Shonzilla, a pattern-seeking animal

Sat Apr 25

OpenSocial interoperability with web 2.0 applications

A discussion recently started by Harry Hübner and commented by Christopher Blum in OpenSocial Interest Group I’m moderating over at XING, led me to a conclusion:
Supporting various applications (either web 2.0 or headless server functionality) inside an OpenSocial container can create more traffic (and revenue if they’re commercial) for application’s developers.

(Caveat: the conclusion is currently based on theory alone but sounds perfectly plausible once you read my explanation.)

Here’s my attempt to stand on Christopher’s shoulders and go into more detail. His proposition of “OpenSocial interoperability” by bringing various popular [web 2.0, headless] applications into OpenSocial containers is one of the ways to get more traction and traffic by using OpenSocial, which in turn could improve perceived interoperability.

This kind of interoperability can be best achieved using OpenSocial REST API which enables application’s home server to access selected OpenSocial container functionality. In this case, best-of-breed and widely adopted technologies are used: HTTP protocol for invoking container’s entry points and JSON for encoding data (read or written).

BTW, headless application can be any functionality on some server that runs or can run without a UI. For some examples of headless applications consider a Jabber or IRC server. You can let your imagination run free once you realize that this headless application can also be (almost) any application running in Amazon EC3, Google App Engine and other clouds. I’m wrote “almost” in parenthesis to include only those apps that understand REST, i.e. speak HTTP and understand JSON.

In more detail and related to OpenSocial, the scenario I’m supporting is the following:

using OpenSocial REST API to enable application’s home server read from and write into OpenSocial container to improve integration of application’s core functionality (running on server) by accessing OpenSocial data items like Person objects (e.g. users of XING, Orkut, MySpace, etc.) and AppData objects (which encapsulate all the specific object types relevant to the application’s core functionality). Using Person and AppData objects on home application’s server improves “social-awareness” of that application. Another part of this scenario is:
using OpenSocial Gadget XML and Gadget API to display socially-aware application’s data (accessed inside an OpenSocial gadget

Note that either part of this scenario or both 1. and 2. can be used to improve application’s interoperability.

In using part 1 of this interoperability scenario, the initiative for improving social-awareness of a popular application by using REST API to connect to OpenSocial container is in the hands of the original application’s developers. In the case of open-source application projects, there are less impediments and objective reasons not to connect open-source applications to OpenSocial container and, through it, all the users using the app. This way, data is not only more socially-aware but also more pervasive when part 2 is used.

When using part 2, application data is embedded into a “personalized web panel” running inside OpenSocial container thanks to Gadget XML, Gadget API and different features-specific APIs that are optionally supported by the respective OpenSocial container. The most interesting feature (i.e. OpenSocial JavaScript API namespace) is RPC feature (which stands for remote procedure call) that an OpenSocial container may implement (since it’s an optional API) to provide gadget-to-container, container-to-gadget, and gadget-to-gadget communication.

The final result of this interoperability scenario is better data availability and more convenience to users which can lead to an increased [web 2.0, headless] application’s usage.

The most prominent example of increased usage thanks to implementing OpenSocial (albeit implementing the entire OpenSocial container is more work than previous scenario) is Plaxo Pulse which got an order of magnitude

Mon Apr 6

T-Mobile to Use Google Software in Devices for Home

NY Times reports on a “secret” memo leaked out from one of T-Mobile’s partners which lays out T-Mobile’s vision of bringing Android platform to home devices like home phone, tablet, etc. allowing for tighter integration with devices like phones, photo frames, digital cameras, security systems, webcams TVs.

Since NY Times is a failry reliable source and the fact it’s becoming apparent that Android platform will become pervasive, I can say this is great news and that Android is the space to watch. Back in December 2007, I’ve also written about the possibility of Android becoming pervasive in my initial rant about Android.

[via NY Times and brianjdixon]

Wed Apr 1

Rhodes framework

Here’s another open-source cross-platform mobile application framework I’ve discovered. It’s called Rhodes framework. This one is both very interesting and special because it does not use web browser as run-time environment but it rather creates native applications.

Cross-platform mobile applications are written in Ruby programming language using MVC architectural. This is definitely good news for all Rails developers out there and perhaps an additional push for everyone else considering finally learning the Ruby language and Rails framework as well.

The version 1.0 release a week ago, on March 24th, supports mobile platforms such as iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlueBerry, and last but not least, Android.

Rhodes framework includes the first Ruby implementation for all the mentioned platforms except Symbian which already had one. Cross-platform mobile Ruby code gets translated into natively optimized mobile apps. One of the main components is client-side component called RhoSync which allows integration with web services and, consequently, integration with almost any back-end system or application. Some integrations already available with Rhodes framework are SugarCRM integration and Ligthouse integration.

How does it work? Nice people from Rhomobile explain it themselves:
“In general, developer productivity is much higher in Rhodes than writing to diverse native device operating systems and APIs since most of your UI customization can be done in HTML templates (ERB files). Rhodes also provides access to native device capabilities such as GPS and PIM data via an extended set of tags (e.g. <geolocation/>).”

Has Rhodes framework intrigued you? If so, have a look at Rhodes tutorial.

[via googletechtalks]

Wed Mar 25

What is PhoneGap? The Movie

Last week, in my blog post iFart Economy, I wrote about simple mobile application that can help you earn a lot of money if you’re creative and use universal language.

Many people may feel reluctant to even try programming for the mobile devices. Since there’s orders of magnitude more web developers (ahem, those who know well and use regularly JavaScript, HTML and CSS) than mobile developers, the barrier of entry has been high. An open-source development tool called PhoneGap might help. This development tool allows you to create mobile applications quickly using JavaScript by offering a number of JavaScript libraries that abstract mobile device hardware and make it available through JavaScript.

What’s nice about this dev tool is that, in theory (i.e. I have yet to try it out), allows you to write once and run on many mobile platforms: iPhone, BlackBerry and Android.

Here’s a quote from André Charland, CEO of Nitobi, the creators of PhoneGap:

We’ve been fielding the question “What is PhoneGap?” more and more these past couple months. So we put together this short video to help explain it:)

Get the code and more at PhoneGap

[via

andrecharland]

Thu Mar 5

HOTWO: Developing Android widgets

Wed Jan 28

10 Careers in Demand for 2009 - PayScale Resources

Phew! During 2009, The Year of Recession, being a software developer is still a viable career choice. :-)

Software Design/Development Careers. Companies from all sectors of the economy are looking for software engineers and programmers, says Turnquist. This is because society in general is becoming more tech-dependent - just think of how rapidly cell phones change with each passing year - requiring software developers that can stay abreast of all the changes.
Median Yearly Salary - $72,070

Mon Dec 29

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Here’s a cool indie rock tune for all of your developers and rockers out there :-)

Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton

In case you wonder, the author is not a programmer but a self-proclaimed internet superstar (ever seen a programmer thats’ also a internet superstar?). He has a bunch of geeky, easy-listening songs that you may want to check out and eventually purchase.

Fri Aug 1

“ # Write the test before you write the code # Manage the lifecycle of your objects fastidiously
# Build only what you need now, not what you might need later
# Apply ancient philosophies to software development
# Question authority, rather than blindly adhere to standards
# Make hard things easier and impossible things possible through meta-programming
# Be sure all code within a method is at the same level of abstraction
# Pick the right editor and assemble the best tools for the job O’Reilly - Safari Books Online - The Productive Programmer

Tue May 13

Android Developer Challenge - round I winners

Android is a mobile device platform coming from Google and backed by Open Handset Alliance. As of May 2008, there are still not Android devices available for purchase, although some have been demoed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this March.

In an attempt to bootstrap creation of a developer community, Google has launched Android Developer Challenge in November 2007, when this mobile device platform has been seen by the general public for the first time. This move has generated a significant interest in the blogosphere, as well as some criticism as far as the Android SDK was concerned, especially for its first, M3 release. In the round I of the contest which has been open until April 14, 2008, a solid number of 1788 entries have been accumulated, 50 best submissions have been selected. Each of the round I winners has received $25kUS which is a nice amount to boostrap the new business. All of 50 winners are participating in round II for additional ten $275,000 awards and ten $100,000 awards. Pretty nice?

In a smart and “don’t be evil” manner, Google has not announced the winners and delegated it to respective Android application developers to spread the buzz and promote the Android platform.

Official list should appears online today. In the meantime, I’ll post some winner entries whose authors chose to brag about their success. After respective applications become available, I might as well post some reviews of the most promising ones.

In the alphabetical list that follows you’ll notice there

Android Scan - Jeffrey Sharkey - automatic barcode recognition and interface to review and auctions web sites
Beetaun - Sergey Gritsyuk and Dmitri Shipilov
BioWallet - Jose Luis Huertas Fernandez - biometric authentication system
BreadCrumbz - Amos Yoffe
CallACab - Konrad Huebner and Henning Boeger
City Slikkers - PoroCity Media and Virtual Logic Systems - location based game
Commandro - Alex Pisarev, Andrey Tapekha - track where your friends are located
Cooking Capsules - Mary Ann Cotter and Muthuselvam Ramadoss
Diggin - Daniel Johansson, Aramis Waernbaum, Andreas Hedin
Dyno - Virachat Boondharigaputra
e-ventr - Michael Zitzelsberger
Eco2go - Taneem Talukdar, Gary Pong, Jeff Kao and Robert Lam - tracks your trips and suggests transportation alternatives to reduce your carbon footprint
Em-Radar - Jack Kwok - weather emergency alerts
Fingerprint - Robert Mickle - collaborative sketching and painting
FreeFamilyWatch - Navee Technologies LLC
goCart - Rylan Barnes
GolfPlay - Inizziativa Networks - support for golf players
gWalk - Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus ten Hagen, Christian Klinger, Marko Modsching, Rene Scholze
HandWx - Weathertop Consulting LLC - location based weather forecast (news article about HandWx)
IMEasy - Yan Shi
Jigsaw - Mikhail Ksenzov
JOYity - Zelfi AG
LifeAware - Gregory Moore, Aaron L. Obrien, Jawad Akhtar
Locale - Clare Bayley, Christina Wright, Jasper Lin, Carter Jernigan - dynamic device settings manager (CNN Money and TechCrunch wrote about this team of MIT students)
LReady Emergency Manager - Chris Hulls, Dilpreet Singh, Luis Carvalho, Phuong Nguyen
Marvin - Pontier Laurent
Mobeedo - Sengaro GmbH - mobile search engine
Multiple Facets Instant Messenger - Virgil Dobjanschi
MyCloset - Mamoru Tokashiki
PedNav - RouteMe2 Technologies Inc. - trip planner
Phonebook 2.0 - Voxmobili
PicSay - Eric Wijngaard
PiggyBack - Christophe Petit and Sebastien Petit
Pocket Journey - Anthony Stevens and Rosie Pongracz - interactive pocket city guide
Rayfarla - Stephen Oldmeadow
Safety Net - Michael DeJadon
SocialMonster - Ben Siu-Lung Hui and Tommy Ng
SplashPlay - guitar teacher
Sustain- Keeping Your Social Network Alive - Niraj Swami
SynchroSpot - Shaun Terry
Talkplay - Sung Suh Park
Teradesk - José Augusto Athayde Ferrarini
The Weather Channel for Android - The Weather Channel Interactive Inc.
TuneWiki - TuneWiki Inc. - lyrics downloaded and awailable while a music tune is being played
Wikitude-the Mobile Travel Guide - Philipp Breuss - suggests points of interest based on location
Writing Pad - ShapeWriter Inc

I’m taking the liberty of listing another entry which has not been published.

Mobeegal.in - location based search engine about which I found out via Intellibitz@Twitter.

If you have more details on any of the entries - let me know via Twitter.

Cheers!
Shonzilla

Sun Feb 3

MySpace about to get serious about OpenSocial

MySpace Developer Program

A couple of days ago MySpace announced receiving pre-registration to their MySpace Developer Program a.k.a. MySpace OpenSocial beta. This is the greatest news coming out of OpenSocial community since it has been made public in November 1, 2007.

For those geeky enough to have heard of OpenSocial - it is an open standard that will enable web-based applications akin to Facebook application to show on any social networking web site (or any web site for that matter) data that are related to you and you choose to display. By data I mean anything, your photos, your favourite movies, your night life recommendations,

You-know-who competition

This move by MySpace (i.e. News Corp) comes as especially improtant as Facebook is planning to increase their stronghold on the market by syndicating Facebook apps (i.e. allowing Facebook apps and your data shown in them to appear on your personal website).

Friend, pokes, funwalls - OK, now show me the money

All the Generation Next’s favourite online games like broadcasting funny videos, tagging friend’s photos, instant messaging for everyone to see, exchanging pokes and what not - they’re all fun for users of social networking sites and social utilities. The question is why and how can these be profitable to these “social containers” and social application developers, or in other words: where’s the money? Especially interesting is how MySpace’s foray into OpenSocial will earn money for those creating OpenSocial apps and therefore MySpace itself.

It’s hard to tell anything specific. I do not know much and I bet MySpace doesn’t either. ;-)

What is apparent, some players from the Facebook ecosystem (Max Levchin’s Slide) are getting heavily valuated, so there’s fire behind the smoke curtain.

Not much choice

I guess it will necessarily be an ad-based revenue model. It is all about getting more eyeballs, more time spent on the site and ad rolls trying to attract customers while trying to be more relevant and trying to increase conversion. OpenSocial support is supposed to lower the barrier of entry for a tidal wave of applications that will make you spend more time on MySpace.

In my view, Facebook currently has by far a more consistent user experience and application ease-of-use which translates into Facebook’s immense valuation in the market of social networks/utilities. That is Facebook main value proposition to everyone - user, developers and future investors.

OpenSocial needs to iron out many technical hurdles in order to make it easy for significant number of developers to jump ships. In the case of MySpace, it will need to work actively with developers taking part in the MySpace Developer Program while ironing out their revenue model. Being a big company, MySpace (i.e. News Corp.) will almost certainly do both things at the same time, which always proves to be tricky as in such cases target (market and revenue model) is moving even more quickly.

Future, if any and the best way to predict it…

At the end of the value chain are the big name contracts (i.e. the true OpenSocial customers) which will come if OpenSocial makes it easy to develop and safe to use OpenSocial applications.

Also to have in mind is Google Social Graph API, that could be a part of the future online social networking puzzle.

Cards, some of them, are on the table and more chips needs to fly in for the greater developer community to jump the OpenSocial ship.Currently, OpenSocial is something to play with and MySpace Developer Program I expect to be a much better far-less-buggy environment then Orkut Sandbox.