NoseRub Blog Blogging about NoseRub and Social Networks

New version of NoseRub available in trunk. Beware of the update!

We just released a new Version of NoseRub on Identoo.com, a downloadable version will be made available within the next couple of days.

If you usually just do a svn update to get the update, don’t do it this time!

We had some problems with the trunk in the last release and therefore completely removed and added it from scratch. Your svn will not be able to handle that! So, here is what I did on Identoo.com and what I suggest you all do, instead of the svn update:

1. mv the old directory, eg. mv noserub noserub.old
2. make a fresh checkout of the trunk
3. copy noserub.php and database.php from your old /app/config/ directory.
4. copy all the files from your old app/webroot/static/avatars/ to your new NoseRub installation.

If you made any changes to CSS or other layouts, you can copy those files from your old installation, but if you changed forms.css, make sure you have the following statement in it:

.micropublish textarea {
width: 500px;
height: 28px;
line-height: 14px;
padding: 5px 10px 5px 10px;
vertical-align: middle;
}


If not, your What are you doing? box will look funny.

Now call the /system/update/ URL and follow any instructions like making directories writeable.

Sorry for the mess, I also thought updates through svn update would be a good idea, but I’m no longer so sure about this…

Where did you install NoseRub?

As mentioned yesterday, there is now a section on NoseRub.com called Sites that use NoseRub.

We want to show people, who is using NoseRub already and show them people to contact from all over the world.

We therefore also introduced a new public API call, that returns the number of users on a NoseRub installation:

host/api/json/info/

For Identoo.com the output looks like this:

{”data”:{”num_users”:804},”code”:0,”msg”:”ok”}


But you don’t need to worry that this information is now leaked on every installation of NoseRub 0.7. This is an opt-in solution where you actively have to set the following line to your noserub.php in /app/config/:

define(’NOSERUB_API_INFO_ACTIVE’, true);


If you don’t add this line, or set the value to false instead of true, a number of 0 users will be returned instead. If you site is listed on < href="http://noserub.com/sites/">noserub.com/sites it will be displayed there with 1 user.

In the future, this directory will be very helpfull when we want to do a distributed search. Searching your local installation is currently in development, but you also would like to search on other sites, too and aggregate this results with your own search. Discovering of frends on other NoseRub installations will also be possible, when we can get information from other NoseRub sites.

And therefore, we need this directory. And don’t be bothered: all new features that involve your installation will be opt-in, so we will not surprise you at one point with something you don’t want.

NoseRub 0.7 available now

As result of the NoseRub DevCamp last week we are proud to present you today the release of NoseRub 0.7!

It already runs since yesterday evening on Identoo.com and since some SVN problems were resolved, it runs like a charm now.

Due to the changes on how we handle feeds, you will see an empty social stream after you upgrade to NoseRub 0.7.

But after you first run the cronjob to refresh the feeds, or go to a profile page, when you want to handle the updates manually, new feed entries will be stored to the database and from that on being displayed.

Plase make sure to read the notes carefully when updating and calling /system/update, as some constants were changed.

We will post more details about the new features of NoseRub 0.7 in the next days.

We then will also introduce a page on noserub.com/sites/ that will show a directory of sites all around the world that use NoseRub. So, if you have a NoseRub installation running, please contact me (dirk.olbertz (at) gmail.com) and send me the URL. I will then add the site to that upcoming directory.

NoseRub + WordPress Blog = OpenID for your Blog-URL

Although this actually is a normal behaviour of OpenID, our new NoseRub PlugIn for WordPress makes it really easy:

1. Download the Plugin
2. Follow the installation instructions
3. Enable the checkbox Use this blog as OpenIDin the settings for the NoseRub PlugIn in your Wordpress Blog
4. You’re done!

From now on, you can use your own Blog-URL as OpenID, for instance to enter the NoseRub Chat.

And while you’re at it: why don’t use one or two (or even all!) of the great widgets of this new and shiny PlugIn?

NoseRub DevCamp ‘08 - What was it like?

Our first NoseRub DevCamp was small, but very successfull.

On both days, Dominik and Lance were in Ormigo’s office space and helped enhancing NoseRub. My special thanks goes to Lance who flew in from England - now, that’s what I call commitment

Markus joined us on Saturday and I hope we could tell him a little bit about what the big idea behind NoseRub is.

Also during both days, Daniel was working on NoseRub from his home in Switzerland. Our Chat was a good tool to keep communication alive.

So, what did we achieve? Actually, a lot, as you can see from this list:

• Daniel added OAuth support for our API, although I yet need to learn on how to use it
• Dominik worked on a Wordpress PlugIn for NoseRub
• He also rewrote on how we retrieve data from other servers and so we now use curl when possible instead of file_get_contents() (Dominik said he needs to test this issue further)
• Lance did an excellent job on writing up a description to develop you own NoseRub services and he used this description a lot:
• Support for Blip.tv, Glugg.no, HemiDemi.com, Identi.ca, Disqus.com, Ffffound!, Blippr and Picasa has been added, while support for Plazes has been fixed.
• Instead of uploading a photo, you’re now able to tell NoseRub to use your Gravatar image.
• Lance also made a new Screencast of a tour through NoseRub
• If you want to, you now can enable a generic RSS-Feed of all your updates.
• The RSS-Feed for the public social stream of all users had been fixed.
• An experimental XMPP feed for all public updates has been introduced. If you want to, you can add fullfeed@jabber.identoo.com to access a full feed from preview.noserub.com. There isn’t much happening and the bot only goes online when he has to send something, so please be patient.
• We rewrote how NoseRub handles feeds and now stores every item seperately. This way, we now can look forward to search and a XMPP track-feature like Twitter used to have it.

I might have forgot something, if you’re interested in the details, have a look at the changesets from this weekend.

We plan to release this version sometime next weekend. Until then we probably will make some more changes, but mostly smaller ones.

I think this DevCamp was a great success and I plan on doing another one early 2009 - but that does not mean, that development on NoseRub will halt until then. Quite the opposite! I think everyone in the team is now even more motivated to enhance NoseRub even further.

A final thanks goes to Ormigo who let us use their office and gave us access to their internet connection.

SVN stays on development branch during DevCamp

As the crowd for the next two days is not that big and more or less already member at our Code Repository, I will avoid the extra hassle and so, the development branch will be the place to look at, if you want to stay on top of what is going on the next two days - codewise…

On preview.noserub.com you will always be able to see a running NoseRub instance from the current development branch. But be warned: this can be rough and is not considered stable!

DevCamp Schedule

It’s only a few days now until the first NoseRub DevCamp here in Cologne and I wanted to share the schedule with you.

We will start at 10:00 am on saturday and at 11:00 am on sunday. The end on saturday is “open”, although I guess at some point we will just look for some place in Cologne to sit/eat/drink together. On Sunday we will close already around 4:00 pm, unless someone else from the Ormigo-Team would be at the office at that time - what would be more of a coincidence, but let’s see, what’s happening on Sunday.

Please bring your own computer, I will try to get some additional monitors. If you need VGA/DVI adapters for your notebook, please bring them along, as we might not have the correct ones in the office. WLAN and LAN will be available for all, I will also bring something to drink and small snacks. As this is the first NoseRub DevCamp, we unfortunately don’t have a sponsor for our meals - but I bet we can sort something out.

If I forgot anything, please ask here. I’m looking forward to see you - in person, or in our discussion group and/or our Chat.

Gordian Knot in my head: XMPP, RSS, Microblogging & Social Streams

I just installed a Jabber server on one of my servers and played with a php class for XMPP to interact with it. The goal is to have some kind of tool to “speak” with a NoseRub server. Features like Twitter’s track for keywords come to my mind, but also for setting your location or various other things to come.

Then, I’m also thinking about how to integrate Identi.ca with NoseRub. There is some kind of protocol available and I hear XMPP a lot when talking about server-to-server communication and so I start thinking: is XMPP just a better/faster RSS? Should I route every single Social Stream of Identoo.com-Users through this new Jabber server and thus allow everyone to subscribe to it by adding it as friend?

Isn’t the Social Stream itself a micro blog? There are so many people pushing their blog updates and new photos from Flickr or elsewhere to their Twitter stream, that it almost is a Social Stream. So, when I add a Twitter user right now as contat on Identoo.com (this works perfectly), I am halfway there, when it comes to a decentralised Twitter. I could support Identi.ca right now, too. The only thing that is missing, are the notifications when someone added my as a contact. And of course, that I cannot add any RSS-Feed to Twitter.com or Identi.ca as a contact.

And this is the Goridan Knot: it is all weaved together, but I think it is very simple to solve. I just didn’t find the right sword to do it. Maybe allowing any URL as an endpoint is good enough + being able to autodiscover a XMPP stream instead of a RSS feed.

Still searching for the sword…

Issue with SSL and Firefox 3 on Identoo.com solved

Until today, I used a SSL certificate from CAcert.org. They are free and do their job: protecting user input on some pages like login and the settings.

But with Firefox 3, a nasty screen was shown, because Firefox no longer (?) supported these certificates. Many users were distracted by this, although it never meant, that their input was not secure.

Anyway… as the certificate was about to run out this evening, I ordered and installed a new one from PSW / Thawte. Firefox 3 now no longer displays an error message when accessing those protected areas on Identoo.com.

NoseRub DevCamp - What to expect?

So, NoseRub DevCamp will take place on September 13th to 14th 2008 in Cologne. The location is sponsored by Ormigo, the company I work for. Here’s a link on Google Maps

I will try to find more sponsors to cover some costs like drinks and some snacks. Obviously this will depend on how many people will attend.

So please give me a note not later than September 3rd if you will attend here in Cologne, or somewhere else world wide. I will not set up a wiki for registrations, so leave a comment here, or write me an e-mail.

There will be no sleeping within the office, but this hotel is just placed next to our office building. I have no idea how good/bad it is, so this is no recommendation, just a hint, that there is a hotel nearby.

I will set up a new Google Code repository for DevCamp, so that I can give write permissions to that repository for everyone. This way, we can speed up sharing code and don’t have too many unverified changes in the main repository.

There are many things to do at the DevCamp, starting by adding new services to NoseRub and improving existing once. But we have a lot of other open issues in our Issue Tracker, some really shamefull like having a password recovery process…

Other things are bigger, like having OAuth for our own API and also being able to act as an OAuth client. This way we could interact with identi.ca, what would really great. Yes, we already could interact with Twitter, but I really don’t want to ask users for their service passwords.

We could create widgets to display our lifestreams on our own servers and have PlugIns for several blogging packages like s9y and Wordpress - in fact, work on a Wordpress PlugIn was already started and is waiting for a newer release of NoseRub.

Other things to do are adding the use of HTMLPurifier for any HTML output from third parties, like from RSS-Feeds. This way, we could allow people to add HTML and CSS to their own profile pages, without being in fear of XSS or other malicous code parts. If you’re a CakePHP expert and designer, I would love to see a way to have NoseRub itself easily customized when it comes to colors and header graphics.

But the DevCamp is also there for learning how NoseRub works. In means of the software itself and of how the protocol behind it works. I therefore encourage everyone during the DevCamp to monitor our discussion group to help other NoseRubbers out there. We will also re-activate our web absed chat then

The nearer the event gets, the more information will be presented here. So, if any open questions arrives, please let me know: dirk.olbertz (at) gmail.com

PS: Thanks to Alex for the logo. Grab it, if you want to. We also have a PNG and an AI Version available, if you need something else.