Yao Ming asks a question on LinkedIn
 I have been working for LinkedIn for the summer. It has been a fantastic experience throughout, but today, it definitely reached a high point when I saw my sports hero and professional passion come together.
I???ve been a Yao Ming fan for the past ten years. One thing I can say is that while most athletes are self-promoting, Yao is all about others in need. Today, he is going high tech on LinkedIn.
Yao Ming, the NBA superstar who plays for the Houston Rockets, is using LinkedIn for a good cause ??? rebuilding schools for the children devastated in China???s earthquake. He asks a great question to LinkedIn users on the relationship between playing sports and professional success. He is also hoping to bring more awareness to his newly-founded Yao Ming Foundation and his Olympic raffle.
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/non-profit/philantrophy/NNP_PHL/275712-27364774
The raffle???s winner and his/her guest will be Yao???s personal guests in the 2008 Olympics. Five answers posted on LinkedIn Answers prior to 11:59pm EDT on 7/19 (Saturday) will be hand-picked by Yao for an award of 20 raffle tickets each.
Yao, a six year veteran in the NBA, became a superstar the moment he entered the league. He started in all six All Star Games and took the Houston Rockets to the NBA playoffs four times. He will also play for the Chinese National Team in the 2008 Olympics next month in Beijing, China.
As accomplished a basketball player as he is, Yao is also well-known for his philanthropic works. Over the years, he worked on important causes such as the rebuilding efforts in the earthquake affected regions in China, raising awareness about AIDS, and wildlife conservation.
So far, the question has gotten great responses. I encourage you to check them out. I wish Yao Ming the best of luck in the upcoming Olympics and with his foundation. |
LinkedIn Tech Talk: Kevin Brown on Shindig
Last Thursday, Kevin Brown visited LinkedIn's Mountain View office to do a presentation on Shindig, an OpenSocial Reference Implementation. Below are my notes from his talk.
In September 2007, Google started thinking about Social APIs. Google Gadgets would be better with access to Social Data ... but that's just Google. It was recognized that this is something that many others would like access to. OpenSocial was announced in November 2007. It's an open standard for developer platforms that has a strong emphasis on "social" data. It's based on gadgets which is now covered by The Open Social Foundation.
In November, many Googlers started working on a Google Code project based on Java and iGoogle. However, there was too much proprietary code. In December, Brian McCallister of Ning created an ASF Proposal for Shindig. It was a rough port of iGoogle but with Ning's PHP code. This turned out to be a great starting point. It immediately got interest from Google, Hi5, MySpace and others. While most committers are still from Google, there are 12 developers that work on it full time and they're adding 2 committers each month. Shindig is a Java/PHP implementation of OpenSocial. Open Campfire is an Apache-licensed .NET implementation that hopes to eventually merge into Shindig.
Shindig has extensive use of existing open source components, including Abdera, Jakarta Commons, Guice, ICU4J, OAuth.net, and JSON.org. It's largely well tested (developers use TDD), especially for the newer code. There's a heavy emphasis on DI (Guice helps tremendously) and the builds are done with Maven (Apache recommendation, Kevin hates it).
3 Parts of Shindig:
- Gadget Rendering: Fetches/parses gadget XML documents. It also provides a robust proxy to implement gadgets.io requirements (including OAuth and Signed Fetch). It acts as a "glue" between JavaScript libraries, remote sites and social data. It's built for medium to large deployments and has robust HTTP support. Lastly, it's very flexible so all major components can be replaced.
- Social API: Handles RESTful API calls and interacts with social data. It provides a backend for opensocial.* JavaScript APIs. It's mostly a serialization/de-serialization layer that delegates to your social data. Currently evaluation two implementation options (Dave Primer's AtomPub version or JSON version - lengthy explanation on shindig-dev). Currently, developers are creating an entirely new version because of REST and its JSON support. REST has a lot of issues when it comes to JSON. It works great with AtomPub, but AtomPub has too much verbose XML.
- Client Code: The first issue that comes up with client code is Security.
For security, iframes cover most of the problems. Cross-domain communication requires special effort - gadgets.rpc has to be implemented using a variety of techniques: window.postMessage in HTML5, document.frameElement in Firefox and window.opener in IE (still in development). Retrieving third-party data is covered by OAuth and Signed Fetch. Getting OAuth / Signed Fetch credentials can be done by passing an encrypted blog of data to the server and treating it as a cookie equivalent. Caja is the future.
Caja (pronounced ka-ha) makes it possible to run third-party JavaScript alongside existing code. It's not quite ready yet, but significant process has been made. It has limited support in Shindig today, which requires "taming" JavaScript APIs and DOM testing.
Summary
Full support for 0.6-0.8 gadget rendering specification (both versions). Full support for 0.6-0.8 JavaScript APIs. REST mostly done (both versions, PHP is closer). Deployed (or in progress) on many sites: Orkut, hi5, iGoogle sandbox, Hyves, CyWorld, Ning and hundreds of others. It has a very active mailing list and they're very interested in finding folks with more Maven experience to help out.
The project's next priority is a stable release. Shindig 1.0 will be OpenSocial 0.8 Compliant. It must have full support for REST. The Java and PHP implementations should be released around the same time. Priority #2 is graduating from Apache Incubator (goals are currently on target). One of the main things they need is more committers, especially those that aren't from Google. Priority #3 is future enhancements, including:
- 0.9: "proxied" content type
- 0.9: OpenSocial templates
- HTTP Performance Improvements
- "out of the box" shared caching
- More social data implementations (e.g. JDBC)
- Better Documentation
We have many more Tech Talks planned in the future at LinkedIn. Please stay tuned to this blog to learn about new and exciting technologies that we're learning about.
NOTE: This entry was published with Kevin Brown's permission. |
LinkedIn DirectAds
As the world's largest and fastest-growing professional network, LinkedIn is a fantastic place for businesses of all sizes to reach professionals with targeted messaging.
That's why today we're announcing LinkedIn DirectAds, a new online product designed for LinkedIn members who want to market their business, product, or service to other members. While large brands and companies will be best served by contacting our sales team, DirectAds lets LinkedIn members purchase audience-targeted text advertising on the site for their businesses of any size. For example, maybe you're a tax accounting firm looking to reach young professionals, or you're a design agency looking to find potential new clients in key industries, or maybe you've just written a new book on a career or business topic. You can use DirectAds to get the word out to your target customers.
 Using DirectAds, members can specify the audience that will see their ads (based on seven different criteria), write targeted messaging for their products, and pay by credit card - Premium Account holders even get 50% off. The whole process takes just a few minutes. We've opened up the product to a large number of our members, so you can try it out for your own business at https://www.linkedin.com/directads .
Like existing ads on our site today, DirectAds advertisements are intended to be non-obtrusive messages that accompany the overall experience of LinkedIn. Note that you won't see any additional ads with the introduction of this product and every DirectAds ad includes the advertising member's name and profile data, so you'll know who is trying to reach members like you.
We think that DirectAds will be a simple and valuable way for members to market their service, business, or product to the rest of the LinkedIn community. Please note that LinkedIn DirectAds is currently available to only U.S. members, but other than that feel free to try it out for yourself at https://www.linkedin.com/directads and send over any comments to feedback@linkedin.com. |
Search your LinkedInbox with ease
How many times have you thought to yourself? Wouldn't it be nice if I could search through my Inbox on LinkedIn. We are really glad to announce this much requested feature this week, close on the heels of the LinkedIn Group Search functionality announced by my colleague, Ben, a few days ago.
1. Where can I find LinkedIn Search?
Start looking along the horizontal navigation header on the homepage (see above screenshot)
You may notice this one-stop search drop-down menu also includes the ability to search within LinkedIn Groups, in addition to searching your Inbox.
2. Let's Search!
How about looking for any Inbox communication thread with the "developer" keyword in my Inbox. Remember this search will also produce results from your Inbox's Archives.
The greyed-out results are pulled from your Archive. So, you don't lose any communication you've received.
Feel free to leave your feedback, comments at the end of this post. We believe this will definitely help you navigate your professional life with far greater ease.
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LinkedIn Store - The Sequel
Since we launched the LinkedIn Store almost 8 months ago we've been
adding items and accessories at regular intervals for all LinkedIn
Fans. The most recent store update was radical, both in terms of the look-and-feel as well as a slew of new products.
Here's a sampling of new products, accessories and more importantly - our new LinkedIn models. Click through the pictures to find out who's who:
 Yes! We've got you covered in LinkedIn gear! Can you notice something unique about the photo?
 How did they trick me into doing this?
 And, finally for the headless LinkedIn'er. Guess who?Once again, thanks to Paul Navabpour, who runs the promotional agency that provides these top-quality
products and helped us build this custom store, and photographer Dave Getzschman, whose magic makes our in-house talent shine.
And, you may stumble upon a cameo or two from me as well. Check out the store to find out more.
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LinkedIn's Alexa Traffic Stats
LinkedIn's Search Engine Stats | Indexed Pages: 78,600,000 | Backlinks: 19,500 |  | Indexed Pages: 1,680,000 | Backlinks: n/a |  | Indexed Pages: 68,042,448 | Backlinks: 61,371,722 |  | Indexed Pages: 368,000,000 | Backlinks: 54,500,000 |  | Indexed Pages: 361,000,000 | Backlinks: 663,000 |
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