Please note this session is geared towards developers who are unfamiliar with OpenSocial.

OpenSocial is an open specification defining a common API that works on many different social websites, including MySpace, Plaxo, Hi5, Ning, orkut, Friendster Salesforce.com and LinkedIn, among others. This allows developers to learn one API, then write a social application for any of those sites: Learn once, write anywhere.

In addition, in order to make it easier for developers of social sites to implement the API and make their site an OpenSocial container, the Apache project Shindig provides reference implementations for OpenSocial containers in two languages (Java, PHP). Shindig will define a language specific Service Provider Interface (SPI) that a social site can implement to connect Shindig to People, Persistence and Activities backend services for the social site. Shindig will then expose these services as OpenSocial JavaScript and REST APIs.

In this session we will explain what OpenSocial is, show examples of OpenSocial containers and applications, demonstrate how to create an OpenSocial application, and explain how to leverage Apache Shindig in order to implement an OpenSocial container.

Prerequisites: Average JS knowledge

Patrick Chanezon

Patrick has been a Developer Advocate at Google since 2005. He has built and grown developer ecosystems for OpenSocial, Checkout and AdWords. Previously he has worked on portals, blogs and syndication feeds at Sun Microsystems, AOL and Netscape. He's the co-founder of the ROME - Atom and RSS utilities in java open source project and the OSSGTP (Open Source Get Together Paris) group.

More on his blog at wordpress.chanezon.com

Chewy Trewhella

Chewy is a Developer Advocate at Google. His job is to make technical things accessible and relevant to technical and non-technical people. He is particularly knowledgeable about Google's APIs and webmaster programmes. He has a BEng in Software Engineering, and he's been with Google since November 2005. When he's not at work, he likes to play the banjo, and sleep.

Chris Chabot

Chris is a Developer Advocate at Google. His main interests these days are OpenSocial, Open Source, innovative web 2.0 technologies and trying to do the impossible.

Before his involvement in the OpenSocial world, he worked with his passion, connecting computers and people, ranging from intelligent planning software for international transport companies in the early 90's to more recently, some of the leading Web 2.0 sites in the Netherlands.

(See presentation)