For users and developers that care about opening up the social web, one of the key building blocks for establishing a durable and portable online identity is OpenID. Recently the excitement and adoption of OpenID has skyrocketed, with Yahoo! providing OpenIDs for their entire userbase, Google's Blogger both providing and consuming OpenIDs, and several large organizations joining the OpenID foundation. Coupled with the security and usability enhancements added to the OpenID 2.0 spec late last year, it seems that OpenID is really going mainstream.

With the great progress made on the technical (privacy and security) aspects of OpenID and the increased adoption by mass-consumer companies, the user experience of OpenID is increasingly a topic of focus. There's a user-education hurdle to get used to the idea of logging into a site using an account you already have elsewhere, and the experience of bouncing between sites and attaching an OpenID can be jarring. An exciting aspect of Yahoo's approach to OpenID was trying to push the technology itself "under the hood" so users just see a friendly "Sign in with your Yahoo! ID" button and are taken to a familiar Yahoo login page. Now a new startup called clickpass, which is launching today, is taking things even further with their magic one-click signin button that removes the back-and-forth dance entirely, and integrates with a number of popular OpenID providers and consumers--now including Plaxo.

When you go to sign into Plaxo, you'll now see the distinctive orange clickpass button under the "Other ways to sign in" section (alongside our other OpenID integration points). The first time you click it, it will take you to a setup screen on clickpass's site that asks you to log into Plaxo if you already have a Plaxo account, or if you're new to Plaxo, you can sign up for a Plaxo account using your clickpass OpenID (no need to create a separate Plaxo password). Thereafter, when you come to Plaxo and click on the clickpass button, you're immediately signed into Plaxo. That's it, just one click.

It's now definitely the quickest and easiest way to sign into Plaxo, especially when you're on a different computer that doesn't remember your saved passwords. And what's cool is that you can hook up clickpass to a bunch of the sites you use, so you just log into clickpass and get one-click access to all the sites you've attached. And that first-time merge/signup page you get when using a new site is always the same, since it's hosted by clickpass. So the idea is that users should quickly learn how to sign into any site that supports clickpass, since the button is recognizable, the user flow is always the same, and the whole process is designed by a company that's primary focus is OpenID usability. Hopefully this will also encourage more sites to start consuming OpenIDs, since now there's a stronger case to be made that it's something mainstream users can understand and benefit from. There's still more work to be done on OpenID technology and usability of course, but this is a major step forward.

Today marks a tremendously important milestone for believers of an Open Web. Yahoo! has announced it will provide OpenIDs for its nearly 250 Million users, meaning they will all be able to carry their digital identity with them in a secure way and use it to interact richly and securely with sites across the web. In parallel, Plaxo has also just released full support for consuming OpenID 2.0, which means among other things that all those Yahoo! users will be able to join Plaxo and use it to synchronize their data without having to create and manage yet-another-login-and-password. And of course so will the users of any other site that supports OpenID. That’s the great thing about open standards—the more people use them, the better they get.

Having a company as big and important as Yahoo! embrace a grass-roots, open-web standard like OpenID is a major accomplishment and validation. OpenID is now officially a mainstream technology, and the proof is that millions of users will now be able to take advantage of it, without ever knowing what OpenID is, how it works, or that they’re even using it. That’s because OpenID 2.0 (which was finalized late last year) includes a number of security and usability enhancements that will make it “just work” for mainstream users. In addition to the current “sign in with your OpenID” functionality on Plaxo, you will soon see a simple button that says “Sign in with your Yahoo! ID”. When you click this button, you’ll be taken to Yahoo!, where you sign in as you normally do, and you’ll be asked if you trust Plaxo to know who you are. Once you consent, you’ll be taken back to Plaxo, and presto! We create an account for you that’s tied to your Yahoo! account via OpenID. When you want to log into Plaxo, you log in via Yahoo, and Plaxo knows who you are and that you’re logged in, thanks to some cryptographic magic on the backend that you never have to worry about. All you know is “I use Yahoo, and now I can use it with Plaxo too.” That’s what it feels like when open social web technology really works.

And that’s just the start. The reason people are excited about OpenID—and the reason Yahoo! has chosen to embrace it—goes far beyond the convenience of single sign-on. The real power of OpenID is that it’s a key building block for giving users a durable and meaningful digital identity that they can use across the entire web. In an OpenID world, the services you use will really know who you are (because you can prove it with OpenID), and they’ll be able to talk to each other in a rich and secure manner (because you are now the same person to both sites). So, you’ll be able to consolidate your online identity (to the extent you want to, of course) and present a unified view of who you really are. And your friends will do the same. So when we talk about an “open social web” where you can stay in touch with the people you care about even though you’re all using different tools and services, this is what we mean. And this is how it’s going to happen. And today it just got real. If you can’t tell, we’re pretty excited.

=joseph.smarr, chief platform architect

I just got back from Google's Campfire One event, where they officially launched the OpenSocial project. As long-time advocates of the Open Social Web, we're thrilled that Google is leading this initiative, and even more thrilled that it's been received so positively! This is a huge deal, and it's perfectly aligned with our vision of empowering users to regain control of their social data across all the tools they use.

To keep the momentum going, we've been working hard to implement the OpenSocial APIs in Plaxo Pulse, and in fact we've just released it into production, making it the first live OpenSocial implementation in the wild. So if you'd like to play around with open social gadgets or develop one yourself, there's no need to wait any longer!

Now, if you've looked closely at the details of OpenSocial, you know it's still a work in progress. The APIs are only at version 0.5 and they're still changing almost daily. So expect a bit of a bumpy road for the next few weeks, and be aware that things may break along the way. But we'll do our best to keep things running smoothly and keep up with the changes as the specs continue to develop. [One quick note: for now we're only allowing specific apps from known developers that we've white-listed to run in Pulse. Email us at OpenSocial@plaxo.com if you want to get your app white-listed, and as the APIs and security models get more fleshed out, we'll ease off these temporary restrictions.]

We're releasing support for OpenSocial now because we want to make sure that everyone who's getting excited about it has a place they can channel their energy and get things running sooner. To that end, we've done our best to comprehensively support the existing OpenSocial APIs and integrate them richly within the Pulse experience. Specifically:

• users can add now add gadgets to their Pulse profiles (click on My Profile at the top of Pulse and then Applications on the left side)
• each gadget also has a full canvas page inside Pulse
• we support complete profile and contact info for the profile and friends-list APIs
• we support storing gadget prefs via the people data APIs
• gadgets can create activity streams and publish activity data, which will show up in the normal Pulse stream (alongside the existing feeds in pulse) with rich rendering support
• each activity can be commented on like normal feed items in Pulse

In addition, we've built OpenSocial gadget support into our new Dynamic Profiles feature, which means just as you can now show a separate profile (photo, bio, contact info, interests, etc.) to your business contacts and your friends, you can also add gadgets separately to your professional and personal profiles, and also control which sets of contacts see the activity streams from those gadgets. So if you just want to emote with your friends and not your business colleagues, now you can!

In case you can't tell, we're really excited to see the social web continuing to open up, and you can bet that we'll continue to push for even greater control, portability, and integration across all the sites and services you use. This is a major step forward, and there is plenty more to look forward to soon!

PS: To celebrate the launch of OpenSocial in Plaxo Pulse and to demo it to anyone that's interested, we're having an OpenSocial "Open Social" at Plaxo on Friday afternoon at 4pm in our office, and everyone's invited. Get all the details on upcoming (and don't forget to add the upcoming feed to your pulse stream so your friends can see you're coming! ;)).

--Joseph Smarr, Chief Platform Architect

A couple of us from Plaxo went to Dojo Developer Day #2 (or 3D2, as the locals called it) this past weekend, hosted at AOL's mountain view campus. We've been making extensive use of Dojo in some of our new soon-to-be-released web development, and it's been really valuable.

If you haven't heard of dojo, it's a major open-source project to build high-quality reusable JavaScript code that solves many of the common problems you face when building an Ajax app (working across browsers, separating your code into modules, making API calls, etc.) and also empowers you to build cooler apps fastert (animation, drag-n-drop, widgets, etc.).

In addition to the general discussion about the future of dojo, highlights for us included chatting with the lfx-animation authors (which we've been really stressing in some of our work), Alex Russell's talk about improving performance (something we're focused heavily on right now), and some cool dojo-enabled show-and-tell projects, including a sweet real-estate search site that makes me want to buy a house in Colorado. :)

It's great to see the energy and sense of community behind Dojo, and we're glad to be along for the ride!

Ring ring....ring ring...Hello? Hi it's the moving truck man, we're going to show up 3 days early...whuh-oh. We cut our trip short in Vegas and booked it to San Diego. Massive thunderstorms blocked the way but we didn't let that get in the way of unloading our small kitchen appliances on time. We chose the Ramada Inn Limited based on their website which CLEARLY shows that Shamu (who seems to live forever and travel from SeaWorld to SeaWorld whenever I happen to be there) and his orca whale buddies would be joining us. No whales. Even Silent Chris' best orca whale mating call couldn't draw them out. We found solace at the Wendy's across the street that could be easily accessed by running across 4 lanes of traffic in the middle of the night. Tomorrow we wake up early and head to the San Diego Zoo before driving 8 or so hours to our home in Mountain View.

-- Pete Curley, Product Manager

At my parent's home, you can always find a stack of calling cards next to the phone in the kitchen. It's the cheapest way for them to keep in touch with their family in Vietnam. But calling cards have always been such a hassle. Minutes run out, some cards don't work, and the rates really aren't all that cheap. My mom was paying about $0.27/minute to call her niece in Vietnam with a calling card. Over the weekend, though, my sister and I got my mom to try her first international call via Plaxo Click to Call. She converted solely on the cost. At $0.16/min., she talked to her niece for longer and with no interruptions from minutes running out on her calling card. And she did it all from the convenience of her landline phone.

You, dear reader, can also find the Plaxo Click to Call button in your address book. It's the easiest way to make inexpensive phone calls. By easy, I mean no headsets, no downloads, and no microphones. Just Plaxo, you, and your phone. And by inexpensive, I mean less than $0.0212/min to China, $0.0196/min to Germany, and only $.001/min in the US. You can check out the rest of the rates here. By partnering with Jajah, our members get the additional benefit of not having to remember or type in any phone numbers, and they always know the number they're calling is up-to-date with Plaxo's smart address book.

Here's how you can initiate a call:

Jajah in Outlook	Jajah in Plaxo Online

1. Go to your Plaxo Online address book or get the latest Plaxo plug-in for Outlook to make calls from your Outlook address book. (Plans are in the works to integrate with Outlook Express and our other clients too.)
2. Decide who you want to call. Click on the purple button. (See picture above).
3. Plaxo transfers the numbers to Jajah's website.
4. Hit the green "Place Call" button on Jajah's website.

THEN...


5. Your phone rings.


6. Your contact's phone rings.


7. And you can start chatting.

Mom doesn't always "get" what I do at Plaxo, but now she sort of gets it and she likes it. Now, when she can't get in touch with me on the weekends, she can call Vietnam :)

-- Janice (Hi, Mom!) Ta, Product Manager

OSCON has grown up from its humble beginnings as a conference for the hackers in the Perl language over a decade ago to the premiere conference on open source software and practices. As conference organizer, Nathan Torkington, likes to put it: “In Babylon 5 terms, open source is our last best hope for software.”

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that at Plaxo, open source is our lifeblood. Our infrastructure is built on Linux, MySQL, and hundreds of other open source tools and libraries. Ecards uses the open-source LAMP stack in order to speed development, Thunderbird was one of our first supported clients and available under an open-source and public license, The Plaxo Open API enables the open-source practice of “mash-ups” to allow you to move your data outside our “information silo”, When people see how our Address Book Widget puts that mash-up power in the hands of anyone, they think there must be a catch. The only catch here is the principle stated in our privacy policy: “Your information is yours (not ours).”—an inherently “open-source” idea.

It is because we build on it (operations and eCards), provide it in code (Thunderbird client), and live its principles (Open API and widget), that it makes sense that we would want to participate more in the community. Luckily at this year’s OSCON, we have a chance to do so in the form of three talks.

• I’m giving a talk “Underpants Gnomes eCards” in the PHP track to explain from a “developer in the trenches” perspective how a revenue product was created using LAMP. Hopefully it will be a little fun to see the things we got right, as well as some of the missteps we made along the way.


• Joseph, who wrote the Address Book Widget, will explain all the interesting problems he ran into when creating Web 2.0 “mash-up” in his “Cross-site Ajax” talk.


• Finally, I put a talk about some of the practical Ajax design patterns we use here at Plaxo in a “0-60 Ajax” talk.

One of the coolest aspects of Plaxo is that your address book is self-updating. When Plaxo members in your address book change their contact information, it also gets automatically updated in your address book. Vice versa, when you change your contact info on Plaxo, people who have you in their address book can get your latest info. The importance and value of this feature is increasing rapidly as the Plaxo network continues to grow and the percentage of Plaxo members in your address book continues to rise.

Today we are enhancing this core feature by giving Plaxo members greater control over how they notify others and receive notification of such changes.

Receiving Member-to-Member Notifications

New choices, now available from your communication preferences, include:

• Daily or weekly digest. Instead of getting individual member-to-member e-mail notifications each time someone changes their contact info, you can choose to get a single weekly message.
• Silent update. You have the option to suppress member-to-member notification e-mails globally, or for specific individuals in your address book.

Communicating Your Own Changes

When you’re updating your own contact information online you also have a new “silent mode” option, which still automatically updates Plaxo members who have permission to see your contact info, but withholds sending them an e-mail notification. This option is particularly useful when making small changes to your contact info.

As always, you continue to have control over who gets your home or work contact info via your sharing options .

We hope these changes improve the Plaxo experience even more and as always, we want to hear what you think.

--Dassi Shusterman, Plaxo Product Manager

In case you haven’t heard yet, the new Plaxo-enabled version of AIM (called “Triton”) has now been officially released to the public. Thanks to everyone that participated in the beta program. We encourage everyone to download Triton and let us know what you think!

The Triton release is a really big deal for Plaxo. It’s by far the largest and deepest partner-integration we’ve ever done, and it’s going to result in (among other things) a big increase in the number of Plaxo members. This is great news for everyone that uses Plaxo, because it means you’ll be able to automatically stay in touch with more and more of your friends and colleagues. To make it even easier, you can now get connected with fellow Plaxo members in your address book if you know their e-mail address or AIM Screen Name (previously you could only get connected by e-mail address). So there will be more people to connect with, more ways to get connected, and more places where your contact information follows you around and is always up-to-date.

Plaxo-enabling AIM is also a great step forward in our goal of giving users access to their data in whatever application they use. Just like our IE toolbar and Thunderbird toolbar, the new AIM provides another group of users with the ability to build and maintain a universal address book where they need it most, and it extends the reach and value of everyone that uses Plaxo as part of another app. And just like with all our toolbars, users of the new AIM also get web access to their contacts via Plaxo Online, so you can always look up someone’s info while you’re on the go.

Here are some of the features you’ll notice when you download Triton:

• Triton setup wizard. You can create work and home cards to share with your contacts (including our new, more powerful sharing options), build a universal address book by importing your existing contacts from Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail, and Yahoo!, and build your Buddy List by finding all your contacts that have an AIM Screen Name. If you’re already a Plaxo member, you can just attach Triton to your existing account, and it will sync your Plaxo address book with Triton.
• Build your Buddy List. This is a really useful feature, especially for people that maintain an address book outside of AIM. Plaxo will look at all the contacts in your address book that have Screen Names (either that you’ve entered or that you’ve received from fellow Plaxo members) and we’ll also look up all AIM members whose Screen Name is linked to an e-mail in your address book. You’ll be surprised how many people you know are on AIM but that you didn’t have in your Buddy List! You can then choose which of those contacts you want to add to your AIM Buddy List. If you’re an existing Plaxo member, you can still run the build Buddy List wizard by launching it from the Edit menu (after you’ve successfully synced your address book the first time).
• Integrated Triton UI. Once you get up and running with Triton, you’ll notice that in addition to your Buddy List, you also have an “Addresses” tab that reveals your Plaxo-enabled address book. Here you can look up extra contact info for your buddies and even choose what info you want to share with them. You’ll also notice the familiar Plaxo icons in the address list for contacts that are also using Plaxo or that you’ve sent an update request to. You can also edit your Plaxo cards from within Triton by going to Edit → Edit My Contact Info.
• AIM enhancements for Outlook. In addition to the new AIM itself, Triton comes with an optional update to the Plaxo Toolbar for Outlook and Outlook Express. In addition to keeping your Outlook and AIM address books in sync, the primary benefit you’ll notice is AIM presence inside Outlook. Click on the AIM status icon next to the From: in any e-mail you receive and you can IM the person, look up their contact info, and more.
• AIM enhancements for Plaxo Online. We’ve also added several AIM-friendly features to our online address book. First off, you can now sign in using your AIM Screen Name, as well as any of your e-mail addresses. Of course, you first have to add your Screen Name to your Plaxo cards (for Triton users, this should happen automatically).
• AIM Mail and AOL Mail. AIM Mail is the new free e-mail service available to all AIM users. When you link you Plaxo account to Triton you Plaxo address book is synced with your AIM Mail or AOL Mail address book. If you use Plaxo with Outlook, Outlook Express, or Thunderbird changes you make in those address books and synced with your AIM mail or AOL mail address book; one Universal Address Book!

We hope everyone will find the Plaxo integration in the new AIM to be useful and fun. As you'll see, Triton greatly expands the number of ways you can stay in contact with your friends and colleagues (im, email, voice, video, etc.) and Plaxo provides you with the contact info you need to take advantage of these new features.

As usual, send us feedback and stay tuned for more to come!

Thanks,
The Plaxo Team

We've been hard at work improving and extending the Plaxo service and we recently released new versions of both our toolbar for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express as well as our web version, Plaxo Online.

In the latest toolbar, we've rehauled the internals to dramatically increase performance and stability. We also added "find as you type" (ala Firefox) to the Update Contacts Wizard. Everyone should upgrade to this version when they get a chance.

In Plaxo Online, we've fixed a number of bugs and improved performance as well. We've also added several new features, some of which we recently announced in our Plaxo Beta Program:

• Birthday reminders - all new members will now receive reminder e-mails a week before anyone in their address book has a birthday coming up. You can click send a free e-card, buy a printed birthday card, or send flowers or gifts through our partners, including Barnes & Noble, RedEnvelope. Best of all, Plaxo can pre-fill the billing and shipping information from your address book (with your permission) so that you don't have to type it in yourself. You can turn off birthday reminders for individuals or altogether—as usual, you are in complete control. Existing users that want to enable birthday reminders should visit their Account Settings and check "E-mail Birthday Reminders" under the notification preferences section.
• Send-to-phone - all members can now use Plaxo Online to send address book entries to their mobile phone without any extra software, cables, or syncing. Simply click "send to phone" next to a contact and it will be sent wirelessly to your phone, where you can accept it and add it to your phone's address book.
• Holiday list maker - If you're planning to send gifts or cards this holiday season, Plaxo can help you build up your holiday recipient list and make sure you have the information you need. Choose people from your address book and we'll list them for you with their mailing addresses. You can edit the addresses yourself or ask the people on your list for an update. Once your list is ready, you can print it as a handy reference. Even better, you can send printed holiday cards to the people on your list, and Plaxo will fill in the addresses so you don't have to write out all the envelopes. You can make your holiday list now or look for the new "Holiday list" button in your Plaxo Online contact list.
• And more - don't forget to check out our new Duplicate Contact Remover and Plaxo Mobile Access, both available inside the Plaxo Beta Program.
  

We hope you enjoy the new features, as well as the increases in reliability and performance. Many of the features we added and bugs we fixed came from user feedback, which we always appreciate. Please continue to let us know if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions!

Thanks,
The Plaxo Team

We're pleased to announce the new Plaxo Beta Program.

- Try new Plaxo products and services before they're released to the general public.
- Help improve Plaxo by sharing observations and frank feedback with Plaxo engineers.

If you are interested, visit http://www.plaxo.com/beta to learn more and sign up for free.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This BETA release includes several new features and services:

- Duplicate contact remover -- remove dups
- Birthday reminders -- makes it easy to send birthday cards and gifts
- Mobile web access -- WAP access to your contacts and calendar
- Send-to-phone -- send phone numbers to your cell phone

Most of these will become paid services, but are free during the beta period.

NOTE: Remember http://www.plaxo.com/beta and use this to activate each new feature.

Send bugs and feedback to betasupport@plaxo.com.

--------------------
Rikk Carey
EVP Engineering & Operations
Plaxo, Inc.

We just released some new features for Plaxo Online that you might want to check out:

• New: Automatically import your Yahoo! Address Book - now you can automatically import your Yahoo! Address Book into Plaxo simply by entering your Yahoo! ID and password. You can find Yahoo! Auto Import during Plaxo Online registration or by clicking "Import" in the top-right of contacts.
• New: Folder Manager - allows you to rename and delete your Plaxo Online folders. Lots of our users asked for greater control of their folders, particularly when they're using Plaxo across multiple computers. To access the folder manager, select "manage folders" from the folder pull-down menu in contacts, or click "manage your folders" in the upper-right of calendar, tasks, or notes.
• New: Card Sharing Manager - this lets you see everyone that you've shared your private cards with and lets you easily grant and revoke permissions. It provides a nice snapshot of your connected Plaxo network.
• Improved: Account Settings - we've simplified and slightly reorganized the account settings page to make it more powerful and intuitive. There's a new "Your E-mail Addresses" section that shows you all the e-mail addresses you're using with Plaxo and makes it easy to edit or delete them and to change your primary e-mail address.

Stay tuned for more coming soon, and as always, let us know if you have any problems or suggestions.

Thanks,
The Plaxo Team

We have just released some updates to the Plaxo Web site. Most of the changes are in preparation for the new Outlook/Outlook Express plugin that will be coming out soon, but there are also some new features we wanted to tell you about:

• You can now manually update any contact to be in the "Replied" state by using the Web site.
• You can now send update requests from any of your e-mail addresses (coming soon to the Oulook/OE version as well)
• New "How to Reinstall Guide" on Help Center
• Importing your address book on the Web site now works with the MAC Palm TSV file format
• Improved the lost password and lost security answer pages
• New About Customer Care page
• You can now select a contiguous block of contacts in the "grid view" of the Web address book by checking the first contact and then holding Shift and clicking the last contact
• Added ability to rename contact folders on the Web site (look for "Rename Folder" at the bottom-right of the Web address book)
• Several minor bug fixes

If you haven't checked out the Web version of Plaxo yet, go to www.plaxo.com and click "Sign In" at the upper-right of the page. If you don't have an account with Plaxo yet, you'll need to register for one first. The Web site can be used in conjunction with the Outlook/OE version of Plaxo or you can sign up as a Web-only user. Please post comments if you experience any problems (or if these changes make your life better).

Thanks,
The Plaxo Team