As I continue to dig out of my emails as well as messages on various sites, I’ve built up a list of various technology developments that have caught my interest.

http://openmicroblogger.com/

This is another player in the http://openmicroblogging.org/ space. (Note: As I write this post, the OpenMicroBlogging page simply says, “It works!” instead of pointing to the protocol definition that used to be up there.)

OpenMicroBlogger.com runs an instance of the software you can find on openmicroblogger.org which uses the OpenMicroBlogging.org protocol. Confusing? Yeah. I wished they had used different names the way Identi.ca and Laconi.ca did.

What is nice is that it supports federation, including interoperability with Laconi.ca

Other things that are nice is that it supports OpenID. Unfortunately, it didn’t like the delegation of my OpenID from Orient Lodge to my XRI based OpenID at 2idi.

What was nice is that when I set up a new account there, it set up a new OpenID account at e-cred.org. One the one hand, I would have much rather had my OpenID redirection work, but if that isn’t working, at least setting things up to go to a new OpenID server, instead of having a completely separate authentication system seemed good.

I haven’t looked closely at the e-cred.org server, but it looks nice and I’m wondering if it supports attribute exchange and if they might end up allowing custom attributes. As an example, I’ve been looking to see if we could come up with an OMBprofile attribute for OpenID. With that, and getting OMB sites to support the attribute, when you remotely subscribe to an OMB stream, you could simply use your OpenID profile making for one less URL to remember.

In terms of the federation, it seems to work okay with Identi.ca, but I had problems getting it to work with my Laconi.ba based server.

http://bridge.kshep.net

So, this federation stuff, enabling users of one microblogging site to follow users of other microblogging sites is pretty cool. But what if you use a legacy microblogging site, like Twitter that doesn’t support interoperability? Well, http://bridge.kshep.net provides a gateway between Twitter and Identi.ca. It would be nice if it provided a bridge between Twitter and any open microblogging site, whether those sites are laconi.ca instances or openmicroblogger.com instances. I’m sure we’ll get there.

I have not set up the bridge yet, because I’m concerned about feedback loops, or at least duplicate entries. I may get around to tweaking my network so I can plug in the bridge, but I may try to set up my own OpenMicroBlogger.org instance first.

http://rejaw.com

I’ve mentioned Rejaw before. However, yesterday, I had some good discussions there. It is still very early there, but its looks like it is about to jump the chasm from being just an innovators playpen to being an area for the early adopters. I think it may have blown past Kwippy.com, yet another microblogging site that hasn’t seemed to jump that chasm yet.

http://chi.mp

chi.mp is currently in alpha, and I haven’t gotten my invite yet. Besides having an interesting URL, it is focused on open standards, like OpenID, Oauth, Attribute Exchange and Atom. They are saying the right things. It will be interesting to see what they can deliver.

http://blip.fm

Also coming across my transom this week was an invitation to play with blip.fm. As best as I can tell, it is trying to play in the last.fm or Pandora space. Personally, I really like using the Pandora/last.fm mashup. It will be interesting to see how blip.fm fits into this landscape, and if any sort of interoperability emerges.

I’ll play with this a little bit more later.

http://xoost.com
Xoost is an interesting idea. Social searching. Do a search on Xoost. Find out what other people similar to you are searching on, shared interests, which pages they found most interesting, something like that.

It is in beta, by invitation. I’m not sure that there are enough innovators on the list yet to obtain critical mass and make the searches particularly interesting, but the idea is fascinating.

http://UrTurn.com

Other’s have encouraged me to check out URTurn.com. When I checked recently, I was told that it was down for repairs and upgrades. There slogan is that ‘Every Click Counts’. I’ll try to remember to check back.

Nurien

Okay, this will end off my list for today. Nurien is another virtual world system. It is supposed to have very good resolution and physics. I’ve seen a video, but that is about it. The video looked very impressive, so I look forward to a chance to explore that in more detail soon.

So, that pretty much catches me up on some of the new technology that has been catching my eye. What’s been catching yours?