On googlesocialweb.blogspot you can read about a nice module that Google made for Drupal, Friendconnect.

Friendconnect is

"... an Open Social application offered by Google that started in May 2008. Google Friend Connect main focus is to simplify the connection between social and non-social websites and standardize the handling and presentation of social applications and content. It uses a blend of open standards, such as OpenID for signin, oAuth to control data, and Open Social for applications."

(Wiki)

More information about FriendConnect can be found on Google's site and a live demo can be found at globant.

Though this is a nice open standard and a nice module, there are two downers IMHO that show that Google doesn't really get the Drupal community or has another agenda:

1. They house the code on their own servers, with own issue queue at code.google.com. Sure they are free to do so but the strength of Drupal is that all modules are on one place, not all around the web.
2. They have licensed this code under the Apache license. All Drupal code and thereby all Drupal modules -and to some extend themes- are released under the GPLv2 or higher. Read this FAQ about the license on d.o for some background. The Apache License 2.0 is compatible with the GPL v3 (not 2!) and since you can accept version 3 of the GPL when downloading Drupal, legally they are in teh clear but it would have been best if they released this under GPLv2 IMHO

Still, nice work Google!

update
Heine Deelstra (hint: lead Drupal security team) warns NOT to use this module on production site at his blog. Something about the quality of code, tweetsource. See Google, if you would have used GPL and drupal.org we could have solved this issue via the proper channels. Now we have to use the public issue tracker of google.code.

Some time ago I saw Layar, a Dutch product from SPRX Mobile; a mobile uugmented reality browser. It basically is an application for a phone with a GPS, camera and compass where you can add a layer of information on top of your real world view; the camera. Right now it is out for the Android platform and soon it will hit the iPhones' appstore (3GS). By combing digital information on top of your real world view you can see geotagged information, for example prices of houses in front of you, ATM's or friends at a festival as is demo-ed in this youtube movie.

The possibilities of combining geo tagged information in combination with your real world view might not be new, but this application sure makes the most of the combination by using the GPS, compass and camera.

So I started wondering, apart from the application on the phone, this could potentially be rather easy in Drupal. You could expose your database / content via a webservice to the phone that displays them. All you need is Drupal core and CCK to add a longitude and latitude information in a content type and maybe use the services module. It is rather easy to do and I would love to work on something like this for a customer.

Oooh. And you need lots of information. Lots of local information since content seems to be king for this kind of functionality. But it sure would be nice for a DrupalCon to find your friends, get information about what is the current and next track in a room by pointing at it or get more information about the sponsors booth. The possibilities are endless, also outside DrupalCon's. This since DrupalCons should probably be held outside due to the lack of GPS reach inside :-)

But then again, if all rooms and people were tagged with the mobile codes the problem would be solved :-) And even the first gen iPhone can read them. Something to keep in mind for the next con... But first: vive la France!

Dear friend Pat Patterson (twitter) pinged me the other day to let me know he actually wrote a module for Drupal. If you do not know Pat, he is the leading authority when it comes to all things "Identity Management"; process, vision and actual code in Sun's OpenSSO project (Sun's open version of the previous proprietary Sun Access Manager. And now Pat released OpenSSO module for Drupal.

Identity management is complex, it is more then 1 slide per second or a technical solution. The biggest problem in ID management is trust, procedures as well as installed base. Migrating a corporation with thousands of employees that is fully AD based (like most enterprises are) towards something like OpenID is impossible. And OpenID by itself only solves parts of the AAA problem. Where OpenSSo might for a corporation migrating towards a more open way of dealing with identities ("persons") a far more better way.

Logging in to a website with Single Sign On (or more often: Single Log On) is only a small part of the problem of an enterprise. Sure, an increasing part since more and more applications are webbased; AJAX replaced RDP and ICA for many tasks. But still, only a small part. So if one wants to push Drupal into the heart of an enterprise as an Intra- or extranet, one needs to understand that OpenID / OAUTH might be good for an all webbased company, but not for any company that is older then 10 years.

OpenSSO however is. And Pat's work to integrate this into Drupal sure helps. Thanks Pat!

If you do not think that OpenID or LDAP is a good solution for you identity management solution, you might want to take a look at SAML.

I was triggered to look at SAML again beacuse a

There is an old Dutch saying that roughly translates to "Weddings lead to weddings". And though attending a DrupalCon is not the same as getting married, it does share some characteristics. It's about sharing, passion, learning and helping without xpecting anything back. DrupalCon's are great places that reach farther then just the Drupal code, the Drupal site, CMS-es or even Open Source. Drupalcons are about people, about technology, the future of the combination of these and how we -as the community- can build this future in our products. Without DrupalCons, Drupal would not have been what it is today. And without future DrupalCon's, Drupal will not be where it should be.

So there are many reasons to make sure we will continue to have DrupalCon's. I do not know what holds the future for DrupalCon (bigger, smaller? separate business con's? one per continent?) but I do hope that the sharing, passion, learning and helping will continue in some form in the future. Maybe you would like to make this possible. By attending DrupalCon's and maybe even by organising a DrupalCon. If this is the case, do not feel intimated by the extreme quality of the DrupalCon DC09 but do tender for organising a DrupalCon. The next stop of DrupalCon will be in europe, Paris. After that we are looking for people that want to organise the Con in N-America. All you need is time, passion, a location, some fellow Drupalaars and .. a bit of time... If you are interested, do contact the Drupal Association. Let's make sure "DrupalCon's lead to DrupalCon's".

Mind you, I'm living together with my better half for over a decade and have two of the sweetest kids on earth I am not married myself. So I atually do not know if attending a DrupalCon is the same as geting married. But I know I will tender for organising a new DrupalCon in the EU anytime.. again .. ;-)