Today I released version 0.0.2 of the OpenSocial Explorer. From an end user perspective not a lot has changed, although there are a couple of differences.

Today the OpenSocial Foundation released the OpenSocial Explorer, a new open source project meant to help developers learn how to build OpenSocial gadgets. Instead of spending hours getting started building your first gadget it will only take you a few minutes!

One of the new features announced in the release of Notes and Domino 9.0 Social Edition last week was support for OpenSocial in Notes and iNotes. This should not come to as a surprise to most of you as we (IBM) have been touting this feature for a while now.

Today was the first release of the IBM Social Business Toolkit SDK. The SDK is meant to help developers build apps using IBMs Social Business Platform, including products like IBM Connections, IBM (Lotus) Domino, IBM Sametime, IBM SmartCloud For Social Business, and many more.

Today ended our (IBMs) very first Social Business App Dev Workshop. Overall the workshop was a huge success for both IBM and the attendees. Over the first 2 days of the workshop we covered various topics including IBM's new Social Business Toolkit and SDK, Domino and XPages, OpenSocial, and even mobile app development. Best of all attendees got to work through numerous "labs" which demonstrated all the capabilities of IBM's Social Business Platform.

Last year at Lotusphere 2012 (now know as Connect) we held the inaugrial Social App Throwdown. It was a huge success both from an IBM and partner point of view. IBM got to demonstrate the powers of its social business platform and select partners got to demonstrate their apps on the main stage at Lotusphere.