What Say U?

November 14th, 2010

What Say U? is a gadget application built on OpenSocial platform and was submitted to Google’s SE Asia OpenSocial Application Contest.

It is a top winning application from Malaysia, among countries like Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

What Say U? is now available for Google Friend Connect, follow this guide.

Introduction

Application Title: What Say U?


Application Description: What Say U? is a gadget application built on OpenSocial platform which enables the owner of the application to post a question and get opinions/say from his or her friends. Friends of the owner will be able to see the question and submit their say to the topic in question. The list of what users (friends and including the owner of the application) said is displayed and can be reloaded real-time in the event any of the users submitted their opinions at the same time. This is different with a Wall or comments application as it is up to the owner of the application to submit a question for opinions. Users can then choose to participate in the topic or submit a question themselves in their own What Say U? application. This can be thought as a way of micro-blogging which also highly attracts interaction among friends.

The gadget currently supports a total of seven languages. Users are able to use the gadget in English, German, Chinese, French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian and Russian. More languages will be supported in the near future.

Both the question and replies (‘says’) supports other Google APIs including embedding of YouTube video or Google Maps link. The YouTube video link in the application will open a YouTube video search container and allow users to search for any video appropriate for embedding. Clicking on the ‘Embed This Video’ link will then automatically insert the video code in to the reply box. The Google Maps link however, will only open a new window to Google Maps website and the user will be able to copy link code from the maps to embed into the their reply or a question. The application also knows when a script is inserted and will be able to avoid cross site-scripting (XSS).

This ‘What Say U?’ application is built on OpenSocial and supported by containers or platform which includes Orkut, Hi5, Friendster and iGoogle.

In application containers that support it too, any activity of a question being posted or a reply is posted to the question, it will be shown to the friends as an activity taken by the user.

What Say U? application is able to engage activity with friends quickly as the application drives interaction among the owner and friends and also subsequent layers of their friends. It does not limit itself to the response in pure text but also allows video and dynamic maps in iframes. The drive to this application is that it is enables the owners to express themselves by posting their thoughts or questions. It is a dynamic application by allowing the owner to create new questions or topics as often as they want. The friends and even the owner can join in the response by submitting their say as many times as they like.

Application Author Marvin Lee

Author Location Malaysia

Application Guide

This application is simple and straight-forward and does not require too much effort for usage. First of all you would need to add the application to the OpenSocial container supported.

Eg. Friendster:

1) Profile View

The profile view of What Say U? is a smaller box in the user homepage. When replies are too long to view in the box, a scrollbar will appear for viewing of the list of responses. Click on the “Switch to Full View” button to navigate to the Canvas View for larger display space.

2) Canvas View

The Canvas View is the space to view the entire What Say U? application in full. It allows easier searching of YouTube videos and usage of the application.

3) To Pose New Question

Click on the “New Question” button and input the question you would like for opinions or comments.

4) To Pose YouTube videos

Clicking the “YouTube Videos” link will open the YouTube Video search panel. Clicking it again will close it. Search for videos you would like to embed by typing the related keywords and then click”Search”. Possible matching videos will be displayed and view them by selecting any video. Click on the “Embed This Video” to automatically transfer the embedding code into the What Say U? submission box. Click on “Say It” to submit the reply/response. 🙂

5) To Pose GoogleMap link

Clicking the “Google Maps” link will open the Google Maps website. Search for the location you would like to pose or the directions to a destination with Google Maps. Click on the “Link” and then copy the code under “Paste HTML to embed in website”. Use the HTML code and paste it to the “What Say U?” submission box. Click on “Say It” to submit the reply/response. 🙂

Possible Solutions

There are many possible solutions to using What Say U? application. In the example below, the application owner would like to gather opinions from friends regarding a future visit to National Monument (Tugu Negara) in KL, Malaysia. (Click to Enlarge)

Friends posted a direction with Google Maps from Mid Valley City, KL to the National Monument and also a video titled “Tugu Negara”.

Application Status

Orkut What Say U? is in the application directory of Orkut. It appeared to be labelled with warning that there is a potential vulnerability (XSS) in the application. The vulnerability has been resolved but the status is not changed.

Friendster What Say U? in Friendster is running on OpenSocial 0.7. The application code works on both OpenSocial 0.7 and 0.8 as the latter supports backward compatibility.

hi5 What Say U? is still pending approval for hi5 to be included into the global application directory.

What Say U? will appear in more OpenSocial application containers in the very near future and look out for more interesting OpenSocial applications coming soon.

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  1. Christoph
    July 6th, 2011 at 03:36 | #1

    Hi Marvin
    I’m currently coding my first OpenSocial 0.9 gadget. (the issue I have is probably also there for 0.8). In your application, when you delete a question and all related comments: how do you gain write/delete access to the comments (which are stored in Owner_Friends I presume)? thanks a lot.
    cheers, Christoph

  1. March 1st, 2009 at 00:38 | #1
  2. March 12th, 2009 at 00:41 | #2
  3. March 20th, 2009 at 01:00 | #3
  4. July 11th, 2009 at 19:53 | #4
  5. August 18th, 2009 at 02:05 | #5