Singpolyma

I knew others were talking about distributed social networking, but Messina is working on code, and even code for Wordpress! The Kilroy concept (an "I was here" plugin) looks excellent. Avatars looks like exactly what I've been saying I should do since I installed Gravatars on this blog. The contactlist plugin looks like basically what I have here (his code, I believe), but I've hacked mine some.  His delegation looks a lot like what I want to add to my XRDS plugin.  Pempeth would go great with his contact form concept.

Other cool stuff there too — overall just excited that things seem to be picking up a bit in this field — I'm writing some bookmarklets just now, and really should clean and release some of the remaining WordPress code.

© 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.

Pempeth is the result of my work based on my previous private messaging TEP.  The protocol draft has matured and there are now implementations! (see the page).  Most notable is a Wordpress plugin, active on this site.

The development of that plugin also sparked an XRDS plugin, which I have also released (despite its somewhat cryptic interface).

Those looking at the main page may also have noticed changes. Yes, that's a mini-feed based on my online activity.  Yes, it's a plugin.  The interface, however, only allows for adding sources (not editing or removing) and is somewhat cryptic, so I have not released it yet.

You can also now log into my blog with your Facebook account (see link in header)!  This uses the API, so I don't got your Facebook password or anything like that.  Also an as-yet-unreleased plugin.

Fun days!  I'm going to be working at AideRSS as a co-op in the coming months, should be fun and more freeing than school!

© 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.

A rogue plugin was eating all of your comments!  Sorry, it's fixed now

© 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.

Also known as Portable Social Networking, this is the concept of decentralising the social networking functionality of sites like Facebook so that one does not have to use every service to connect with everyone (previously covered here).

Videntity is a wonderful service for this movement, and one that I have been using as the hub of much of my efforts. Explode seems promising, but they're down for upgrade.

So let's talk about my list from last time:

1. hCards and Pingerati : For Blogger I have a wizard. Pingerati pings still manual.  For WordPress there is a widget.  Pings still manual.  For even more professional information (such as my resume) there is an hResume WordPress Plugin.  For other websites/services there is always the hCard Creator.  Of course, Videntity.org supports hCard by default.
2. XFN Friends lists : For Blogger I have a wizard.  This wizard will actually work on any web page or on any service where you can post (X)HTML (including MySpace or Xanga!)  For WordPress there is a nice plugin, although a widget version would be a bonus.  Videntity supports this by default.

   As far as finding/adding friends goes I have a bookmarklet for Videntity that allows one to add hCards, Facebook results, or Wink.com people results as friends/contacts.  Bookmarklets for other services would not be hard.  For Blogger we would need an actual blogroll-producing service beyond just a wizard to make this work.

3. Public/private profiles : Again, Videntity has this built right in (as long as you have the URL that the contact uses for OpenID on the friend list, it does not follow rel=me).  I am working on a solution for WordPress.  Would people be interested in a solution for Blogger/other websites?
4. Messaging : not sure where I stand on this.  Lots of nice contact options, and creating a 'wall'-like interface on WordPress would be easy.  The question is : what is the goal of this?  If it is just the address book features then a way to integrate social networking contact lists with email clients / Gmail might be better.  If it is being able to communicate without revealing your email address a protocol/system for that might be easy enough.

   My brother (and avid Facebooker) says that it is about visibility.  The benefit of Facebook messaging, for him, is the unified notifications area that he KNOWS his friends all check.  He KNOWS that they will see his message.  He is not sure they check their email.

I still promote the idea of supporting rel=tag on hCards.  We need a better hCard search engine, one that takes Pingerati pings, crawls regularly (some of my pings from months ago were never indexed by the Technorati Kitchen hCard search), outputs results as hCards (to facilitate things like my bookmarklet), and recognizes rel=tag.

Perhaps a tagspace could do a rev=tag for members.  If an hCard URL has rel=tag to a page that has rev=tag to it that would give credibility to the category.

Notifications (think Facebook mini-feed) need to fit into this idea somehow.  Events are hCalendar.  Notes/posts/shares are hAtom/xFolk.  Status is something I've blogged about recently too.  Services like Twitter are heading in the right direction.

© 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.

Some of you may have noticed the gradual changes going on — most notably the 150 or so of you who read me by feed. I am moving my primary web presences from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress on singpolyma.net.

My Technical, Personal, and XOXO blogs are all here (see tabs above) with all their content. If the old ones aren't properly redirecting yet, they will be soon — going to a post on the old sites should take you to that post on this site. Feeds have not changed much, they are still on FeedBurner, but there is now a main feed (and blog) that combines posts from all three!

The site is not 100% done, obviously (a hacker's site never is ), so if you see something that needs to be added/changed, feel free to contact me!

For this launch I have upgraded my FreshTags plugin and written Videntity and OldBlog redirection plugins. All my WordPress plugins now have thier own page.

Some of my TechBlog readers may fear (and, in fact, this has been voiced to me) that now that I am WordPress-powered I will forget Blogger. Not true at all. My existing hacks will receive maintenance, and new ones will be coming. I am not deleting my account or anything ;).

So, to finish this post up, I would like to thank those who made this site possible. If I forgot anyone or anything, it shall be added.

© 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.