Disqus - Latest Comments for evanp

Re: I (still) want a toolkit to make twitters (Scripting News)

kenzoid — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 10:54:40 -0000

I agree with Evan here, Dave...it sounds like Laconica is precisely what you're looking for, plus bonuses. It's completely compatible w/ Twitter at the API level, yet does more stuff besides (federation, for example, so we can set up our own installs, yet still subscribe to users at the other one). Great tool.

Re: I (still) want a toolkit to make twitters (Scripting News)

evanp — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:08:00 -0000

Dave,

I'd sure like to know what you need out of Laconica that you're not getting.

Re: Linux.com to Bring “Social Web” To Linux Geeks?

rtaibah — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 08:12:49 -0000

Thanks Evan, but this is just an idea proposed on Linux Foundation. Whether they take it or not is up to them. But it would be really nice to have something similar to Twit Army. Maybe you can offer them your offer directly?

Re: There must be some way out of here (Scripting News)

exador23 — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:05:18 -0000

How coincidental! I'm an interconnected fault-tolerant network of synapses!

Re: There must be some way out of here (Scripting News)

evanp — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:37:57 -0000

Hi, Dave. So, I appreciate your attention, but I think you have the wrong idea about status.net. It's not the entire plan for Laconica -- not by a long shot. The plan, in a nutshell, is "WordPress of microblogging".

That means massive adoption -- we have a goal 100M people on the OpenMicroBlogging network by 2013.* I'm tracking the successful steps of WordPress as closely as possible, and I want to have the software available in as many was as I possibly can. Here are some of those ways:

* Download the software from http://laconi.ca/ , upload it to your (public or Intranet) Web server, and run the Web-based installation program. This is pretty standard for PHP/MySQL software like WordPress, Drupal, and others, but I think this only reaches a certain percentage of people.
* Virtual appliances on a lot of platforms. I want Laconica to be launchable as EC2 AMI, VmWare virtual appliances, and Joyent Accelerator images.
* _Literal_ network appliance -- an easy-to-install piece of hardware running a LAMP stack with an easy-to-configure Laconica on the inside. Order it, drop it into your rack, configure a bit with a Web browser, off to the races.
* One-click installs on as many hosting services as we can find.
* One-click installs in as many of the Web-hosting control panels as we can find.
* Installation packages for as many major Unix-like distros as we can find: Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD.
* Application Service Providers like status.net. We'll provide easy-to-use installs for people who want to do minor theming, choose from a selection of supported plugins, and map their own domain names to the servers. They won't have to worry about scaling, backups, upgrades, or any of that hassleful stuff. This is more or less what WordPress.com does. I think it's what you were suggesting you'd do with smallpicture.com. Our software will be Open Source, by the way: you will be able to run the same kind of service on smallpicture.

Hosting costs money. (Shock!) Letting people reimburse us for this cost of providing this kind of service is really, really straightforward and honest. If site owners want to commercialize their system with advertising, we'll have plugins to allow it. (It may be possible to have a plugin to let them charge _their_ customers for accounts -- it might not be a bad idea.)

Anybody right now can take our software, install it, and build a community. That's what Leo's done with Twit Army; what bleeper.de is doing in Germany, saigonica.com in Viet Nam, naijapulse.com in Nigeria; trymyfashion.com for fashion and www.todaysmama.com for parents. My company (and hopefully soon others) will also provide installation, customization, maintenance, service and support for people who don't want to maintain the software for themselves.

If status.net was the endgame, well, that'd be one thing. But it's just one part in a strategy to get Laconica into people's hands /by any means possible/, no matter what their level of proficiency is.

* (Some people may not know that Laconica supports federated, distributed microblogging, also supported by openmicroblogger.com and a few other experimental implementations. That means that Laconica installations aren't islands; they're nodes in an interconnected fault-tolerant network of servers. I'm also working with the JaikuEngine team to get the protocol implemented for their software.)

Re: Linux.com to Bring “Social Web” To Linux Geeks?

evanp — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:21:32 -0000

I'm the lead developer of Laconica (the Open Source microblogging software used by Twit Army and Identi.ca) and I'm excited to hear you're going to develop a mublog site for Linux.com.

Please let me know if you need any help with setting up Laconica for your microblogging service. Laconica developers are excited at this prospect.

Re: HowTo: Laconica Notepad

evanp — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:05:38 -0000

Missing link to the public timeline can be fixed by setting $config['site']['logo'] = 'url of logo'; in the config.php file.

Broken "Before" should be fixed when you upgrade to 0.7.2.1. You've got an intermediate dev version installed right now, which is why pagination, OpenID, and remote subscription are kind of buggy.

Re: HowTo: Laconica Notepad

evanp — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:04:01 -0000

Dave: some notes:

First, tickets in our ticketing system are really helpful. See http://laconi.ca/trac/ . I'll try to harvest as much as I can from this list; many things you mention are already in progress.

Second, templating is REALLY SLOW for high-volume systems. I really strongly prefer using hooks to modify HTML instead. You can just modify what you care about, and ignore the rest.

Browser-based admin: good idea, on the agenda for 0.8.x release. Admin API: also a great idea.

Having each new user auto-subscribed to sysop: great idea. Having each new user generate a message: much better sent to a group, like !newuser. That way people who really care can listen, and people who don't can ignore it.

Blocking users globally: you can do that in the config file.

Multi-hosting: coming soon, part of the 0.8.x release.

Multi-media payloads: part of 0.8.x release.

In general, it may be good to look at the Laconica roadmap: http://mail.laconi.ca/pipermail/laconica-dev/20...

Re: An alternate OSCON? (Scripting News)

dave — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:32:28 -0000

Thanks for the bug report! :-)

I fixed the post...

Re: An alternate OSCON? (Scripting News)

evanp — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:26:27 -0000

Dave: I'll be in Portland for OS Bridge; I've already proposed two talks for the event.

One error in your post: you say OSB is "in Portland on June 17-19 at the same time as OSCON." OSB is June 17-19, as you said, but OSCON is July 20-24, nearly a month afterwards. So, no need to choose between the two: I plan on being at both.

Re: Identi.ca Wants To Become Jabber, Inc.?

stoweboyd — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:48:34 -0000

I really like the idea of a big federated microblogging network, (In fact it was in the design of Workstreamer, that I worked on in 2007-2008).

Behind the firewall is a big opportunity, yes.

As I said, you are moving into the Jabber Inc. pattern, and there are big opportunities there. I will track you down in the next weeks so we can talk more deeply on this.

Re: Identi.ca Wants To Become Jabber, Inc.?

evanp — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:27:44 -0000

Hey, Stowe. So, no, we didn't know about the Jaiku announcement before the fundingI, for one, think it's /great/. I think it's very likely that when the code comes out, we're going to see something that's compatible with Identica's OpenMicroBlogging standard. Meaning: one big, open, federated microblogging network.

I don't think that our software is even much of a competitor to Jaiku's. Theirs will run on Google App Engine, which is a great platform, but it's not one-size-fits-all. Many companies are going to want something inside the firewall. Many public sites will have different hosting requirements. So it's not going to be a big competition -- more of a complementary model.

The last thing I want to do is build a company that depends on the failure of twitter.com. That's just a dumb bet. Instead, I want to let Twitter blaze the way for micromessaging, and when entrepreneurs and CIOs say, "I want my own Twitter!", Identica will be there waiting.

We've got a handful of relationships already for building public sites using the Identica software, and more on their way -- stay tuned. There are also a number of /big/ (100K+ employee) companies trying out Identica inside the enterprise, and I think that's going to be a real big factor for us, too.

Re: http://venturebeat.com/2009/01/14/identica-gets-fresh-aid-in-quest-to-out-message-twitter/

evanp — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:15:01 -0000

Hello, all. Nice analysis, and food for thought.

I'd much rather build a business that depends on the /success/ of Twitter than on supplanting or dislodging them. Twitter is doing an excellent job of popularizing and spreading the idea of microblogging. There are a lot of entrepreneurs and CIOs who are looking for ways to implement their own microblogging sites -- "I want my own Twitter!" Those are Identica's customers.

We've already got contracts for installation, customization and maintenance of public sites, and more in the pipeline. There are in-house pilot programs at *big* companies to use the Identica software for enterprise microblogging, and I expect those to continue to grow. Additionally, we'll be rolling out a hosted service in the beginning of this year -- think federated Yammer -- which I think will be another good way for folks to try out the code.

All of which is to say: we're making a business that builds on Twitter's success. I think that having a complementary and compatible Open Source package is a great way to ride that wave. Wish us luck.

Re: identi.ca gets funding, and a case of bad timing

evanp — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:22:54 -0000

It's funny -- you're not the first person to think this was bad for Identi.ca. Au contraire! Google seems very enthusiastic about "creating a freely available and federated, open source microblogging platform." An Open Source Jaiku could be easily hooked into the OpenMicroBlogging network, meaning we'd have a much bigger network of sites.

Is the Jaiku software a direct challenge? Not really. It runs on Google App Engine, which is really great for a certain class of deployment. Other folks are going to be looking for different hosting options -- including deployment inside the enterprise. I think that Identica's software will be a very compelling option there.

So I'm psyched to hear about Jaiku: it's all upside for us. Anyways: thanks for the congrats, and keep your eye out -- lots more news to come in the next 6 weeks.

Re: My Identi.ca Wishlist

metajack — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:06:13 -0000

@Evan: I had no idea about 'help' for the XMPP bot. That's awesome.

The short urls don't seem to work for me. For example, mousing over a
url doesn't show the exploded URL. I think that it would be nice to
explode the urls by default in XMPP since there is no reason to keep
them short (same applies to the Web view).

I'll add the blog to my feed; can't believe I missed that.

Re: My Identi.ca Wishlist

evanp — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:42:34 -0000

Great list! A couple of notes: you should try sending "help" to update@identi.ca, there are a ton of commands in there. In particular, "follow X" and "fav X" currently work through the IM interface. Short urls and tooltips work on IM the same as the Web.

We have a blog at http://controlyourself.ca/, linked at the bottom of every single Identi.ca page. We do post news of upgrades and new features there.

Agreed about documentation -- it's something we really need to get cooking. There's a great upgrade to the documentation at http://laconi.ca/trac/wiki/Documentation, but we need to feed that back into the online help on the site itself.

Re: Why I don't believe in the "OpenMicroblogging Standard": My answer to Jesse Stay

xhtmlcss — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:45:42 -0000

Hi, Evan and thanks for the detailed response.

You've done well by starting by the very thing that makes our point of views differ. And this is exactly why I started this post by giving a definition I think that is valid. And depending on what someone chooses as a "definition" of MicroBlogging, one of us will certainly be right. Let me explain:

I personally don't think that microblogging is that mission-critical. For if I really was in any emergency situation I'd better use "classical" means of communication, such as phone or... just my voice to call for "help" :)
It's the way we see this communication that defines what "is" microblogging and "how" it should be designed.

My humble definition is exactly that one given by Wikipedia -not that I believe that what Wikipedia says is for sure TRUE- but because of my idea that microblogging, no matter how "serious" it can be, is not a mission-critical thing and is not "real time" or even close to it.

When viewed as a real-time thing, it sure requires the sender to "push" information toward the recipients, and this will make all your arguments more than valid. But when viewed as a micro-blogging or as a blogging of micro-content, then it's easier and more adequate IMHO to use the "polling" method.

In simpler words, what separates our points of views is that I see microblogging as if "I" was asking how "You" are doing. While you're seeing it as "I" am telling "YOU" how I'm doing.
This is what makes microblogging a messaging question for you, while it's just a "content publishing" for me.

We DO agree on *subscriptions*. I see it as OPML, because the subscriber checks how his friend is doing, and you're seeing it as OAuth because you're seeing microblogging as "I'm telling the world how I am and want this to be known almost in real-time".

I feel like I've repeated my argument many times, but it's really the way we "define" microblogging that direct us to a given design.

Again thanks for your answer and the smart exchange!

Re: Why I don't believe in the "OpenMicroblogging Standard": My answer to Jesse Stay

evanp — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:16:43 -0000

Hi, Karim! The big difference between OpenMicroBlogging and regular ol' blogging is this: microblogging has close-to-real-time latency requirements. If someone posts a microblogging notice, it should go out over IM and SMS as soon as possible.

This can't depend on periodic polling from the subscriber; the number of actual messages posted (a handful per day) doesn't justify the kind of polling frequency needed to have an acceptable latency (<1 minute, per most microblogging users). If we ran it on polling, only ~0.3% of polling calls would result in a positive result.

I looked into trackback for doing this kind of "push", but the semantics of trackback are that the post they reference are a *response* to something the recipient posted -- which isn't normally the case with a notice. In microblogging, notices are pushed to all subscribers, regardless of whether the notice is a response to something they've said before.

Finally, microblogging depends on *subscription*: that is, that I authorize your server to send me your update notices. That's why we use OAuth -- it's perfect for distributed authorization.

I'm the last person to want to re-invent the wheel. That's why I used existing standards like OAuth to make OpenMicroBlogging work. If you'd like to help out and taken OpenMicroBlogging to the next level, I'd love the help -- there are a lot of people who want to see _some_ standard, based on easy-to-implement existing technologies, go forward.

Re: If Twitter is a microblog, Laconica is a microforum

randulo — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 05:05:56 -0000

Evan, Glad you didn't take offense, none meant. Laconica is a great name for a baby girl. OpenMicroblogger is a great name for an open source project for neck beards. Hey, what's in a name? Nothing for those of us who think these things are great, and I haven't had a neck beard for many, many years.

Laconica is a great project and it fulfills a clear need, IMO, but there would likely be more interest generated with an evocative name. I agree that Laconica isn't silly like a lot of others, but it doesn't mean anything to anyone AFAICS.

There is hardly a peep all day out of the IRC channel or the mailing list.

Thanks for all the hard work to all who provide it. I don't sit around criticizing either. I have donated to both "microforum" projects and I try to spread the word in groups where I think there might be interest.

Cheers!

Re: If Twitter is a microblog, Laconica is a microforum

evanp — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:47:16 -0000

"...the horribly-named Laconica"? Are you serious? In an area with site names like Spoink, Plurk, Rejaw and Kwippy, do you really think that the mellifluous and pronouncable Laconica is a notably bad name?

Anywho, I appreciate the larger point -- nicely said.

Re: A Separate Reality: Identi.ca on the Brink

cgerrish — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:01:23 -0000

Evan, thanks for taking the time. BearHug Camp made very clear the two alternate paths. The first part of the day belonged to Twitter, the second part belonged to Open Microblogging as an ecosystem. Each of these visions are compelling and either one could come to dominate. I'm rooting for the open system because I think there's more opportunity for more players. But it's very clear that there's nothing about a "better idea" or "open source" that guarantees success. History is filled with the wreckage of companies with a "better idea."

The purpose of this post was to lay out the two visions and evaluate them. Twitter has a clear path, they have the users and once all the features/functions are restored they can start sprinting. Open Microblogging as a network isn't ready to walk, let alone sprint. There are some very difficult problems that need to be solved. When OMB can function and grow as a network based on a open standard we'll actually have something. I'm just putting the focus on the specific steps to get to that point. Growing unconnected individual instances isn't creating nodes-- nodes are part of a network. It's the connections through a standard that start to create the network.

Timing is everything, well, not everything -- users are everything. One might ask if unused software was ever actually written. There's a window of opportunity, but it won't stay open indefinitely. Everyone in this community needs to feel the fierce urgency of now. The vision of an OMB network is a beautiful one, but now we need to make it more than just a vision.

Re: A Separate Reality: Identi.ca on the Brink

evanp — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:43:12 -0000

Sorry, one more thing: I think that work to encourage other Open Source and commercial mublog providers to support the standard is very key. I'd like to start organizing a movement around OpenMicroBlogging (OMB) that can a) provide patches or plugins for FLOSS implementations to support the standard and b) encourage some of the hundreds of commercial sites to join the network.

Re: A Separate Reality: Identi.ca on the Brink

evanp — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:40:40 -0000

Cliff, I'm so disappointed by this post. If the open microblogging community in general, and me in particular, aren't able to keep up the optimism and support of longtime advocates and participants like yourself, we are -- I am -- doing something quite wrong.

I agree that I in particular, and probably the gang in general, too often take the future openness of the medium as a foregone conclusion. I know that it's not inevitable.

I think we all also know that the time when Twitter was the only mublog site on the planet is over, and that kind of thing never goes back in the bottle, no matter how much people hope for it.

But realistically it's in the hands of developers like myself and advocates like you to convince the general population and other mublog providers that an open-standard messaging standard is simply better in the long run for us all. And that's not an easy task -- there are a lot of people who sincerely believe that their own chosen mublog platform is going to "win" once and for all.

I agree on the dev priorities that you've outlined, and most importantly on the main goal for Laconi.ca: stimulating growth of the network. That means putting viral features into each node to grow its individual size, and making it easier to install and setup nodes to increase the points in the net.

Thanks for not pulling any punches. It's not the time for it.

Re: Why Laconica Means Big Things For Corporate Micro Blogging

evanp — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:05:08 -0000

I agree with Marina! I think it's also interesting to go "multichannel" with corporate microblogging -- using desktop apps, the Web, RSS, and mobile devices to keep teams in touch.

Re: TWiT Army

evanp — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:26:11 -0000

I hope so! So great to have a Twitter A-lister do a Laconica install. Now, we gotta get Scoble.