March 2008 Archives
UPDATE: Monday, March 31st 04:30 PST - Release has progressed as planned, and we now have 53 applications approved for launch tomorrow. If you got us your userids before about midnight, you can access the platform on www.hi5.com now. Currently the platform is open only to whitelisted users. Release to the rest of our users will proceed as planned starting at 12:00 pm PST today. If you were late getting your application submitted or getting your ids whitelisted, not to worry, contact us at platform-help@hi5.com and we'll do our best to accommodate you as soon as possible.
The hi5 Platform is set to launch tomorrow. Details of the rollout plan are as follows.
We will rollout to percentages of our user base based on userid ranges. In addition to that we have implemented a user whitelist to allow developers with apps that are launching and hi5 developers to see the platform regardless of rollout percentage. If you are a developer with an app launching and have not yet sent us ids to whitelist for the launch please send your developers' hi5 ids to platform-help@hi5.com and we'll add them to the whitelist.
Tonight, Sunday March 30th
We will be reviewing and approving applications, which will then be live in production to whitelisted accounts only. At this point developers will be able to review and test their applications in production. This is not a hard deadline for approving apps. If you miss tonight and your app is ready, just send an email to platform-help@hi5.com and we'll review and approve as soon as possible.
Monday March 31st
We will start opening up the platform to our userbase. The tentative plan is to open up to 1% of users at 12:00 PST, and roll out to as much as 10% over the course of the day depending on performance and bug reports.
After Monday, we will continue rolling out as quickly as possible, again depending on perfomance and bug reports. We will roll to 100% as quickly as possible, but are tentatively planning to allow 2 weeks. If we can reach 100% sooner, we will. We will be patching often, so please report bugs to us at platform-help@hi5.com as the rollout progresses. We will also be opening up our bug tracking system in the coming days to provide a better way for reporting and tracking issues, we'll blog when that happens.
Throughout this period the hi5 platform team will continue to be available on our irc channel at irc.freenode.net #hi5dev. We encourage you to escalate any serious issues to us there as well.
Viral Channels During Rollout
During the rollout period EMAIL will be disabled, as it's difficult to control sending emails only to users in the release pool. requestSendMessage with type=EMAIL will return a NOT_IMPLEMENTED response with an explanation that it's disabled for rollout during this period.
All other viral channels will be on and functioning as normal. Notifications, Friend Updates, and Application Invites will be delivered to all users. However, users not in the release pool will not see them until they enter the pool. So, a user entering the pool later this week who has received any of these items prior to entering the pool, will have them waiting for them with alerts on their homepage to that effect.
A big thank you to all the developers who have been hard at work preparing for launching applications with us tomorrow. We're all very excited at hi5 about tomorrow's launch and the tremendous value we expect your applications to provide to our users.
The hi5 Platform is set to launch tomorrow. Details of the rollout plan are as follows.
We will rollout to percentages of our user base based on userid ranges. In addition to that we have implemented a user whitelist to allow developers with apps that are launching and hi5 developers to see the platform regardless of rollout percentage. If you are a developer with an app launching and have not yet sent us ids to whitelist for the launch please send your developers' hi5 ids to platform-help@hi5.com and we'll add them to the whitelist.
Tonight, Sunday March 30th
We will be reviewing and approving applications, which will then be live in production to whitelisted accounts only. At this point developers will be able to review and test their applications in production. This is not a hard deadline for approving apps. If you miss tonight and your app is ready, just send an email to platform-help@hi5.com and we'll review and approve as soon as possible.
Monday March 31st
We will start opening up the platform to our userbase. The tentative plan is to open up to 1% of users at 12:00 PST, and roll out to as much as 10% over the course of the day depending on performance and bug reports.
After Monday, we will continue rolling out as quickly as possible, again depending on perfomance and bug reports. We will roll to 100% as quickly as possible, but are tentatively planning to allow 2 weeks. If we can reach 100% sooner, we will. We will be patching often, so please report bugs to us at platform-help@hi5.com as the rollout progresses. We will also be opening up our bug tracking system in the coming days to provide a better way for reporting and tracking issues, we'll blog when that happens.
Throughout this period the hi5 platform team will continue to be available on our irc channel at irc.freenode.net #hi5dev. We encourage you to escalate any serious issues to us there as well.
Viral Channels During Rollout
During the rollout period EMAIL will be disabled, as it's difficult to control sending emails only to users in the release pool. requestSendMessage with type=EMAIL will return a NOT_IMPLEMENTED response with an explanation that it's disabled for rollout during this period.
All other viral channels will be on and functioning as normal. Notifications, Friend Updates, and Application Invites will be delivered to all users. However, users not in the release pool will not see them until they enter the pool. So, a user entering the pool later this week who has received any of these items prior to entering the pool, will have them waiting for them with alerts on their homepage to that effect.
A big thank you to all the developers who have been hard at work preparing for launching applications with us tomorrow. We're all very excited at hi5 about tomorrow's launch and the tremendous value we expect your applications to provide to our users.
UPDATE: See Notifications and Emails sections. We have decided not to support VIEWER_FRIENDS and OWNER_FRIENDS as recipients but do continue to support an array of userids of up to 100 users.
On March 31st, a complete set of viral channels will be released, making it easier for developers to distribute applications to the hi5 community. Please note that policies on viral distribution are subject to change, so please check the wiki page regularly for more information.
Invitations
Invitations appear under the “Requests” header, at the top left corner of a user’s homepage. A user of an application has the ability to invite their friends to install the application. There are no limits to how many friends a user can invite. We have built a standard User Interface for selecting friends. Friends who receive an invitation have the option to block an application or report it as spam. A user can only receive an invitation to an application from the same friend once. Any installed application has Invite links on the profile module and the top of the canvas page. An application may also request to forward the user to the invite page at any point via the OpenSocial requestShareApp method.
opensocial.requestShareApp(recipients, reason, opt_callback)
Notes:
requestShareApp(opensocial.DataRequest.Group.VIEWER_FRIENDS, opensocial.newMessage('Gifts are more fun with friends!'));
Notifications
Notifications appear under the “Requests” header, on the top left corner of a user’s homepage. Here, all notifications are aggregated and displayed as a single number. If an application triggers a notification (e.g. “You have received a gift from John”), this will be sent to the recipient of the action. Notifications can be sent to users who have the application installed and users who don’t have the application installed as yet. Notifications will be limited to 5 per application per recipient per day.
Notifications are sent via the OpenSocial requestSendMessage method, with TYPE=NOTIFICATION
Notes:
var recipients = new Array();
recipients[0] = 1000;
recipients[1] = 1001;
var messageParams = {};
messageParams[opensocial.Message.Field.TYPE] = opensocial.Message.Type.NOTIFICATION;
var message = opensocial.newMessage('Notification text', messageParams);
opensocial.requestSendMessage(recipients, message, handleNotificationResponse);
E-mail messages
Applications can send email messages to users as long as the user has the application installed and the user has given the application the permission to do so. Currently, the e-mail limit is 1 email message per app per recipient per day. The user will have the option to unsubscribe from the email message.
Notifications are sent via the OpenSocial requestSendMessage method, with TYPE=EMAIL
Notes:
var messageParams = {};
messageParams[opensocial.Message.Field.TYPE] = opensocial.Message.Type.EMAIL;
messageParams[opensocial.Message.Field.TITLE = 'Subject of email';
var message = opensocial.newMessage('Body of email', messageParams);
opensocial.requestSendMessage(opensocial.DataRequest.PersonId.OWNER, message, handleEmailResponse);
Friend Updates
Application developers have direct access to the friend updates on hi5. When a friend update is generated by a user, that update is displayed both on the generating user's profile page in the Recent Updates section, and on the generating user's friends' homepages in the Friend Updates section. Not all updates are published to all friends, but the publication rate is quite high. Currently we support 1 update at any given time per generating user per application, meaning a user could see at most the same number of updates on their homepage from an application as they have friends. We plan on supporting activity templates in a follow-up release, which will allow for better matching and aggregation and will allow us to change this limit.
Friend Updates are created via the OpenSocial requestCreateActivity method
Notes:
var activityParams = {};
activityParams[opensocial.Activity.Field.TITLE] = title;
var mediaItems = {};
var mediaItem = opensocial.newActivityMediaItem(opensocial.Activity.MediaItem.Type.IMAGE, viewer.getField(opensocial.Person.Field.THUMBNAIL_URL));
// Add a media item link if supported
if(gadgets.util.hasFeature('hi5') && opensocial.getEnvironment().supportsField(opensocial.Environment.ObjectType.ACTIVITY_MEDIA_ITEM, hi5.ActivityMediaItemField.LINK)) {
mediaItem.setField(hi5.ActivityMediaItemField.LINK, viewer.getField(opensocial.Person.Field.PROFILE_URL));
}
mediaItems.push(mediaItem);
activityParams[opensocial.Activity.Field.MEDIA_ITEMS] = mediaItems;
var activity = opensocial.newActivity(activityParams);
opensocial.requestCreateActivity(activity, opensocial.CreateActivityPriority.HIGH);
General Notes
As mentioned above, these policies are subject to change, and feedback is appreciated at this time. You can find us on our irc channel at irc.freenode.net #hi5dev, and we'll have Feature Request submissions available on our developer site soon as well.
On March 31st, a complete set of viral channels will be released, making it easier for developers to distribute applications to the hi5 community. Please note that policies on viral distribution are subject to change, so please check the wiki page regularly for more information.
Invitations
Invitations appear under the “Requests” header, at the top left corner of a user’s homepage. A user of an application has the ability to invite their friends to install the application. There are no limits to how many friends a user can invite. We have built a standard User Interface for selecting friends. Friends who receive an invitation have the option to block an application or report it as spam. A user can only receive an invitation to an application from the same friend once. Any installed application has Invite links on the profile module and the top of the canvas page. An application may also request to forward the user to the invite page at any point via the OpenSocial requestShareApp method.
opensocial.requestShareApp(recipients, reason, opt_callback)
Notes:
- The only valid value for recipients is opensocial.DataRequest.Group.VIEWER_FRIENDS. There is no limit to the number of friends a user may select to invite, but there is no Select All feature in the form.
- As noted in the spec, containers should either refresh the application or call the requested callback on completion of this request. Since we always refresh the gadget, the callback is ignored.
- reason should be of type opensocial.Message, and the text should be in the BODY field. If set, the reason will be displayed in the invite form.
requestShareApp(opensocial.DataRequest.Group.VIEWER_FRIENDS, opensocial.newMessage('Gifts are more fun with friends!'));
Notifications
Notifications appear under the “Requests” header, on the top left corner of a user’s homepage. Here, all notifications are aggregated and displayed as a single number. If an application triggers a notification (e.g. “You have received a gift from John”), this will be sent to the recipient of the action. Notifications can be sent to users who have the application installed and users who don’t have the application installed as yet. Notifications will be limited to 5 per application per recipient per day.
Notifications are sent via the OpenSocial requestSendMessage method, with TYPE=NOTIFICATION
Notes:
- The recipients field may be a user id, an Array of user ids, OWNER, or VIEWER. OWNER_FRIENDS and VIEWER_FRIENDS will not be implemented at this time.
- The notification will only be sent to recipients that either have the app installed or are friends with the viewer.
- The array of userids passed as recipient may contain at most 100 ids.
- HTML content in notifications is sanitized. Only 'a' and 'br' tags are currently allowed.
var recipients = new Array();
recipients[0] = 1000;
recipients[1] = 1001;
var messageParams = {};
messageParams[opensocial.Message.Field.TYPE] = opensocial.Message.Type.NOTIFICATION;
var message = opensocial.newMessage('Notification text', messageParams);
opensocial.requestSendMessage(recipients, message, handleNotificationResponse);
E-mail messages
Applications can send email messages to users as long as the user has the application installed and the user has given the application the permission to do so. Currently, the e-mail limit is 1 email message per app per recipient per day. The user will have the option to unsubscribe from the email message.
Notifications are sent via the OpenSocial requestSendMessage method, with TYPE=EMAIL
Notes:
- The recipients field may be a user id, an Array of user ids, OWNER,
or VIEWER. OWNER_FRIENDS and VIEWER_FRIENDS will not be implemented at
this time.
- The notification will only be sent to recipients that either have the app installed or are friends with the viewer.
- The array of userids passed as recipient may contain at most 100 ids.
- HTML content in emails is sanitized. Only 'a','br', and 'strong' tags are currently allowed.
var messageParams = {};
messageParams[opensocial.Message.Field.TYPE] = opensocial.Message.Type.EMAIL;
messageParams[opensocial.Message.Field.TITLE = 'Subject of email';
var message = opensocial.newMessage('Body of email', messageParams);
opensocial.requestSendMessage(opensocial.DataRequest.PersonId.OWNER, message, handleEmailResponse);
Friend Updates
Application developers have direct access to the friend updates on hi5. When a friend update is generated by a user, that update is displayed both on the generating user's profile page in the Recent Updates section, and on the generating user's friends' homepages in the Friend Updates section. Not all updates are published to all friends, but the publication rate is quite high. Currently we support 1 update at any given time per generating user per application, meaning a user could see at most the same number of updates on their homepage from an application as they have friends. We plan on supporting activity templates in a follow-up release, which will allow for better matching and aggregation and will allow us to change this limit.
Friend Updates are created via the OpenSocial requestCreateActivity method
Notes:
- hi5 currently supports the following fields: TITLE, BODY, MEDIA_ITEMS, FAVICON_URL, and URL
- USER_ID, APP_ID, and POSTED_TIME are inferred from the request and if set are ignored by hi5
- Priority, although required by the OpenSocial spec, is currently ignored by hi5
- FAVICON_URL is used as the icon in the Friend Updates feed if specified. If unspecified, we will use the icon specified in the application's ModulePrefs. If that is also unspecified, we will use the standard hi5 gear icon.
- An update may have up to 5 MediaItems associated with it.
- hi5 support an additional MediaItem field, hi5.ActivityMediaItemField.LINK. This allows for individual MediaItems to have links to content.
- If the BODY is set, the URL field is a link attached to it. This URL supports view-params to an app canvas page. If unspecified and the BODY is set, this link defaults to the generating user's canvas page with no view-params.
- HTML content is sanitized. Only 'a' tags are currently allowed.
var activityParams = {};
activityParams[opensocial.Activity.Field.TITLE] = title;
var mediaItems = {};
var mediaItem = opensocial.newActivityMediaItem(opensocial.Activity.MediaItem.Type.IMAGE, viewer.getField(opensocial.Person.Field.THUMBNAIL_URL));
// Add a media item link if supported
if(gadgets.util.hasFeature('hi5') && opensocial.getEnvironment().supportsField(opensocial.Environment.ObjectType.ACTIVITY_MEDIA_ITEM, hi5.ActivityMediaItemField.LINK)) {
mediaItem.setField(hi5.ActivityMediaItemField.LINK, viewer.getField(opensocial.Person.Field.PROFILE_URL));
}
mediaItems.push(mediaItem);
activityParams[opensocial.Activity.Field.MEDIA_ITEMS] = mediaItems;
var activity = opensocial.newActivity(activityParams);
opensocial.requestCreateActivity(activity, opensocial.CreateActivityPriority.HIGH);
General Notes
- All viral channels are monitored and may be subject to spam control.
- All viral requests are limited to the 'canvas' view. Requests from 'profile' or 'preview' views will return an opensocial.ResponseItem with error code set to to opensocial.ResponseItem.Error.NOT_IMPLEMENTED.
- Users have the option of disallowing applications from sending Friend Updates, Notifications, and Emails on their behalf.
- If an application is blocked by the user, none of the viral channels will reach the user.
- Successful requestSendMessage requests will return an opensocial.ResponseItem whose data field will contain a list of users who received the message. This is not yet available in sanbox but is expected to be ready for launch, details to come.
As mentioned above, these policies are subject to change, and feedback is appreciated at this time. You can find us on our irc channel at irc.freenode.net #hi5dev, and we'll have Feature Request submissions available on our developer site soon as well.
Hi devs,
New methods for getting User Presence and Online Status
You can use an OAuth compatible library to verify the requests are correct. We have one available here:
I know this is late in the game, but I plan to move to most apps in our sandbox to our new production gadget server at 6pm PT. I will not be moving certain apps that I know have compatibility problems with this new release.
There's a lot of new good things in our new gadget server. Here's the changelog:
Better Performance via Batched Requests
When you create a new opensocial.DataRequest() all items are submitted to the server and the results come back in one shot. The following code will send one request to the backend that updates some app data, loads the owner/viewer/viewer friends, and loads app data for viewer and viewer_friends. All in one request!
var req = opensocial.newDataRequest();
req.add(req.newUpdatePersonAppDataRequest('VIEWER', 'gifts', json));
req.add(req.newFetchPersonRequest('VIEWER', opts), 'viewer');
req.add(req.newFetchPersonRequest('OWNER', opts), 'owner');
req.add(req.newFetchPeopleRequest('VIEWER_FRIENDS', opts), 'viewerFriends');
req.add(req.newFetchPersonAppDataRequest('VIEWER', 'gifts'), 'data');
req.add(req.newFetchPersonAppDataRequest('VIEWER_FRIENDS', 'gifts'), 'viewerFriendData');
req.send(onLoadFriends);
Activity Feed Fetching
You can now fetch activity feed data for any set of users.
Better Support for Application Data
You app can now get application data for whole sets of user ids.
Important! Our old version of the datarequest API had a bug with respect to the Open Social standard. Per that standard all data is now html escaped. If you're using JSON or other format sensitive data you should decode your data like this:
var json = gadgets.util.unescapeString(data[person.getId()]['gifts']);
We previously had published a way of retrieving hi5 presence and status data via custom APIs. We've changed this so that you can get this information in any fetchPersonRequest/fetchPeopleRequest call. The new way of retrieving this data is to pass in a valid list of PROFILE_DETAILS. Here's a sample:
var opts = {};
opts[opensocial.DataRequest.PeopleRequestFields.PROFILE_DETAILS] =
[opensocial.Person.Field.AGE,
opensocial.Person.Field.NAME,
opensocial.Person.Field.GENDER,
opensocial.Person.Field.PROFILE_URL,
opensocial.Person.Field.THUMBNAIL_URL,
opensocial.Person.Field.STATUS,
hi5.PersonField.PRESENCE
];
var req = opensocial.newDataRequest();
req.add(req.newFetchPersonRequest('VIEWER', opts), 'viewer');
.....
In your callback you can get at this data in the following way:
var status = viewer.getField(opensocial.Person.Field.STATUS);
var presence = viewer.getField(hi5.PersonField.PRESENCE);
Albums Support
This current build does not support fetching albums. We will add this feature in before monday.
Signed Requests
You can now make requests to your backend server with SIGNED requests. Adding this to your application means that you can be assured that data has not been spoofed or tampered. Here's a simple example of using signed requests:
gadgets.io.makeRequest("http://www.inuus.com/os/testOauth.php", function(r) { alert(response.text);},
{CONTENT_TYPE: gadgets.io.ContentType.JSON,
METHOD: "POST",
POST_DATA: "message=moooooo",
AUTHORIZATION: gadgets.io.AuthorizationType.SIGNED});
http://www.hi5networks.com/platform/browser/sampleapps/
The hi5modules.com public certificate can be downloaded here:
http://www.a.hi5modules.com/hi5modules.com.cert
It was brought to our attention that the BODY field of activity items was not supporting embedded links. Upon investigation, we realized that our friend update bodies for all updates, even hi5 generated ones, do not allow HTML of any kind because truncation can result in malformed HTML issues. So, tonight, we came up with an interim solution you can take advantage of.
We will not be able to allow embedded links in the BODY of activites for launch, but we will allow you to customize the more >> link that follows each activity BODY. To do this we added support for the OpenSocial activity URL field. This field also supports view-params to direct users to particular pages within your app. Here's an example that will link to the viewer's canvas page for your app with an additional parameter:
function createActivity(title) {
var opts = {};
opts[opensocial.Activity.Field.TITLE] = title;
opts[opensocial.Activity.Field.BODY] = "Start sending gifts too!";
var viewParams = gadgets.json.stringify({"test":"w00t!"});
opts[opensocial.Activity.Field.URL] = "/apps/displayAppCanvas.do?appId=[APP_ID]&userId=" + viewer.getField(opensocial.Person.Field.ID) + "&view-params=" + encodeURIComponent(viewParams);
var activity = opensocial.newActivity(opts);
// Request the activity creation
opensocial.requestCreateActivity(activity, opensocial.CreateActivityPriority.HIGH);
}
If no URL is set, the more >> link will continue to default to the VIEWER's (the user generating the update) canvas page.
This feature will be available on sandbox tomorrow.
We will not be able to allow embedded links in the BODY of activites for launch, but we will allow you to customize the more >> link that follows each activity BODY. To do this we added support for the OpenSocial activity URL field. This field also supports view-params to direct users to particular pages within your app. Here's an example that will link to the viewer's canvas page for your app with an additional parameter:
function createActivity(title) {
var opts = {};
opts[opensocial.Activity.Field.TITLE] = title;
opts[opensocial.Activity.Field.BODY] = "Start sending gifts too!";
var viewParams = gadgets.json.stringify({"test":"w00t!"});
opts[opensocial.Activity.Field.URL] = "/apps/displayAppCanvas.do?appId=[APP_ID]&userId=" + viewer.getField(opensocial.Person.Field.ID) + "&view-params=" + encodeURIComponent(viewParams);
var activity = opensocial.newActivity(opts);
// Request the activity creation
opensocial.requestCreateActivity(activity, opensocial.CreateActivityPriority.HIGH);
}
If no URL is set, the more >> link will continue to default to the VIEWER's (the user generating the update) canvas page.
This feature will be available on sandbox tomorrow.
Activity and Notifications are again available at sandbox.hi5.com. Thanks for your patience while we got these systems migrated over in preparation for our upcoming launch.
Both requestSendMessage and requestCreateActivity are now also passing proper responses as defined in the OpenSocial specification for these methods into the optional callback if it's provided.
Let us know at platform-help@hi5.com or on our irc channel at irc.freenode.net #hi5dev if you see any issues.
Both requestSendMessage and requestCreateActivity are now also passing proper responses as defined in the OpenSocial specification for these methods into the optional callback if it's provided.
Let us know at platform-help@hi5.com or on our irc channel at irc.freenode.net #hi5dev if you see any issues.
We pushed some significant updates to sandbox.hi5.com tonight. Here's a summary:
Thanks to the developers who have been hard at work on their applications and have reported bugs for us. Your feedback has been invaluable. We're now spending time each day in our irc room at irc.freenode.net #hi5dev. Please join us there as we approach our launch.
- App Invites are working again, and moved to our production-ready system. We have also implemented requestShareApp (just in case anyone was interested :) ) So, a call to requestShareApp will redirect the user to the invite page, allowing you to place contextual links and redirects to invites in your application. The callback is not functional yet, it returns to your canvas page, and the only idSpec that works is VIEWER_FRIENDS (which makes sense for most use cases), but we wanted to get it out for you to test on early and give us feedback. We'll work on rounding out the feature the rest of this week. This does have the likely implication that we will now limit notifications to just users who have the app installed now that you have more control over invites. We will publish our finalized rules for all the viral channels by the end of this week here and in our developer documentation site.
- FIRST and MAX filtering is now implemented for friend fetches. The default is 0-20 as defined in the OpenSocial spec, but we allow you to fetch up to 200 friends at once. So starting now you need to specify a higher MAX value to get more than 20 friends, and MAX can be anything <= 200.
- View-params are now working properly when using requestNavigateTo
- Fixed a bug in album fetches where an album with 0 photos would break the request.
- Notifications are still down, but we should have them back up tomorrow. This is also due to moving over to production systems in preparation for our 3/31 launch.
- We also migrated our main application tables to production. We imported all of the applications you've created, but we did not migrate user data so you may need to re-add apps to your profile or update their permissions from the My Apps page. Sorry for any inconvenience but this was the cleanest way to do it.
Thanks to the developers who have been hard at work on their applications and have reported bugs for us. Your feedback has been invaluable. We're now spending time each day in our irc room at irc.freenode.net #hi5dev. Please join us there as we approach our launch.
Our hi5 Platform Hackathon on March 15th was a great success. It was held simultaneously at the Google Campus in Mountain View, California, and the Campus Estado de Mexico of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM).
Both events were stellar, with nearly 200 developers in attendance in Mountain View and over 80 developers in Mexico City. Representatives of Google, Globant, Joyent and ITESM also joined in on the fun, with both hackathon locations linked via a video conference and an IRC chat channel.
Many thanks for all of the time and effort everyone put into the event! We were pleased to hear from so many developers that our platform is already more evolved than any other OpenSocial-enabled platform, and also appreciated the feedback we received to further improve it in the next two weeks prior to the official launch.
The application showcases were also a highlight of the day, with some of the coolest apps pushing interactivity into the 3D world. Here is a sampling of a few of the apps that were demo’d:
- Pix Wall — leave a note, photo or video on your hi5 profile, or add to your friends’ Pix Walls
- MyMiniLife — bling out your ‘home’ using music, pictures and videos, or impress your friends with sticky notes and gifts
- Build and Smash (Windows only) — build words and messages that you and your friends can smash, or throw rabbits at bowling pins
- SuperFortune™ Cookie — add a dash of fate to your profile, or send some along to a friend
- Friend Geography — Locate your friends on a Google Map.
- Coolness Factor — Calculate your coolness factor based on the distribution of gender and other factors.
It’s not too late to get your app included with the hi5 Platform launch! If you haven’t already done so, please register with us, review our Developer Guidelines and have your feature-complete, qualifying app in the hi5 sandbox by Friday, March 28.
Of course we couldn't finish this post without reminding you of all the great reasons you should collaborate with hi5:
Global Reach, New Distribution
hi5 is ranked by Alexa® as the #8 website globally, and the most-trafficked site in nearly a dozen countries, including many in Latin America, Europe and Asia. According to cross-visitation data from comScore, less than one third of our users are also active on other leading social networks – providing an expanded audience for your apps.
Ease of Development
Because we are a founding adopter of OpenSocial, your apps can be deeply integrated within hi5, as well as easily translated to other OpenSocial-enabled websites – further increasing your reach potential by many millions.
Monetization
With the platform launch, hi5 will provide developers with a dedicated canvas page for your applications which you can monetize through advertising (in addition to any other revenue-generating strategies you have or arrange with us).
Viral Channels
We will also provide you with numerous viral channels to promote your apps to our users, including notifications, invites, messages, friend updates and more — within allowable limits to ensure an optimal user experience.
Free Infrastructure and Translation for First 100 Apps
For the first 100 new apps that are approved for the hi5 Platform launch, the associated developers will win one year of scalable, on-demand architecture on a Joyent Accelerator™. Additionally, we will provide Spanish or English translation for these apps as well.
More detailed information is available in our Developer Center. You can also learn more about hi5 in the Press Room of our company website.
Hi everyone,
Just a heads up that we're undergoing site maintenance tonight and our API servers have been impacted. You might experience difficulty fetching data via OpenSocial calls in our sandbox until morning.
Also, we are currently moving some of our viral features over to new production systems in preparation for launch. Currently Notifications and App Invites are not working in sandbox. We're going to make every effort to get them back up tomorrow, and I'll post when they are.
Just a heads up that we're undergoing site maintenance tonight and our API servers have been impacted. You might experience difficulty fetching data via OpenSocial calls in our sandbox until morning.
Also, we are currently moving some of our viral features over to new production systems in preparation for launch. Currently Notifications and App Invites are not working in sandbox. We're going to make every effort to get them back up tomorrow, and I'll post when they are.
As we proceed towards our OpenSocial release, we've spent a lot of time polishing up the user interface. In a number of places we display your application name along with an icon. Up to now we've used a small gear. In our next developer release, you'll be able to change your icon. You need to modify the icon attribute of the ModulePrefs tag. You should specify a URL of a 15x15 image; note that while .ico does not work on IE6, so .gif or .png is required. To make things really easy you can just add a reference to your existing favicon file, in the appropriate format. Here's a snippet of code that shows how to specify the icon:
<ModulePrefs
[other attributes]
icon="http://images.hi5.com/images/favicon.gif"/>
Once you add your icon attribute, use the developer console to 'Refresh' your application. After that, your icon will appear in many places throughout the hi5 site.
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