Recently in Behind the Scenes Category

We're proud to announce that Hi5 will fully implement Google's OpenSocial APIs.  OpenSocial expands on hi5's existing Widget system by adding many high-quality applications for our users and allowing much greater flexibility for developers using the hi5 Platform.  The following video shows an example of a number of OpenSocial applications running inside a beta version of www.hi5.com

As you can see, OpenSocial opens a number of possibilities for Developers and Users.

For Developers

Open Social applications are easy to write and give you the widest audience.  The Open Social API builds upon the Google Gadget system, which is well designed and feature rich.  Here at hi5 we especially noticed that internationalization features are present, which is essential for delivering these applications to our diverse world-wide audience.

The API is simple, yet powerful.  Your application can access profile, friends, and activity information for the  viewer and owner of a profile or canvas page.  It only takes a few lines of JavaScript to pull in this information, the rest is all standard HTML and JavaScript.

For hi5 Users

This project will bring some great applications to hi5.  Music Applications like iLike will track your favorite music and your friends favorite music.  Slide's Funwall gives you a whole new way of chatting with your friends.  And Movie application Flixster will let you show off your favorite films and celebrities on your home page.

Even more exciting is the applications yet to be written.  We fully expect a large number of new, interesting, and localized applications to pop up.  These new applications will give you applications that speak your native language and target your local customs and culture.

The Future

At hi5 we're excited about delivering this platform to our users and developers, along with our current Platform.  We plan to have a developer sandbox available in November, with a production release following after a period of testing.  Developers are encouraged to visit the hi5 Developer site and Google's OpenSocial site to keep abreast of the latest information and join in the conversation.

As you know by now, Hi5 supports widgets from Slide and Rock You.  To accomplish this integration we wrote a completely new software platform.  The end result is http://api.hi5.com/.  The software that makes it possible is called Enunciate.

Enunciate is an open-source toolkit that generates a complete interoperable system for providing Web Services.  It does this by allowing you to place metadata and documentation about your desired services directly in your code. Invoking the enunciate compiler generates a complete web site with documentation, server endpoints, and client libraries.

We're using the following features now:

• REST endpoints for Widgets, Feeds, and Authentication.
  
• SOAP support, including generated SOAP client libraries.
• JSON output support.
• Full documentation coming direct from the code.

Hi5 sponsored much of the work for Enunciate 1.3 and will continue to work with the primary author and community to improve and extend the Enunciate code.  The roadmap has a number of exciting features that you will soon see on the Hi5 API server.

We welcome you to participate in the future of Hi5 API development.  You can join our new Hi5 API group where you can ask questions and keep abreast of the latest news.

Another LinuxWorld conference has come and gone.  Many people from Hi5 attended, which just goes to show how important Linux and other Open Source products are for our business.

Hi5's success is based in large part on these high quality open source products.  Our entire site runs using open source software on a Linux platform.  We've found that this provides us with unparalleled flexibility, performance and low costs.

To make Hi5 run we use all of the following products:

• Linux Servers running SuSE Enterprise Linux
• Apache and Lighttpd web servers
• PostgreSQL, a highly scalable database
• Squid for web acceleration
• Resin and Tomcat Java Application Servers
• Struts, our MVC platform
• iBatis - for Object Relational Mapping
  
• Spring - Java Application Framework
  
• Memcached, where we cache as much as possible.
  
• Lucene indexing and search engine
• Enunciate web service deployment framework
  

In addition to being users of these products Hi5 has been more and more active in the community efforts surrounding these Open Source projects.   We've moved beyond mailing list activity and bug reports to actively  contributing code and sponsoring development work.  You can expect more and more of this in the future.

It's all very exciting!  If working with open source projects is your thing then you should definitely check out our careers page.  We'll be talking more about our open source contributions in the months to come, so stay tuned to our blog.

Paul

Update: Lou tells me that we have a few more obscure software components that we enjoy using:

• SiteMesh - Web Page Layout and Decoration Framework.
• StringTemplate - Simple templating engine.
• JRobin - RRDtool for Java
• ImageJ - Image Manipulation toolkit
  

Hi5 has a team of people devoted to protecting your security and privacy.  Recently we shutdown several malicious "Phishing Sites" which attempted to steal Hi5 passwords.  Here's some background on how we dealt with this problem:

• Problem was reported, we found that there was a site containing a fake Hi5 home page.
• We immediately reported the site to all the Phishing clearinghouses.
• Then we looked up who hosts the server and who was hosting the domain/DNS.
• In this case we found that the phisher was using a Dynamic DNS service.  We contacted their customer service which shut down access.
• Then we contacted the web hosting company in Malaysia.  This required multiple emails and phone calls in the middle of the night.
• Finally the web site was shut down.
• Details about the identity of the perpetrators was supplied to the appropriate authorities.
  

Phew!  It's a lot of work protecting Hi5 users from unsavory elements!

We do our best to keep on top of this, however you can protect yourself from Phishing attacks by following a few simple steps:

• Use a current browser.  The latest versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer contain Phishing protection.  When we find evidence of a phishing site we report it immediately.
• Pay attention to your browser bar.  Insure that the URL starts with http://www.hi5.com before entering your password.
• Report suspicious phishing emails to us.  Click on the contact link on any page to alert customer service about this type of activity.
• Remember, if an email sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Hi5 will never solicit financial or personal information via email.
• Read more about protecting yourself from Phishing attacks.  Microsoft and Wikipedia both have good articles about protecting yourself from Phishing attacks.