Skiff Profiles

[Thomas Parslow]

Hello SkiffHackers!

So this evening I decided to actually get the Skiff Profiles thing I
started at Skiff Hack working.

http://skiffprofile.herokuapp.com/

Please do give it a try and send me any feedback! It's very basic at
the moment but it works.

The profile fields are in no way set in stone, they're just the ones I
thought of. So let me know what you think should be in a Skiff
Profile!

For integration with other apps every profile is available as a JSON
document, just stick .json on the end:

http://skiffprofile.herokuapp.com/profile/f54f1980fe7515d4924dff9287b7b83b.json

The id used is an MD5 hash of the user's email address. You can also
lookup profiles via the actual email address:

http://skiffprofile.herokuapp.com/profile/t...@almostobsolete.json

This should allow any app that uses Browser ID for login (and thus has
the user's email address) to grab Skiff Profile data for that person.

JSONP is also supported so you can use it from client-side Javascript:

http://skiffprofile.herokuapp.com/profile/t...@almostobsolete.json?callback=mycallback

While you can always lookup a profile by email address you can't get
an email address from a profile unless you're logged in. Does this
seem reasonable? Or should it always show the email/never show the
email?

I'm hoping to get a bit of feedback from you guys on the Skiff Hack
list then I'll send it to the Skiff Mates list and see if people want
to actually use it!

Regards,

Tom

--

Thomas Parslow
Freelance Developer
Django, Python, Javascript and more!

http://almostobsolete.net
+44 (0) 7951261227
@almostobsolete

[Jonathan Markwell]

Very cool Tom!

Love the simplicity and the APIs.

Once, you're ready to go live I'll put a links with reminders to
complete / update it in all our automated signup / billing emails.

Might need to add in app instructions / link to gravatar, last time I
checked only ~20% of Skiff Mates had a profile there.

Best,

Jon

--
Jonathan Markwell

Shipping Web Applications - http://inuda.com
Making Stuff Happen - http://inuda.org

mob: +44 (0)7766 021 485 | tel: +44 (0)1273 252 191
skype: jlmarkwell | twitter: http://twitter.com/jot

[Miles Cheverton]

Hullo Tom - tested & seems to work all great, forgive the copy and paste nature of my info, stole straight from my Linked-In profile :)

Probably a little far down the line now but I'd be interested to know why you chose Browser ID for the auth rather than say Twitter with a fallback to FB & OpenID? Not that you necessarily made a bad choice it's just that I'm working on something similar with a client at the moment.

Can these IDs be rolled into booking meeting rooms & managing our accounts with The Skiff? multiple IDs is always a massive pain in the bum to keep up to date!

Fields wise - should displaying the email address publicly be an option? Maybe make the other fields optional to display publicly?

Can we add Linked-In profiles?

Can we add links for personal as well as business sites?

Can we alter the URL of the profile to be more friendly? Does that matter?

If you enter your own URL without HTTP, the link fails. I'd also open both the URL and Twitter in a new window, but thats just me.

Cheers & thanks!
Miles

[Steve Purkiss]

*coughs* you can log in with a range of different IDs on
http://open4.org, including linkedin. And although it isn't pretty at
the moment it'll pull in your linkedin profile, as per:

http://open4.org/member/steve-purkiss

I'm building open4.org not just for theskiff and as people were
working on other efforts I didn't mention, but seen as you did I did.

I'm sure some more lean code could be made though to do what you want ;)

s

--
Steve Purkiss

http://purkiss.com

[Thomas Parslow]

Thanks for the feedback guys!

I've added some instructions about Gravatar to the edit profile
screen. It does fall back to Twitter profile images if no Gravatar
image is available.

I'll be adding an API soon to get a full list of profiles. I forgot to
mention before but the code is up here:

https://github.com/skiffhack/Skiff-Profiles

I've also added a LinkedIn url field to the profile and I've linkified
the free-text fields (so you can put urls in and they'll get turned
into links).

Nicer URLS would be nice, I'll try and get those added soon. Right now
it's using a md5 hash of the email address which is what the API uses
(so that other services can retrieve profile info without revealing
email addresses).

I think making show-email optional is a good idea. Until then I've
hidden the email for all users.

I've also added some extra validation on the twitter and link url fields.

The reason I chose BrowserID is mainly to allow interoperability
between different Skiff apps. If we all agree to use BrowserID then
you can use the same login for all Skiff apps that get written AND
they will all identify the user by email address. This will allow any
app to, for example, query profile information for the user that just
logged in. I'm hoping in this way we can create a set of loosely
couples applications that never the less all work together for the
users, that way anyone can just jump in and write something if there's
an area they feel is being under served.

I'm really hoping we can share this profile information with the other
apps as they come online, so meeting room bookings and skiff
membership all run of the same sign in and share the same profile
data. I'm also hoping that other apps will provide their public data
via an API keyed on email address or the md5 of the lower case email
so that other apps can consume that data.

Tom

--

Thomas Parslow
Freelance Developer
Django, Python, Javascript and more!

http://almostobsolete.net
+44 (0) 7951261227
@almostobsolete

[Thomas Parslow]

For Richard and anyone else who's interested, there's not a JSON
version of the profile list:

http://skiffprofile.herokuapp.com/profile.json

Tom

--

Thomas Parslow
Freelance Developer
Django, Python, Javascript and more!

http://almostobsolete.net
+44 (0) 7951261227
@almostobsolete

[Richard Dallaway]

Fantastic - thank you.

--
http://richard.dallaway.com

> > > I'm building open4.org (http://open4.org) not just for theskiff and as people were

[Simon Elliott]

+1 for BrowserID, it's something that needs our support and the only
way to do that is to *only* accept that login mechanism. Facebook
should not control the logins to most of the Internet.

http://blog.theopenphotoproject.org/post/13914931003/the-internet-needs-browserid-a-plea-to-developers

On Feb 5, 11:15 pm, Thomas Parslow <t...@almostobsolete.net> wrote:
> Hello SkiffHackers!
>
> So this evening I decided to actually get the Skiff Profiles thing I
> started at Skiff Hack working.
>
> http://skiffprofile.herokuapp.com/
>
> Please do give it a try and send me any feedback! It's very basic at
> the moment but it works.
>
> The profile fields are in no way set in stone, they're just the ones I
> thought of. So let me know what you think should be in a Skiff
> Profile!
>
> For integration with other apps every profile is available as a JSON
> document, just stick .json on the end:
>

> http://skiffprofile.herokuapp.com/profile/f54f1980fe7515d4924dff9287b...

>
> The id used is an MD5 hash of the user's email address. You can also
> lookup profiles via the actual email address:
>

> http://skiffprofile.herokuapp.com/profile/...@almostobsolete.json

>
> This should allow any app that uses Browser ID for login (and thus has
> the user's email address) to grab Skiff Profile data for that person.
>
> JSONP is also supported so you can use it from client-side Javascript:
>

> http://skiffprofile.herokuapp.com/profile/...@almostobsolete.json?callback=mycallback

[Thomas Parslow]

Simon and me have been working on Skiff Profiles tonight and it now
reports presence:

http://skiffprofile.herokuapp.com/

It should display a little green marker against anyone currently at
the Skiff. It should also show how long since last seen in each
profile view. Here's mine:

http://skiffprofile.herokuapp.com/profile/f54f1980fe7515d4924dff9287b7b83b.html

It will detect whether you are at The Skiff or not based on your
laptop's MAC address.

There's an opt-in to allow this tracking right now, it's under "Edit
Profile". But I've helpfully automatically opted-in my helpful guinea
pigs :)

I think it's getting ready to launch to the rest of The Skiff. Jon,
any chance of having profiles.theskiff.org point to it?

Regards,

Tom

--

Thomas Parslow
Freelance Developer
Django, Python, Javascript and more!

http://almostobsolete.net
+44 (0) 7951261227
@almostobsolete

[Adhip Gupta]

Looks great! How about we make this the main site itself and have a welcome page that acts as the dashboard itself? It may show a little different data depending on whether you are logged in or not.

I can integrate the work that I've done to flesh this out on Friday if it sounds good.

[Thomas Parslow]

Sounds great! Looking forward to seeing it!

--

Thomas Parslow
Freelance Developer
Django, Python, Javascript and more!

http://almostobsolete.net
+44 (0) 7951261227
@almostobsolete

[Miles Sabin]

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 7:20 PM, Thomas Parslow <t...@almostobsolete.net> wrote:
> Simon and me have been working on Skiff Profiles tonight and it now
> reports presence:
>
> http://skiffprofile.herokuapp.com/
>
> It should display a little green marker against anyone currently at
> the Skiff. It should also show how long since last seen in each
> profile view.

That's very cool ... nice work :-)

Cheers,

Miles

--
Miles Sabin
tel: +44 7813 944 528
gtalk: mi...@milessabin.com
skype: milessabin
g+: http://www.milessabin.com
http://twitter.com/milessabin
http://www.chuusai.com/

[Graeme Sutherland]

very, very awesome...  

Feels to me like it also ought to be on who.theskiff.org, or maybe that's another who's in view?

Every coworking place in the world will be dying for this, you clever, clever people.

cheers,

g

On 8 February 2012 19:20, Thomas Parslow <t...@almostobsolete.net> wrote:

I think it's getting ready to launch to the rest of The Skiff. Jon,
any chance of having profiles.theskiff.org point to it?

--

Graeme Sutherland <gra...@nodestone.com>

http://grasuth.com - @grasuth - tel 07894 122 604  - skype: grasuth

Building Web Applications:

   For   > The Web • Facebook • Business • Widgets 

   With > Python • Django • JavaScript • jQuery

[Thomas Parslow]

Nice one Graeme, I like "who.theskiff.org" much better than
"profiles.theskiff.org".

The reporting is a little off right now, it's showing people as in the
Skiff when they're not. We're trying to track down the the problem :)

Tom

--

Thomas Parslow
Freelance Developer
Django, Python, Javascript and more!

http://almostobsolete.net
+44 (0) 7951261227
@almostobsolete

[Jonathan Markwell]

All very awesome.

I've pointed who.theskiff.org to proxy.heroku.com

Now you should just need to run:

heroku domains:add who.theskiff.org

Great work!

Best,

Jon

--

[Thomas Parslow]

Awesome, thanks Jon! It's now running at http://who.theskiff.org/

We'll sort out the bugs in presence tomorrow then announce it on the
main Skiff list.

Tom

--

Thomas Parslow
Freelance Developer
Django, Python, Javascript and more!

http://almostobsolete.net
+44 (0) 7951261227
@almostobsolete

[Steve Purkiss]

Cool - I just changed my gravatar and cleared caches etc - how long
does it take to update? Still seeing old image, tried multiple
browsers...

--
Steve Purkiss

http://purkiss.com

[Steve Purkiss]

ooo - it's updated now!