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Announcing the First West Coast OpenSocial Hackathon

Posted on March 21, 2008 by jessestay

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:

625 E Technology Ave B2300
Orem, UT 84097

Facebook Getting the Vote Out – but is it Good for Developers?

Posted on March 20, 2008 by jessestay

You’re seeing it here first folks – this morning Facebook announced a new tag on its wiki called . I imagine an announcement from Facebook will come soon on their purposes for this. From the wiki, :

Displays a Rock the Vote widget inline in your application. The text inside the tags is formatted as a hyperlink. When the user clicks the link, a Working Assets US Voter Registration dialog appears. When the user is done, they are prompted to share it with their friends. Then they are returned to your page.

This is particularly suitable for political apps or any app that wants to encourage voter registration.

Now, I’m not that familiar with the whole “Rock the Vote” organization, and I’m very for encouraging voter registration, but isn’t this also giving preferential treatment to other big organizations on Facebook? How did “Credo Mobile” get their sponsorship on this? Does this mean apps and organizations like my company’s client, “Takes All Types” will have their own tags for developers to use too? Has FBML been turned into an advertising tool? As a Facebook Developer myself I’m a little concerned about this one.

To implement the tag, you would do something like this (from the wiki):

Register to vote!

The link looks like this:

And produces a form that looks like this:

The second half of the form looks like this:

It’s a Boy! The first full, live Twitter Birth

Posted on March 19, 2008 by jessestay

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

Facebook Works to Reduce Spam Further With "Feed Forms"

Posted on March 7, 2008 by jessestay

Today, a new way of posting to the News Feed in Facebook appeared on the Facebook Developer’s wiki. Facebook introduced “Feed Forms”. To use a Feed form, you simply create a regular form as you would any other form, but add a special “fbtype” attribute to the form. The only documented value listed thus far is “publish”. Facebook then intercepts the form, reads the url in the action parameter, and prompts the user, asking them if they want to publish the story to their friends.

To use a “feed form”, the url in your action parameter for the form should return content in the form of JSON with a simple feed response. The example they give for return JSON data is this:

{ "method": { "fbtype" : "publish",

           "next": "http://my.canvas.com/next_page.php",

           "feed": {"title_template": "{actor} published status",

                    "body_template" : "New status is \"{status}\"",

                    "body_data"     : {"status": $_POST['status']}}

}

I created a sample form that looks like this, returning the above data (changing the url) in application/x-json format:

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem this feature is live yet (or I’m just doing it wrong), as my returned JSON data just gets returned back to me when the form is submitted. I will post screen shots as soon as I hear confirmation that it has gone live (I expect that to be next Tuesday, when they usually do pushes).

Does this mean Facebook is doing away with the automated posting of News feeds by applications, or is it just one more way, and better way to make your feed story more likely to appear in your user’s friends’ news feeds? There is no official word from Facebook yet as to how they intend to use this.

Announcing New Features for SocialToo.com

Posted on March 1, 2008 by jessestay

Many of you are currently using SocialToo.com for auto-following those that follow you on Twitter. Well, I just added 2 new features to the site that might warrant you wanting to log in again and seeing what’s there. The first feature is Facebook profile redirects – now, “yoursocialtoouser.socialtoo.com” will redirect to your Facebook profile if you click on a link on your SocialToo! dashboard (after logging in). See my Facebook profile here and add me as a friend!: http://jessestay.socialtoo.com BTW, this is just one more example of how you can integrate the Facebook API outside of Facebook itself.
Also, I just added a UI to the blacklisting functionality I’ve talked about before. This will allow you to specify specific users you don’t want the SocialToo! Twitter Auto-Follow script to follow. You will of course have to unfollow them if you are already following them, but from then on they will no longer be followed by SocialToo!

These are just a few of many integrated Social Tools I’ll be adding in the future. Stay tuned here and I’ll keep you updated (I’ll also shoot you a quick Twitter DM for the big ones like this!). Let me know if you run into troubles. Enjoy!

You can also read more about it on FacebookAdvice.com here: http://facebookadvice.com/2008/03/01/socialtoocom-your-companion-to-facebook-and-the-social-web/

Announcing OpensocialNow.com – OpenSocial News and Reviews

Posted on February 26, 2008 by jessestay

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!

Twitter as a Tool for Disasters and Emergencies

Posted on February 26, 2008 by jessestay

First, let me start by apologizing for the silence. I kind of went dark over the weekend for an all-weekend binge to finish a project developing a Facebook app for a very large client. I’m actually quite pleased with what we were able to accomplish in just a matter of 2 days! (and no sleep, I might add) When their application goes public I’ll talk more about it – I really like what we did!

Now, back to the topic. Recently, my Aunt sent out an e-mail to my extended family’s e-mail list on yahoogroups asking about how she could use Twitter in the event of a disaster, or to prepare for disasters. My Aunt and Uncle are currently in charge of the Welfare program for the entire country of Chile, for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

First, I was taken back that my 60+-year old Aunt even knew what Twitter was, but secondly it got me thinking. Chile has had some of the largest earthquakes in the recorded history of this earth. It is not quite at the level of the United States in terms of mass-communication methods such as computers and the internet. I’m sure there are many areas that do not even have internet.

Because of the inability to get high-speed internet access (or even phone lines, in general) out to remote areas, the majority of people in third-world countries communicate via cell phone. It is simply easier to give someone in the middle of Chile, or Brazil, or Nigeria, or Burma, a cell phone than to run phone lines and broadband lines around to every remote village in the country. Not only that, but it’s more expensive to do so!

Therefore, I can very much see a strong benefit for these countries to utilize services such as Twitter, that have a strong Mobile, SMS platform, to communicate in the event of an emergency. I mentioned my Aunt’s desire on Twitter, and got this response from @theotherdrummer via e-mail (Please forgive the LDS terminology. For the non-LDS, a “Ward” is a local congregation. A “Stake” is a group of those local congregations. A Bishop is the leader of a Ward. In LDS culture, LDS refer to each other as “Brother”, and “Sister”, hence the reference…):

My first thought was that it can be used to notify families/stakes/wards of the status of individuals, to serve as a central hub. For example, set up a Twitter account specifically for the Chile 1st Ward. Should something happen, members of the Ward begin texting their status and location to Twitter: “Brother Martinez, at home, OK.”

The Bishop can use this as a starting point to check on people, and can also be used as a source of info for relatives and friends who might be out of the affected area worrying about their loved ones.

The Stake would also have an account to which the Bishops can pass information to.

I thought this was an excellent example of a way to bring people together in the event of an emergency. Of course, I’ve been in Hurricanes before. Having grown up in Houston, TX, and lived in Richmond, VA, I know that when emergencies happen, communication lines generally go down. In cases like that there are better communication methods such as Ham Radio to consider (I’m KC5PZP in case you were wondering…). There are still often cases where that isn’t the case, and even those that are able to get through can communicate with the world the status of their situation, and where they are.

Twitter as an Emergency Tracking Tool

After this, as an experiment, I started tracking “earthquake”. There was recently a 6.0 earthquake near us, out in Wells, NV. I even felt it in my bed early in the morning, way out in Salt Lake City, UT! This inspired me to follow the term and see where else in the world people were experiencing earthquakes.

Once I started tracking “earthquake” on Twitter I began to realize this was not at all a rare occurance! Soon I was seeing big and small earthquakes all around the world, from California, to aftershocks around Wells, NV, to Sumatra and Jakarta, Indonesia. What was fascinating is that I wasn’t only being notified of the earthquakes, but I was also seeing others’ reactions to the events! I can only imagine what I’d see if I tracked, “tornado”, or “fire”, or “storm”. It would take just a simple, “help” from someone for me to get into action and communicate via Twitter to find someone to help them.

Now, imagine a tracker that tracked all these terms, and put them on a map, such as the USGS’s earthquake tracker, and added Twitters to the Earthquake Geological alerts. Add in Hurricane trackers, weather data, and more, and you’d have quite a useful tool that could be utilized by FEMA for tracking where help is needed on an on-demand basis. FEMA could actually become the first responders with such a tool!

While communication is often disrupted in such events, Twitter can still serve as a useful resource among those that do still have communication. What suggestions do you have for emergency management and preparedness using Twitter and similar such services? Any and all comments I will forward to my Aunt for use in Chile.