Eric Mill
Webfinger - Personal Web Discovery
This talk will introduce Webfinger, a radical protocol for user identity that Google turned on in February for everyone with a Gmail address, which is all of you. But even though Google is pushing it, Webfinger isn't owned by Google, and can and should be used by everyone. But not everyone yet has heard of Webfinger, or understands what it is.
Webfinger attaches identity to your email address, solving some important problems all at once. By attaching an OpenID, you can sign up or log in with your email instead of a URL, improving the user experience tremendously, and removing the need for websites to write the same user management logic over and over. By attaching your various social network profiles and blogs, you can get a complete picture of a person's output, all automatically.
This talk will go over some of Webfinger's potential, and point out how we can all start doing a lot less work as developers, and a lot more work at building an easier and more social Internet.
About Eric Mill:
Eric Mill is a developer for the Sunlight Foundation, an open government non-profit advocacy group and technical lab based in Washington, DC. Prior to that, he spent a couple years earning his chops at thoughtbot, an awesome Rails shop. He works primarily in Ruby and Android.
