NoseRub

NoseRub 0.6 was just released and Identoo.com got that update already. This release contains mainly bugfixes, but also some new services: you can now add your Online IDs from Nintendo Wii, Playstation Network and XBox Live. We also added support for YouTube and Ormigo.

If you have your Profile on Identoo, check it out and see if you can add some more information about you. I'd like to see some of you guys adding me through Playstation Online. Check my profile page out: identoo.com/dirk.olbertz

The new version can be downloaded here.

Has anyone reading this have good contacts to del.icio.us? It seems that del.icio.us blocks requests from Identoo.com, as curl "http://feeds.delicious.com/rss/dirk_olbertz" works fine locally and from different other servers in the UK.

It might be a problem with the Provider I use for my servers. I heard that, at least for email, their IP ranges are on some black lists.

I already contacted del.icio.us' support, but after telling me, that they would forward it to someone else, I did not hear anything and a second reply to that ticket got no response at all.

Right now, even a simple "we blocked you and cannot whitelist your IP" would help me in order to think about the next steps. But rught now, it's just frustating, as users on Identoo.com won't see any updates from their del.ico.us accounts.

So, help is greatly appreciated!

Update: Apparently, fetching del.icio.us feeds is working again. I'm not sure wether this is a temporary thing until I hit some treshold, but if not, I hope this blog post reached someone inside or near del.icio.us, who fixed the problem. If so: thank you!

Right from the beginning of this project, we wanted the following to work:

1. You open an account on Identoo.com and add contacts and web accounts


2. You install NoseRub on your own server and import all your data from the Identoo.com account


3. Afterwards, all the people who added you as a contact, will seamlessly get your new profile URL

With NoseRub 0.6 we're now able to do this!

First of all, you export all your data on Identoo.com. You will find this tools in the menu Settings and there at Manage:


You will receive a JSON file with all your contacts, accounts and profile data. On your own server, you then simply import this file:


NoseRub then parses that file and displays, what you're about to import. If you confirm, all those contacts, web accounts and profile data is imported. Afterwards, you can use your new NoseRub installation, just as you did on Identoo.com.

In order to tell all your contacts, that you moved your profile, you then go back to Identoo.com and set a redirect to your new profile:


You now even can delete your account on Identoo and the redirect will still work.

We have to admit, that the whole redirect thing is currently not 100% perfect. We will change that and then, all the people who have you as contact, will not only be redirected to your new account, but also see your new profile url as their contact.

So, what means your data to you?

I just release NoseRub 0.6 alpha. You can see it in action on Identoo.com or can download the package here: noserub.com/downloads

If you prefer the subversion checkout, you can now update/checkout from the trunk. More information about the SVN-Repository can be found here: noserub.com/code

The main goal for this release was to add URLs as contacts. What does this mean? If you take an URL like http://tantek.com you will see, that his HTML output uses a lot of Microformats - of course, you say :-)

The great thing about this is, that he therefore makes it easy for NoseRub to get information about him (via hCard) and his web accounts (via XFN). Basically, NoseRub already did exactly that when syncing between different servers. We just need to do some minor changes to allow any URL as contact, but we also added support for the Social Graph API from Google. That means that NoseRub does not only rely on finding information through Microformats on that site, but also uses the data that Google's API returns for that URL.

Another good example for a great URL as contact is David's homepage. Working for SixApart, he uses the Action Stream PlugIn for MovableType. The great thing now is, that I can add him as contact on Identoo.com and follow his activities, without forcing him to use NoseRub for himself.

This is a big difference to eg. FriendFeed.com, where you can only follow people that use FriendFeed for themselves. As a matter of fact: each public friend feed URL is great for adding as contact in NoseRub. For instance Johannes Kleske (mostly german content).

Right now, NoseRub ignores any FriendFeed RSS-Feed. Not, because we don't like them, but because they duplicate content in a way, that we (yet) cannot filter them. So, if you add a FriendFeed RSS-Feed to your NoseRub profile and wonder, why it does not get updated: don't worry, you probably are better off, if you just add that URL as contact...

The second big thing in this release is covered in a separate blog entry. It is about being really portable with your data.

Just one quick note, why this release is tagged as "alpha": The two new features heavily use networking features that are difficult to test locally - especially, when you're just a bunch of people dedicating their free time for this great project. We don't expect any old features to be broken. In fact, we fixed some bugs. But the new features might have their problems that we wanted to verify in the wild. So, please be patient and report any problems. Either through the ticketing system, here in the blog, or in our discussion group.

I talked about NoseRub 0.6 a few days ago and was very excited about it. Today, I made the first huge steps toward that release. The main thing we want to achieve with that is, that you can add any URL as a contact!

I repeat this, because it's so important: you will be able to add any URL as a contact!

What does this mean? This will mean, you can add davidrecordon.com as your contact and see what he is doing in your network's social stream. You also automatically get updates about new services he is adding to his site. You will also be able to add users from FriendFeed.com to your contacts and thus get informed about what is going on on their sites.

We do this by parsing Microformats information from these sites. Namely hCard and XFN. For even better results, we use the Socialgraph API from Google to examine the XFN.

On the screenshot in this post, you can see how this looks like. You see Davids photo there, as this is made available through hCard on his website. The broken image left to him is from brianoberkirch.com. That is, because we currently don't copy the images to our own server (but we will do! we are no traffic stealers!) and only David has the same naming convention for the small image, as NoseRub has :-)

You can also see David's updates in the social stream, as the updates from Jörg Kantel are. I just added his account from FriendFeed.com as my contact. We have to think about what to do with the feed from FriendFeed here, as we already accessed the single accounts. But this are just some minor issues that can be solved.

But what really important is, that this is a real distributed social network! And your contacts do not even need to know what NoseRub is. Just add them as your contacts and be able to follow their activities from that moment on. And if you want to, you just install NoseRub on your own server and no one but you has full control over your social network.

We want to release NoseRub 0.6 later this month. Although a lot of work is already done, we need to polish some things and also may add one or two surprises :-)