[Myexperiment-discuss] Open Social

[Ross Gardler]

open social is probably important to this project. I just thought I should flag
a proposed contribution to the Apache Incubator:

Apache member Brian McAllister, who works for Ning, has proposed a new project
for Apache called Shindig. Here's an excerpt from the proposal:

    OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across
multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create
social applications that use a social network's friends and update feeds. A
social application, in this context, is an application run by a third party
provider and embedded in a web page, or web application, which consumes services
provided by the container and by the application host. This is very similar to
Portal/Portlet technology, but is based on client-side compositing, rather than
server. More information can be found about OpenSocial at
http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial.

    Shindig is an implementation of an emerging set of APIs for client-side
composited web applications. The Apache Software Foundation has proven to have
developed a strong system and set of mores for building community-centric, open
standards based systems with a wide variety of participants. A robust,
community-developed implementation of these APIs will encourage compatibility
between service providers, ensure an excellent implementation is available to
everyone, and enable faster and easier application development for users.

. . .

    Ning, Inc. intends to donate code based on their implementation of
OpenSocial. The backend systems will be replaced with more generic equivalents
in order to not bind the implementation to specifics of the Ning platform.

Clearly, if My Experiment wants to become a container for open social apps this
will be the path of least resistance, at least for now.

Ross