As I was posting past posts to my Instagram using Timehop, I remembered my blog when it was on Google’s Blogger platform — then I remembered Nokia’s OVI platform. I was also reminded of the OpenSocial platform in the process. Now, I remembered having a Google Chrome extension that I abandoned long ago.
These services — some are free, some are not — were part of who I was before convincing myself “I need to stop being a general blogger and start targeting a specific audience.” Here’s my take on those services.
OpenSocial Platform
I was introduced to OpenSocial through Friendster and Widgetbox. On Friendster, you can copy-paste your web widgets, but when I discovered it, I got so excited that I made other profiles on MySpace, Bebo, hi5, Tagged and Orkut, not knowing why these sites exist and what’s their purpose.
The widget I spread throughout the platform, as far as I remember, is the blog widget that they offer — just connect to RSS, and boom, the flash widget will pop up after setup.
OVI
Poor Nokia, it failed to discover what it needed to do when it was one-upped by Apple’s iOS. During the time of OpenSocial, Google’s Android OS was just a project to me.
Setting that aside, OVI was Nokia’s own App Store, and they provided cool stuff for bloggers and websites to show their content on Nokia’s feature phones.
They had this website where we can make an OVI app for free, and it will be on the OVI Marketplace. I wasn’t sure how people will get my app because I don’t have an emulator of sorts to test the app in the flesh.
Google Chrome Extensions
Google Chrome extensions are something I really ignore nowadays (I only have a few of them) but way back in its heyday, I published a simple app that uses HTML, Javascript and some CSS.
The app I published there works like this:
- Click the button on the right-side of the browser, and
- A small window opens up, showing the latest posts on my blog/s (thanks to FeedBurner).
I got the code from a website that offers tutorials (I forgot what it was), but it helped me gain the right to publish Google Chrome Extensions for free (nowadays you need to pay for that, I think).
It’s too early to post this as a #ThrowbackThursday post, but hopefully you get the idea. Even before startups were not that of a common word, I was able to tinker with different stuff.
Also, I learned about Dynamic HTML (shout-out to Dynamic Drive), Web 2.0 (shout-out to CNET), and Freewebs and GeoCities (bless you two).