Project: Social networking extension for Mozilla Thunderbird
The plugin for Mozilla Thunderbird should inform about the membership of senders of emails in social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, XING, MySpace, Skype etc.
Social Networking services such as XING [1] and LinkedIn [2] already provide toolbars for MS Outlook the task is to create a similar toolbar for Thunderbird, which is furthermore not limited to one Social Network.
Several Social Network accounts should be configurable with the extension. Once, the user receives a new email the extension should check if the sender is member of one of the configured Social Networks. This can be for example indicated by small buttons in the toolbar, which are black and white by default but colored once a membership is detected.
The extension should either use the API's provided by the Social Networks or some kind of scraping mechanism.
[1] http://www.xing.com/app/user?op=downloads
[2] http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=outlook_toolbar_download&trk=ftr_otb
Voting
The following summarizes the current state of the voting about which offer to accept:
- €300 by jrernst: First prototype and screenshot
€233(8 votes)
Requirements
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R1: LinkedIn support
by soeren on 14 Oct 2007 14:04
Average rating:
(7) -
R2: Extensibility for additional Social Network sites
by soeren on 14 Oct 2007 14:04
Average rating:
(4)1 Comments on "Extensibility for additional Social Network sites" (Show)
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R3: Odnoclassniki.ru support
by anna on 14 Oct 2007 14:04
Average rating:
(5)3 Comments on "Odnoclassniki.ru support" (Show)
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R4: Facebook support
by soeren on 12 Oct 2007 13:46
Average rating:
(6)0 Comments on "Facebook support" (Show)
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R5: MySpace support
by soeren on 12 Oct 2007 13:46
Average rating:
(5)1 Comments on "MySpace support" (Show)
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R8: XING support
by klaus on 16 Oct 2007 04:06
Average rating:
(8)XING [1] is a very popular professional social networking site in Germany and other countries.
[1] http://www.xing.com1 Comments on "XING support" (Show)
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R9: Skype support
by soeren on 25 Oct 2007 02:01
Average rating:
(2)0 Comments on "Skype support" (Show)
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R10: Check membership for a new contact
by soeren on 25 Oct 2007 16:31
Average rating:
This can be done either on the basis of the email or the name.
1 Comments on "Check membership for a new contact" (Show)
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R11: Add a context menu entry to invite contacts to certain Social Network
by soeren on 25 Oct 2007 16:35
Average rating:
Should redirect to the respective Web page for inviting the contact or open an email with the respective information.
1 Comments on "Add a context menu entry to invite contacts to certain Social Network" (Show)
Comments
- Need more information
Can somebody explain how the plugin should DETECT a membership? Maybe by scanning the email for header contents? How should the plugin INFORM about a membership? Simply display a string? With a symbol? Or like a banner added to the displayed mail content?
by jrernst on 25 Oct 2007 01:40
- Added a more preceise description
How the actual implementation is done can be also suggested somebody with experience in implementing XPI extensions.
by soeren on 25 Oct 2007 02:43
- Implementation
Okay, now I got a first idea on how to do an implementation of this extension. Unfortunately I don't use neither Windows nor Outlook so your reference didn't help me much. Can somebody send me a screenshot of the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar to the mail address shown in my profile?
by jrernst on 25 Oct 2007 14:42
- Inspirational screenshots
You will find some screenshots by searching for "LinkedIn toolbar" on some image search (e.g. http://images.google.com) There is also a description by LinkedIn itself: http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=outlook_toolbar_20_faq
However, this should be understood more as an inspiration - a Thunderbird toolbar with support for several Social Networs might look and work differently.by soeren on 25 Oct 2007 16:28
- Googles new OpenSocial API might be an simple building block
http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/
by soeren on 2 Nov 2007 14:32
- XING API doesn't work at the moment
I received this message: "Thank you for your interest in the XING API development. At the moment, the API is undergoing major changes and therefore, we do not issue any further API keys."
by jrernst on 5 Nov 2007 00:59
- OpenSocial doesn't work at the moment
mportant: The OpenSocial People data API hasn't been released yet; this document is a preview of the reference guide that we'll publish when we release the data API. All of the details are subject to change, but this preview should give you a general idea of what the API will be like.
See http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/docs/gdata/people/reference.htmlby jrernst on 5 Nov 2007 02:16
- Is there any working API ?
by jrernst on 5 Nov 2007 02:18
- Last chance
Now I contacted Xing and LinkedIn to get access to their APIs.
by jrernst on 5 Nov 2007 22:45
- LinkedIn is willing to cooperate
In mid-december I will get further information from LinkedIn about their API.
by jrernst on 7 Nov 2007 02:03
- First success with LinkedIn API
Meanwhile I analyzed the Firefox extension provided by LinkedIn and managed to figure out how it works. Fortunately I could refactor the relevant parts for Thunderbird. Now I'm able to check the membership of an email sender in LinkedIn !!!
by jrernst on 13 Nov 2007 02:47
- I added support for Flickr
by jrernst on 18 Nov 2007 00:35
- Added support for hi5
hi5 has the simplest API of all. No login required :-)
by jrernst on 18 Nov 2007 02:57
- Added support for MySpace
No official API method yet but I found a way to use the internal myspace search.
by jrernst on 19 Nov 2007 08:27
- Added support for XING
Now the extension supports XING. It's also a workaround because no official API method is available. Maybe XING will support in december. Hopefully. Parsing HTML code is error prone.
by jrernst on 20 Nov 2007 01:05
- Flock does similar things
You should look at flock. They have automatic detection for social networking sites. It may not be thunderbird, but it may be what you are looking for.
Of course it would be interesting to integrate flock code into a thunderbird extension.
www.flock.comby Fallen on 21 Jan 2008 12:51
- Flock does not have needed things
Flock has support to manage friends lists but this extension has to detect membership by an EMAIL address. It must detect membership even if there is NO friends list. That's a bit more tricky because API support for this particular method isn't given by all portals.
by jrernst on 22 Jan 2008 16:35
- Still developing...
Hi at all. I had not much time to proceed. Please stay tuned...
by jrernst on 10 Mar 2009 11:52
- Implementation
I got news that the bit amount has been reached.
Okay, now I will go to implement a usable program from prototype.
Hope the social networking sites haven't changed the API meanwhile...by jrernst on 4 Apr 2009 13:25
- helloworld
there's also : http://www.helloworld-network.org/
by melvincarvalho on 20 Apr 2009 12:54
- Helloworld doesn't help
Hi, there are several social networking projects out there. Helloworld is based on Firefox. But they all miss the point that it should work in Thunderbird AND the function to be performed is to detect the membership by mail address.
by jrernst on 20 Apr 2009 15:21
12 Bids (€300)
The following donations will be made to the developer upon successful completition of the project:
- €30 by soeren (14 Oct 2007 14:04)
- €33 by klaus (15 Oct 2007 07:08)
- €33 by tj (15 Oct 2007 07:24)
- €10 by sebastian (16 Oct 2007 01:02)
- €25 by karla (18 Oct 2007 06:15)
- €70 by soa (21 Oct 2007 06:27)
- €10 by david (23 Oct 2007 12:55)
- €10 by amol (26 Oct 2007 17:18)
- €10 by coresystems (29 Oct 2007 20:35)
- €12 by anna (7 Nov 2007 06:16)
- €37 by jurik (18 Nov 2007 02:10)
- €20 by geraldo (2 Apr 2009 00:54)
Offers
- €300 by jrernst: First prototype and screenshot
1 Comments on "LinkedIn support" (Show)