OpenSocial recently had its first year anniversary, and the specification and APIs are growing in popularity. And now, courtesy of the OpenSocial team, several new client libraries are available for leveraging server-to-server APIs. This gives developers easy access to building OpenSocial apps in languages other than JavaScript.

The new OpenSocial client libraries utilize the OpenSocial REST and RPC protocols, and they are available in four flavors. Pick your choice of Java, PHP, Python, or Ruby, and you will be on your way to developing some social applications.

According to the OpenSocial Blog:

Each library enables developers to retrieve profile information and persistent data from supporting containers without having to concern themselves with managing network connections, signing requests, or other lower-level details.

These containers are a great addition to the other resources currently available for OpenSocial. Be sure to check out our OpenSocial API profile as well as the OpenSocial Developer web site for additional information.

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OpenID holds much promise as a means of supporting a single digital identity that can be used across the Internet. Currently there are several types of OpenID identity providers out there, and several of the major players on the web, including AOL, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo!, have committed to become OpenID providers as well. While there is some concern about the ‘Balkanization’ of OpenID by these service providers (essentially the concern is over the fact that service providers will only provide OpenIDs and subsequently they will not become consumers of OpenIDs from other providers), the positive side of this adoption is that hundreds of millions of existing user accounts can now be used as OpenIDs.

However, there is one catch: at present implementing OpenID support for more than one of these providers can be challenging, given that the OpenID specifications and extensions supported vary among each provider. Enter RPX, a new software as a service (SaaS) that handles the user interface, authentication, and import of user profile and registration data for any web site.

RPX essentially serves as a proxy that utilizes OpenID (and several other open standards such as OAuth and HCard) to provide users on your web site with the ability to register and sign in using several different accounts, including AOL, Facebook, Google, MySpace, Yahoo!, and many other OpenID providers. Rather than trying to figure out which provider supports which specification and extension, RPX presents a unified sign in form that allows your site to become an OpenID consumer that supports accounts from the major service providers.

According to the RPX web site:

When a visitor is ready to sign in or register at your website, you display the provided RPX login interface. The sign-in interface helps the user choose their provider, and then RPX authenticates the user with their provider. The sign-in interface can be added as a popup overlay, or embedded directly into your webpage. If you’d like to build your own custom interface, that is also possible.

RPX includes an API that can be used to customize your implementation of the service, including the user interface (see our RPX API profile for details). Currently RPX is available as a freemium service. You can check out the full documentation available on the service and API. RPX was developed by JanRain, an OpenID solutions provider from Portland, Oregon.

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Last month developers at Yahoo!’s Open Hack Day got a sneak preview of the new Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP). YAP is in preview mode and not yet available for public use, although documentation for the new service is available.

According to Yahoo!:

The Yahoo! Applications Platform (YAP) is the software and services that enable developers to build web applications that are available throughout Yahoo!– the largest audience in the world. The Yahoo! Applications Platform has the following components:

• Development environment – A browser-based tool that enables software developers to quickly create, preview, and publish web
  applications.
• APIs and web services – Programmatic access to OpenSocial functionality and popular Yahoo! web services.
• Distribution and discovery infrastructure – The built-in features
  for publishing applications on galleries on web pages such as Yahoo! Profiles.
  End users can discover applications by searching or browsing within application galleries.
• Runtime and rendering environment – The backend servers and software that run applications and convert the code into HTML.

As a platform, YAP can be used by developers to develop Open Applications, which Yahoo! describes as:

An Open Application is a web application that has been registered on the Yahoo! Development Network (YDN) and runs on the Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP). As seen by the end user, an Open Application has multiple views, integration points, and components.

Open Application components include a Small View, Canvas View, and Chrome. Note that YAP provides support for social applications via OpenSocial.

Here’s a video from the Yahoo! Open Hack Day that gives an overview of YAP:

We’ve included Christian Heilmann’s presentation on Opening Yahoo! to User and Developers from the Future of Web Apps Conference (held in London, England last week).

Currently there is a PHP SDK available and developers should note that Yahoo! has followed Facebook’s lead (along with numerous other platforms) by providing its own flavor of XML: Yahoo! Markup Language (YML). You can check out the reference documentation for YML, including YML Lite (a subset of YML).

Webmonkey.com has additional coverage (including screen shots) of YAP from the Open Hack Day event, and Ash Patel has compiled a list of blog posts about Yahoo!’s Hack Day and Open Strategy.

Certainly Yahoo has their share of APIs, with 32 Yahoo APIs in our directory, so there’s a lot of potential for YAP and what this new platform could mean for Yahoo.

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