G Friend Connect

Google Friend Connect wall/comments Gadget added

2009-02-17T22:10:57+00:00

I just added replace the Roller comment macro in this blog with the Google Friend Connect Wall Gadget. I gave it scope of PAGE, so it should associate comments with each post. Let's see if it's working...

Installing Google Friend Connect

2009-02-17T17:05:25+00:00

I just went through the process of installing Friend Connect on this site and specifically, for this blog. It was a very simple process, but a little more challenging than installing a simple Google Gadget because you must first download and add two files (canvas.html and relay_rpc.html) to the root of your website's domain. If you don't control the root of your domain then this could present a problem, but there do seem to be workarounds and on Blogger.com the files are already present.

Installing Friend Connect was so simple that I didn't really need any help. The basic steps were:

Login to the Friend Connect site
Choose the Setup a New Site option, enter your site's URL and title
Download canvas.html and relay_rpc.html and add them to your site
Pick the gadgets you want, copy-and-paste the HTML/JavaScript code into your site

If you need some additional guidance, there are some how-to guides around the web:

You can see the resulting Member Gadget in the left sidebar of this blog. Try it out. I believe you must login via your Google account, but then you can choose to join via either your Plaxo, Orkut or Twitter networks. I'll have to do some more experimentation.

What can you do with plain old Gadgets?

2009-02-17T09:07:10+00:00

Before I explore Google Friend Connect, I'd like to see what you can do with plain old Google Gadgets. Specifically, I mean Google Gadgets for your Webpage, a subset of Google Gadgets that are can be added to places other than iGoogle, like this blog. These Gadgets are more limited because they must follow these rules:

It cannot store state. For example, a syndicated gadget cannot be a to-do list that stores personal list items for each user.
It cannot use the dynamic height feature. For example, it cannot get bigger or smaller depending on the amount of content.
Its functionality should not be dependent on each user specifying different user preferences.

(From http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/legacy/publish.html#Syndication)

At this time, there are 62,419 gadgets that follow those rules. Problem is, those rules above are pretty limiting -- Gadgets that follow them cannot be very social.

How do you add a Gadget?#

If you want to add such gadgets to your webpage, pick one from the Gadget Directory with the URL below:

http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open

Pick the Gadget you want, make a couple of color and border settings and press a button to get the code to be inserted into your blog. For example, I picked the Slim RSS Gadget, got the code below:

http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://1o4.jp/google/module/slim-reader.xml&up_mtitle=Slim%20RSS%20Reader&up_mfeed=http%3A%2F%2Frollerweblogger.org%2Froller%2Ffeed%2Fentries%2Frss&up_contentsnum=7&up_titlelink=http%3A%2F%2Fgoogleblog.blogspot.com%2F&synd=open&w=140&h=200&title=Blogging+Roller&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js">

Then you simply paste that snippet of code into the template that defines your blog, in the place where you want it to appear. That means you must have a blog that allows template editing and you must be comfortable HTML enough to find the right place to do the pasting.

Welcome

2009-02-17T08:30:03+00:00

Hi, I'm Dave Johnson, a software developer looking at ways to social enable existing web sites.

I'm starting this blog to explore how Google Friend Connect, Google Gadgets and other Google social goodies can be integrated into a blog.

This site is running Apache Roller 5.0-dev (not an official release) and JSPWiki 2.8, but, generally speaking, the things I do here with Gadgets and Friend Connect should work on any blog, wiki or CMS platform.