ELC Technologies Releases New OpenSocial Container to Embed New Applications for Social Networks

November 30, 2007; 05:26 AM

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ELC Technologies, the consulting firm with the largest global team of dedicated Ruby on Rails developers specializing in enterprise application development, has released a new open source plug-in for Google’s OpenSocial platform. Called OpenSocial Container, the plug-in facilitates the integration of new application plug-ins for emerging social media sites. This marks the first time that a third-party developer has created a documented and complete plug-in that makes it easier to add new applications to social networks that have adopted Google’s OpenSocial standard released earlier this month. ELC released the plug-in as open source code to the Ruby on Rails community this week.

ELC developed its OpenSocial Container using a combination of Ruby on Rails, and Javascript, allowing developers to quickly and simply deploy new OpenSocial applications. ELC’s OpenSocial container provides a secure host for Ruby on Rails developers to use the OpenSocial API calls in a controlled fashion. The ELC OpenSocial Container also provides an open, well-documented, and portable platform to create new OpenSocial APIs that can be used for multiple social media sites.

“We have a number of social networking clients, such as Cisco and MediaTrust, who retain ELC to help develop next-generation social media applications and also desire to support OpenSocial. Developing an open source plug-in was a logical step for ELC,” said Ryan Garver, CTO of ELC Technologies. “With the release of this open source plug-in for OpenSocial, we hope to make it easier for the Ruby on Rails community to bring new third-party OpenSocial plug-ins to emerging social networking sites.”

Since the release of Google’s OpenSocial API November 1st, a number of social networking communities have embraced the new API, including Plaxo, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Six Apart. The ELC container supports the three common OpenSocial APIs: the People and Friends API that lets applications update profile and contact information; the Activities data API that lets applications view and publish “actions”; and the Persistence API that lets applications edit content for an existing application, user, or gadget and query the content using an existing feed (ideal for pushing content to gadgets).

For more information about ELC’s OpenSocial Application Container, visit them on the Web at www.elctech.com.

About ELC Technologies

Founded in 1991, ELC Technologies (www.elctech.com) is powering the hottest Ruby on Rails web applications. From Cisco to TuneCore to Live Nation, ELC Technologies is bringing Ruby on Rails to business-critical applications. The company’s team has years of technical experience and more than 50 years of team Rails experience. The company has assembled developers who are Rails Studio Alumni, Scale with Rails Alumni, Advanced Rails Studio Alumni, Enterprise Rails Studio Alumni. ELC Technology is also a RailsConf Sponsor in the U.S. and Europe. The company has one of the largest and most experienced Ruby on Rails teams, tuned in to the latest web technologies and aesthetics, with a broad palette of agile practices to help client projects succeed. ELC Technologies has its headquarters in Santa Barbara, California, and international offices in London, England.