Ben Allfree :: Painless Programming

GoPotato.tv is an online publisher of comedy programs. They chose Ben to revamp their site using Ruby on Rails.

Facebook recently invited Ben to found the Facebook Developer’s Garage, Santa Barbara chapter. The group focuses on current Facebook trends and techniques and seeks to build a local community for supporting the technology.

EcoPerks raises ecological awareness. Ben is working with them to revamp the web site and add a ton of new features in a hurry!

Here’s a fun thought: who is already working on a platform-independent social widget framework?
This would be something where you can target both Facebook and OpenSocial apps using the same common code base. Our last attempt ended up being pure Facebook because there just wasn’t enough overlap. It seemed easier to make the app twice and [...]

rSocial, a social networking application framework for Ruby on Rails, is an open source project maintained at RubyForge. The purpose of rSocial is to build an OpenSocial host.
rSocial is a combination CMS and social networking portal. It supports user profiles, friend lists, and extensibility through OpenSocial modules as well as native modules.
Ben has borrowed from [...]

Ben will be working with BlowfishWorks.com on future products. Details are currently under NDA, but expect good things!

Several clients are interested in a Twitter clone. Part of the service I provide and the experience I bring is risk assessment. In this article, I talk a little about how to assess the business risks involved in your next project idea and how I can help.
A Twitter clone is a timely example. Each client [...]

Today, Ben announced support for OpenSocial application programming and consultation services.
OpenSocial is a new social networking application standard comparable to the Facebook API. Applications made using OpenSocial are expected to run on many social platforms including mySpace and SalesForce.

Understanding web services and related technologies will increase your decision-making power because there is an industry-wide push under way to get applications talking to one another in a standardized way. If you miss the point of this trend, you will find yourself wondering why the industry is making such erratic moves.

The increasing importance of Social Software (software that connects people) is driving the need for robust security and permissions systems. There are dozens of approaches and possible solutions to realize so-called "trustworthy computing", and this week I happened to come across an impressive security system that is worth sharing. The bottom line for both business [...]