This morning an e-mail went out to the OpenSocial and Gadget Spec Mailing List for OpenSocial developers, mentioning proposed problems and a need for “Templates” in OpenSocial. For those Facebook developers out there, this could be one of the missing links in OpenSocial, replacing the benefits of FBML for Facebook.
Read more about it on OpensocialNow!…
I’m going to take this one with a grain of salt. The last time they made an announcement like this it was recalled, and more than a month later until we actually saw a launch. However, today Orkut announced that they would be launching to 10% of their users, in a gradual rollout within “about” the next week. It looks as though they will be launching to millions of users in India at first, corresponding to 10% of their user base. Is the time really coming? Orkut – we really do want to see you succeed! Release early and release often man!
Read more at OpensocialNow.com…
I mentioned this at the Hackathon in March, but have not had the time to blog about it yet. Thus far all announcements for the Utah Social Media Developers Garage Meetings and Utah Facebook Developers Garage Meetings have been announced either through this blog, or our Facebook Group. I’ve now created a Google Group for us at http://groups.google.com/group/utsmdev. Please sign up there and I’ll issue all announcements via that list. Google Groups provides a more neutral ground in the sense that users don’t have to have an account to use it (to an extent), as compared to the Facebook groups. We’ll keep the Facebook groups around, and depending on membership I’ll still send announcements there as well, but I encourage all to sign up on the Google Group if possible. In addition, having a mailing list will allow us to have more of a discussion. This way if you are working on a project in Facebook, or OpenSocial, or even WordPress or Twitter or other APIs and you run into issues, you can ask the group and we can work together to solve the problem. I figure this way we’ll be able to all build a strong Social Media Development community here in Utah that others can rely on. Google groups will also give us a page we can tell others about the group, when the next meeting is, etc. If you have some graphics and HTML skills to help with that I am open to volunteers!
Also, I have created a Google Code repository at http://code.google.com/p/utsmdev/. For anyone okay with producing their code under the GPL, this will give you a place to store your code, and collaborate with others on the code, track issues, etc. If you want commit permissions to that repository please contact me and I’ll add you. As Google App Engine gets more integration into these things we’ll also set up a hosting option through Google App Engine to actually host your apps. Hopefully all these options will make it all much easier for everyone to get out and collaborate in their coding. It’s a good time to be a developer…
P.S. – We will continue on in our every-other-month meeting structure now, so our next meeting will be the second Tuesday in May. I’m working on a speaker, so if you know anyone or have ideas let me know!
The hype is out there and it is real. After the launch of Google Apps Engine, everyone is up in arms as to what exactly it is, and who needs to watch out. The truth is, everyone needs to watch out when Google launches something, since because of tight integration with all of their products, a slight tweak in one product could mean cross-integration between others, making it almost impossible for you to compete as a company because all of the sudden your space is being threatened by the new products.
Read more on OpenSocialNow.com…
Okay, so I was wrong – it was worth a try. I do still expect more large announcements related to Social Media from Google. Just recently, Google announced their “Google Apps Engine” (will it be nicknamed, “GAE”?). It is essentially a competitor with Amazon’s EC2, S3, and SimpleDB, but at a much higher level. You’ll be required to interface with the service via the Python Programming language at first, but it is intended to make scalability and server set up much easier. Google does say that the underlying infrastructure is entirely language neutral, so we should expect more languages in the future. The advantage over Amazon is Google takes care of all the server set up for you – this is essential for a small business that can’t afford to hire an expensive Linux Admin as Amazon requires.
The Service is only available to the first 10,000 developers that apply at http://code.google.com/appengine/, and will be available starting at 9pm PST tonight. You can read more at Venturebeat and TechCrunch here and here.
According to Mike Arrington (I know, I said I wanted to boycott TechCrunch but it’s just so dang hard to avoid! I’ll stick to boycotting Crunchgear for now.), Google is having another “Campfire One” event tonight. The last Campfire One event they announced OpenSocial. It was the OpenSocial team that announced the event, and the biggest bloggers and developers in the industry were all there. Mike Arrington thinks this one is going to be the announcement of “BigTable”, Google’s answer to Amazon SimpleDB.
I think otherwise – see my thoughts at OpensocialNow.com.
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!
After meeting up with Bess Ho, founder of the Silicon Valley Web Builders and Facebook Developers Garage, we decided a joint hackathon, focusing on OpenSocial would be a great opportunity for both of our groups. So I’m proud to announce that next week, March 26, from 8pm MST to 1am MST the Utah Social Media Developers Group (formerly Utah Facebook Developers Garage) will be joining with the Silicon Valley Web Builders live via Ustream.tv and Qik for a great night of OpenSocial hacking!
We’ll kick off the event with a presentation by Jason McGowan, lead developer at the Facebook App, We’re Related. He’s going to talk about some of the work they’re doing on OpenSocial. We’ll follow that with a presentation by Ted Haeger, Director of Developer Relations at Bungee Labs. I’m told he’s going to show us some cool new features of the Bungee Labs developer tools that integrate with OpenSocial, in a 15 minute timeframe. Bungee Labs will be hosting the event and providing snacks and drinks. Here’s Ted’s Bio:
Ted Haeger directs Bungee Connect’s developer program and leads Bungee Labs’ team of evangelists. An avid technologist, Ted is keenly interested in the rapidly evolving social dynamics and changes to human culture coming about as the Internet continues to develop. Prior to his work at Bungee Labs, Ted directed the open source advocacy program for Novell. He still keeps strong ties to friends throughout Free Software community and regularly speaks at various international and regional open source events.
The rest of the night will be spent just hacking and coding on OpenSocial, with the help of other developers there in both Utah and Silicon Valley to help getting started and continuing your development in OpenSocial. Both Google and RockYou have generously offered to provide Swag for the event (MySpace was offered the opportunity, but supposedly they “have already met their goals for the number of developers on their platform”. MySpace – the offer is still out there if you want it!). Thanks to them for their generous help in getting this event together. So the evening should be full of education, swag, snacks, and coding, a developer’s dream! If you’re a business that would also like to offer some Swag or something else contact me and we’ll add your name to the Sponsors list!
So if you’re a developer already or looking to develop in Social applications in Google’s Open Source platform, OpenSocial, come on over and code with us! Those interested in meeting developers are also invited. Bungee Labs, Google, RockYou, and my Social Media Applications Agency, SocialOptimize, will be Sponsoring the event.
Before coming don’t forget to sign up for the sandboxes you are interested in developing on – they often take a few days to get approved. You can find links to those environments here. Be sure to check out the tutorial here.
An interesting Fact – based on comparing numbers with Bess in Silicon Valley, it appears that Utah has the largest group of Social Media developers next to Silicon Valley on the West Coast. Our Facebook Group actually has more than they do! Let’s all get together and show the developers in Silicon Valley what Utah is all about! Please be sure to RSVP for the event on Upcoming or Facebook (join our group there!). You can find directions to Bungee Labs here:
It’s a Boy! Yes, we gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy last night, March 19th, 2008, at 3:24am. He was 6lbs 4oz, at 19″. We’re still figuring out a name – it’s now between “Jesse III” (after my grandfather, continuing his legacy), “Joshua Timothy”, and “Joshua Gregory” (my Dad’s name is Gregory).
We pulled out full stops for this birth Socially. I believe, except for maybe Scoble, it was the first full, “live” birth broadcast on Twitter. Twitter was an easy way to get the word out, and since the hospital had wifi I could use Twhirl to update Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, and Facebook all at the same time. We also live-broadcasted parts, including a few heavy contractions by Rebecca (SFW – just turn the sound down because she’s loud!), all via Ustream.tv. The Twittergrams and ustreams were all taken just right as the baby was born – you were there when it happened! I also posted items and pictures to Facebook. The baby’s nickname right now is “Twitter”. I had to have hundred of my Twitter friends and family wishing us luck, wishes, and congratulations last night so I can’t thank you all individually. Thank you for your wonderful wishes!
We’ll continue doing a few live streams via Ustream.tv, and you can keep track of when we go live, what’s going on in Baby 4.0’s life all by following me at http://twitter.com/jessestay, or typing “follow jessestay” and sending to 40404 on your cell phone. Here are a few videos to tide you over:
http://ustream.tv/xVmJRVOkN4vty.4Ug.PQlA.usv
http://ustream.tv/ukWPPvGTH5BF1pPXwIFqAvy3Yp3fmvH9.usv
You can also check out the pictures on Picasaweb:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jessestay/20080319Baby40?authkey=f197LRVdBWM
I’m proud to announce a new website I’ve been working on. You may have heard me Twitter about it a few times. The site is called OpensocialNow!, and will be your source for OpenSocial News, Reviews, and info. We’ll cover the Orkut launch, the Myspace launch, Hi5, and LinkedIn, as well as general things you can do with OpenSocial. This is the first blog of its kind, and as OpenSocial launches in the next week or two I’m sure you’ll see many more like it. It’s my hope that you’ll subscribe to the site via rss and make it your Official source for all things related to the popular social networking platform, OpenSocial. You can read more about it right on the website here:
http://opensocialnow.com/2008/02/26/welcome-to-opensocialnow/
Oh, and stay tuned to OpensocialNow.com. I have one more big announcement about a change in the OpenSocial launch coming up tonight!
