We've released a gadget called Friend Introducer, which allows FriendConnect members to write introductions to their friends. It's displayed on the left side of this blog, so if you're a member, please give it a try. (If you're not, please become a member and give it a try!)

What is FriendIntroducer?

There are three main views: the profile view that is displayed on the blog;

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Displays up to five testimonials from FriendConnect members. Pageable, with testimonials written for each member displayed in random order.

Clicking on a member's thumbnail image will switch to the detail view (although it's not the OpenSocial-style view). (Note: I've corrected this to avoid confusion. I just call it the detail view; in OpenSocial terms, it's the profile view.)

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Since multiple people may have written testimonials for a single person, the detail view allows you to view all testimonials about that person.

Click the button at the top of the gadget to switch to canvas view.

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In the canvas view, you can write introductions for the logged-in user's friends. If you don't have any friends, you can add someone on the same FriendConnect account as your friend.

How to paste FriendIntroducer into your blog #

First, register for FriendConnect here. Once you've registered on the site...

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Click Social gadgets.

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Click the Custom gadget link at the bottom.

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Please set the Gadget URL to [http://devlab.agektmr.com/OpenSocial/FriendConnect/FriendIntroducer.xml](http://devlab.agektmr.com/OpenSocial/FriendConnect/FriendIntroducer.xml].

Adjust the width of the gadget and click Generate Code to generate HTML code that you can paste into your blog or other website.

Impressions #

As I mentioned in a previous post, the key to creating a FriendConnect gadget is:

  • The OWNER is a virtual personality called a blog.
  • You can switch between the canvas view and the profile view using requestNavigateTo.
  • The canvas view background can be changed by modifying the canvas.html file included when creating the site.

That's about it.

At the moment, OpenSocial does not have a community-oriented concept, but it may be easier to understand FriendConnect as a slightly twisted application of community.

Another interesting feature of FriendConnect is that you can merge and use friend lists imported from multiple social networks. For example, I import friends from Orkut, Google, Plaxo, and Twitter, and if someone who subscribes to the same blog as me is a friend on these social networks, they will also become friends on FriendConnect.

Maybe one day, when Google turns iGoogle into a social networking site, these friend lists will be available for use.