Aggregating my online data

23 Nov 2007

In a continuous effort to leverage the power of other sites like Flickr, I’ve integrated my Flickr photos in the blog list. Somewhat related to my thoughts on social networks and putting your content online, it is an example of pulling my data from a variety of sources and displaying them where I choose, here. It is also reminiscent of the mini feed on facebook.

Apart from spending time thinking about what I wanted, the programming didn’t take long - in great deal thanks to Zend Framework. It is my personal mashup.

I realize that most of this has already been done by software such as WordPress through it’s plugin architecture. It requires knowledge of programming and it does not include the crucial element of the social graph.

Grabbing updates from friends, however, would simply be a matter of changing the urls of the various services. As such it illustrates one of my key arguments against Facebook: The fact that Facebook is a walled garden, accessible only to members, prevents me from accessing from outside information about friends (or myself) from that small part of the internet.

Now, to solve the social graph problem…