Here is a list of open protocols and standards that I recently have learned more about. It was much to my benefit and hopefully will be to yours as well:

• Jabber/XMPP – Jabber is an open, free and secure messaging and presence protocol built on streaming XML technologies. Sort of like a “Linux for instant messaging”. This is the protocol that Google Talk is built upon and is built into my lovely new Nokia N800. Also, lots of instant messaging clients on many platforms provide support for it (For instance, iChat, Trillian and Gaim). Due to it’s open nature and my desire to use my shiny new toy as much as possible, I am going to try to use it as much as I can and encourage my “buddies” to do the same. My Jabber ID is patrickrhone -at- gmail.com (at = @) for anyone who wants to get in touch with me there.

• SIP – SIP stands for “Session Initiation Protocol”. I have installed Gizmo Project on my N800 so that I may make VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls and SIP is the technology on which Gizmo Project is based. Think of it as the “Linux of VoIP”. There are lots of other projects also based on SIP as well (Asterisk PBX for instance) and there has been some efforts to integrate SIP with Jabber.

• OpenID – OpenID is an open, decentralized, and free framework for personal digital identity. As it stands today, lots of places you go online require you to log in or otherwise provide authentication for who you are. As a result, you end up with lots of usernames and passwords everywhere. With OpenID, instead you will have all of those credentials on an OpenID server and all you will have to do is type in the URI to your credentials and the servers will handle all of the authentication securely for you. Lots of big players like Microsoft are getting behind this idea and supporting it in their products and sites.

• Microformats – Microformats are simple pieces of code that one can add to a web site that contain small snippets of data and can not only be read in a browser but also easily imported into other applications. For instance, imagine if you came across a website and that person had a business card published as a Microformat on the site. With one click you could then add it to your contact manager of choice. The idea is to make such data adhere to simple and easily readable standards and to make it highly portable. I am sure if I am not explaining this well, someone will jump in the comments and correct me.