Google Friend Connect

I'm trying out Google Friend Connect here. If you have a Google account, you can join right here.

Long term, Google plans to offer more widgets and features that will "enrich your experience", as they say. I'm not so sure of all that, but I'm willing to give it a try. For example, they already have a "wall Gadget" (at bottom of this page) that implements a comments system.

I'm not certain that's a better idea, but it could cut down on spam if you don't allow anonymous comments. My concern is that the comments become "off site".. there are good and bad aspects to that.

Anyway, feel free to fool around here. I'd need to make some design changes to implement this site wide. I'm not sure when or even if I'll do that; we'll see what the level of interest is.

If you are paranoid about Google, yeah, I understand. Between Gmail, Analytics, Search, Groups and now this, they sure do have a lot of information to harvest.

I've been a little worried about that for a few years now. Right now, Google probably knows more about me than I know myself. Right now, I cautiously trust Google not to abuse that data but it is starting to get a little scary. I can easily see the day when Google will have to have stronger guarantees of privacy and big compensation if one of their employees subverts that. So if you don't want to sign up, I get it.

On the other hand, the cat already has the mouse, doesn't it? Opting out here doesn't change that..

A few directories of GFC Enabled sites:

• Google Friend Connect Directory
• Friend Connectified
• GFCDIR.com

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Sun Dec 28 18:57:59 2008:   TonyLawrence


Still unsure about this. I thought it was locking up Firefox today but I just needed to trash my preferences (this 3.05 update has caused more than a few problems for folks). Still, I don't like that NoScript sees it as an XSS danger and that I've had a few spammers come in that door.

We'll see..

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