New applications of the Secure Web Feed Protocol – In Gmail and RSS Calendar

Frederick Giasson

Five days ago I proposed my article: Secure Web Feed Protocol, to the PST05 conference. Two days after I came around 15 things you can do with RSS. Two of these applications got my attention:

  1. Collect your email from all your email accounts in your RSS reader
    Stay updated on someone’s schedule
  2. I thought: these ideas are wonderful! What about the security of these services? Could they use SWFP? There is what I found.

1. Google is supposed to have tested a RSS feed service for Gmail in their GoogleLabs in 2004. I can not confirm if the service is always available because I do not have any Gmail accounts and I can not sing-in for one. This service put new incoming messages of a Gmail account into a RSS feed. Then if you subscribe to that feed you will see your new Gmail messages directly into your web feed reader. What an excellent idea! However, I was surprised to found that they used SSL to create a secure channel between the feed and the feed reader.

In the section 5 of the SWFP article I explained why I think that using SSL to secure a web feed is not the good strategy to adopt. It is for this reason that I was surprised to discover that they tried to use SSL to secure the inbox web feeds. JC suspected that they did not create it for this purpose but for another application called Google Notifier. I think he is right.

I do not know what was the real purpose of this test but the result is the same: the idea of using RSS feeds to check your mail is interesting. However, using SSL does not seem to be the good strategy to adopt. Not all stand alone feed readers support SSL. If you do not wish to enter the login and password of the private feed each time you want to check for new messages, you will need to do something like that:

https://USERNAME:[email protected]/gmail/feed/atom

This solution is even worse than not encrypting the web feed at all. With this string an intruder could sing-in into your account then check, delete or send messages with your Gmail account. It is far worse than only having access to the unencrypted inbox content.

This is a beautiful idea that could be handled by the Secure Web Feed Protocol. Now check out the second application of RSS feed that could use SWFP.

2. This time we are sharing our calendar with our friends and family using a service called RSS Calendar. When you add something to it all your friends and family will have access to your calendar’s changes. Is that not beautiful? Yeah it is. What about the security of this other service?

You could wish that the planet know that you are going to Mont Washington the 20 Mai 2005. But what if you only wish that your friends and family know it? There is no privacy feature in the service for the moment.

I think that the implementation of the Secure Web Feed Protocol could be really interesting in this case too. Only the people you choose would be able to read your calendar. I like the idea.

You are now thinking: how could the implementation of SWFP could be done in such services? The only thing that will change with what I discussed in the article is the way you will distribute the asymmetric keys

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Why blog systems do not include comments in blog posts’ feed?

Frederick Giasson

Comments are integral part of posts. Why blog systems, like Radio Userland, do not take this fact into account? I mean, why the comments are viewable from another source, another system? I would like that the comments made on my posts be integrated in them and in the blog’s feed.

Why? You are asking. I thought about it and I found that even on popular blogs people do not comment too much. The reason? Most readers seem to read the posts on the feed and not on the blog. The result is that they do not see the comments made on them. If people could be able to read the comments at the same place that they read the posts, I think they would be more motivated to join in the discussion and leave comments.

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Is the iPod Mini the best travel companion?

Frederick Giasson

If not he is near. I just bought one in prevision of my trip to India in some months. Why do I think that the iPod mini will possibly be my best travel companion?

  • The iPod mini has the longest battery lifetime (about 18 hours)
  • You can put between 1000(the 4Gig) and 1500(the 6Gig) songs
  • You can upload audio books to learn the local language. In my case the Pimsleur Hindi I
  • You can plan some part of your trip in the calendar
  • The apple power adaptor can handle most of the world’s current voltage and Hz
  • He can be use to wake you the morning
  • You can play games while waiting at the airport or at an international bus station
  • You can read text format ebooks
  • You can consult a to-do list (previously build in a text file)
  • You can use it as a watch
  • You can use the contact list to consult the addresses of the hotels where you are expecting to sleep and the ones of your embassies in the countries are planning to go
  • You have plug-ins to transform it into a camera or a FM transmitter to listen the local news
  • He is small, light and beautiful

Do I need to tell mores?

I finally know why people sometimes adulate them. They are awesome. They are relatively low cost, full of useful features and beautiful.

In next days I’ll explain how I incorporated it in my daily live: the interaction of the iPod Mini between: me, my laptop and other software.

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Now I think that I know what writing mean

Frederick Giasson

In reality I don’t really know what it means but I tasted it

Sorry for my lack of blogging in past days. I had been overwhelmed by the writing of my article called Secure Web Feed Protocol. I rewrote it 4 times. As I said in a previous post I was only supposed to post the idea here, on this blog. Finally I sent a whole article to the PST05 security conference. It’s my first interaction with the world of publishing. The only thing I know is that I learned many things in the process and that I have many others to learn, accepted or not. I don’t really care about the outcome because I loved the experience and already learned a lot by doing it.

The main thing I learned was what writing means. I read some books about writing in past few months. They all said that writing is rewriting; that writing is a process. Now I know what they mean. If you don’t understand what you wrote, how people can? The only trick is to rewrite it as long as your thoughts are not clears.

Writing is learning? I learned a lot then. I not only learned on writing, I also learned on the subject I was writing on. Why? Because “writing is thinking is learning” — William Zinsser.

writing learning paper security

Shame on Canadian Politicians

Frederick Giasson

All the ancient Canadian combatants of the World War II are currently in Holland for the commemoration of the 60 anniversary of the liberation of Holland. The Canadian army of the Second World War was an army of volunteers, ready to give their live for their families, country and the World’s peace. The Dutchman are currently thanking them another time.

They know what these Canadian boys and guys done for them; they thank them every year; they teach the true story of their courage to each new Dutchman generations. They are seeing as heroes. In Canada they are seeing as elderly people that participated to a war far from home.

A week ago, our politicians tell them that they will not go to the ceremonies in Holland because they don’t have the time for this: the current minority government is in troubles. Tomorrow, after that these old heroes tell to these politicians what they think of them, the prime minister and the chefs of every other party concluded a truce to fly to Holland… The problem is that they will not be there for the official ceremony of Sunday, they will arrive in Monday.

Shame on them. These soldiers are old, it’s probably one of the last chances we have to thank them for what they done for our country, for our generations. We must remember.

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