Trick #1

Suppose, you have your Gmail account as: firstname.lastname@gmail.com

With Gmail, you can also use it as: firstnamelastname@gmail.com or first.name.lastname@gmail.com or first.name.last.name@gmail.com

Gmail doesn’t recognize dots as characters within usernames. Email sent to all of these email addresses will go to your original Gmail account, that is: firstname.lastname@gmail.com

Here is what google has to say about this:-

Sometimes you may receive a message sent to an address that looks like yours but has a different number or arrangement of periods. While we know it might be unnerving if you think someone else’s mail is being routed to your account, don’t worry: both of these addresses are yours.

Gmail doesn’t recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address; they’ll all go to your inbox, and only yours. In short:

homerjsimpson@gmail.com = hom.er.j.sim.ps.on@gmail.com
homerjsimpson@gmail.com = HOMERJSIMPSON@gmail.com
homerjsimpson@gmail.com = Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com
All these addresses belong to the same person. You can see this if you try to sign in with your username, but adding or removing a dot from it. You’ll still go to your account.

If you get mail that seems to be intended for someone else, it’s likely that the sender entered the wrong address, just like if you’ve ever dialed a wrong phone number for someone. In these cases, we suggest contacting the original sender or website when possible to alert them to the mistake.

Source: Your address is similar but has more or fewer dots (.) or different capitalization

You may call it a feature or a bug. But Gmail basically allows this because your contact people might get mistaken with the dot in your email address. Suppose, your gmail account is firstname.lastname@gmail.com. Your friends might get confused with or forget the dot and type your email address as firstnamelastname@gmail.com. To remove this common human error, Gmail recognizes email accounts with and without dot to be as one.

Trick #2

Gmail does not recognize characters after the PLUS symbol.

So, if your Gmail address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com then you can also use it as firstname.lastname+blog@gmail.com or firstname.lastname+cool@gmail.com.

All emails sent to these address will go into your original Gmail address, that is: firstname.lastname@gmail.com

Trick #3

Suppose, your Gmail address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com. Then, you can also use it as firstname.lastname@googlemail.com

Email sent to firstname.lastname@googlemail.com will go into your original Gmail address, that is: firstname.lastname@gmail.com

Usuage

One big benefit of this Gmail feature is that you can now have multiple Twitter, Facebook or any other account with your single Gmail account. Because Twitter, Facebook, etc. recognizes dots as characters within email addresses.

It means that Twitter, Facebook, etc. recognizes firstname.lastname@gmail.com and firstnamelastname@gmail.com to be two different email addresses. But on the other hand, the email provider (Gmail) recognizes them to be as one.

So, create two Facebook accounts (one with firstname.lastname@gmail.com and the other with firstnamelastname@gmail.com). The confirmation email will be sent to your original Gmail address, that is: firstname.lastname@gmail.com. Confirm both of your Facebook accounts and enjoy!

Cheers :)

Related posts:

1. Google Apps: Setup Gmail for your Domain’s Email
2. Magento: Send Transactional Email
3. Magento: Send email easily using Zend_Mail
4. PHP: Easily send email with PHPMailer
5. Magento: Tell / Email a friend – Feature by default

But this is possible and I have implemented it as well. You just need a wordpress plugin and facebook application.

WordPress plugin required: Twitterup

This plugin updates your twitter status with the latest post that you’ve made. It also has the option of including a link back to your post so people can easily click on it to view the post. The link provided in the tweet can be shorted via a service of your choice: tinyurl.com, is.gd, bit.ly or snurl.com

Facebook Application required: Twitter

Updates your Facebook status with Twitter status and updates your Twitter status through the application.

The scenario:

1) You publish an article in your wordpress blog.

2) Your article is published as Twitter status through Twitterup wordpress plugin.

3) Your Facebook status is updated through the Twitter Facebook Application.

Finally, you combine Twitter, Facebook and WordPress blog at a time.

Related posts:

1. Introduction to facebook connect
2. WordPress Plugin: Quick Adsense 1.0
3. Left or Right Align your image, adsense code or other advertisement in wordpress
4. WordPress: Archive link not working
5. WordPress Contact Form 7: Quick Fix to spinning arrow displays forever & no success/error message displayed

Facebook has lauched Facebook Connect with 24 partners initially. Those partners include CBS, CNET, CollegeHumor, Disney-ABC Television Group, Evite, Flock, Hulu, Kongregate, Loopt, Radar, Seesmic, Red Bull, Socialthing!, The Insider, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Uber, Vimeo, Amiando, Plaxo, and Xobni.

Features of Facebook connect:

1. One-click Login: Allow users to log in with their Facebook identity and allow your site to access their Facebook profile information.

2. Increased engagement: Leverage users’ personal interests to show more relevant information and surface personalized content from friends such as reviews or comments.

3. New forms of distribution: Users can share content and actions taken on your site with friends back on Facebook through Feed, invites, and other social communication channels on Facebook.

4. Access to Facebook Platform: Use the same APIs that have allowed more than 670,000 developers to build more than 52,000 engaging applications for Facebook users since May 2007.

Early results have shown that sites using Facebook Connect for login have seen as many as 2 out of 3 new registrations come via Facebook Connect, and those users have about 50% more engagement on sites.

Sources:

http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=108

http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Facebook_Connect

Related posts:

1. An introduction to RSS
2. What is Google’s OpenSocial?
3. Twitter, Facebook, WordPress getting together
4. An Introduction to PEAR
5. An Introduction to Smarty Template Engine

JavaScript API

The JavaScript API lives under the opensocial.* namespace and provides access to three primary areas of functionality:

* People — information about individual people and their relationships to each other
* Activities — ability to post and view updates on what people are doing
* Persistence — a simple key-value data store to allow server-free stateful applications

Here are some of the things you can do with the JavaScript API:

* Build applications without maintaining your own server
* Build applications that include a server-side component (for offline processing and/or access from other websites)
* Create brand-new applications
* Expose existing web applications in the context of existing social websites
* Add social features to existing gadgets
* Write one application that can run in the context of many different social websites

The JavaScript API is designed to use standard web technologies:

* It’s packaged as a set of methods in the opensocial.* namespace.
* It allows you to use any standard JavaScript programming techniques and third-party libraries.
* It includes a full asynchronous callback system to support rich AJAX interactivity.

REST Protocol and RPC Protocol

The REST protocol and RPC protocol provide complementary functionality to the JavaScript API, so you can access people, activities, and data from your server.

The REST and RPC protocols are designed to use standard web technologies:

* Server interactions are based on the JSON-RPC protocol, the AtomPub protocol, or plain XML.
* Authentication is handled by OAuth.

Impact on Facebook:

Developing OpenSocial applications will be easier than creating Facebook apps and will work across different social networks.

Benefit for Google:

OpenSocial is part of Google’s quest to increase usage of the Web. More applications can mean more searches and ad searches. You could also expect some new advertising services based on tapping into the OpenSocial APIs that works across all compliant social networks.

Users and Developers:

For users, it means more applications that can tap into user data, social graph, feeds and other content on a variety of social networks. They will have more choice of social networks.

For developers, they have more opportunity to spread their work across different networks without significant cost and complexity.

It is interesting that this is not a social network but a compatibility layer across networks.

The Google OpenSocial APIs will cover many of the essential social networking functions: Profile Information (user data), Friends Information (social graph), and Activities (things that happen). On the social network side they will be joined by sites supporting the API including Salesforce, Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Newsgator and Ning (with Google’s own Orkut included as well). On the application developer side they will be joined by some of the leading Facebook developers including Flikster, Rock You, Slide, and iLike.

Here is the complete list on who is using Google’s OpenSocial API.

Complete list of social networks and application developers using Google’s OpenSocial API

Sources:

http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/docs/

http://blog.programmableweb.com/2007/10/31/google-opensocial/

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6813

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/technology/31google.html?ex=1351483200&en=ffeaa22f4e2aa416&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&pagewanted=all (Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook )

Related posts:

1. Introduction to facebook connect
2. Google Apps: Setup Gmail for your Domain’s Email
3. Google says Sorry to me
4. How to Reset Google Apps Admin password?
5. Blogspot: How to add google adsense to your blogger website?