...to equally humble endings.

But oh so much fun in between!

Greetings! :)  My name is Shannon.  I am a 23 year-old undergraduate studying Computer Science at Georgia Tech, slated to gradumacate this August on the 1st (w00t!) and head off to Carnegie Mellon for graduate school, delving into the burdgeoning world of Bioinformatics.

BUT!  Before the fall comes the summer!

I am fairly new to the Joomla! community.  More specifically, I've been one of those annoying lurkers for the past few years who reads articles but never responds.  A stealth member, if you will. :P  Now, having applied to the Google Summer of Code, proposing to integrate the OpenSocial API into the modular, robust, and all-around impressive CMS Joomla!, I will be a much more active figure in the community.

And, you know, hopefully engaging those of you gentle readers in conversation, be it about my project, Joomla! in general, or any mistakes I've made (of which there will be many, I have no doubt).  For this reason (as well as the simple fact that I love conversation), please feel free to give me feedback!  After I've been staring at PHP for hours and hours, it all tends to start looking like rainbows to me.

Blue rainbows with white backgrounds.

...

Anyway.

I'll keep everyone apprised of my progress, roadblocks, brainstorms, and general nerdtacular silliness related to this summer's OpenSocial project here, so be sure to check back every now and then.  You know, if you're bored or something.

(P.S. The Joomla! administrators have recommeded that we blog at least once every two weeks.  I'm thinking...twice a week.  *grin*)

Shannon Quinn is a Computer Science major who will graduate in August from Georgia Tech, specializing in databases, networking, software engineering, and security. This fall, Shannon plans to begin a PhD program in Bioinformatics. Shannon is proficient in PHP, C/C++, Java, and .NET, and has experience developing with the Facebook API. He has used Joomla! to build several Web sites, including sites for himself, his fraternity, and for undergraduate research. Shannon has a strong interest in social networking applications and learning new technologies.

Mentor: Amy Stephen has 25 years in Information Technology, specializing in Web development and data warehousing. She discovered Joomla! in November 2005 when looking for software for her daughter's high school Web team. She was so impressed that such rich technology would be liberally shared that she started helping in the Joomla! forums and contributes her own extensions. Currently, Amy is on the Joomla! Communications Team and has proudly participated with the Joomla! Bug Squad.

As Web 2.0 continues to dominate the Internet, social networking sites are situating themselves deeper and deeper into the infrastructure of the world wide web, with Facebook and MySpace at the helm.

There is already a project underway to integrate Facebook functionality into a two-way module in the Joomla content management system. This project would be an effort to spearhead the Joomla! CMS into the OpenSocial realm, particularly within the context of MySpace and Orkut, or any other website which uses the Google OpenSocial API to implement its social networking website. A group within this website would correspond to an entire Joomla! powered website, and subsequent actions taken on the website would be reflected in the group, and vice versa.

Communication between these entities would consist of XML transmissions over HTTP/HTTPS; essentially, SOAP. Communication would work both ways, as users could also log into their accounts on the server and view Joomla information.

OpenSocial API: http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/