Tendenci Blog

Google's Open Social - Good News for Tendenci!

Techcrunch pre-announced Google's Open Social social software developer APIs today. This is very good news for Tendenci and a lot of other software companies! To explain.

Tendenci has always been written distributed. We have lots of small sites and they do not authenticate against one common source. This distribution is modeled after other fault tolerant systems to function best on a very hostile Internet. And is of course in addition to backups, etc. Nothing is fool proof, but this is a common sense start for the benefit of our clients.

Unfortunately distribution brings with it a set of problems. I am registered on Tendenci, the Houston Technology Center, The Houston Red Cross, etc etc and they are all Tendenci sites. Yet my "friends" list on each site has to be recreated each time and it doesn't mirror vox, or linkedin or facebook anyway. What a pain! In fact, I just don't bother.

From the Techcrunch post:

OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

1. Profile Information (user data) (Tendenci users and userprofiles)
2. Friends Information (social graph) (Tendenci contacts table)
3.  Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff) (Tendenci eventlogs and authors table)

So the question is "on release can we really just connect Tendenci to Open Social?". Well it won't completely be THAT easy, but pretty close. We already use third party authentication services and integrate with numerous vendors through an XML data interchange. And we won't really know until we get to sink our teeth into the Open Social API. But right now it looks very promising. More as we learn more!

Ed

User identities to show Online Social Connections

Did you know that from your Tendenci user profile you can add user identities to identify areas of social networks you are connected to?  Encourage your Tendenci users/members to add their identities to display social networks.  This is a great way to see who is socially connected to sites like Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, Digg etc.

After have you added your user identities, there will be a visual display of icons on your user profile of identities you have added and are connected to.

I am pushing to integrate blog identities here also. Check back soon.

Tiny Updates for Photos and Comments

Photos and comments received some tiny updates worth mentioning.

You are now finally able to see the number of photos inside of a photo album.
Example: http://www.schipul.com/en/photos/

Comments have user icons next to them so that we can make fun of your mug while we read your comment.  It's the little things that make a difference.
Example: http://www.schipul.com/en/photos/v/132 

Thanks for a great Tendenci User Conference!

We had a really great Tendenci User Conference this year - thanks to our amazing clients and partners!  With around 100 attendees, there was a lot of connecting, knowledge sharing and Tendenci feedback going on.

For those who couldn't make it this year (we missed you), we have uploaded our presentations from both the Tendenci User Conference and the Web Marketing Bootcamp training sessions.  Definitely check them out online!

Also be sure to take a peek at our User Conference photos and Anniversary party photos.  We had a really great time - especially as this was the first time that many of us got to meet clients that we spoke to so regularly.  Can't wait to see you all next year!