Today Yahoo announced that they are joining forces with the OpenSocial platform, and will be joining both Google and MySpace to build “The OpenSocial Foundation”. This new foundation “will seek to ensure that the technology behind OpenSocial remains implementable by all, freely and without restriction, in perpetuity.” It is modeled after the current industry-supported OpenID foundation. As an addition to that announcement, Google has released “opensocial.org” to promote the development of OpenSocial on a standard platform away from the Google environment.

Read more about it over at OpensocialNow!

As promised, I’ve created a Pligg module that will allow users to “sign up” for Pligg pages. Right now I’ve only finished the “sign up” part. You will need to create your own cron script that interfaces with the notifications table, and integrate it on your own into the user profile page if you want your users to be able to remove themselves from notifications. I wanted to get this out there anyways so others could help me out on it. “Release early, release often”. Expect the other features I mention above here shortly, and if you happen to beat me to them, please let me know with the code you’ve produced so I can integrate it into the next build! Here’s the download link:

http://forums.pligg.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=38&act=down

To install, copy to your modules directory, and untar and un-gzip it. Then, go to your admin and you’ll see the module under the Module Management section. Enable it, and you’re set! Read the readme.htm file (or click on the “Email Latest Stories” link) for more details on installation. You’ll also need to add the notifications table to your pligg database, included in the notifications.sql file.

My Brother sent this to me. He and my Mom just happened to be traveling through Wyoming on his way to New York during a large snowstorm last week. A strong wind blew, sliding the trailer they were pulling, along with the car off the road. The next thing he knew they were half-way up in the air, trailer all the way upside-down off the road. Amazingly enough, there wasn’t a scratch on his car when they got everything unhooked. The only damage was one item in the trailer.

I’ve noticed Picasaweb now has new Image linking capabilities. I’m going to try it out with our good friend, Mr. Praying Mantis:

From Jesse's Garden

Very nice…

For those of you who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I have a proposal for you. As I mentioned before, I’ve started a new little venture called Came2Pass.com. Its slogan is “News for Mormons, by Mormons”, and it will soon become your one-stop shop for all LDS-related news, information, and stories. It is a place where you, your mom, your grandpa, or even your best friend can get together and know what each other are looking at on the web. It’s cutting edge for Mormon News!

Well, I’d like to make being part of the Came2Pass.com community a little sweeter. As of today, I am initiating a contest. From the time Came2Pass went live until now the first 100 users that sign up and submit a unique, appropriate LDS-standards related story get entered into a random drawing for $100. Yes, you have to sign up, and yes, you have to actually submit an appropriate, unique LDS-standards related story to be eligible.

Is that not enough? How about I make the deal even better? The first 500 users that submit at least 1 vote on stories will be eligible for a random, $50 drawing at the end of the 500 votes. Each user only gets entered once per contest, and no, you can’t win both contests, but you should try on both, as you may win one or the other! Please ensure you sign up with a valid e-mail address, as

So I encourage everyone to hurry up and subscribe and start voting on articles! It could mean $100 in your pocket.

Here are some questions some of you may ask:

Is Nephi included in the drawing?

No. In case you haven’t noticed, Nephi is just a bot, and is built to agreggate several LDS-related feeds from off the web to ensure you always have plenty of original content.

So, how can I get original content if Nephi is already gathering it for me?

Nephi is set to only gather a few specific websites’ content. There is plenty more out there. Also, if you beat Nephi to the punch, you get credit for the content for purposes of the contest (JesseStay will even vote for your article!).

Do all my votes count towards the contest?

Unfortunately, we can only enter one vote per user into the contest. You can get double the chances by submitting an original story however!

How do I register?

Registering is easy! In the top bar of the page, you’ll see a “register” link. Click on it and it will ask for a username of your choice, password of your choice, and an e-mail address. Enter your information, and click “Create User”. Congratulations! You’re now a member of the Came2Pass community! Make sure your e-mail address is correct so we can contact you if you win the contest.

Also, you might enjoy after that point adding additional information about yourself for your friends to see. Click “Top Users” on the left and see if any of your friends are on there. Add them as friends if they are (more features surrounding that to come!).

How do I submit a story?

Submitting a story is easy! Simply login, click “Submit a New Story” on the left-hand page, and enter the url of the story you are linking to. If you would like to submit your own content, leave that page blank. Click “Continue”, and enter the information on the following page about your story (or your own original content). Then click “Preview and Submit”, review it, and be sure to submit it again, and you’re finished! See? Wasn’t that easy?

Please, if you have any more questions feel free to post them below, or click on the contact link at the bottom of Came2Pass.com. Again, the link to Came2Pass.com is:

http://www.came2pass.com

Good luck, and I’ll see you on Came2Pass.com!

UPDATE: Now instead of one vote per person being entered in the contest, each vote you make gets entered. Therefore the more votes you make, the better your chances of winning the $50! Good luck, and tell your friends!

I have started a new venture that I hope can be of service to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It’s called came2pass.com (http://www.came2pass.com) and it is intended to be a “Digg” for members of the Mormon Church. So, other Mormons can now share links and content they find with each other. Other registered members can vote for the content they like on the site, and the top voted content gets rated to the front page. They just need to register, submit an article (it supports editorials and user content as well), and then they can register friends as well, and then view what their friends are submitting and voting for. All pages have rss links so you can keep track of it all in your favorite rss reader.

I see this as a great tool for the average BYU student or alumni, where they can track the latest news on campus, rumors about candidates for student body President, their favorite professors, news on campus, etc. It would also be an excellent tool for the 40+ year old scrapbooking Mom. I keep getting chain letters from them - I think this is a great way to share the stuff in those chain letters with your friends and family that want to read it, and not worry about spamming those that don’t.

Because content can be submitted as well, I use it as a way to blog about the site. You just view my submissions page, and all new submissions count as blog entries.

I’m about ready to shoot myself. I decided to try a Typo upgrade, and just realized it deleted the db! Fortunately, I had an old backup, but I’m missing about 4-5 articles from since then, including my one from today! I’ll have to decide if I need to reload the previous from some of the agreggators reading this site.

I recently switched to Media Temple for my hosting - I got tired of worrying about uptime, etc. on my own server. I tried WestHost, here in Utah, for a couple days, but they just didn’t have enough flexibility, in particular for Ruby on Rails support. Media Temple even has a page for how to set up Typo in their docs, so I was sold right away (this blog is written on Typo).

Anyway, despite my satisfaction with Media Temple, it seems they are having some server issues. This site maybe up and down in the next few days until I get this issue sorted out. Hold tight until I can fix it.

Oh, did I mention I’m learning Ruby on Rails? More about that later…

This Praying Mantis has a small moth in its hands.