That sly Ben Hammersley fellow is at it again. Apparently, Flickr has services which are accessible.
Mr. Hammersley is responsible for Linkr:
The current version of Linkr allows you to authenticate with your Flickr username and password, and then tells you all about the websites your Flickr contacts write.
I say current version because the code is in there to add in the thing I want it to do, namely to display the last x urls those sites themselves link to.
Other services include Connectr, Playr, and Reviewr.
There is some more stuff here. Single sign on and third-party authentication anyone? Read on…
Avi will want to look at this (PDF) to pick out the holes -- where does it fall down in comparison to his MISO suggestion for sign-ons?
While you're at it, Avi, I also found this recent Life with Alacrity post that mentioned SDSI:
To adopt his method for FOAF requires everyone to have a FOAF service script somewhere and not just a data file. But we've seen broad adoption of personal RSS and Trackback services, so I don't think this is a huge obstacle to overcome.
Just like I've been saying. Yes, I will run my own profile/authentication server. No problem. Folks without access to a server can get it from hosted sites, like those darn Flickr folks. Actually, Stewart et al at Ludicorp: please give us a GNE/Flickr script snippet written in PHP that we can put on our site.