October 4, 2009

Micros in Federation

As previously noted, Micros is the microblogging running inside Melative, and one of the major goals is cross-domain compatibility and fluidity; aka Federation. Rather than build something similar to OpenMicroBlogging protocol, we decided to design a specification protocol which the microblog will use to solve this problem of cross-domain following. (Just for reference, any publishing software can use the specification, it’s open and being fleshed)

Here, I’d like to address 4 aspects of the service to help enrich the understanding of this Federated specification, as well as the solution and benefits it provides.

What problem does Federated micro-publishing solve?

  • Social services may only be used with valid usership
  • Social relations may not be established without mutual usership (centralization)
  • Social services are closed, by nature (one must have an account)
  • Social services are centralized (e.g. thedomain.com)
  • Users are following other rules (e.g. site agreements)
  • There is no freedom, as there are always requirements (e.g. usership)

How is this a unique solution?

  • Decentralized (users on any domain may be part of the social-sphere)
  • Federated (users may establish relations without regard for central usership)
  • It’s a specification
  • It’s an open protocol
  • It’s adaptable and customizable

We are only implementing a version of what is possible through the API specification. Other developers may create their own platforms which will interact in the same fashion. The aim with Micros is a publishing platform, similar to a blog, but extensible through theming and plugins. The core of Micros will be a hooking environment in which 3rd party scripts may execute.

Is there evidence that this works?

What sort of business model does it cater?

  • No central ownership
  • Specification provides an infinite platform
  • Open development
  • 3rd party applications
  • 3rd party features
  • Potentially massive user-base (the Internet)

The importance in the business model is that the specification allows developers/vendors to create their own pay/private services, which still enables interaction with the social-sphere. Also open is the area of customizations, similar to Wordpress’s flourishing theme/plugin base.

In summary, we are modularizing the microblog to fit this specification in hopes of building a larger, open social publishing network that may be used regardless of usership and domain.

September 19, 2009

Micros, Melative’s Microblog

For now, the name is Micros.

The microblog on Melative is perhaps one of the most familiar features for users, but with the amount of attention and development that goes in, there must be something more.

What is the Micros?
Micros is a textual interface for micro-updates, which also allows inline commands on context-types, or what we call textual scrobbling. Textual, for the scrobbled update (e.g. ‘listening to /music/Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain/track/Gold Soundz.’) may also have a message appended to the event (e.g. ‘listening to /music/CRCR/Range Life. We should all strive for a range life.’).

It may be seen as a status-update type interface, but there is special nuance between “status-update” and “microblog” (here is a clear explanation which I find handy). When we consider textual scrobbling containing message content, it is much more fitting to be called microblogging than status-update. The key here is “content,” or more specifically publishing content.

At the top level, Micros aims to be more akin to WordPress, in that it allows content publishing, but in a micro manner. This similarity also is aligned with the notion of being open-source and allowing decentralized installations.

Why is Micros important?
As we develop this feature more, we are aiming to extract and modularize it as a standalone application, while still allowing interface commands to have value on the Melative experience engine (organizing, categorizing, interacting with a user’s media library).

At the same time, the system will be built for near-real-time notifications across domains, yes cross-domain following/subscriptions/@replies.

We feel, that in this age of communication, there is little reason to centralize micropublishing to a few large, closed1 channels (Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter), where there is no inter-channel communication without valid usership on each service.

Simply put, Micros is a blog which will notify subscriptions in near-real-time, without the need for centralization (those who are subscribed on various domain/nodes will receive the content directly).

Notes
1 – Closed in the sense that non-users may not interact, this is the opposite for Wordpress, which allows non-user commenting. Micros will allow non-user following, where the event (an XML packet) is sent to subscribed nodes.
-There are other features behind the system, such as scrobble-anything and exact context-referencing, but they are slightly more specific to the experience engine (allowing logging, linking, rating, tagging, wishlisting all from the microblog).

August 28, 2009

Tutorial: Using twhirl with the microblog

We should be able to sum this up in 4 images, but just in case, grab a cuppa-java for the ride. Isn’t coffee so delicious.

1) In accounts, select laconi.ca as the service for a new account.
Select laconi.ca service

2) Enter name@melative.com for the screen name, where name=your user name
Enter username@melaitve.com

3) Add the account, and hit Connect
Add account, and Connect

4) Enter password, and Login to enjoy
Enter password, Login

^_^

Notes

For more information on how this works, see the laconi.ca Twitter API documentation. Note: we are not using laconi.ca, but simply built an interface almost to the specifications.

April 11, 2009

Context-Designated MicroBlogging

Context-designated microblogging, as described here, is generally a superset of the OpenMicroBlogging specification. The notion comes from the concept of contexts which are microblogged about.

Assumptions

We assume the non-grammatical understanding of the word, context, and point towards the notion of context within a computer system or application. In this light, context will represent the topic or target of a user’s notice or an event stemming from a user action. For our purposes context, topic, and target may be used interchangeably (terminology is adjustable, but the idea stands as topic/target/context sensitive/aware/designated microblogging).

Read the rest of this entry »

Quick Note on Stream Replies

While viewing friend activity is a relatively simple find (/stream or /dashboard), the question of replies must also be answered.

Because the stream is contextual, users are treated as a context and thus replies can be viewed through the api as a normal activity call.

http://dev-api.melative.com/xml/activity?user=RyanA&style=1

style=1 is added for xsl processing. In this way, replies are quite easily retrieved.