Tag Archives: web dev

DiSo Is Born. OpenSocial Delayed Until Next Year.

Posted on by
2

Ha! I knew I could almost taste the mythical open, decentralized social network of tomorrow. In context, turns out it was the network of the day-after-tomorrow, with Chris Messina posting today that:

Steve Ivy and I have embarked on a prototype project to build a social network with its skin inside out. We’re calling it DiSo, or “Distributed Social Networking applications”. The emphasis here is on “distributed”.

The initial implementation of the project is built on WordPress, though making clear that this project is intended to be an example whose concepts should be able to be implemented on any platform. Since Steve offers a path to contribute to their effort (see “What’s Next”), I think the floater in my break list might just have found a permanent slot. With a twist and all for the better, so long as I find an area I can effectively contribute to.

I’ve tried to address related subjects on wp-hackers before, but the thread never picked up. The plugin paradigm is always a good approach, and if the implementation solidifies, code could ultimately make it into the WP core. +1 for that on my side! Just visit this very site with the excellent Operator FireFox add-on, and you’ll see what I mean. :-)

On the other hand, Open Social is now being reported as being delayed until next year:

OpenSocial received a ton of hype when it was announced. Rumors of an early November launch surfaced following Arrington’s announcement of Maki Maki. The announcement turned out to be only that, an announcement. Soon after, I spoke with developers that suggested would open their platform by December 5th. That hasn’t happened either. Techcrunch has pointed to a Google group about OpenSocial in which a Google employee states “This puts us into January before the API is ready to be implemented by containers, so expect some early adopters to have a public launch early 2008.”

With so much activity at the standards/architecture level in the identity and social spheres right now, I’m one to say waiting a few months might actually be a very good thing for all involved parties here. A project of Dilo’s scale will thrive on the experimental angle and be malleable enough to rapidly adapt to changes, but OpenSocial is expected by many to be a stable platform to invest in, and has been presented (or represented) as so.

Filling Up the Break

Posted on by
1

I’ll be focusing on Plank until the holidays, but I’m already finding myself filling up my wish list for what I want to tackle during the break. Family first, but there’s always a few hours of the day (err, night) to geek it out.

So far, here’s what I have down. Posting it here will give me a push to get it done. :-)

  • New features for WPhone: Viper007Bond, Doug and I are in planning stage for a few nice features we’re trying to deck the upcoming 1.5 version with.
  • Setting myself up with an OpenLDAP sandbox for wpDirAuth: when I left McGill, I also left behind the AD install that was providing me with a testbed for my WordPress/LDAP authentication plugin. I don’t mind flying blind with the code, but it’ll help with support.
  • Write an app with Symfony: I have a small toy project I want to get to, and I’m planning on using this PHP5 framework as a RAD environment.
  • And a few floaters that I haven’t quite officially added to the list yet, like upgrading my site’s theme visually and with data portability in mind, etc.

Bah, with three kids, it’s not like it was going to be a relaxing vacation anyway.
Might as well just add to the fun. ;-)

Fixing HTML

Posted on by
Reply

From Fixing HTML:

HTML needs fixing. The HTML 4 recommendation was published in 1999. Since then, the web has grown from a document retrieval system into an application delivery system. We have made significant progress since then, due to the cleverness of the web development community and the surprising expressive power of JavaScript, but we are at the limits. HTML is no longer a driver of innovation. It is now a serious impediment.

I’ve always favoured HTML 5 over XHTML 2.0, but Douglas Crockford does have an interesting point there, though it could unarguably be labeled as a bit drastic at times.

FaceBookCampMontreal

Posted on by
Reply

One more! Tonight was FaceBookCampMontreal, an unconference for everyone with an interest in building on the Facebook Platform. Once again, great event, great crowd, very interesting subject.

I’d venture to say that the event was actually a bit late for the developer crowd, since we’ve all drunk the Facebook API Kool-Aid months ago, and most of us have been playing with it publicly or in private sandboxes. On the other hand, the PR crowd was there in full force and was visibly excited by the torrent of opportunities the FB ecosystem truly is.

So if you need a Facebook application and don’t know where to start, a good first step is to call Plank. :o) We’ll hook you up with a strategy that makes sense for both you and your users/audience.

I also have my own pipe dreams, but I’m just too busy to take on yet another project right now. Maybe in December…