Ok, not exactly the first one, but I hope it’s at least one of the most comprehensive and among the easiest to read. It’s posted at ConcreteCMS.com, the website for the company where I work as director of technology. Get the full story over there:

A First Look at OpenSocial
Answering Questions About Google’s Effort at Standardizing Social Network Widgets, and the Creation of Your First OpenSocial Widget

Who should read it? Any web developer who has any questions about OpenSocial; anyone curious about what OpenSocial brings to the table; and anyone who thinks its a death knell to Facebook applications. By the end of it you’ll know all about OpenSocial, and you’ll even know how to write a social widget.

Oh, and please, give me feedback.

The entire Mac web is awash with news, reviews and general statements about Coda, Panic’s web workflow tool. It’s a good tool, with plenty of things going for it (and some rough spots), and since it’s aimed squarely at me, I was looking forward to digging into it, and writing a long, in-depth review not unlike this one .

Coda, apparently, had other plans. Witness the screen with which I am greeted upon starting the application.

Perhaps there are some naughty entropic bits loose in my MacBook Pro, or perhaps TextWrangler is fighting to keep me as a user. Or maybe its something else. Who knows. I only downloaded it yesterday, Panic! I promise!

I already posted this on the official your-wishlist.com blog, but I thought I ought to post here, as well:

ABAW is a Dashboard widget for searching Amazon.com. ABAW lets you easily add products from Amazon.com to a wishlist, and get back to working as soon as possible. Once you’re ready, you can checkout through Amazon.com, or share your items in a public, private or password-protected wishlist hosted at your-wishlist.com

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After a grueling two weeks of work, your-wishlist.com has launched. Your-Wishlist.com uses the Amazon API to grab product data, and lets members organize these products, rate them, comment on them, and share their wishlists with others.

Using AJAX to minimize the hassle of adding products to wishlists, your-wishlist.com is fully “Web 2.0” aware, but does not yet incorporate the Web 2.1 blink, or a fully Web 2.0 compliant name; this is not likely to change, although other feature upgrades are already in development.

Now, those of you who know me personally know that I really dislike most things. With that in mind, most of you who know me professionally can probably extrapolate that I have little use for buzz-words like AJAX, podcasting, vidcasting, vlogging, etc… Note: This does not mean I’m critical of the concepts behind the buzzwords; I’ve done remote scripting on the web for ages, and I’m writing in a goddamn blog, so that really wouldn’t make much sense. No, it’s the buzzwordiness of it all that I can’t abide. I guess I’m just a curmudgeon.

That said – sometimes, you have to know when you’re beaten. That’s why I’m doing something right now that I really would rather not – I’m using the phrase “Web 2.0.” As near as I can tell, Web 2.0 refers to a website that features a dynamic user experience, and achieves this dynamic user experience with flare and techniques that aren’t employed by most standard websites, which are typically more of the “static page -> form post -> server response -> page reload” variety.

Well, I’ve attempted to throw my own hat in the ring, with a local community website, which launched on New Year’s Day. Check it out:

The Portland Scene

It’s for the city of Portland, OR, specifically, but if you’re a web developer, you might find it interesting anyway, even if you live in Nova Scotia. Why? Well, let’s list some features.

• I’m using the Scriptaculous Library , which I’ve found quite good, although the Prototype library, which it requires, I have found buggy in the past.
• I’m using Yahoo’s Map and Geocoding APIs , which are very, very keen.
• User and picture grids are sortable and filter-able without reloading the page. Play around with the grids in the righthand column, but don’t lose focus on the other things you’re looking at.
• The Scriptaculous autocomplete control makes searching for locations less tedious, and almost – gasp – fun!
• There are tons of bits of functionality that are handled without specific page reloads, including picture reordering and adding to favorites.

Basically, the entire goal of the site was to create a virtual community for a physical one, and get rid of some of the interface annoyances that we put up with when we use sites like Citysearch. Is it successful? I hope so, but I’m not sure. But, like anything else in the Web 2.0 world, The Portland Scene is in beta, and the features and fixes are coming fast and furious. Hope you find it interesting.