Software Developer, David Falck, is one of the creators of Project Draw. He has also worked on Project Freewheel. David submitted this article about the OpenSocial API .
Open Social is a burgeoning community-based, common API for social applications.
One of the coolest features of the OpenSocial is the concept of "gadgets". A gadget is nothing more that an XML file that defines your embeddable web application. Project Freewheel is a perfect candidate for an OpenSocial gadget. You can imagine a user of a Project Freewheel gadget inviting his project team to a real-time collaboration session from within their web-based social network. Other Labs applications would be great candidates for "gadgetization" too. Project Draw, Project Showroom or even Scott's "It's Alive in the Lab" blog could be placed inside a gadget quite easily.
The best part of developing an OpenSocial gadget is that once you've developed it, it should theoretically run in any of the OpenSocial-compliant containers. The Project Freewheel gadget could be used to share designs across any number of OpenSocial-compliant networking services including Google properties like (iGoogle), and Bebo, as well as Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, NetModular, MySpace, Ning, orkut, Plaxo, Six Apart, Freebar, LinkedIn, Tianji, Salesforce, Viadeo, Oracle, and XING and Yahoo.
Here’s a screen shot of a first pass at a Freewheel gadget in iGoogle.
We're always looking for new and exciting ways to share our projects in Labs and the OpenSocial API may be a great way to accomplish this in the near future.
Thanks David.
Being social is alive in the lab.
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