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OAuth, the open authorization protocol standard that will let users give limited access to their data to third party websites without giving away their passwords, crossed an important threshold tonight.

All parties involved in building the spec have signed a covenant of non-assertion, meaning that OAuth can now be safely implemented anywhere without concern about Intellectual Property lawsuits. If you think this is too geeky for you - try out the live demo embedded below.

You can do a lot with new software if you tell it a little bit about yourself - but who wants to give the new kid on the block the password to their most important communication tools?

Unfortunately that's what we're asked to do with a lot of new applications these days. It doesn't have to be that way, though.

Open source blogging platform WordPress may have won most peoples' hearts as the best blogging platform in town, but that doesn't mean its core developers are resting on their laurels. The company made two statements last night about moves its users are sure to love.

WordPress announced last night on the company blog that WordPress.com users have a new blogging option called "Turbo," which uses Google Gears to speed up the service's admin functionality. Just an hour earlier, WP founder Matt Mullenweg indicated that users should look for OAuth support in future versions of the software.

Open standard based user authentication protocol oAuth has now been implemented across all Google Data APIs, quickly offering this young standard for easy mashups more market validation than it's ever had before.

Eight months ago we wrote about the launch of oAuth 1.0, asking if the standard would lead to a flood of mashups across the web.

The Get Satisfaction API that we reported on in February was finally released today. Two months ago, Get Satisfaction said they were "superclose" to releasing the API -- perhaps not so close as they thought. However, the company today announced the release of that API with the goal "to expose every part of the Get Satisfaction service." Get ready: the customer support mashups are coming!

Late last night Yahoo! owned photo sharing site Flickr launched a new feature - the ability to search your Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail contacts list for people on Flickr so you can add them as contacts. Many services let you do that, but almost all of them require you to give up the user name and password for your email. Flickr did it right and it was exciting, for us at least. GMail users are taken to a GMail page, where GMail asks for their usernames and passwords - then asked if Flickr should be given one time access or ongoing access. That's great. We've been calling on applications to use best practices and emerging protocols to access user data without asking for passwords for some time. The risks are too great, otherwise.

Some Flickr users, though, are really upset. They don't want anyone who has sent them an email to be able to easily find their photos on Flickr. What some people call Data Portability, others call a privacy violation.

Diigo is a social bookmarking and research tool that offers so many features it's overwhelming. I've been excited about it before, only to find that after a short period of time, I stop using it - in favor of something simpler. I have been really excited about it, in fact, but even the highlights of today's new version leave me with tempered enthusiasm.

The highlight of the new version is recommendations. The new Diigo offers a number of social networking type features that in-and-of themselves aren't worth a lot to me, but if they can do some number crunching and recommend people and content that I may want to subscribe to - that's gold.

Today Marshall Kirkpatrick interviewed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at SXSW, with the main topic of discussion being Data Portability. Later in the day at the festival, a star studded panel discussed building portable social networks. The panel highlighted four technologies that help make identity and data more portable across social networks: hCard; XFN and FOAF; OpenID; OAuth.

Blogging developer Jeff Atwood has written up a story of password theft that will run a chill down the back of anyone who enjoys trying out new applications online.

The story is about a GMail archiving application being sold by an unscrupulous coder who programmed the app to forward all GMail usernames and passwords from customers to his personal GMail account.

Mozilla today announced Weave, a new web platform that will store users' browser metadata in a cloud environment for access anywhere. Weave is a "framework for services integration" that will, according to Mozilla, "focus on finding ways to enhance the Firefox user experience, increase user control over personal information, and provide new opportunities for developers to build innovative online experiences."