The Cloud needs to be open – just as source code and data protocols needed to be open to create the Internet. With more and more data moving into and being created inside the cloud, this data needs to be owned by the creators, not the services.
For the sake of discussion, let’s call this: “Open Data.”
How important the topic of Open Data is usually becomes apparent when a mass desire to move data from cloud A to cloud B comes up. This week one of these events happened: a lot of people expressed their desire to copy their friends network from Facebook to Google+ including many of us here at Open-Xchange.
There are always courageous people like Mohamed Mansour from Ottawa, who implemented a quick hack for Google Chrome to export your Friends from the Facebook site and plug them into your GMail Address book, from where you can re-use them inside G+ to define your ”Circles.” It worked a few hours until Facebook shut it down. Dumb move if you ask me.
At Open-Xchange, we have a developed a little extension to our Social OX feature to provide just that, copying of your networks to and fro, only using the official API´s. If you want to know how we do this, read on. If you only want to know how you can use it, jump to the “OX.IO to the rescue” section.
How We do It
First of all, you get your own Open-Xchange user at http://ox.io. This is your private user, all data is yours. This is not a public cloud service that scans your data for gold. It’s a free demo of our Open-Xchange platform, a piece of beautifully crafted Open Source software used by tens of millions of people that love to have control over their data (download at http://www.open-xchange.org).
With the Social OX part of Open-Xchange we use the API´s from the social and business networks to create address books for each of them. Then we enhance this data with the contacts we can harvest from your E-Mail accounts made available to your Open-Xchange user.
This data from all your networks and address books and all contacts from your E-Mails is then merged into your “magic” address book.
That’s it: OX.IO to the rescue. Your contact data that you desire, all in one spot.
This newly “merged” address book can then be exported as vCard and imported into whatever you like making your magic address book available wherever you like – no questions asked – by no sugar mountain or paranoid android.
Ok, first, to be clear — this is still sort of geeky at the moment, so buyer beware (even though its free)
1. Allow popups in your browser. Then go to http://ox.io
2. Click on “Create Account” and do so
3. Click on the link you received in your E-Mail – you’ll be logged into your private OX account immediately.
4. Click cancel on the Wizard screen, you may go back there later from the help menu, instead go to the Mail View (click on the envelope in the top left corner) and click on the “Add E-Mail account…” and add at least that account that you use for communications with the people from your network. NOTE: Your E-Mail account must be IMAP – not POP, or it won’t work. Also, your Open-Xchange account will not copy and E-Mails, it just makes that account available inside the Web UI.
5. Optional: Add more E-Mail accounts (must be IMAP). The more E-Mail your Open-Xchange user can harvest for E-Mail addresses and names the more it can overcome the limitations of the API’s.
6. Now we will import your networks and address books. If you only want to import Facebook skip to step 7, otherwise use the import wizard first. Go to “Help (the “?” on the top)->Wizard”. On page 2 you can select from many other services. Don’t do Facebook, this comes last. The more the better.
7. Go to the contacts view (the black figure icon), click on the “Import facebook contacts” button. Click the “—or create a fresh one for your profile” oAuth Account button to allow access of Open-Xchange to your Facebook account. Press “Start” when done.
This will run a while. For each E-Mail account we go through each mail folder and use the first 6000 E-Mails to look for contacts. The more E-Mails we parse the more of your Facebook friends contacts will have this data. Go do something else and come back later…
At the end of the process the download of the newly merged super address list will start. Import to your liking, in Apple iCal, Gmail/G+, Facebook, Outlook, whatever you like. The data is also in the newly created “Facebook” address book for more exporting or playing pleasure.
Now, go out and enjoy this new found liberation. And by all means, go forth and enjoy YOUR data.
Btw: All this will be part of our next Open-Xchange release, so you can enjoy the Social OX functionality from professional environments that you run yourself or that you can get from our service provider partners. Check them out on our website.