Facebook Connect vs Google Friend Connect: Fight! Amidst all the talk about data portability and net identity, all that end users want to know is: how can I use this, and is it any good? Now both Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect are open to everyone; we've looked into these two services to see what they offer and which one is easier to use. So, what's the main difference here? In the simplest of terms, both Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect let you create applications on your website that allow your visitors to interact with the site and their friends by logging in with their Google, Facebook, or OpenID credentials.
The key difference between the two services is the fact that Facebook is one social network, while Google Friend Connect is open to any site, service or social network that uses OpenID for identification. For example, with Google Friend Connect your visitors can log in using their Gmail credentials, meaning that they don't really have to be a part of any (strictly defined) social network at all. Ease of use. GeoData Explorations: Google's Ever-Expanding Geo Investmen. Google has been investing lots of money in geodata acquisition. Some of the money is being spent externally: they’ve inked an exclusive satellite imagery deal with GeoEye (Radar post) and a data sharing deal Tele Atlas (Radar post). And some is being spent internally with Mapmaker, Street View and the web. Over the past week Google has been sharing visualizations of their internally gathered geodata.
Here’s a round-up of them. The image above was released on December 9th. The dark image above was released on December 11th. This final image shows all the points described by GeoRSS and KML all over the world. In some more GeoData Explorations posts this week I will look at OSM vs Google and some surprising trends in KML. This timelapse video of Da Lat, Vietnam being created is one of the most impressive. jMaps - jQuery Google Maps Plugin. jQuery has quickly become one of the most used JavaScript libraries around. Google Maps is possibly the most popular mapping website on the web. Wouldn't it be nice to connect the two easily using a small library? Well, jMaps is a library that does just that and version r64 has just been released. Below is a rundown of the main features as posted on the jMaps Google Code page. jMaps is a jQuery plugin that provides a really easy API to create and manage multiple google maps on any page.
You can go to the Google Code page here. Facebook Blocks Google’s Friend Connect. There Goes the Open Web. Gadgets For Your Webpage.