Tagged: social networking

The other day I stumbled upon a very well put together Facebook Connect - Wordpress plugin. Given the task of finding a way to connect the two, a Google search pointed me to www.sociable.es.

Once installed, the plugin implements a widget into your Wordpress sidebar that allows users to log into their Facebook accounts and share a blog post with friends, post a blog article to their Facebook wall, share blog comments to facebook, even import registration data to the Wordpress application. The registration part is clever. As a new visitor to the Wordpress blog, a user simply click the “Connect with Facebook” badge and enters their Facebook credentials. In a snap a new Wordpress account is created based upon their Facebook profile and their profile image and other basic information is imported over.

Check out a demo at http://www.onewelcomesone.com/wordpress/  - The demo is a clean installation of Wordpress with nothing but the plugin added. The overall setup took less than an hour and could be done by anyone.

Developed by Javier Reyes, the Wordpress plugin is easily installed through the Wordpress plugin directory and immediately configurable through the Wordpress administration interface. Backed with a straightforward read-me, the plugin is installed in 8 steps. For a noob, the toughest part of the installation is probably creating a Facebook application through www.facebook.com/developers but after that, it’s all drag and drop. Anyone who toys with the two applications will love this plugin.

Check it out, install it, enjoy it. If you have any questions, leave a comment. It’s an excellent way to start boosting traffic on your blog and getting your articles spread across larger social communities.

Recently I saw an alarming post from my former writing teacher on Facebook. It said “Thanks to everyone for their love and support during this difficult time.” Difficult time? I was worried. I didn’t want to bother her if she was in the middle of something terrible. But I did want to be supportive. What to do?

I clicked on her wall. There were tons of messages from friends – but none said what had happened! Some of the messages addressed her daughter so I knew she was probably okay. I deduced it must have something to do with her husband. Nervously I clicked on his Facebook page, which was linked to hers through the “Married” section. His status said, “John is happy and looking forward to going to Madagascar!” Quickly I Googled his name. An article came up from a Madagascar newspaper…. in French. I knew it had to have the answer.

My rusty college French skills only got me so far. Troubled, I looked at my chat list but my only friend who spoke French wasn’t online. I found a French/English translator through Google and entered the article. My worst fears were realized: John was dead.

I immediately went back to my teacher’s Facebook page and expressed my sympathies, then reflected upon what a strange experience that was. We all know personal privacy is as antiquated as the rotary telephone – but even this? The most intimate, private and tender pieces of our lives are available (with a little digging) for anyone to see, comment on, and become a part of.

My mom, who was visiting at the time, said, “My generation would never do that, we would call someone and speak directly.” But what if you’re not a ‘phone friend’? Texting, IM, email, blogs, comment posts and Twitter have allowed for compartmentalization and delineation of relationships in a whole new way. Is it better to post a brief note to let someone know you’re thinking of her – or is that low level of effort just insulting? Is social networking and Internet sleuthing a horrible invasion into someone’s inner life or a valuable way to connect and extend support to your ‘village’ in difficult times?

My answer came in her next post. “Every time one of you writes, my mobile beeps, showing me the message. And I feel just a little bit better.”

Here are 2 useful plugins I thought I’d share.  We’re incorporating them on a few sites and I thought I’d share.

Solving multiple image uploads
First up - image upload. — one by one is a pain and re-ordering / etc. is not always easy.  This control allows you to upload images and re-order, etc.  We found it to be pretty easy to use and implement.  Facebook uses this as their default image uploader.  Only problem is you have to allow it to have access to your file system which might deter some users.  Overall worth it though.  Has support for ASP.Net (C#, VB), JSP, PHP, Perl, Python, ColdFusion, Ruby

http://www.aurigma.com/Products/ImageUploader/OnlineDemo.aspx

Leveraging existing contacts in webmail/outlook/social networks

This nifty app lets you invite your friends from most of the common social networks (MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, Orkut, Hi5, Xing.  It has support on the server side for PHP, .Net, and Java so can be used on most platforms.  So you can invite your friends in these networks through their built in engines.. You can’t import these people as their email address is typically not exposed.

Next is their importer that will allow the user to put in their webmail account information and passwords and retrieve all of their contacts (typically for importing into the users contacts folder in the app you’re writing).  You get emails, etc. of all the people they have stored there.

Finally, they have an Outlook / Thunderbird importer but it makes you walk through an export process that’s not ideal.  I am still looking for an out of the box Active X outlook importer that skips this step.

The drawbacks are the interface (can use lots of work) and the roughness of the Outlook / Thunderbird integration.

http://www.octazen.com/products.php