Twitter, OAuth, Contests and More

Barry Chapman

So it has been a little while since I talked about anything website related, so I figured I would take this chance to do so and fill you in on some changes that have happened around here - along with some things that are in the works!

First and foremost, we have launched our new and improved Media section. To start with, this section will be supplying you with podcasts and webinars that are presented by ANX. It will be expanded in the future to accomodate related downloads (such as slides/powerpoints and the likes). There are also RSS feeds associated with these either as a combination, just webinars or just podcasts.

We have also opened this media up to anyone. You are not required to create an account on ANX.com to download/subscribe to/view this media. However, by doing so, you can participate in our blog and communities and even take part in a contest to win $100 or a Flipshare HD!

Switching gears a bit, I would like to get onto the topic of Twitter. Developers are undoubtedly aware of the following:

Basic Auth Deprecation on August 16, 2010

August 16, 2010 The @twitterapi team will be shutting off basic authentication on the Twitter API. All applications, by this date, need to switch to using OAuth.

Anyone that uses the Twitter API has been using some method (most commonly 'Basic') to access Twitter and submit updates or other tasks to their Twitter account. For those of you that are using Basic authentication, you will required to modify your connection to Twitter to use the OAuth Communication Protocol. OAuth is a token based connection that keeps your username and password secret from the 3rd party apps and lets you authenticate that way. We have converted our framework to connect using this method. We do plan to integrate other aspects of various Social Media platforms into our website in order to create a more robust user experience and source of information sharing.

Did I mention we are having a contest? Submit your wildest remote access stories on our communities and be entered to win a Flipshare HD! While you are in our communities, drop me a note on our Website community to discuss all things websites (ours and others). We like to talk about new practices and usability while at the same time creating a tool that people can look to in order to get answers to questions and foster discussion.

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