Like all good web ventures, the Social Web has risen in prominence ahead of any reliable standards that would ensure a consistent user experience. But that's finally beginning to change. With this book, you'll learn about a rich set of open source technologies for building compelling-and secure-social applications and websites. You'll discover what it takes to engage users on a personal level, and learn ways to monetize your venture. Programming Social Applications introduces you to the open source tools used on many major social platforms, and explains how technologies such as OpenSocial, Apache Shindig, OAuth, OpenID, Caja, and others work together to help you solve practical issues. You'll also examine successful proprietary platforms to help you gain a comprehensive understanding of the Social Web's foundations. * Learn how to build viral applications with social data * Implement social web technologies using real-world examples * Work with OpenSocial to standardize social graphs-individual nodes and their relationships * Build a scalable OpenSocial application container with Apache Shindig * Develop comprehensive user authentication and authorization systems using OAuth and OpenID * Learn how Caja, and ADsafe provide user security on social websites * Deal with bugs and other problems when implementing these technologies * Build distributed web frameworks that extend social graphs to include any social footprints users leave on the Web

Developers, designers, engineers, and creators can no longer afford to pass responsibility for identity and data security onto others. Web developers who don't understand how to obscure data in transmission, for instance, can open security flaws on a site without realizing it. With this practical guide, you'll learn how and why everyone working on a system needs to ensure that users and data are protected. Authors Jonathan LeBlanc and Tim Messerschmidt provide a deep dive into the concepts, technology, and programming methodologies necessary to build a secure interface for data and identity-without compromising usability. You'll learn how to plug holes in existing systems, protect against viable attack vectors, and work in environments that sometimes are naturally insecure. Understand the state of web and application security today Design security password encryption, and combat password attack vectors Create digital fingerprints to identify users through browser, device, and paired device detection Build secure data transmission systems through OAuth and OpenID Connect Use alternate methods of identification for a second factor of authentication Harden your web applications against attack Create a secure data transmission system using SSL/TLS, and synchronous and asynchronous cryptography