Category Archives: Social Media

New “Shindig” project will be open source OpenSocial implementation

Google’s OpenSocial effort passed a milestone yesterday when the first pieces of code were uploaded for Shindig (tip of the hat to Mr. Topf for pointing this out), an open source implementation of the OpenSocial API.

Why is this important? Quite simply, I see an open source implementation as critical for the success of any API. As noted in the Shindig Proposal on the Apache Software Foundation’s web site:

Shindig will provide implementations 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.

The Apache Software Foundation has proven it is the best place for this type of open development.

The Shindig OpenSocial implementation will be able to serve as a reference implementation of the standard.

The key part is that last sentence. A “reference implementation” does a couple of things. First, for developers for whom the license terms are appropriate, they can simply incorporate the code directly into their products and… ta da… they are writing OpenSocial applications. Second, for developers who can’t directly use the code verbatim due to licensing, they can at least study the code and understand how it works. They can see how the OpenSocial interaction occurs in a working example.

Getting an open source reference implementation out there enables developers all over to rapidly use and learn about the API. While this news yesterday represents only the very first step in the development of the project, it’s a good start down the path. Now, developers can download the existing code, try it out, and, hopefully, contribute patches/fixes/etc. back into the code base.

Shindig will be a good project to watch. There does not yet seem to be an official project web page, but there is a “project status page” on the Apache Incubator site.

P.S. And for those wondering, “shindig” is an English word for “a social gathering” which makes it rather appropriate.

Blognation Meltdown? Oliver Starr leaves Blognation with accusations in his “Open Letter to Sam Sethi”

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Is the Blognation network of blogs really built on a house of cards? Is it in the process of a major meltdown?

This morning at about 5am US Pacific time, I headed over to us.blognation.com to see if there was any update on the status of Marc Orchant. You can imagine then, my surprise at being confronted with “An Open Letter to Sam Sethi” posted by Oliver Starr:

Please Note: This is an open letter to Sam Sethi, Founder and CEO of Blognation. I have elected to write this letter after having been one of the principal Blognation authors since August of this year. In all that time I have not received the pay promised in my contract nor the reimbursement promised for expenses incurred on behalf of Blognation during this period. I am not alone. Every other Blognation author is in the same unsavory situation.

This open letter details in very broad strokes the reasons why I have lost faith in Sam. It makes specific statements as to the veracity of things Sam has said or written as well as things he has failed to do. I do not say these things lightly. Every statement made in this letter can be backed up with verifiable written material from email correspondence, Skype chats, or SMS messages.

The introductory post had more and ended with this:

Lastly, this post is likely to be removed very shortly after I post it so please, make a screen capture, download it to an off-line reader, copy and paste it into a document or repost it on your own blog(really). At the end, this is a cautionary tale and the victims are the people that have worked for months on the content many of you have enjoyed but for which Sam Sethi has yet to (and may never) pay.

The post then went on into the actual “open letter to Sam Sethi” which did, at great length, go into the allegations Oliver raises against Sam.

True to what Oliver wrote, the post was yanked. Before I could save it to read later, I clicked on another link to see something and a second or two later when I went back in the browser, the post was gone – as were all other posts after October 31st!

Oliver did, though, publish the post in its entirety over on his new website, owstarr.com.

It is, indeed, a sordid story.

Obviously, it is only one side of the story and until we see some response from Sam, presumably on one of the blognation pages (or perhaps on his Twitter page) we can’t see the other side of the story.

Given that some of the other authors who are involved with blognation are friends of mine, I would very dearly like to hope that Blognation is not the house of cards that Oliver alleges it to be. They have all (including Oliver) been outstanding writers and I have very much enjoyed reading their posts. Hopefully the network will be able to continue, although if Oliver’s allegations are true it is hard to see how it could realistically go on for much longer.

Right now, we really need to wait to hear from Sam – or from other authors within the blognation network.

This is not a good day for the blogosphere.

UPDATE #1, 6:15am: Tech Crunch is also carrying Oliver’s letter in its entirety.

UPDATE #2 – In removing Oliver’s posts, Sam also removed the post about Marc Orchant that almost all of us have been linking to! Oliver Starr, though, now has a new page providing updates about Marc.

Technorati Tags: blog networks, blogging, blognation, sam sethi