Summary

A simple, open source GAE project to allow enterprise users to maintain one single social graph. The goal is to explore and learn how Google App Engine can enable enterprise cloud computing. All work will belong to the community that contributes to this project.

Details

This application will be developed and hosted in Google App Engine and the source will be kept here. It will allow users to maintain one master social graph across their various enterprise and personal applications. Support for enterprise context for security levels and activity streams will be explored.

Extremely simple and straightforward integration techniques will allow a social graph to be connected together and kept up-to-date from multiple sources including e-mail, syndication, and common social graph APIs.

To the extent possible, Google APIs and development kits will be used such as Google Web Toolkit, Social Graph API, etc.

This project is open to anyone who would like to contribute. Contributions can include ideas, documents, designs, code, testing (submit bugs here), etc.

Important Update

This will start as a one day group experiment on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 1:00PM EST. We'll use Twitter to collaborate.

Update 1 - 2:21pm EDT: We've started, track everything below on Twitter for full details on how to catch up.

Update 2 - 3:46pm EDT: The app is up at http://ess.appspot.com but doesn't do anything yet. It'll be up at http://onegraph.org soon.

Update 3 - 8:36pm EDT: Getting ready to wrap but there is now full functionality for creating accounts and adding social contacts. A good day. More soon.

Update 4 - Sunday, 4/13: Lots of new functionality added, just about ready for actively scanning e-mails for social graphs.

Update 5 - Tuesday 4/15: ESS will now take e-mails sent to its import email address and add the contacts to users' social graphs inside the application. Social interaction scores are now calculated and reported as well.

You can follow this project's daily activity on http://twitter.com/opendev.

-- Dion Hinchcliffe

Become A Contributor

Contact me via IM or e-mail below with your Google Account e-mail address and I will add you as a contributor:

dion@hinchcliffeandco.com

Twitter/Gtalk/Skype: dhinchcliffe

Background on Social Graphs

Here is a high level overview of what social graphs are and why they matter.