218 Cloud Computing
the embedded player and preconfigured parameters can be quickly gener-
ated using a wizard. This makes it possible to find a video by leveraging the
Data API and subsequently displaying it using the embedded player. Once
the embedded player has been added to a web page, it can be controlled
using JavaScript. If you are embedding the player in an Adobe FlashPlayer
application, you would use ActionScript instead of Javascript. Using either
scripting language, you can create actions similar to what a user could do by
clicking on the familiar control buttons—pause the video, seek forward or
backward, mute sound, etc. You can use either scripting platform to poll the
status of the player and to check for the occurrence of specific events.
Chromeless Player
Interface elements and controls (such as toolbars and buttons) placed
around content are sometimes referred to as “chrome,” so a chromeless
player is, by definition, a YouTube video player without such controls. This
makes it easy to customize a player used within a Flash or HTML environ-
ment. The chromeless player exposes the same JavaScript and ActionScript
APIs as the embedded player.
8.3.3 The YouTube Custom Player
The custom player goes even further than just using scripted API calls to
paste videos into your site. Developers can easily configure the custom
player to show playlists, favorites, or custom, locally available videos. Some-
times it’s nice to have control over your web site without having to edit it.
Many web sites benefit from having video content, but updating this con-
tent can be difficult. The YouTube custom player allows you to customize a
YouTube player and populate it with videos you specify. Once the custom
player is on your site, you can easily update the appearance or content by
logging into your YouTube account and clicking on Custom Video Players.
In creating a custom player, you can choose from a number of themes for
the player. The videos that a custom player displays can be all of the videos
on your YouTube channel, all of your favorite videos, or any custom playlist
you have created. By creating playlists and hooking them up to a custom
player, you can easily control what is displayed on your web site without
ever leaving YouTube!
8.3.4 YouTube Data API
The YouTube Data API lets you incorporate YouTube functionality into
your own application or web site. You can perform searches, upload videos,
Chap8.fm Page 218 Friday, May 22, 2009 11:28 AM
Zimbra 219
create playlists, and more. It is possible to search for videos, retrieve stan-
dard feeds, and see related content. A program can also authenticate as a
user to upload videos, modify user playlists, and more. The Data API is pri-
marily for developers who are used to programming in server-side lan-
guages. It is useful for sites or applications that want deeper integration with
YouTube. This integration might be a web application to allow users to
upload video to YouTube, or a device or desktop application that brings the
YouTube experience to a new platform. The Data API gives you program-
matic access to the video and user information stored on YouTube. With
this, you can personalize your site or application with users’ existing infor-
mation as well as perform actions on their behalf (such as commenting on
and rating videos.) If you are curious about how the Data API works at the
basic level using XML and HTTP, you can read the Protocol Guide.
8
This
guide details the requests and responses that the YouTube API servers expect
and return. To learn more about the structure of these requests and
responses, read the Reference Guide. This guide defines the API’s feed types,
HTTP request parameters, HTTP response codes, and XML elements. You
may also want to read about the Google Data Protocol
9
and the Atom Pub-
lishing Protocol,
10
which are the standards on which the Data API is built.
To make working with the API easier, there are a number of client libraries
that abstract the API into a language-specific object model. These client
libraries are open source and can be used and modified under Apache
License 2.0. There are Developer’s Guides for Java, .NET, PHP, and Python
as well as sample code.
8.4 Zimbra
On September 17, 2007, Yahoo! announced that it had entered into an agree-
ment to acquire Zimbra, Inc., a company specializing in web-based email and
collaboration software, for approximately $350 million. The Zimbra email
and calendar server is available for Linux, Mac OS X, and virtualization plat-
forms. Zimbra can synchronize with smartphones (such as iPhone and Black-
Berry) and desktop clients (such as Outlook and Thunderbird).
Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop
11
is a free, open source email and calendar cli-
ent which runs on any Windows, Apple, or Linux desktop computer. It
8. http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html.
9. http://code.google.com/apis/gdata.
10. http://googledataapis.blogspot.com/2008/07/intro-to-atom-publishing-protocol.html.
11. http://www.zimbra.com.
Chap8.fm Page 219 Friday, May 22, 2009 11:28 AM
220 Cloud Computing
works online and offline, and it works with any POP or IMAP email
account, such as Yahoo! Mail, Zimbra Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL,
Microsoft Outlook, or any other work or personal email account that uses
POP or IMAP. Zimbra provides software for email and collaboration,
including email, group calendar, contacts, instant messaging, file storage,
and web document management.
Zimbra can be deployed on-premises or as a hosted email solution and
imposes no limit on the size of email storage. Advanced web technology
adds Conversation Views and Message Tags to automatically highlight
important emails in all your email accounts. The visual Search Builder
makes it easy to quickly find important pictures, documents, or messages
from people you care about. Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop also manages your
Contacts and has a Calendar, Document editor, Task list, and Briefcase for
storing all your attachments. Zimbra Desktop uses Web 2.0 AJAX technol-
ogy and is designed to handle several email accounts with multigigabyte
storage (there are no 2-GB mailbox limits!). Zimbra also features archiving
and discovery for meeting regulatory compliance guidelines. The Yahoo!
Zimbra desktop is shown in Figure 8.3.
Figure 8.3 The Yahoo! Zimbra desktop.
Chap8.fm Page 220 Friday, May 22, 2009 11:28 AM
Facebook 221
8.4.1 Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS)
ZCS version 5.0 is a modern, innovative messaging and collaboration appli-
cation. Ajax-based web collaboration is core to ZCS 5.0. The web client
integrates email, contacts, shared calendar, VoIP, and online document
authoring into a browser-based interface. Open source Zimlet technology
makes it easy to include custom mash-ups in the ZCS web client.
ZCS 5.0 includes an Ajax-based administration interface and scripting
tools to use with the ZCS server. Full support is provided for standards-
based APIs (IMAP/POP/iCal/CalDAV) as well as MAPI and iSync. This
approach enables compatibility with third-party clients such as Microsoft
Outlook, Apple desktop suite, and Mozilla Thunderbird. Zimbra also
offers Zimbra Mobile, which provides over-the-air push synchronization to
smartphones and supports BlackBerry Enterprise Server via a Connector.
The Zimbra solution also has a set of security features including antispam
and antivirus scanning. Zimbra also features archiving and discovery ser-
vices as an optional component to save and search email for various com-
pliance issues.
8.5 Facebook
Facebook, Inc., is a leading engineering company located in the heart of Sil-
icon Valley. Facebook was formerly called Thefacebook and is a free-access
social networking web site that is operated and privately owned by Face-
book, Inc. While he was a student at Harvard University, Mark Zuckerberg
founded Facebook with his roommates, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris
Hughes, fellow computer science majors at Harvard. Initially, site member-
ship was limited to Harvard students. Later, membership access was
expanded to other colleges in the greater Boston area, the Ivy League, and
Stanford University. It later expanded to include any university student,
then to any high school student, and, finally, to anyone 13 years old and
over. Getting onto Facebook is easy. First you create a sign-on identity and
provide your email address, as shown in Figure 8.4. A simple three-step pro-
cess is all it takes to establish an account.
Once you have completed the account creation process, you are taken
to your home page, where you can customize it to suit your interests. Figure
8.5 shows a home page as it looks before customizing.
Chap8.fm Page 221 Friday, May 22, 2009 11:28 AM
222 Cloud Computing
Figure 8.4 Finding friends on Facebook.
Figure 8.5 The Facebook default home page.
Chap8.fm Page 222 Friday, May 22, 2009 11:28 AM
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