Joseph Smarr

As a longtime avid Netflix fan, I was excited to see that they finally released an official API today. As an avid fan of the Open Web, I was even more excited to see that this API gives users full access to their ratings, reviews, and queue, and it does so using a familiar REST […]

Performance Challenges for the Open Web
Stanford CS193H: High Performance Web Sites
Stanford, CA
September 29, 2008
Download PPT (6.8 MB)
Web site performance guru Steve Souders is teaching a class at Stanford this fall on High Performance Web Sites (CS193H). He invited me to give a guest lecture to his class on the new performance challenges emerging from our […]

Web 2.0/Web 3.0 Mashup
Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT (EmTech08)
Boston, MA
September 24, 2008
I was invited to speak on a panel at EmTech, the annual conference on emerging technologies put on by MIT’s TechnologyReview Magazine, on the future of the web. The conference spans many disciplines (alternative energy, cloud computing, biotech, mobile, etc.) and we were the […]

Tying it All Together: Implementing the Open Web
Web 2.0 Expo New York
New York, NY
September 19, 2008
Download PPT (7.2 MB)
I gave the latest rev of my talk on how the social web is opening up and how the various building blocks (OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, PortableContacts, XRDS-Simple, Microformats, etc.) fit together to create a new social web […]

OpenSocial, OpenID, and OAuth! Oh, My!
Google I/O
San Francisco, CA
May 29, 2008
Download PPT (7.3 MB)
Update: Google has posted a full-length video of my talk, along with a web-friendly copy of my slides.
I was one of only a few non-Google employees who was invited to give a talk at Google’s big developer conference, Google I/O, in San […]

Data Portability, Privacy, and the Emergence of the Social Web
Web 2.0 Expo
San Francisco, CA
April 23, 2008
Download PPT (5.3 MB)
I’ve been talking about opening up the social web for some time, but the world keeps changing around me, so I can never use an old talk for very long. Since Web 2.0 Expo is such a […]

I mentioned earlier that the opening up of the social web has become a hot topic that’s taking center stage at many recent conferences and community events–and it seems to keep getting hotter every day. As a passionate advocate and early adopter / implementor of many of the building-block technologies (OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, microformats, Social […]

Co-founder Peter Nixey just wrote up a riveting account of the recent launch of his startup clickpass for Vitamin. It’s a must-read. Plaxo was one of clickpass’s launch partners, so the story features a few cameos from yours truly.
It will be hard to forget waking up in an Austin hotel around 9am on the day […]

Social Networks: Where are they taking us?
MIX 08 (panel)
Las Vegas, NV (Venetian)
March 6, 2008
Download audio (WMV 43.9 MB, MP4 38.6 MB)
Joshua Allen from Microsoft contacted me and asked if I’d like to be on a panel at MIX 08, Microsoft’s big web-focused conference, about the future of social networks. I’d never been to a Microsoft conference before (most of […]

The Future of Social Networks
Future of Web Apps Miami (with Tantek Çelik and Brian Oberkirch)
Miami, FL
February 29, 2008
View Slides (slideshare)
Download MP3 Audio (37.3 MB)
In addition to the half-day workshop I presented at FOWA Miami, I also gave a talk as part of the main event with Tantek and Brian Orberkirch (who also has a great write-up of our talk) on […]