film lists or other info, you can do so via the site’s integration with Facebook Connect.

Users can use it much like Tivo for the Internet. They can queue shows to watch, get season passes, and get alerts when new episodes show up online. The company is headed by Jim Lanzone, former chief executive of Ask. He says that the idea is that there is so much available on the web now, you have to have an easy way to search it.

The service has been in private beta testing since mid-September. Fans can make their own comments and upload their own content. You can search for topics within a specific program. For instance, you can look for “Bill Gates” appearances on the Charlie Rose show. The index will also suggest shows based on what you’ve watched.

The company was founded in January and it raised $8 million in a first round from Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures. Blake Krikorian, founder of Sling Media, has joined the company’s board of directors. Rivals include Hulu.com and Blinkx.

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