The web is currently buzzing about Twitter’s acquisition of Tweetie and this move is having unexpected consequences for the Twitterverse: dozens of businesses who were built on top of the Twitter API will now have to live in Tweetie’s shadow (renamed Twitter for iPhone) and choose between closing down or finding new avenues to explore.

So what does this have to do with Myows?

By everybody’s opinion, there are too many Twitter apps. But we have a solution for the global programmers’ community: Follow Myows

I’m not talking about following us on Twitter ( @Myows ). No. I’m talking about following us in our fight to curb down copyright infringement and help creatives worldwide help themselves.

The revolution is in it’s infancy but gaining fast momentum; so now is a great time to jump on board and make a name for yourself by creating some new, awesome, gob-smacking ways to interact with our platform.

And how are we supposed to do that?

The answer holds in 3 letters: API. Our development team has spent a great deal of time getting the API ready for release and last week we published both an API challenge in which everybody is a winner, and also a neat video tutorial showcasing how to create an app by using the Myows API.

We’re here to help with any question you may have. We’re doing our best to grow Myows’ reach and community, and to get to where we want to be, let’s be honest, we need you.

So before you start mapping your next Twitter app, I’d like you to ask yourself: “Does Twitter need me, my skills and a new app? Will i make a difference in the Twitterverse?”

…

I didn’t think so.

Then go back to the above question and replace the word “Twitter” with “Myows”.

There we go!

Follow us now, our API is calling for you and together we can make a big difference.

Take fuss-free copyright management to the next level.

Get your hands dirty with Myows’ publicly available API, fresh from the desks of our globally-scattered development team. This brings us one step closer to our platform-vision: helping the planet’s switched-on creative community help themselves. We’re looking for Myows members to help us add further functionality to the existing app at Myows.com. The brief is straightforward:

1- Use the new Myows API to develop a plug-in, add-on or stand alone application that assists other Myows members in registering, protecting and/or managing their rights

2- Develop this solution in a way that allow users to access key functionality in 4 steps or less

3- Implement your code and design with integrity, simplicity and elegance

We’re looking for plug-ins, add-ons and stand alone applications that improve the user experience and add useful functionality. To participate, you’ll need to create a thread before 15th May in our API forum category and provide a link to a demo of your app.

Fellow Myows users will have the opportunity to vote for their favorites from 15th till 31st May 2010. The winner takes home an Apple iPad (yeah, we’re self-funded!) and so does the runner-up (…yet generous!). We are also busy putting together a panel of industry heavyweights to award a jury’s grand prize of 1000$ to the app that best fulfills conditions 1,2 & 3 above.

Finally, any developer who creates an app we deem to be even vaguely useful and presentable will receive a lifetime Myows pro account (valued at over 1000$). Again – that’s just the kind of guys we are.

Feel free to create apps for resale (on Themeforest or CodeCanyon for instance) or build your own business on top of the Myows API. Obviously, we’d like you much more if you made your work available to the world for free, but we’ll get over it.

Feel free to run ideas and questions by the Myows team and other members by posting them up on the Forum. We are all here to help. Good luck. Be creative.

EDIT: Nettuts has published a video tutorial prepared by Dave:
How to Create an App with the Myows API (15 minutes).

Okay, to be honest, it’s a little frustrating. But then I guess it’s always annoying to be faced with trust barriers when you’ve started a positive initiative and all you want to do is go out there and nail bad guys. Of course, these questions are only natural at the end of the day. So here is our response.

We realise that there will always be skeptics and conspiracy theorists, but as for the rational majority – here’s what we’ve done to ensure that you can trust us with your work:

1. Each file is stored and backed-up on two remote, independently operated and maintained servers on opposite sides of the world. If both these servers are simultaneously and cataclysmically destroyed, the safety of your OWs will cease to be your priority.

2. A unique hash value is generated for each work at the time of upload. This is permanently linked with the file to form your OW. Basically each file is packing its own fingerprint/retinal ID, proving that it is who it claims and that it was born when it was born.

3. All databases (including hash values) are periodically filed (as recorded data) at our lawyer’s offices in a large steel safe that may even survive the cataclysm mentioned in 1 above.

4. All the leading web security standards (including SSL encryption) have been thoroughly and conscientiously applied across our app to ensure safe transfer of data and reliable verification where required. (Gmail and Basecamp only recently switched to this approach, and Facebook or Twitter have yet to follow our lead in terms of site-wide SSL security.)

5 Dave, Max, Steve and I are all really good-natured people with solid middle-class upbringings, decent (not decadent) tertiary education and friendly dispositions.

What else can we do to help you believe we’re on your side?

Plenty. But right now our focus is on getting a great service and product to people that do believe us in light of the above. Time will provide the best evidence of our intentions.

Suffice to say that we’ve gone the extra mile in building a brand that stands for integrity, safety and solidarity amongst the creative community. Ergo: there’d be little point in allowing anything or anyone to jeopardise all that.

As far as l running off into the night with our members’ work is concerned… what would we do with your OWs if we were to steal them? Would we print them all out and fold them into origami paper hats?… perhaps. Would we secretly sell them on to the highest bidder? Now that would be ridiculous.

Stealing our member’s OWs (or allowing them to be stolen) is really not a sustainable business model. If this ever happened, you can bet your cotton socks (it’s an English thing) that somebody would find out and spread the word fast. We are talking about the net after all.

We would prefer to keep our business and personal reputations in tact thank you very much.

Bear in mind that, if we breached fellow-members’ trust, we’d go down in history, not only as evil idiots, but also as irony personified. Myows would be stuffed. What a waste… even if we were the bad guys.

Which. Of course. We’re not.

Two of the biggest challenges in any web application are simplicity and security.

The importance of good security is immediately obvious. The security and integrity of a user’s data is the most important thing that an organisation such as myows.com is entrusted with when the user signs up to their service… and the challenges airtight security represents are numerous.

Secure design is also not something that can be tackled on at the end of development, but must be a consideration every step of the way.

Simplicity is another very well recognised goal, however it is seldom achieved as much as it is aimed for (or paid lip service to). A simple interface or experience doesn’t mean one that is “dumbed down” or offers less capability than a complex one – even the most powerful and capable tools should aim for the simplest possible presentation. Truly simple and functional design is surprisingly difficult to achieve.

When your aim is to excel at both security and simplicity, you cannot sacrifice either one for the other, and the interaction between them can be complex. Many security procedures can make users feel like they are being made to take a longer way around than necessary.

Also one must be careful of “security theatre” – security procedures that may seem effective, and make people feel safe, but in actuality are easy to defeat (and so do not really add anything of value).When making things simpler, it’s important to realise that some things should still require a few steps or additional confirmation.

When creating the interface and interaction flow for myows.com, we faced quite a few decisions on how to best manage and balance these factors. One of the these concerned Myows’ central function – how to handle the actual timestamping and certification of works.

Many solutions around the timestamping and certification of documents and other data have focussed on digital signatures – signing works and providing users with signed versions of their files, or hashes of the file’s content to keep.

With myows.com, we decided to keep the actual work, along with the timestamp data, all together in one place. This frees users from having to deal with private and public keys, or storing their own hashes and works securely (and having to make sure these are kept safe).

As all transactions are over HTTPS, works are secure between the user’s computer and Myows, and cannot be tampered with. Once the works are with Myows, we store them in our secure system – nothing else is required of the user.

This solution satisfied our goals of being safe and straightforward to use and understand, without sacrificing any functionality – actually, it’s more convenient and useful than having to keep track of hashes, keys, etc. It also makes for more reliable evidence at the end of the day as opportunities for tampering are non existent when evidence is stored by a neutral and reliable third party.

This kind of balancing act is guaranteed to turn up many times in any project – however by staying flexible and aware of the overarching design ideals, very rarely should one goal have to be sacrificed for the sake of others.

Technology seems to be, by its nature, a democratising influence. As new advancements are made, capabilities that were once in the hands of an elite few are unlocked for anyone who wants them. In recent times the interplay between this increasing of ability and the way that copyright has traditionally worked has come to the fore.

In modern times, copyright theft is easy to achieve

The way that technology develops is usually uneven, often surprising us with the way that the landscape is changed. Essentially, some things become easier more rapidly than others. One of the most prominent examples in the creative fields has been the ease with which works can be duplicated.

For a long time, copyright (the right to copy) was enforceable mostly simply through the relative difficulty of creating copies of a work. When films had to be printed onto actual film, specialised equipment was needed.

When VCRs first arrived on the scene, some know how and two machines were required. Now, all that is needed to create duplicates is a regular computer – even a notebook will do. The same is true for images, books, software – practically everything to which copyright applies.

The spread of the ability to reproduce works is by no means a bad thing for creators. For instance, it allows many who could not previously get their work out there without distribution deals or printing equipmen to have the kind of ability to reach an audience that was previously very hard to get to. However, the tools for protecting original works have not kept pace with the tools for duplicating them.

New factors are involved in protecting your copyright

Part of the reason for this is that protecting works is a process – it’s not an action that is taken once, and then remains done, but involves several factors – proving ownership, keeping track of assigned rights, finding infringers, and taking the correct legal steps. Much of the technology influencing copyright has been about actions – authoring or copying a work. Recently however, process focussed innovations have been gaining popularity.

When creating myows.com, we realised that solving the problem of proving ownership of a work without necessarily always being able to use the official copyright process was only part of the problem facing creators. Providing evidence of ownership and date of creation was obviously of primary importance. Just as important though, if not more so, was the process of keeping track of works and permissions and following the correct steps when infringing content was discovered. In this way we could provide not only a starting point, but also steps toward a favourable solution.

The change created by technology is a constant force – however, with the right tools, we can ensure that it works to our advantage as creatives by continuing to benefit from the positives, and protect ourselves from the negatives.