Artesia Spotlight is a bi-weekly review of key news in the fields of social media, user communities and virtual worlds. If you want to be the first to read the news, you can subscribe to receive Artesia Spotlight by e-mail on this page.
Tool Spotlight
Site owners can now facilitate the process of signing up for a website by using either Google Friend Connect or Facebook Connect. Google Friend Connect allows site visitors to sign in with their existing Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID accounts and can also provide a variety of social features through OpenSocial gadgets. Similarly, Facebook Connect allows site visitors to sign in with existing Facebook accounts and (if the user allows it) also publish info about user activity back on Facebook. Both services have the advantage of a large user base and make single sign-on easier for the average user.
Presentation Spotlight
Razorfish's presentation Portable Social Graphs - Imagining their Potential explores some of the potential uses of Facebook Connect that could make websites more social and relevant for the users. This presentation can be used to encourage companies to think about how they can transform their applications or services into a social utilities.
Other news
- Forterra's new version of its virtual worlds platform OLIVE will include integration with Lotus Sametime (IBM's enterprise communication an collaboration suite). For more information, see this video demonstration.
- Both YouTube and Facebook now support High Definition (HD) videos. In addition to that, Facebook now allows their videos to be embedded on other sites, which is something that video sharing sites like YouTube have been offering for a long time.
- YouTube invites musicians from around the world to audition for the YouTube Symphonic Orchestra. See more info on the project's official YouTube channel.
