NoseRub

I just uploaded the slides for my session at BarCamp Cologne 2 (PDF). As you can see from the Download URL, the files are hosted on GoogleCode, where I also put the source code for NoseRub. You can use noserub.com/code/ as a shortcut to the GoogleCode project homepage for NoseRub.

The available version is pretty rough and there might be some changes this evening. I didn't create a branch right now, an archiv to download will follow this evening. But if you want to, feel free to get the trunk, read the installation instructions and play around. If you can't wait to ask me about the source in private on BarCamp at the weekend, try noserub.com/discuss/. I'm probably busy over the weekend, but will try to take part in any discussion.

Two days before BarCamp2 in Cologne. That means one evening for the latest preparations on the code and one evening for creating the presentation.

Almost like always, I guess, the code is not as ready, as I would like it to be. But the two important aspects are working: seeing your network and show how the decentralised idea is meant to be.

I also managed to add a little update routine, so that changes to the database or settings for NoseRub can easily be checked after installing a new release. Even with the first version yet not being online, I had to think about this stuff, so updates should be no problems afterwards.

There is si much to do, but most of it has to be done after the BarCamp weekend. I hope for a lot of good discussions and maybe even some contributors. The design/layout is a mess and I can't wait to see PHP IDS and Jamal being integrated. And I'm very ashamed, that I yet did not install SimpleTest to test the models...

As friday will be reserved for coming up with the presentation, tomorrow is the last coding day before BarCamp. And that means, that I will finally open up the SVN, so that interested people can have a first look. I want wait for this very early feedback, before I make a first distribution package. And I will wait a few more weeks, before a version will be online at noserub.com itself.

(Click on the images to get a larger version of the screenshots)



The first screenshots looks messy, but just displays my network's activities. Here all kind of actions are aggregated: Photos (Flickr, Ipernity, hq23), Links (del.icio.us) and Text (Blogs, Twitter, Pownce).

I need to figure out a nicer way to display that mess...



In this screenshot, the latest activities are filtered by type, in this case Photos. This looks much clearer here, but is also much easier to come up with a decent display.

There is a lot of small things to do, first I thought of implementing RSS-Feeds for all this, but now I shifted focus to integrate XFN, hCard and FOAF. Interaction between NoseRub-Installations on different servers will be much easier then! And this is one of the key parts of NoseRub, when it should be a decentralised social network.

A few weeks ago, I did not only delete my Flickr-Account because of the censorship, but also started acting about an idea I went along for a few months now.

One of the most important thing for me at Flickr was my contact page, where I could follow a lot of friends, people I work with, or worked with, or those I find interesting. Suddenly, all that was gone. Sure, I could add the RSS-Feed of every one of them to my feed reader. But why was there no "export my network" functionality? And why did Flickr have the information, but not me?

This is, when I started a Wiki on NoseRub. The domain was registered a few months back, when I thought that this would be a nice name for something that has to do with social networks - I had no further plans back then...

Right now, I'm working on an example application for NoseRub, the first few Milestones a fairly vague, but I'm currently in the middle of Milestone 2.

When I came back from a short holiday in Naples - Italy, Cem pointed me towards this post from Tim Bonnemann and pretty fast I ended up looking through the Social Network Portability Wiki-Page on Microformats.org. And I was thrilled, as I took a few moments during my holiday to think about Im- and Exporting data from and to NoseRub: FOAF and hCard+XFN already have anything there is needed.

This was also the time for me to open up this blog. I wanted to introduce NoseRub to a larger community on BarCamp Cologne 2 on August 18th & 19th. But I think it's about time to share and discuss a bit more already.

After the weekend, I will have a first version in the SVN-Repository of my CakePHP example implementation. I'm not sure how far I will have gotten then, but I will bring it up anyway. I still think, that I can bring up a first alpha version of NoseRub online for BarCamp Cologne 2. Until then, I will keep you posted here.

In the meanwhile, I will think on how to participate at the SocialNetworkDevCamp in Richmond, CA...