A few days ago I posted SocialCorral to Feedmyapp, and not only has traffic increased quite a bit, but sCommerce did this awesome writeup! Thank you David Hobart!

I have the beginnings of a new widget, and I am testing it on my blog: http://lucasrockwell.com. Look for the text "Follow me..." on the left of the screen (or see screenshot below). It uses the current widget, but the widget pops up only when the "Follow me..." text is clicked. The code for the "Follow me..." text works just like the UserVoice or Get Satisfaction "Feedback" links that you see on many websites.

This widget is not ready for prime time yet (still need to work on color customizations and the ability for someone to change the text for the "Follow me..." link), but I'm getting close!

IE 7 kept throwing a "Stack Overflow at line ..." so after much digging, I found that IE 7 does not like Prototype 1.6.1.0, so I downgraded to 1.6.0.3, which was very easy because with use the Google JS CDN!

The next version of the SocialCorral widget is in the works. It will be more like UserVoice than AddThis (but without the lightbox) in that it will be a link you can place on the left or right side of your page. When the user clicks on the link it will open up your widget. The widget colors will be customizable, too.

We are wondering how best to monetize the widget... Perhaps we can't, and maybe a better way to go would be to ask people to pay what they think is reasonable for the service (sliding scale). This has worked well for some bands (musicians) when they release a new album via the web... Of course, those bands are very well known, but perhaps it could work. And we could feature the people who donate on the front page... Lots of possibilites. More to come, soon!

You can now adjust the width of your widget so that it better fits into the side navigation on your website or blog. Check out the examples below.

We are currently working on a widget that is more like addthis.com, where you only see your name, and when you hover over your name you get a popup with all of your social network usernames and details about you.

Oh, and we are also working on a API which will allow you to get at your data via XML. We are thinking that the addthis.com-style widget and the API will be available for a small fee -- like $10/year. We'll have more details as we get closer to releasing these features.

Thanks again for using SocialCorral!

SocialCorral has been releases/launched/iterated. Please log in and let us know what you think!

I am getting read to launch iterate SocialCorral. Why did I cross out launch and replace it with iterate? Well, that's what everyone (except for 37signals) tells you to do: iterate (rapidly), don't launch or release. So, that's what I'm going to do, iterate rapidly, and see what happens.

Twittbookspace is really just a pet project for me, but I hope it turns into so much more. I started SocialCorral for three reasons:

1. I was getting tired of telling people my various social network usernames.
2. I was in a new job and was not being allowed to do any work. Seriously, I begged for work, but instead, it was all about writing 20 page specs and endless meeting after endless meeting to explain code to the department director! So, to keep myself relevant with my peers, I had to come home and do some actual programming.
3. I wanted to create a web 2.0 website using LDAP as the backend instead of a database.

So, I started SocialCorral. I knew I wanted to use Rails because I have quite a bit of experience with it, but the downside was that the Ruby LDAP library leaves a lot to be desired as it makes a new bind for every operation. This is devastating to an LDAP server, so I thought about using JRuby, which would allow me to use JNDI, which means connection pooling, and all of that great stuff.

Below is the list of technologies I use to make Twittbookspace run (on the server-side):

• JRuby
• Rails
• OpenDS LDAP - 100% pure Java, open source LDAP server
• Tomcat
• CentOS