facebook

Rails with OmniAuth & Mini-FB for rapid Facebook app development

Apr 17

I’ve recently been getting back into Ruby on Rails since my love-affair for CodeIgniter & PHP has wained a bit recently. I kept on building apps that required Facebook/Twitter authentication and relied heavily on the well built but rarely updated libraries like TankAuth.

If you don’t know, Rails has things called Gems, which are essentially packaged up libraries of code, usable throughout your applications within the MVC framework. Two of these, OmniAuth and Mini FB, offer a fantastically easy roll-out of a basic Facebook Connect powered app.

The fuss about Google+ (for developers)

Jul 11

Considering you’re reading a blog, I’ll just go right ahead and assume you’ve heard of Google+ and all of its “facebook killer” gubbins. It seems, initially at least, that the service has hit the ground running and Google are already planning on increasing its presence across all its services, such as Google Mail. But what has the search-giant offered the developers, in order to create third-party apps and services?

An introduction to the world of APIs

Apr 11

At its most basic, an API is simply a way for two programs to talk to each other. They’re a set of rules, regulations and restrictions, dictated by one applcation to allow another to interact & manipulate the content. API’s are, in general, offered as a free service – however there are often premium or paid versions of API’s which remove restrictions allowing more data to be captured.