OpenSocial API Blog

Eureka! Lockheed Martin contributes OpenSocial platform to open source

2010-08-31T06:36:00.000-07:00

Lockheed Martin Corporation recently announced the release of its first open source software initiative around social media called Eureka Streams. Eureka Streams is a social media platform that integrates activity streams and OpenSocial apps. Lockheed Martin has spent the past several years growing a strategy of Social Software within the Enterprise to bring widely distributed employees together. Eureka Streams takes that vision further by incorporating what works well on the internet and builds a platform based on open standards to expand social media even further.

Eureka Streams, initially built internally, is now being made available
under the Apache License as open source. Shindig version 1.1 (beta)
integration provides the framework to offer the OpenSocial 0.9
features, creating a user focused OpenSocial gadget container that can
access the user profiles and activity data created within the tool.
The UI has been developed using Google Web Toolkit to provide a
flexible JavaScript front end developed in Java.

Eureka Streams is currently released to open source at version
0.9. The team has placed a heavy focus on user interaction,
performance, and scalability to this point, but is shifting their
focus to the developer and looking for support from the open source
community.

For more information and to learn how to get started, please visit the Eureka Streams web site.

Posted on behalf of Steve Terlecki, Lockheed Martin Corp, by Mark Weitzel, President, OpenSocial Foundation

Nature chooses OpenSocial

2010-07-15T18:34:00.000-07:00

We’d like to share a little bit about why we adopted the OpenSocial platform for our new online service, called Workbench (http://network.nature.com/workbench), but first we should probably fill in some details about who we are.

Founded in 1869 as a vehicle for reporting the grand results of scientific work and discovery, Nature (www.nature.com) is one of the most distinguished scientific publishers in the world. Nature exists to be a scientific communications company, and back in 1869 the best way to achieve that goal was to publish a periodical. Nowadays, if you were to start with that mission you would most likely start on the Internet.

Nature Network (http://network.nature.com/) is our domain-specific network for researchers. Our intention with Nature Network is to not only provide a platform where scientists can create an online presence and interact with each other, but also to bring interesting information and functionality to scientists. There are a few advantages to having a domain-specific network over a generic network. First of all, it allows the emergence of community norms, i.e. tone of voice, that are fit for that specific community. Also, by creating and hosting our own network, we have the chance to connect the research literature with the social activity around that literature. We have started, for example, to link our academic papers to blog posts that mention those papers, and we have many plans going forward to extend these kinds of connections.

While working on upgrading our site over the last year, we decided to build in an API and so became interested in OpenSocial. Obviously, since Nature Network promotes social connections, OpenSocial was a contender straight away. We wanted to be able to host interesting functionality on our site and the gadget specification is perfect for that.

Our redevelopment process happened in Java, and again that was a great fit with the Shindig project. Being able to see an active developer community around the standard and around the reference implementation was also a major factor in our decision. Our developers found it easy to integrate Shindig with the code that we were creating and they did this quickly as an early prototype. Seeing our wireframes turn into a live demo was a great moment - it was at the point that we took the decision to go with OpenSocial.

We are planning to open our gadget platform and API to external developers so that all the exciting activity that is happening within Nature Network finds its way to anyone who is interested.

To summarise, we wanted to be able to create an API and offer gadgets to our users. OpenSocial provided a great answer to both of those needs. As we continue to evolve and add capability to the Workbench, we are planning to open our gadget platform and API to external developers so that we can build an ecosystem based on open standards around all the exciting activity that is happening within Nature Network. The ongoing development and great documentation that exists have given us confidence in the project and we are excited by the direction that OpenSocial is heading.

Please feel free to drop us a note with your questions. Contact us via e-mail, network at nature.com.
Nature Network Team

Nature Network is the professional networking website for scientists around the world. It’s an online meeting place where you and your colleagues can gather, share and discuss ideas, and keep in touch. It’s also where you can consult the community for answers to scientific questions or offer your expertise to help others. Additionally, using the Workbench, you can collate your online scientific tools together in a customizable workspace, allowing you to group your most important tools and information in the way that works best for you.

Posted on behalf of the Nature Network Team by Mark Weitzel, Secretary, OpenSocial Foundation

The votes are in!

2010-06-16T17:35:00.000-07:00

The OpenSocial Foundation community representatives election has concluded. You have selected Paul Lindner and Mark Halvorson to serve as your two representatives for this year's board. Congratulations to Paul and Mark!

For those of you looking to get involved with OpenSocial, there are many opportunities outside the board, including:

wiki.opensocial.org: Contribute to documenting best practices and articles on the new OpenSocial community wiki
Get Started Building Apps: Brainstorm, check out a few tutorials, and get programming
Help build OpenSocial 1.1: Participate in the on-going evolution of OpenSocial's technical specification by contributing to the next version of the specification

See you on the forums!

Posted on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation by Mark Weitzel (Secretary)

The polls are closed!!

2010-06-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

Greetings Everyone,

This is just a quick note to let you know that the election for the two OpenSocial Board Community Representatives is now officially closed. We will be tallying up the ballots and posting the results shortly.

I would like to thank all of our nominees for being willing to commit their time and effort to OpenSocial, as well as all of those who took the time to vote. Finally, I owe one last thank you to Ryan Boyd of Google who went above and beyond to helped make everything happen behind the scenes.

Posted on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation by Mark Weitzel (Secretary)

Rock the Vote: Community Representatives election is open!

2010-06-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

The election for the OpenSocial Foundation's community board representatives is now open. If you previously applied for membership, you should have received an email directing you to submit your ballot. The election will close at 11:59 PM PDT on Tuesday, June 15, 2010. You can find information on each person on the candidate info page.

Two of these candidates will be elected by the community to serve on the OpenSocial Foundation's Board of Directors. As a reminder, the role of the OpenSocial Foundation is to promote the OpenSocial specification, and to help ensure that it remains freely implementable by all, in perpetuity. You can find more information about the foundation by visiting the OpenSocial Foundation FAQ.

If you have not submitted a membership application to the OpenSocial Foundation, and would like to have your voice heard in this election you still may do so. To be eligible to vote in the current election, you must submit the OpenSocial Foundation membership application (it's free) by 11:59 PM PDT on Tuesday, June 8, 2010.

If you have any questions or comments about the election please visit the OpenSocial community forum.

Posted by Mark Weitzel, on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation

Board Nominations Close Tuesday, June 1!

2010-05-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

Greetings!

Just a quick reminder for everyone.

Nominations for the OpenSocial Board of Directors community seats are underway and will close on Tuesday, June 1, 2010. Please use the on-line form to nominate someone.

We are looking forward to working with the community and to another great year for OpenSocial.

Posted on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation by Mark Weitzel

OpenSocial State of the Union 2010 Recap

2010-05-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

On behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation, I would like to thank everyone that attended the State of the Union event. A special thank you to the wonderful team at MySpace for arranging and hosting this event. With the participation of about a hundred at he event, I am confident we can move the standard forward.

If you missed it, you can check out the slides for the event. Here a quick summary of some of the key topics we discussed:

We have new Board members and great energy (Welcome Cody Simms from Yahoo! and Jason Gary from IBM). Also, please take advantage of the 2 community seats available. Nominations are open and any member of the OpenSocial Foundation is welcome to participate.
It is exciting to see OpenSocial adoption outside of “traditional” Social networks and into domain specific networks and even major enterprise vendors.
We seek your help in giving our foundation’s pages/navigation an uplift. Feel free to jump in and add your ideas.
OpenSocial 1.0 next--Here's what's on tap: improvements to the existing OAuth implementation, inter-gadget communication, and views for Mobile devices. We also need to pay attention to the development & spec process. Our goal is to get prototypes and spec patches in now, followed by a tight, well controlled, editing cycle.
The board is excited about engaging OpenSocial’s worldwide community. We are looking to sponsor events outside the U.S. and will be working on figuring this out over the next few weeks.

Here are some more details below about the event. Please feel add your thoughts & suggestions as comments to this blog post.

The event started off with introductions of the Foundation Board members and officers. Cody Simms is Yahoo!’s corporate designate. IBM is a new corporate member and has designated Jason Gary as their representatives. Welcome Cody and Jason. The complete list of your Foundation Officers and Board Members is in the FAQs.

In addition to new corporate members of the OpenSocial Foundation Board, there are two community seats available. Anyone is able to serve on the board. The only requirement to nominate or hold the position is that you must be a member of the OpenSocial Foundation. There are no membership fees to join OpenSocial. All you need to do is fill out a simple on-line membership application.

It’s been an exciting year and a half for OpenSocial! We’ve seen continued adoption of the specification as new containers come on line. Perhaps what is more interesting is that we are starting to see OpenSocial adoption outside of “traditional” social networks. This includes adoption by enterprise vendors such as Jive, Atlassian, and IBM.

Before getting into the heart of the discussion, we reviewed our current Web presence. Right now, we’ve got information buried on existing pages, scattered across different sites, and in general, have an inconsistent way of engaging our members. As a result, we are going to start looking at how to clean this up. Please post a note to the community group list if you’d like to help with this effort. There’s also a wiki page to capture your ideas.

Looking ahead for the remainder of this year and into next, we’ve got some exciting things starting to happen. First of all, we agreed on the scope and timeline for “OpenSocial 1.0 next”. There were three areas that we’d like to start working on for the next version of the spec; improvements to the existing OAuth implementation, inter-gadget communication, and views for Mobile devices. There’s already some code for intergadget communication in Shindig, and the team from Mixi has put together a good starting point for Mobile.

We will be following the development process and incorporating the extensions mechanism that we outlined last year. This means that we should be able to accept patches to the spec and prototypes now! Our goal is to get prototypes and spec patches in now, followed by a tight, well controlled, editing cycle. Ideally, this gives us time to try out the prototypes now, rather than actually developing and prototyping the new features at the same time we are writing the spec. The specification process and extension process will be updated in the next few days to reflect these ideas.

It is also worth noting is that we’d like to get as many of these prototypes as possible into Shindig so it’s easy for people to try them out. Paul Linder and the Shindig community has done a great job over the last few months of refactoring and organizing the code to make this much easier. Thanks to Paul and the Shindig committers!

One of the original goals of OpenSocial was to create a community that could rapidly prototype new ideas. With the development process, the extensions mechanism, and Shindig, we’ve got all the pieces in place to do just that. An example of this is the work that has been done to provide a prototype of the ActivityStrea.ms specification.

But we don’t want to stop there! A number of new and exciting ideas in the social Web space are emerging, and as a community, we should be prototyping them as quickly as possible to understand their impact to OpenSocial. Examples of these include Salmon, Pubsubhubbub, Web Finger, and OAuth 2.0. Let’s get prototypes going now so that when these specs become final, it’s easy for us to provide an open source implementation and a clean path into OpenSocial spec. This way, we can move the entire industry forward—together—faster.

So far, most (if not all), of the ‘official’ OpenSocial Foundation sponsored events have been located in the United States. One of our goals for this year is to change that. A number of members have expressed interest in having events in Asia and Europe. This is a great way for our community to engage the large number of world wide container providers and businesses that are successfully implementing OpenSocial. The Board is very excited about reaching out to our worldwide membership and is looking forward to helping the community make this happen.

Thank you, once again, to the team at MySpace. There were great to work with and put on a fantastic event. I would also like to thank our community. It’s because of you that we had a great event.

Now let’s get prototyping!

Posted by Mark Weitzel, on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation

OpenSocial State of the Union & 1.0 Release Celebration!

2010-04-22T17:05:00.000-07:00

The OpenSocial Foundation cordially invites you to come and meet the developers and community leaders that are driving OpenSocial. This is your chance to learn more about what the various OpenSocial providers are doing and get involved in shaping the next version of the specification.

Oh, and now that OpenSocial 1.0 has been released, it’s time to celebrate! We’ll have a happy hour immediately following the State of the Union with lots of tasty food and cold beverages.

The State of the Union & 1.0 Release celebration will take place on May 18th from 1 – 6pm PDT. Our good friends at MySpace have graciously agreed to host event in their San Francisco offices. We hope to see you there!

Please RSVP at http://opensocial.eventbrite.com/

Posted by Dave Peck & Mark Weitzel on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation

OpenSocial 1.0 spec published

2010-03-15T17:45:00.000-07:00

With so many different types of websites adopting OpenSocial it has become clear that a "one size fits all" approach isn't appropriate for the OpenSocial spec. Containers have different types of data they want to make available to clients (sometimes it's social data, sometimes it's not), and some want to expose that data via web services, while others wish to use gadgets. As such, modularity was a key goal in the OpenSocial 1.0 iteration, allowing implementers to pick and choose the elements of OpenSocial that make sense for their use cases. OpenSocial 1.0 also defines extension points so containers can add functionality not covered in the spec, but do so in a standard way, making it easier to fold such extensions back into the spec or share extensions across containers.

To accommodate the varied use cases of OpenSocial containers, OpenSocial 1.0 has been revised to include four compliance models:

Core API Server - For containers that wish to expose data in a standard way though web services.
Core Gadget Server - For containers that simply want to be able to render gadgets.
Social API Server - For containers that wish to expose social data through standard web services that are consistent across containers.
Social Gadget Server - For containers that want to render gadgets and provide them access to standard social data.

The spec itself has been reorganized along these lines as well, consolidating all data definitions into the Core Data Spec and Social Data spec, and creating a separate file for each of the four compliance models.

Posted by Lane LiaBraaten, on behalf of the OpenSocial Community

Using IBM Mashup Center to build interoperable Web 2.0 applications with OpenSocial gadgets

2010-02-04T17:44:00.000-08:00

Greetings…

As many of you know, IBM is committed to building and advancing open standards and platforms. Openness fosters an ecosystem of innovation, promotes customer choice, and allows enterprises to build solutions that best meet their needs. We’ve been working with the OpenSocial Foundation to help define and implement the requirements of enterprise customers.

Recently, we put together an article that can be found on DeveloperWorks that describes how you can use IBM Mashup Center to build complex Web 2.0 applications that use OpenSocial gadgets by simply dragging them from a pallet and dropping them on a page.

However, OpenSocial gadgets are not the only component model available, for example there are OpenAjax widgets as well as one that IBM uses for many of our products called iWidgets. Because of the importance of interoperability with previously deployed products that leverage different component models, this article demonstrates how you can build a mashup using different types of gadgets/widgets and still have them interoperate and communicate with each other. This interoperability is achieved by leveraging the OpenAjax Hub, a proven technology for inter-gadget communication available from the OpenAjax Alliance.

The article on DeveloperWorks represents an initial step. Members of the OpenSocial Foundation and the OpenAjax Alliance are now working together to support inter-gadget communication into the next version of OpenSocial by integrating the OpenAjax Hub. The designs and work items can be found on the OpenSocial wiki.

Feel free to jump in and help continue to evolve OpenSocial for use in enterprise environments.

Posted by Mark Weitzel, IBM SWG Strategy & Technology, Emerging Standards Team

MySpace SF devJam on Jan 14th

2010-01-06T08:23:00.000-08:00

MySpace is hosting a developer event at our San Francisco office on January 14^th where developers can come and learn about the MySpace Developer Challenge, meet the MySpace developer team, and hack away with us!

This MySpace devJam “hackathon” is a great way to turn the ideas you've been thinking about into something real and live on the site. The objective is to create something interesting, preferably that you can enter in our developer contest by the end of the day. We'll have coding sessions for each contest category and give you an update on our OpenSocial work and new APIs. It's also a chance to get feedback from your peers and help from the MySpace Developer team.

We recently opened up our data by releasing a suite of free-to-use APIs that we hope will inspire the developer community to create innovative applications. To celebrate, we've launched the MySpace Developer Challenge, a competition aimed at encouraging further development from our partners. Now, we’re opening up our San Francisco office on January 14^th (1 – 5pm) so developers can get started on their submissions with help from the MySpace developer team.

We hope to see you there! For a detailed agenda and to RSVP, go to http://myspacedevjam.eventbrite.com/.

Posted by Amy Walgenbach, MySpace Developer Platform

The MySpace Developer Challenge

2010-01-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

Calling all developers! MySpace is hosting the MySpace Developer Challenge, a competition aimed at encouraging further innovation from the developer community. We believe the best onsite and offsite integrations with MySpace are not here yet and the MySpace Developer Challenge intends to find them. We also want to reward innovative developers big and small and recognize them as much as we can.

Developers can participate by creating a new MySpace application or integrating our API's on their website. The Challenge will feature monetary and promotional prizes, to be given out to those developers whose submissions are picked by a panel of judges. There is a two month submission window, culminating in winners announced at the Games Developer Conference in San Francisco in March 2010. Submissions for the Challenge will be accepted from January 4 through Feb 28, 2010, and the most promising entries will be recognized in March.

The contest features five categories, and each category winner will be awarded $10,000 (for a total of $50,000) as well as MySpace promotion.

MySpace Developer Challenge Categories:

1. Most innovative use of the Real-Time Stream API

o MySpace's Real-Time Stream API allows the full MySpace activity stream to be pushed
to your site in real-time. The API includes granular filters to control
the amount of data seen. Show us your best integration of this API on
your site and enter for a chance to win.

o To spur some ideas, check out these examples by OneRiot, who launched their real-time search integration, Groovy Corporation , who included MySpace in their massively parallel processing technology, and Google will be leveraging our data in their Google Real-Time Search shortly. Also, check out our own internally built demo of our Real-Time Stream API.

2. Best new MySpace app

o Build a new MySpace app and enter for a chance to win.

3. Most innovative use of the Open Search API

o MySpace's Open Search API allows your site to include public MySpace profile information in search results. Users can search for people by name, profile type (eg musician, celebrity, comedian) or email address and filter search results by gender, age and location. Show us your best integration of this API and enter your site for a chance to win.

4. Most innovative MySpace Integration on Mobile

o MySpace is looking for innovative uses of our APIs for mobile applications. We're accepting submissions for mobile apps that either leverage our iPhone SDK for integration into existing apps and games or create a stand-alone MySpace application that surprises us with your creative use of our APIs, for any mobile platform. Think big or focus on a core feature - the goal is to enhance or reinvent a mobile MySpace experience.

5. Most innovative use of Photos

o With MySpace's Photo Upload API you can now upload photos from your site or app into MySpace. This includes the creation of public or private albums. Show us your best integration of this API and enter for a chance to win.

Our judging panel will include Mike Jones - MySpace COO, Ron Conway -
Founder and Managing Partner of Angel Investors LP, David Glazer -
Engineering Director at Google, and Robert Scoble - renowned blogger and
tech evangelist.

Go to http://www.myspace.com/developerchallenge for more information and to submit your entry.

Posted by Amy Walgenbach, MySpace Developer Platform

RenRen Launches OpenSocial 0.9 Support

2009-12-30T11:30:00.000-08:00

As one of the leading social networking sites in China, renren has always been a close partner of OpenSocial, following all the product and technology progress of OpenSocial. After one month of intensive development and testing, the renren Open Platform formally announced the support for OpenSocial 0.9.

This OpenSocial upgrade on Renren consists of the following progress:

Full support of all the features of OpenSocial v0.9
A more friendly payment interface
Support for the RESTful API of OpenSocial
More useful info on the wiki

After one year’s growth, over 2,000 third party applications have been launched on the renren Open Platform. A batch of top applications have acquired millions of users. In order to build a healthy and open environment for the developers to unleash their talents and realize the entrepreneurship, the renren Open Platform keeps improving the functionality and efficiency of its own API, and firmly chose OpenSocial as a open API standard.

OpenSocial helps developers to reduce the cost of development and implement features effectively. Especially for the overseas developers, it is quite easy for them to transplant the hot oversea OpenSocial-supported applications to China. The Renren Open platform has benefited a lot from OpenSocial.

With innovation and openness, the Renren Open Platform will continue the partnership with OpenSocial, together with global developers, and drive the new Open Era of China internet.

Bo Li, Fusong Li and Jing Huang, renren.com

"Enterprise OpenSocial White paper" now available!

2009-12-22T03:05:00.000-08:00

OpenSocial emerged from the demands of consumer-facing social networking sites, including MySpace, LinkedIn, and Ning. The rise of online social networking, and the changing nature of the consumer web, have both made OpenSocial increasingly relevant to business and enterprises. Beyond social capabilities for accessing and sharing user profile, relationship and activity data, OpenSocial can also be used as a general purpose web application integration technology, providing open standards for browser-based components known as gadgets. For non-browser/ui data transfer OpenSocial also includes a REST based server-to-server protocol

Over the last few months, a small group of enterprise vendors have been working together to understand how each is using OpenSocial within their organizations, and identify requirements based upon their enterprise use cases. What started out as a panel session at Google IO in May of 2009, led to larger face to face meeting in September consisting of representatives from IBM, SAP, Atlassian, Alfresco, SocialText, Cisco, Cubetree, eXo Platform, Google and others. The result of that face to face meeting is the Enterprise OpenSocial white paper, a collaborative effort that discusses general requirements for enterprise social systems and describes how OpenSocial can be used today to address them. Not all requirements are met today, however, so the paper also outlines the current gaps and discusses how the specification might evolve to meet them.

The white paper is intended for IT professionals, development managers, and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) who are leading organizational changes through social computing by embracing standards and Web 2.0 approaches. Our next face to face meeting is in late January 2010, so check out the Enterprise OpenSocial page on OpenSocial.org for more details. We hope that you find the paper enjoyable and educational. However, we recognize this is only the first step. Like the paper, we'll conclude with a call to action and encourage you to become involved and help shape OpenSocial.

Click here to read the "Enterprise OpenSocial White paper"!

Posted on behalf of the Enterprise OpenSocial team by Mark Weitzel (IBM) and Chris Schalk (Google)

Collaborate around OpenSocial gadget content using Atlassian Confluence

2009-12-11T15:23:00.000-08:00

Hello Readers, Mark Halvorson from Atlassian posting. A while back Atlassian announced its commitment to bringing OpenSocial to the Enterprise, since that time we've been working hard to get OpenSocial working in all of our products. In October we released JIRA 4.0, Atlassian's award-winning issue tracker. With JIRA 4.0's new Shindig-based dashboards, JIRA acts as both an OpenSocial gadget producer and consumer. Now we're happy to announce that Confluence 3.1 is now generally available for download from atlassian.com - and it too can now both produce and consume OpenSocial gadgets!

As many of you know OpenSocial gadgets make it easier to integrate with other applications on the web and behind the firewall. Along with many other new features it is now possible to embed OpenSocial gadgets on any Confluence wiki page. This will let groups of people collaborate around gadget content from virtually any application seamlessly.

Embedding OpenSocial Gadgets is Easy - Confluence 3.1 lets you embed Gadgets from other Atlassian tools like JIRA, Bamboo and FishEye directly into Confluence pages. You can add and configure gadgets in just a couple clicks using the Macro Browser, a visual editor available from any page:

And because OpenSocial is an open standard, you can use Gadgets to integrate with 3rd party applications behind the firewall and thousands of applications on the web.

Add Confluence to other applications - Confluence also provides its own Gadgets that you can embed into other OpenSocial containers like JIRA or even Gmail. Confluence comes with three out-of-the-box gadgets: Activity Stream, QuickNav and Confluence News.

See for yourself
Check out our brief overview video to see all of Confluence 3.1's new features in action:

Try it now!
Download Confluence 3.1 now to upgrade or get started a 10-user license for only $10, or a free 30-day evaluation. We've introduced simplified evaluation installers for Windows and OS X to get you up and running quickly.

If you need instant gratification, you can also check out our Online Trial (also free for 30 days) or play around with our live Sandbox.

Check out 3.1 and let us know what you think!

Posted by Mark Halvorson, Atlassian Software

MySpace Beta Launches OpenSocial 0.9 OSML and Data Pipelining

2009-12-08T05:09:00.000-08:00

MySpace is announcing the public beta of OpenSocial 0.9 with OSML and Data Pipelining.

For off-site developers and API-based apps, we've had OpenSocial 0.9 REST APIs available for a few months, go check it out. This beta launch represents the second half of an exciting and feature-packed release of OpenSocial on the MySpace Developer platform.

"What does OpenSocial 0.9 do for me on MySpace?" you might ask. There are lots of great things:

* A simple tag-based syntax for accessing data (Data Pipelining).
* A powerful template system for defining reusable content as "custom tags" for server-side or client-side rendering (OSML).
* A rich expression language for accessing data (OpenSocial Expression Language - or OS EL).
* Improved Gadget XML support for writing cross-container apps.
* Internationalization support with message bundles.
* Faster renderings performance

Now, instead of writing 30+ lines of JavaScript code with requests and callback handlers to get a list of friends, one Data Pipeline tag can retrieve this data:

<os:PeopleRequest key="myFriends" userId="@viewer" groupId="@friends" />

If your app needs to display and format data and UI components, it can be done with OSML markup instead of JavaScript. To define a tag "myapp:PersonBlock" showing a person's name and image in a box, use the following markup.

<script type="text/os-template" tag="myapp:PersonBlock">
<div style="border:3px solid green;">
<img src="${My.person.thumbnailUrl}" />
${My.person.displayName}
</div>
</script>

Any data declared with Data Pipeline tags can be easily accessed via the OpenSocial Expression Language (OS EL) within your app. The code to show the name of the first friend in the friend list registered under the key "myFriends" is as simple as this:

The first friend's name is: ${myFriends[0].displayName}

Improved Gadget XML support means your app's source code can be managed with a single code file. Porting between other OpenSocial containers will be greatly simplified. We're also exposing REST APIs for app management. You'll be able to wire in your favorite code editing tools for app management.

As part of the improved Gadget XML support and the new OS EL, you can easily internationalize and localize your app to be used in different cultures. The text of your app can be defined in different message bundles and accessed via OS-EL statements. A "Hello World" app supporting English and Spanish would contain code as below:

<Locale>
<messagebundle>
<msg name="greeting">Hello World</msg>
</messagebundle>
</Locale>

<Locale lang="es">
<messagebundle>
<msg name="greeting">Hola Mundo</msg>
</messagebundle>
</Locale>
...

${Msg.greeting}

Over the next few weeks we'll be diving into the features of 0.9 in more depth, adding tutorials, and building sample apps to get you up and running, so stay tuned. There will be a number of tutorials on creating OSML apps linked to from the OpenSocial Version 0.9 Wiki Page. For now, you can create a friends list app as follows:
1. Go to the developer site, sign in, and create a new On-site app named "My Friends".
2. On the Upload App XML page, scroll down and click the (Beta) App Gadget Source Editor button
3. Click the Install button on the gadget editor screen to install the app you've just created.
4. Insert the below code in the source text box and save:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<Module xmlns:os="http://ns.opensocial.org/2008/markup" >
<ModulePrefs title="Friends need Hello also" description="This is the desc">
<Require feature="opensocial-0.9"/>
<Require feature="opensocial-templates"/>
<Require feature="opensocial-data"/>
</ModulePrefs>
<Content type="html" view="canvas">

<script type="text/os-data">
<os:ViewerRequest key='vwr' />
<os:PeopleRequest key='friends' userId="@viewer" groupid="@friends" />
</script>

<script type="text/os-template">
<h1>Hello world, ${vwr.displayName}</h1>
Your friends are:
<div>
<os:Repeat expression="${friends}">
<p>
Friend number ${Context.index} is: ${Cur.displayName}
<img src="${Cur.thumbnailUrl}" />
</p>
</os:Repeat>
</div>
</script>

</Content>
</Module>

Happy coding!

studiVZ, meinVZ and schuelerVZ launches OpenSocial support

2009-12-07T06:26:00.000-08:00

Our three platforms studiVZ, meinVZ and schuelerVZ are Germany's largest social network with close to 16 million users.

We are proud to announce that our platform has OpenSocial 0.8.1 up and running. Developers can upload and test their Apps against our platforms and request the approval to make them available to our users.

All interested developers are invited to visit our developer's wiki at http://developer.studivz.net/wiki, where more information can be found on how to become a VZ OpenSocial App developer. Following the strict German privacy regulations, we introduced a new concept called VCards, which enable users to determine which of their profile information they are willing to share with each of their installed Apps, this can be App-specific if they wish.

Services

Currently we offer the following OpenSocial services:

People
AppData

The next release will continue implementations of the following services

Messages
Activities
Payment (Scheduled for a Q1 2010 launch)

All services are also available in our REST API over two-legged or three-legged OAuth.

Views

Profile
Canvas
Group (VZ only)
Preview (VZ only)
Popup (VZ only)
Integration (VZ only)

Extensions

Beside the standard extensions we implemented some additional functionality in order to meet our platform's needs and to enhance the user-experience:

vz.invite

Extended invitation functionality

gadgets.cache

For easy CDN access

gadgets.tracking
vz.vcard

Functions for vz specific privacy layer

VZ Sandbox

Our sandbox is the first instance a freshly developed App has to pass. This is the place where developers can test their newest App revisions before they are published. We currently offer the following features inside our sandbox:

Rrevision based storage and deployment
Online XML-editor
Statistics and tracking access
Logging
Multi-user access and shared development capabilities
Integrated previews

We strongly believe that OpenSocial should also be taken literally, so we initiated a monthly GeekNight, where all interested developers are informed about our current projects and get a chance to mingle with other industry professionals.

For more information on our GeekNight events, feel free to visit
http://www.studivz.net/geeknight.

Posted by Sebastian Galonska, VZnet Netzwerke Ltd

Announcing the Worldwide Ning Appathon Competition

2009-11-06T08:28:00.000-08:00

Let the games begin! At last night's Ning Appathon kickoff event at the Ning offices in Palo Alto, Ning started a week-long worldwide app development competition for the recently launched Ning Apps platform.

WHAT: The Ning Appathon is a week-long OpenSocial development competition with prizes for both original and ported applications. Judges include Ning Chairman and Co-founder Marc Andreessen, Wired magazine Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson and Managing Director of building43 Robert Scoble.

WHERE: The competition is open to participants worldwide. Visit the Ning Developer Network for details and Ning Apps documentation.

WHEN: The competition began at our kickoff event on November 5th. All entries must be submitted via http://developer.ning.com/appathon by 10 p.m. Pacific on Thursday, November 12th.

PRIZES: The Grand Prize for Best Original App is $5,000 (US). The Grand Prize for Best Ported App is $4,000 (US). Two Original App and Ported App finalists (four total) will each receive $500 (US). All six winners will also receive prominent editorial placement in the Ning Apps directory.

Please visit the Ning Developer Network for more information. Good luck!

Posted by Kyle Ford, Director of Partner Design & Development, Ning

Come Join Us at the Ning Appathon!

2009-10-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

To continue the momentum from our recent Ning Apps launch -- our Apps program based on OpenSocial -- we're excited to announce that we'll be holding a special developer event called the Ning Appathon at our offices in Palo Alto, CA on Thursday, November 5th from 6pm-10pm.

The event will include:

An overview of Ning Apps and our OpenSocial implementation
Presentations from existing Ning Apps developers
A chance to meet members of the Ning Engineering and Developer Advocacy teams
Free pizza and beer :)

Most importantly, we'll be announcing the start of a week-long app development competition which will include awards for new applications in addition to ported applications. Prizes and details will be revealed at the event.

All attendees will receive a complimentary Ning hoodie, so be sure to tell us your shirt size when RSVPing. You can attend solo or bring one colleague, we only ask that you RSVP by 9pm PST on Thursday, October 29th through our website, http://developer.ning.com/appathon. All attendees must be at least 21 years of age.

Thanks!

Posted by Ernie Hsiung, Lead Developer Evangelist, Ning

Write a Gadget, Win $5000!

2009-09-23T15:55:00.000-07:00

Mark Halvorson from Atlassian Software here! You may have read my blog post a while back about Why Enterprise Software Provider Atlassian chose OpenSocial Atlassian. We've been working hard over the past year adding an OpenSocial container based on Shindig into JIRA 4. I'm writing today because we've got some cool news for all you gadget developers out there.

But before I mention that, I wanted to give you a heads up about Atlassian. We build affordable, lightweight software that helps enterprises collaborate better. Our products include Confluence, recognized as the most widely-used enterprise wiki, and JIRA, one of the world's most popular issue trackers for IT project management. We also make a bunch of developer tools to help you write great code. Check us out.

We're excited to announce Atlassian Codegeist IV, our fourth annual plugin competition. We're giving away over $50,000 in prizes for the coolest, most useful, most elegant plugin or integration for any of Atlassian's products. There are six prizes, each worth $5,000 in cash, and thousands
more in software, conference tickets, and even a new MacBook!

But the interesting thing for the OpenSocial community is that because JIRA 4 is now an OpenSocial Container, and gadgets are now a big part of our plugin competition! To jumpstart our gadget development, we're sponsoring a category for best OpenSocial gadget inside JIRA. In JIRA 4, we're focusing on the gadgets part of the spec, with more Social features to come in our next release. OpenSocial is a brand new technology for our community, so the field is wide open.

We've also got a first- and second-place Best Plugin prizes, and three other specific categories for different types of plugins (each still worth $5,000). There's something here for everyone, including opportunities beyond traditional Java development.

This year we will even be announcing the winners live on October 21 at AtlasCamp, our premier developer conference. You need not be present to win, but it sure will be more fun!

You can use the Developer Forums to communicate with your peers, find team-members, ask questions, and publicize your awesome new plugin. The Atlassian Developer Community is strong, and Codegeist is a wonderful chance to collaborate with other developers.

Check out the Codegeist website for more information and get started today.

Thanks, and Happy Coding!
http://www.atlassian.com/

Posted by Mark Halvorson, Atlassian Software

MySpace Full Support of OpenSocial 0.9 REST APIs Now Available

2009-09-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

MySpace is pleased to unleash our full support of OpenSocial 0.9. MySpace's OpenSocial 0.9 implementation was built on an entirely new framework with three main goals in mind for developers; stability, performance and compliance to the OpenSocial 0.9 specification. These three goals will yield more consistent results, fewer errors, and means that your code should be even more portable to other social networks that support OpenSocial.

While we're labeling this as a BETA, we feel our APIs are in a very solid state and are ready for widespread use. The PHP and C# SDKs have been fully updated to use all of the new 0.9 APIs we have available. The other SDKs are currently being updated for your use and we've started to update the community-supported SDKs found at opensocial.org.

Documentation for all the APIs can be found here:

Activities : Provides the event data found in the MySpace Activity Stream.
Albums : Support for fetching, creating and updating photo albums.
AppData : A generic key/value store that your app can use to fetch, update and delete data relevant to your app.
Groups : Provides information on a user's friend categories.
MediaItems : Photo support, including photo uploads.
People : Gives access to a user's profile data, as well as their friends' profile data.
StatusMood : Allows support for updating and fetching a user's status and mood, as well as fetching their friends' status and mood.
Notifications : Create app notifications that are displayed in the recipient's mail center.

Posted by Chad Russell, MySpace Team

Japan's mixi has launched its OpenSocial Container for all users!

2009-09-17T16:39:00.000-07:00

Hello! My name is Yoichiro Tanaka, and I belong to the Platform Team of mixi, Inc. "mixi" is currently the most popular social networking service (SNS) in Japan and has more than 17 million registered users. I am happy to announce that we have released "mixi apps" which is based on OpenSocial to all of our users. As of September 4th, more than 220 apps have already been registered and launched!

Background

mixi was originally launched in February 2004 as one of the first social networking services in Japan. It lets users create profiles, make friends with other users, post diaries, discuss in communities, share pictures and music with friends, etc.

mixi apps is a new service which lets social application providers develop applications that use social graphs formed within mixi, and provide these applications to mixi users. To achieve this, we chose OpenSocial as the best solution.

In order to be ready with a quality set of applications for our public launch, we have been running a beta version of mixi apps for our developers since last December.

Applications

Since our launch of mixi apps, we are finding some applications that are substantially more popular than others. Here's two of the more popular applications.

The first application is "Kanji test" produced by Drecom. It challenges users, who compete against each other, to write down how to read Kanji characters (also known as to "furiganize"). It also shows the ranking of the number of Kanji sets that the user successfully furiganized. In the relatively short period since it has been available to users, it has skyrocketed in popularity and already has over three hundred thousand users!

The next application is "Recollect sketch" produced by REAL. Users are given a theme, and are challenged to draw it entirely from memory! What results is usually a very unique and funny image which users can share and enjoy with friends. This application is visually entertaining and social, and it already has about one hundred thousand users.

The preceding applications are just a sample of the continually growing application directory of mixi apps, which averages several new applications per day!

Supported Features

OpenSocial 0.8.1 core APIs (People, Activities, Persistence, and Invite).
The gadgets "core" and "feature-Specific" APIs (mostly supported).
Partly supports Albums API in OpenSocial 0.9.
A mixi specific "Community API," which allows application access to mixi community (or group) information along with its members.

Upcoming Supported Features

Sending a notification between users using a requestSendMessage function.
Sending a event of app's life-cycle for developers.

mixi Ad Program

In addition to mixi apps, we have also recently announced the "mixi Ad Program". This service is one of the business support programs from mixi for developers. If you decide to join this service, ads will be shown within your application, and you will make profits through revenue sharing based on your application's page view. This service has already started from September 3rd, 2009.

The features of "mixi Ad Program" are the following:

Registry and usage fee are free!
Both corporate and individual developers can join this program.
Ordering and confirming your reports is easy through a single management page.
Assured profit of a minimum of 0.01 yen per page view.

More information on this service can be found at:

http://developer.mixi.co.jp/appli/mixi_adprogram/adprogram_info (Note: this site is in Japanese)

We believe this production release of "mixi apps" and overall support of the OpenSocial standards will enable us to easily continue innovating on compelling future social services for our users. In addition, we hope that our business support programs will greatly contribute to developing the market of mixi apps.

Posted by Yoichiro Tanaka, mixi Platform Team.

Business of Social Applications

2009-09-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

In just over two years, social applications have greatly enhanced the user experience on social networks. The number of app installs among social networks has climbed into the billions, creating an industry with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. In this series of blog posts we are going to cover a wide range of topics such as business models, characteristics of successful apps, best practices, and metrics/stats.

Historic Overview

The industry started out with the introduction of the Facebook Application Platform but has since expanded to many other social networks all over the world thanks to the OpenSocial standard. Social networks that benefited from adoption of OpenSocial include MySpace, orkut, hi5, Yahoo, and more than 20 other social networks. You can visit the OpenSocial

wiki for technical details, tutorials and samples, and check out the Containers page for a comprehensive listing of all the OpenSocial networks along with traffic and demographics data.

In a short period of time, social applications have gone through two distinct phases in terms of feature richness and monetization methods. The first phase was dominated by apps providing simple social interactions such as self-expression or giving gifts. The second phase exhibits increasingly sophisticated characteristics in apps such as game design patterns (levels, points, rankings, etc.) and user generated content.

Business Models Overview

The business models of social apps have closely followed the development of social apps. In the first phase, the most revenue was generated from traditional display ads, supplemented by affiliate/referral offers and app installs. This worked well for simple interactive apps with relatively low engagement because users quickly moved on to next thing, be it an ad, a link or another app install. In this phase, less engagement by users in apps kept page view inventory in balance with available ads, resulting in high eCPM and profits for developers.

As apps matured in sophistication and richness, users became much more engaged with apps, less inclined to click on ads, links, or another app installs. Higher engagement also generated much higher demand for page view inventory, outweighing the supply from ad networks and therefore reducing eCPM rates. Out of necessity, app developers learned to take advantage of high user engagement by selling virtual goods, and in doing so, creating virtual economy business models that have provided the second boost to the ecosystems of social apps.

Stay tuned as we explore the business of social apps in upcoming posts on the OpenSocial blog.

Posted by Shawn Shen, Google Developer Relations

Ning Apps Launch Across 1.5 Million Ning Networks

2009-09-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

Today we released Ning Apps, or third-party applications based on OpenSocial 0.8, that serve as new, rich features for our 1.5 million+ Ning Networks and 33 million users.

Thanks to OpenSocial and more than 90 Ning App developers, our Ning Network Creators now have an even greater choice over the features and applications they can add to Ning Networks to make them exactly right for a given topic, interest or passion.

If you don’t know about Ning, we’re the social platform for the world’s interests and passions online. Through the power of Ning Networks, we bring the context of topics, interests and passions to social networking. We’ve been at work on Ning Apps in a private beta for a few months now and our Network Creators love Ning Apps for three key reasons.

First, with a single click, a Ning Network Creator can now add Ning Apps to expand the functionality of their Ning Network and increase engagement by their members. Most social platforms rely exclusively on members adding applications to their profile pages, but when a Network Creator adds a Ning App, that Ning App is available to all of the members of that Ning Network in a flash. This means that with one action, a Network Creator can make their Ning App available to hundreds, thousands or even millions of people instantaneously. This is a different – and we think better – approach to application distribution.

Second, with the breadth of Ning Apps, the options on Ning Networks are infinite for Network Creators. Here are some examples of how Ning Networks can use Ning Apps to engage their unique audience in a relevant and effective way.

For Artist, Musician or Entertainment Ning Networks

Sellit online store to sell merchandise
Ticketmaster or LiveNation to sell event tickets
Qik to stream mobile video or Ustream.tv to live video chat from a live event

For Activist and Non-Profit Ning Networks

Social Giving by Pinc to support fundraising efforts
Marketplace Classifieds to allow people to post and search local ads for more volunteers and resources
BlogTalkRadio to host live radio shows
PollDaddy to rapidly gauge members level of involvement
Huddle to share workspaces and collateral
Tungle.me to schedule meetings and mobilize members
WordPress to display blog posts

For Sports Fan or Extreme Athlete Ning Networks

NewsShare to share highlights and stories
Emote to share real time reactions to games and players

You can see the Full Ning Apps Directory at about.ning.com/ningapps.

Third, Ning Apps are completely integrated into Ning Networks by design. Ning Apps support gadgets.skins, allowing them to automatically inherit the visual style of the Ning Network to which they're added. Additionally, each Ning App by default is designed to write to a member's Latest Activity feed, send messages on behalf of the member (via requestSendMessage) and drive distribution using a Ning Network’s default viral sharing options.

If you're a developer interested in more info, please check out our Ning Developer Network. If you're a Ning Network Creator, please visit the full Ning Apps Directory on your Ning Network to start adding Ning Apps today.

Posted by Jay Parikh, Senior Vice President of Product Engineering at Ning

Check out Cyworld's developer sandbox

2009-09-02T08:31:00.000-07:00

Annyonghaseyo! This is Kyle Kim from Cyworld with some exciting news!

We have recently launched Dev.Square a sandbox environment for Cyworld developers. In celebration of the launch, we had a big announcement conference in Seoul with over 750 people attending (see the photos here). I'd like to thank everyone who attended the conference as well as those who contacted us after reading our previous post.

For developers in Korea who are interested in writing applications for Cyworld, we are hosting a workshop on September 4, 2009. Speakers from our partner companies (including Mickey Kim and Chris Schalk from Google) will host sessions on OpenSocial APIs, social gaming, and trends within the social apps industry. For more details on the workshop, please visit the Dev.Square website.

The DevSquare website is currently available in Korean and English; Language settings can be changed from the drop-down menu at the bottom of the page. In order to register as a developer, you should first register as a Nate/Cyworld member. We apologize for the cumbersome process, but do not miss this opportunity to access our 24 million Cyworld users / 27 million NateOn (IM) users.

For English comments / questions, please contact Dyne (dynelee@skcomms.co.kr), and for Korean comments / questions, contact devsquare@nate.com.

We have also created an official Twitter page. Please follow us for frequent updates.

Posted by Kyle Kim, Cyworld Team