How about an app that implements the FriendFeed API and nothing more. Simple, manageable, achievable, boring (meaning it might get done). Open projects for things with user interfaces end up in religious battles within nanoseconds, imho.
Unfortunately without a better way to filter the types of content being displayed, the content display would be rather uninteresting, I'd think (or overwhelming). Might be a good place to start, however.
- Chris Messina
I think it's the right way to go. Plus it would incentivize lots of experimentation on UI. Further, I would be more comfortable building on the realtime API (which is very nice btw) if it were open source, more so than when the future of FF was uncertain.
- Dave Winer
Now comes the obvious question -- Paul -- would you guys be willing to release your implementation of the API under an Open Source license? That would get things going really fast. Not sure if it makes sense, perhaps the implementation isn't easily separatable.
- Dave Winer
We're looking into open sourcing some parts, but I don't think it's possible to open just the api because it's too integrated with everything else at the moment. Maybe after some refactoring it would work -- I'm not sure.
- Paul Buchheit
How dependent is that on server infrastructure?
- Amit Morson
Somewhat missing the point of why its being talked about in the first place.
- Michael W. May
@Paul, I'm excited to hear some things may be open sourced. What license would do you think you guys are likely to use? GPL/LGPL? BSD? Apache?
- Jason Huebel
Jason- I'd assume Apache, just because that's what they used with V1 of the API
- Jimminy Fuller
The potential of this is very exciting! :)
- Susan Beebe
from iPhone
Once a core API is in place it would be easy enough to have multiple UI projects. Without the API there is nothing.
- Eoghann Irving
A client API is a great start, but what we really need is an open source server that emulates the backend of Friend Feed. Then...we can do whatever we want to expand the protocol.
- Gary Burge
But there could be multiple back-end implementations. You could have everything from a new, stand-alone Python engine to some sort of weird Ruby system that tries to use Twitter as a datastore to some PHP glue added to Drupal or Wordpress. For a distributed, federated system to truly thrive, IMHO, the group needs to concentrate on how the parts interact, and then teams can break off and build components.
- Ken Sheppardson
BTW, I agree with your original thought, Dave. It's hard enough for groups to agree on a common data bus system/format (ala RSS vs Atom), let alone on some collective vision of a GUI.
- Ken Sheppardson
In fact, if there were a sort of "stack" of components for implementing FriendFeed-like systems in muliple languages, it might encourage other teams to build compatible systems. You have any sort of architecture diagram you could share, Paul? :-) How bout you and Bret and Benjamin just quit your day jobs and come help out ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
Wave federated protocol.... people can write thier own servers, or even use other WFP clients.....
- Roberto Bonini
Now you're thinking like good programmers! Modular programs that interact, independent of underlying language or OS. This stack idea is worth developing, I think.
- Kevin L
Roberto, Wave is only a method for communicating changes to objects in real time. It doesn't relieve us from having to define data structures and how they relate to each other.
- Kevin L
Kevin: My point is that as long as clients and server agree on the saame protocol, the underlying implementation does not matter. This means that A) Anyone can write thier own server in what ever language they so please using whatever data store they want B) People can write what ever Ui they so please including web and desktop based clients and C) it means that we can interact with other Waves, seeing chages to those waves IN REAL TIME as part of our FF stream.
- Roberto Bonini
Sure, building a federated social network on top of Wave is a pretty slick project, and Google's going to be pushing that effort, I would think. The only problem is there are currently no public projects that support Wave, let alone FriendFeed. Trying to "clone" FriendFeed starting with a Wave engine confuses me.
- Ken Sheppardson
Wave isn't ready yet but the tools are there: threaded conversations, multiple participants, real-time, public waves (though I don't know if they will retain that for the final version), bots to integrate with servers. So all your conversations would be centralized in Wave, but you would go to a site like ff for 'discovery'.
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
I agree. The API is the place to start. I also like the stacks idea. If we are trying for a federated, distributed system, going as modular as possible with as much encapsulation as possible is the best route because it will give users the most possible control of their own installs. I don't know about Wave as the way to go, but I can't back that opinion up as much as I would like as I haven't worked with it too much yet; it just seems half-finished and up in the air.
- Neal Jansons
Hey, we continue to celebrate a week apart. My son Doug beat you to 44 in December. I achieve 70 week from Sunday. Enjoying myself over that.
- Dennis E. Hamilton
from twhirl
Ahh...what to do? Robert said there was no need to wish him a happy b'day, but I do this for others; why should I exclude him? and everyone else is doing it...I know; happy Scoble's birthday, fellow FriendFeeders!
- MiniMage TKDteacher of FF
Happy Birthday, Robert!! Hope you enjoy your day and weekend. :)
- Fa La La La Lindsay
Happy Birthday! If you were in Atlanta it would have been a snowy (predicted) birthday, not to mention a kewl place to celebrate in, home to Coca-Cola, CDC, Lockheed Martin and our very own Ted Turner's creation CNN. :-) [edited]
- Moushumi Kabir
Happy Birthday Robert! Enjoy your day!
- Laura Zickus
Wait. I thought you were 10 years older than me. Then I realized you were 10 years younger!! Now I find out you're my age? I am suddenly hopeful! Yes we 44yr- olds can! .......Hey Robert, seriously, I wish you another 56 healthy years. Happy Birthday! ♫
- Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct
Wishing you a great one Robert. Thanks for all you do for the Internet. I loved your interview with Seth Godin, you 2 were great together.
- Jeremy Campbell
from twhirl
@Jeremy Campbell - do you have a link to that interview?
- Peter Warnock
Happy Birthday! Hooray for 1965! (My birthday is still a few weeks away, in March.)
- vicster is...
Scobleizer, time to CELEBRATE-You have so much ahead of you, b/c what's behind you was great!! Thanks for all the great insight!!
- Harold Cabezas
Is that a photo of the collage one they sell? http://www.giinii.com/dpf_det... I am so glad these have come down in price. A lot of family got these for each other for Christmas this year. Great stuff. Issue for me is the ease of use for Grandparents. They need a way to put photos into these that is so incredibly simple your dog could do it. ie... If I email the grandparents some photos, they can just drag and drop them to the card that plugs into this... or drag and drop the photos from Flickr.
- Colleen
Colleen, what about a wifi frame? They can automatically get the latest 20 photos from Flickr, or the latest 360 photos from the photo-sharing site I made, OurDoings.
- Bruce Lewis
"This memo presents a technique for using XML (Extensible Markup Language) as a source format for documents in the Internet-Drafts (I-Ds) and Request for Comments (RFC) series."
- DeWitt Clinton
Guardian get it wrong finishing their article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media...) with "Help the man out by posting your suggestions below". It should read "Help the man out by posting your suggestions to him on Twitter http://twitter.com/Wossy..."
After a loong Athens Startup Weekend, this is what we have to show for it. Thanks, organizers! Congrats, @nikan and team! Great work, everyone! #asw
- Alexandros Georgiadis
from Bookmarklet
"I blogged about my thoughts to have a more holistic solution approach to solve the comment-aggregation issue based on OpenID. Would love to get your feedback on my thoughts! - You (edit | delete)"
- Sebastian Küpers
i run openid.org - always interested in potential applications and i like this - ben thinking about openid and commenting for a while.
- Steven Livingstone-Pérez
from twhirl
"Hoover’s, the business information company, has released their own Hoover’s API, aka “HAPI”. This new API enables developers to create applications that utilize Hoover’s database of 27 million companies and 34 million business executives (details at our Hoover’s API profile)." -Kevin Farnham at Programmable Web
- DeWitt Clinton
from Bookmarklet
"The child was drawing a picture about what his mother does for a living. The mother works at Home Depot and the picture depicts the mother selling a shovel."
- Jess Lee
from Bookmarklet
I'm wondering how you got the graphic in your FF post. I'm a newby and want to be able to do that trick.
- B2B Specialist
Chris, at the top it says "Post". One of the options is photos, which works for any graphic on your computer. I had taken a quick screenshot to the desktop and grabbed it.
- Louis Gray
BUT ... how long until we see the first successful attempt? I see many casualties but on the web someone saw this and said "I bet *I* can do that".
- Steven Livingstone-Pérez
from twhirl
lol - maybe weblivz...I just reckon this was election night and he was a lil 'Obama happy', someone said he couldn't do it and he said...
- Zee.
He's missing one of the more crucial problems though: foreign entrepreneurs have a very tough time acquire a visa that will allow them to start a company: pretty nearly the O-1 is the only visa that will allow this, and that keeps out almost everyone.
- Danielle Fong