Social Programming
Within the past few years, social networks have grown the internet. This includes MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, which I guarantee everyone has head of. Many of these were great for people to express themselves, but not ask questions, get answers, and share some of their hobbies in more details. Then came StackExchange and GitHub, these issues were soon put to sleep. The next question became, how can you integrate and share this data?
Just about every website you visit, you will see a Twitter feed at the bottom. This was great for a while, but when everyone joined in the trend, the number of HTTP POST requests going to Twitter congested the pipes of the internet. Why not give it a break and show your GitHub and StackExchange activity instead?
Your GitHub Timeline
If you don't know what GitHub is, visit their website and check them out. In short, they are a code repository hosting service for GIT. And if you don't know what GIT is, here is an excerpt from their page:
Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning fast performance. It outclasses SCM tools like Subversion, CVS, Perforce, and ClearCase with features like cheap local branching, convenient staging areas, and multiple workflows.
On GitHub's website, every user has a public profile which shows your recent activity, which includes comments, issues, commits, pushes and repository creation. Anyone can view your public repositories which stores source code for projects you have worked on.
Your StackExchange Timeline
StackExchange is simliar to GitHub in the means that people share code. But it is more focused as a Questions and Answers style site. StackExchange contains around 101 different focused websites ranging from Ubuntu, Programming, Literature, Mathematics, and Skeptics. You can either answer questions asked by other people, comment on questions and answers or ask your own questions. All of these are recorded in your timeline feed.
Feeding your Site
There are two scripts loaded up on CodeCanyon, GitHub Activity Timeline and StackExchange Activity Timeline Widgets. These solve the problems above, and let you show your timeline feeds on your own websites. Check out each of the packages and see some examples of the scripts in action!
