[jdev] buddycloud update, and what next?

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Further updates would be welcome, especially any insights from the
social web federation meeting on Sunday.

On 7/7/10 10:06 AM, Simon Tennant (buddycloud) wrote:
> We've been quietly working away on buddycloud.
> 
> Now we're looking for feedback on our very very alpha version of the
> web-client at http://buddycloud.com and also get ideas on what to work
> on next?
> 
> The website and mobile clients are built atop XMPP where users can log
> in an participate in their own channels
> (http://buddycloud.com/user/buddycloud.com/simon), friends channels, or
> topic channels (http://buddycloud.com/channel/football) and share
> location in a meaningful way ("I'm at home").
> 
> The basics of buddycloud are channels and location:
> 
> buddycloud channels are built atop pub-sub and let you bring your own
> jid to the party. A channel is somewhere between Twitter posts and IRC
> conversation. The distinction depends on the particular channel and the
> moderation team running it. Originally buddycloud channels were built on
> MUC, then we tried using PEP. After much client and backend reworking,
> we've settled on pub-sub as a much more flexible and robust solution.
>  Using pub-sub also works better for mobile users who need a
> low-overhead re-sync when they come back online.
> 
> Location (think "I'm in East London, UK") and place (think "I'm at home
> sweet home") sharing are done using bookmarks of surrounding WiFi,
> cell-id pattern or GPS coordinates (we're not really fans of the
> check-in madness and you don't need to become a mayor of anything).
> Location uses XEP-0255 and XEP-0080.  We're also working with the W3C's
> location sharing and still keen to push the
> http://oslo-protocol.googlecode.com for federated location sharing.
> 
> We continue to believe that many social networks should exist and
> federate with each other using open protocols like XMPP or the work of
> the Ostatus team. Users should own their identity and content and
> control their own privacy. We've tried to buidl buddycloud along these
> lines and we are participating in the Ostatus summit to see how we can
> make this happen for the non-XMPP world too.  This is our rough idea of
> how things should work; I'm sure that there are some good jdev minds
> that might want to add to this.
> 
> We think our next step is to enable any XMPP server operator can run
> their own channels and location components and to finish up the Android
> and the iPhone clients (also all XMPP transport).  The Nokia client is
> shipped.
> 
> All code is opensource and we are keen for more participants to join us:
> 
> - web-clients, widgets and the mobile clients are all on
> http://buddycloud.googlecode.com.
> - Smack for Android improvements are hosted on http://asmack.googlecode.com
> 
> We are also looking for help, especially as we add more web
> functionality. The next less-fugly version looks like this:
> http://m.buddycloud.com/tmp/proofs/20100702-web-channels-ng-outline.png
>  and should be out in the coming weeks.  If you'd like to join in or
> just watch progress we hang out in MUC: seehaus at channels.buddycloud.com
> 
> To quickly summarise what turned out to be a much longer email, please
> share how you think federated social networking built atop XMPP *should*
> look and what you would like to see as a next step.
> 
> S.
>