Chris Alexander

OAuth is an often confusing protocol, that can be very difficult to get started with and nigh-on impossible to debug.

With that in mind, I set out to learn more about OAuth, why it’s there, how it works, and what you can do with it.

Of course the best way to do this is to actually get developing. So I got my PHP out, fired up my favourite IDE, and got started.

Here’s what I learnt, from the beginning, and it will hopefully save anyone else getting started with OAuth a bit of time and a lot of confusion.

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Entries are still open for 4 competitions of the Imagine Cup – Embedded, Game Design, Digital Media and IT Challenge.

What’s more, if you sign up today, Microsoft will donate money to the 5 charities that they are working with this year!

Sign up for the Imagine Cup today!

Great Opportunities

I’ve already written about what fantastic opportunities there are available to students entering the Imagine Cup this year.

The simple fact of the matter is that taking part in this competition gives you more opportunities than from taking part in any other student activity that I have ever come across.

What’s more, this year’s finals are being held in Poland, so if you make it through to that stage then you get even more great experiences out of the Imagine Cup. (Last year the finals were held in Cairo).

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“Om nom nom” is all I have to say about today’s photo – a metre of jaffa cakes!

06/02/10

Ok, so you’ve all been begging for proof that I am in fact 6ft 3in tall – here is a picture of me with Sarah (@GirlyGeekdom). She’s our Community Manager and around 5ft 6in I’m told.

Enough proof for you?!

05/02/10

So if you’re on Twitter often enough, you may have seen the little mistake that Vodafone UK – @vodafoneUK – made earlier.

Let’s just say that the tweet that got sent out to thousands of followers isn’t particularly safe for work – click on for the details.

While obviously this was a pretty epic mistake by whoever was in charge of keeping 2 Twitter accounts updated, I would hazard a guess that it was a simple mistake choosing the account to tweet out of.

Although as you may have seen in my recent photo, I take some pretty serious precautions when there’s a possibility of making a really big mess of it. I hope they have learnt to make sure that they are logged in to the right account before they post a tweet!

Kudos is due to Vodafone, however, who recovered by replying to every single complaint (it goes back literally pages on their timeline) in some kind of automated but also somewhat personalised manner. At least they dealt with it well, rather than just closing their account and firing everyone involved.

Managing that kind of situation is something that marketers and community managers are going to be facing in the future, and hopefully they can deal with it suitably.

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