Federated social networks

This post on O'Reilly has a link to Noserub, an open-source protocol for sychronizing data between different social networking sites. Potentially part of what I'm looking for, though it's a bit too early in the development process.

Facebook: analysis and defense

Thanks to this excellent post on EFF's Deeplinks blog, I can now point the few of you who are interested in the details at Jay Goldman's excellent analysis explaining how FB and their Beacon partners accomplish something that would be a cross-site scripting attack if they weren't ganging up on you to do it. It's done without cookies, by the way; the key part is javascript on the original page dynamically constructing an iframe that does the dirty work talks to Facebook.

So, if blocking cookies won't do it, how do you disable Beacon? The answer is in this blog post by Nate Weiner. Finally, here's CA Security Advisor to point out that Facebook gets the information about your third-party activity whether or not you opt out. Goldman's analysis makes that clear as well. Facebook, of course, says that 'If a Facebook user clicks "No, thanks" on the partner site notification, Facebook does not use the data and deletes it from its servers.'

Do you trust them?

Art for sale!

No, not here -- I just buy the stuff. Over here where vixyish is auctioning off two batches of drawings: Iron Doodler (where this cool rose icon came from) and storybook archetypes. And she has an Etsy Shop, too!

And while you're in a buying holiday mood, I have a few CDs to sell, too.

Say hi to the flower_cat

My darling flower_cat has a tendency to read my flist rather than her own, and she hardly ever posts, so she tends to be off peoples' radar somewhat. And she forgets how to add friends, so every so often I point her at my profile and walk her through adding a couple of people. We just did that tonight.

You're still more likely to get a phone call than a comment from her, though.