Following on from my last post about our meeting with ICT, OAuth is now integrated into DIVERSE; this update was somewhat delayed as a result of the technical issues outlined previously.

As part of OAuths integration a number of changes have been made to DIVERSE so far, with many more planned in the near future.

Currently the changes are centred on the toolbar, for users this means once they have signed in they receive a more personalised content through the toolbar, and so will only get options to add links to clouds that are part of their course. Similarly when a signed in users tries to like/dislike a link it now defaults to relevant clouds that are associated with their course. The concept behind this is that it provides a cleaner user experience for the user.

This change also affects the main DIVERSE application, as introducing course specific content filtering means the structure of the application is undergoing some changes. So this means future clouds addresses will become http://diverse.lincoln.ac.uk/index.php?module=MODCODE&topic=TOPICNAME.

Although the current plan is that these ugly URLs will be turned into more user friendly URLs in the near future. When this happens instead of http://diverse.lincoln.ac.uk/index.php?module=MODCODE&topic=TOPICNAME the link would be http://diverse.lincoln.ac.uk/module/cloudname ; which is much nicer and easier to remember.

However at the same time we want to allow users to experiment and use DIVERSE freely, and so as part of this update a separate sandbox is being created which will allow users to create their own clouds; this sandbox will be reached by users like this http://diverse.lincoln.ac.uk/101/mycloudname.

Other planned updates include a few additions to the toolbar such as the inclusion of the universities link shortening service linking you, as well as the introduction of course sites ahead of DIVERSEs full deployment in the near future.