Google has released the OpenSocial JavaScript API version 0.6 which updates the initial release to deal with what OpenSocial Developers and said are the major pain points. Some the the updates include:

• Gadgets can now be container-aware, if necessary, to build tighter integration.
• Developers can easily have apps that let users navigate between different surface, such as profile and canvas pages.
• Tighter permission controls for reading the Viewer object from the datastore as well as an optional end-user prompting mechanism.
• Introduced opensocial.makeRequest, allows both POST and GET, and includes an option for OAuth signing or authentication
• Cleaned up the Activities class: removed the Stream class, removed the summary field, and removed folders.

They have a list of their feature priorities available here. Some really interesting additions to OpenSocial, definitely getting exciting.

Watching Jay Leno tonight and it is a re-run of last christmas because of the writers strike. We just got satellite TV again, we have been without for about 6 months.

I noticed that Comedy Central and NBC are now offer full archives of past TV shows online now.

It is funny how they fought it for so long, and now they embrace the open content.

Shows what putting pressure on the big boys about being more open and creative and generating revenue from content.

Curious to see whats next?

Found an interesting post while reading on Merlot this evening about Pageflakes a home / start page environment. (http://teacher.pageflakes.com/)

They have a teachers edition for the home page environment ready to go with some existing widgets that could be used in a classroom environment as well as allows for custom development of widgets.

I think every Web 2.0 should offer a Education version of their application to help increase adoption, because anyone going to school is potentially within your target audience or soon will be!

I was maintaining my Classroom 2.0 profile on Ning today and came across the Ning Network Creators social network which is dedicated to deploying Ning Networks.

I was watching a video on Ning embracing OpenSocial and allowing network creators to integrate OpenSocial widgets into their Ning social networks. There really isn’t much available yet, but eager to see what is next.

I really like the Ning interface and tools available on the network. I have been getting more and more involved in Classroom 2.0 started by Steve Hargadon. He’s put a lot of work into it and has a really high quality network setup.

Really looking forward to getting my first OpenSocial application developed.

Was reading up on LinkedIn’s Intelligent Application Platform on their blog yesterday and today. Really trying to process the depth of their release and how it compares to the Facebook platform.

One thing I like is you can build your application and integrate it within LinkedIn or you can integrate LinkedIn into your application somewhere else.

They have opened up to the OpenSocial movement which definitely sets them apart from Facebook out of the gate.

However until I actually get an application under my belt I really won’t speculate on how intelligent the platform is or how flexible it is.

I signed up to be a BETA tester on their platform.

Time will tell…

Been getting back into Question and Answer site marketing for my web development company Original Web Solutions.

I added 2 RSS feeds to my Google Reader from Yahoo Questions and Answers.

Computers & Internet > Internet
Computers & Internet > Programming and Design.

I have been monitoring for 2 days now. I really am just watching now, I have answers about 10 questions.

Most of the questions I have answered are derived from my web development experience so I reference my web site as a resource for a link.

Its educational on what users are thinking as well as helps me generate some links to my site and increases my credibility and scoring of my Yahoo user account.