SocialCorral

Not logged in {   login/signup   |   search   }  

Background

I created SocialCorral because I wanted a site where I could list out all of the social network I belonged to, and my username for each. I wanted to do this because it started to become a chore to tell people what sites I was on, my username, my blog URL, etc. So, I came up with the idea of SocialCorral, which I like to call a person's "social network card" — kind of like a business card, but for all of your social networks!

The Widget

When I first started creating this site I thought it would be cool to just show a page of a user's social networks as if they looked like business cards, but then I quickly realized that the application would be so much more useful if people could take their SocialCorral with them. So, I thought up the SocialCorral widget, which you can see to the right. Currently, the widget only comes in the color and size you see here, but I will soon be adding the ability for users to change the size and color scheme of the widget, so that it will fit in with style of someone's website, blog, social network page, etc.

Info For Geeks

SocialCorral is made with the following technologies:

1. Web framework: Rails
2. Language: JRuby
3. Storage: OpenDS LDAP Server
4. Java App Server (ok, container): Tomcat
5. Web Server: Apache
6. OS: CentOS

You may notice, no database. I decided to use LDAP over a SQL database for 4 reasons:

1. I know LDAP pretty well :-)
2. LDAP is multi-master, and can replicate over SSL across very rocky terrain
3. Given the item above, I feel that LDAP is underutilized in the Web 2.0™ world
4. I was tired of using a database

Credits

I would like to thank the Academy...Oh, sorry, wrong set of credits... Honestly, I would like to thank all of the people who make the amazing open source software in the preceding section. Seriously, you people make the world go 'round!

I would also like to thank Mark James of FAMFAMFAM, the creator of the Silk Icon set! Whenever I need an icon, I got to his site first!

Let Me Know What You Think

So, try it out and let me know what you think.

Thanks!

Lucas Rockwell
Creator, SocialCorral