Entries from March 2009 ↓

Google Friend Connect Is trying to catch up with Facebook Connect, and just now released its first set of APIs, which will let developers integrate Google Friend Connect more deeply into their sites and applications. Google Friend Connect offers a single sign-on service as well as several data portability features.

The new APIs will allow site owners to use both JavaScript and REST APIs to embed Google Friend Connect directly into the markup language of each site and make it easier for to combine it with their existing login systems. Google has also created APIs for developers who want to create plugins for content management systems such as Wordpress and Drupal. Gadget developers now have better authentication options as well. According to the API page:

Friend Connect API’s enable developers to

• Integrate social flows and data directly within a page’s markup, via the OpenSocial standard specification
• integrate existing login systems, registered users, and existing data with new social data and activities.
• Create social gadgets & services that are embeddable within millions of Friend Connect enabled sites.

Of course, Facebook Connect already has its own set of competing APIs (which are the same ones used by its 670,000 application developers). The Google Social Blog has more info.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

You can log in to comment here on ReadWriteWeb with an OpenID, via Facebook Connect or through various other methods. Imagine if you could make “friend” connections with other commenters on our site. That relationship wouldn’t be reflected back into the OpenID or Facebook account that you then take to other sites.

If it did, that could be a real game changer. We’d love to introduce our smart and sassy readers to each other here and then see them be friends on social networks, mobile sites and all around the web. Just a pipe dream? That’s what a brand new identity provider called Cliqset aims to make possible. We believe it’s the first identity provider of its type that allows 3rd parties to change user profile information, not just read it.

Sponsor

Cliqset isn’t a social network that you’d go and join like you would others, it’s more like the glue that ties together your identities across all supporting social networks. Unlike other similar services, though, this portable system of identity, contacts and activities works two ways. It allows your identity to be changed by what you do around the web, it doesn’t just serve up a centralized identity to dependent lesser networks you log in to. This identity provider could treat supporting sites much more as equals than Facebook does, for example.

Cliqset uses the OAuth data standard to do all this, so it doesn’t even have to ask for your password to the networks you want to connect.

Who’s using Cliqset so far? Unfortunately, the geeks behind Cliqset don’t do a very good job explaining what they do and they don’t have any examples other than their own site today at launch.

That could change soon, though. The company has released a variety of code libraries for developers to drop Cliqset support into their applications. At launch there are Java, iPhone and .net for Windows Mobile libraries. A PHP library is forthcoming. All the libraries will be open sourced and posted to Google Code.

Facebook Connect lets 3rd parties publish updates to a user’s activity stream, but that’s about it. We asked a number of hardcore identity geeks whether they had seen anything quite like Cliqset before and no one had. There are OpenID and related specifications aiming to accomplish just this, but nothing in the wild yet, according to the OpenID Foundation and Six Apart’s David Recordon.

Recordon is a little concerned about seeing another company release an API to accomplish what Cliqset aims to do. “At first glance, it seems like Cliqset is leaning in the correct direction with their support of OAuth for APIs and OpenID for sign in, but are still creating their own APIs – ala Facebook Connect – when dealing with profiles and activities,” he told us. “This is both yet another validation of the work by the wider DiSo community and opportunity to finalize the Portable Contacts and Activity Streams specifications for broad adoption on the social web.”

We asked Cliqset specifically about Facebook Connect, whether it wasn’t in the company’s interest to implement a Read/Write capability in its identity system as well. They said they believed it was but that they expected the giant social network to take much longer to implement this key feature. By offering iPhone and Windows Mobile libraries right out of the gate, we think Cliqset could move quickly in the mobile world as well.

Unfortunately, the company isn’t doing a terribly good job of explaining its fundamental value proposition so far. We’re not the first site to cover Cliqset today (see PC World’s coverage for example) and everyone else is writing up the company as just one more cross-site identity provider. There’s more than that going on here, but we’ll see if this startup with what it calls “the most robust APIs you’ll find anywhere” is able to make the market headway that its innovative vision seems to warrant.

Discuss

Allan Jardine has updated his popular DataTables rich data grid control. Allan told us what his aims were for this 1.4.1 release:

Being fairly happy with the options that DataTables presents to the end user, I’ve focused this release on providing tools for the developer. A plug-in API, non-destructive DOM manipulation (the biggest weak point of the old versions) and documentation are the major new features.

If you take a look at the new rich API you will see that can manipulate the data in the table, build filters, fetch remote data, and more.

What does DataTables feature again?

• Variable length pagination
• On-the-fly filtering
• Multi-coloum sorting with data type detection
• Smart handling of column widths
• Fully internationalisable
  UK, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Norwegian, Portuguese Brazilian (and more) translations provided
• State saving
• Hidden columns
• Dynamic creation of tables
• Ajax auto loading of data
• Custom DOM positioning
• Single column filtering
• Alternative pagination types
• Non-destructive DOM interaction
• Sorting column(s) highlighting
• Extensive plug-in support
  Sorting, type detection, API functions and pagination
• Fully themeable by CSS
• Solid documentation

Some questions

Why not simply use PayPal?

In their own words

‘The Invoice Machine takes a new clever approach to online invoicing. It’s beautiful and simple-to-use interface makes producing professional looking invoices a very pleasant experience.’

Why it might be a killer

The end result really looks pretty, and it has some powerful tools that you can use.

What it does

The Invoice Machine is a web application tailor-made for producing nice looking invoices, and keeping track of them at the same time. The whole focus of the site is on making things easier that before when it comes to generating invoices, but also to make them look a bit prettier and making the whole process a bit more efficient.

When one starts thinking why one should use this application it becomes notoriously apparent that the app itself allows a new clever approach to online invoicing. Everyone knows what a big pain it is to produce and chase all of those invoices to your clients, and see if you really got paid what you had to. With The Invoice Machine this has become a lot easier, because you can begin registering your clients and products and services, and then making new invoices can be done super simply. Every time you generate a new invoice you just need to chose the options from the pull-down menus and input the amounts and then you can send the invoice straight away. Another powerful feature is the possibility of detailing and rapidly calculating tax discounts and other variables regarding the invoice itself so you don’t need to pull out your calculator every time you have to produce an invoice. The service is also available in several languages, thus making it very versatile.

The service in its most basic form is free, however if you would like to send more than 3 invoices a month, then you will need to start paying a fee in order to use it.

Link: http://www.invoicemachine.com
Our Review: http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/invoicemachine-com-making-invoices-pretty-simple

 

Marilyn sez, “Urban Camouflage: imaginative use of military ghillie suit where you look like a tree, local vegetation etc. Funny videos! Another guy disguised to look lie a pile of boxes that has tumbled from shelves in the warehouse area. When he starts to shuffle away it’s funny!” Shown here: “person disguised as pile of colored paper at Ikea, next to display of same.”

URBAN CAMOUFLAGE

(Thanks, Marilyn!)

Yahoo! Updates, the company’s answer to Facebook Connect, became available on more than 600,000 websites today with the launch of a new partnership with commenting infrastructure company JS-Kit. Whereas Facebook’s technology for tying profiles and activity updates between sites around the web has raised concerns about proprietary control over data, Yahoo! has implemented the open standard OAuth in its system.

By partnering with JS-Kit, a service that powers comments and ratings on sites big (like AOL and Sun Microsystems) and small (JS-Kit bought up old school market leader Haloscan in July), Yahoo! Updates is coming out of the gate in a big way. How does its technology compare to Facebook Connect?

Sponsor

The vision for all these kinds of systems is that allowing readers to authenticate themselves with a trusted 3rd party makes them more likely to post comments, offers exposure to site owners when comments are syndicated into activity streams on bigger sites and should allow site owners to access verified information about their readers’ profiles and interests. That last part is still something we’re waiting for, but that should be part of the value proposition to site owners.

Facebook Connect has been lauded for its usability; so much so that advocates of OpenID felt deeply threatened until Facebook teamed up to work with them on the OpenID user experience. In contrast, the Yahoo/JS-Kit user experience is immediately quite usable and full-featured. The same type of pop-up window asks users to grant permission to JS-Kit (or any other site using Yahoo! Updates) to access their Yahoo! profile information. There are a few extra boxes users have to click in order to grant that permission, but that’s the extent of the complications. You can test the implementation on this page.

We’re quite impressed with the technology and we’re always appreciative of the way that Yahoo! supports open standards. It’s not as if the company is accepting 3rd party OpenID login on Yahoo! sites yet, but all these other little steps are quite significant.

One thing that Yahoo! doesn’t currently offer is syndication of off-site activities into Yahoo! properties. The company says that’s coming soon.

In the coming months, as Updates are implemented across Yahoo!, publishers will enjoy referral traffic back to their sites from across the Yahoo! Network (more than 500M+ monthly unique visitors)…Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Toolbar, Profiles, etc.

If you thought Facebook represented the mainstream face of newsfeeds, 3rd party identity authentication, etc. just imagine what Yahoo! could do. The only question is whether the giant company will move fast enough – Facebook is very close to having stolen its thunder already. Yahoo! has been talking about “opening up” and integrating social data across its sites for months, Facebook tends to be much, much faster at taking action and innovating.

Facebook Connect is also available on JS-Kit supported pages, so it’s not as if Yahoo! has surpassed Connect. We’ve asked Facebook for a precise number of pages that Connect is available on and are awaiting a reply. We do know that the company says that 6,000 developers have implemented Connect, but for all we know that number includes JS-Kit with its 600,000 sites as just one developer.

What do you think of the new JS-Kit/Yahoo! tie-in? Would you use it on sites where both it and Facebook Connect are an option? You can test Facebook Connect here on our site or both Connect and the new Yahoo! Updates commenting over on Guy Kawasaki’s blog.

Discuss

Someone sent a video camera on a seven-and-a-half minute ride on a sushi conveyer belt, capturing amused and surprised eaters as they discover that they’re the subject of someone’s weird tentacle-eating video.

The fun almost stops when some lady in the kitchen gets uppity, but luckily enough the sushi chefs put it back on track and back to its owner. Is a sushi place the only place with a conveyer belt? I can’t think of any other restaurant type that does this. I would like to see more, though.

If you’re looking for a more surreal trip around a sushi belt, here you go. [Boing Boing]