Es Tea Double Eye » gatorpeeps

Open Microblogging, what exactly is it?

Stii — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:52:17 +0000

Since the start of Gatorpeeps we had a few requests (as soon as we tell people we’re actually not using Laconica) whether we’re going to support the Open Microblogging protocol. I know of the Open Microblogging protocol, but never took the time to explore it. I immediately started exploring it, but found there is very little being said about it or what it can do. Shockingly little.

So what is it? Best we paint pictures as that seems to be the only way I get to understand stuff lately :P

I’m a user over at Floss.pro, which is a Laconi.ca Microblogging platform for people with an interest in Open Source software. I’m all over the web, so at some point I get to Army.TWiT.tv which is another microblogging platform (Co-incidentally also Laconi.ca). There I notice someone’s updates I really would love to see more of.

The problem is that I’m not a army.twit.tv user and would have to subscribe once more to another platform. No problem at ALL! You do not have to become a army.twit.tv user in order to follow someone’s updates there. Since I’m a member of another microblogging platform that supports the OMB protocol, I can still follow this user. Enter the OMB protocol:

So I click on his/her username, which takes me to his/her profile page.

I then hit the “Subscribe” button as if I were a user on the army.twit.tv. This takes me to a remote subscription page where I need to enter my URL to my Floss.pro account.

I hit the Subscribe button and get taken to the Floss.pro site where I am asked to confirm whether or not I really want to do this.

I accept and get taken back to the army.twit.tv site where I can see I’m now snug and safely a subscriber of that user’s updates.

If I now visit my page on Floss.pro, all future updates that the army.twit.tv user makes will show in my timeline on Floss.pro! Nice, hey?

I get the idea that generally not many people uses it yet. Twitter for one does not support remote subscription. Some geeky fellows on other Laconi.ca platforms do use it, but the general non-technical user almost certainly does not know of it! Big part of the problem is of course that people are not really aware that it can actually be done! Why not? It is a fantastic idea! We at Gatorpeeps are sure as hell going to implement it although I suspect that very little people might end up using it soon. Notwithstanding, it may just fly and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be left behind if and when this happens!

More reasons for Gatorpeeps

Stii — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:54:12 +0000

Finally we can talk about Gatorpeeps officially! We’ve been rather quiet about it, primarily since we needed to finish a few things and stress test it before we punted it.

We had our fair share of “Blegh, another Twitter clone…” and we expected it. The thing is, we love twitter! Always have, always will.

So why did we clone it then? Simple. Some of the reasons Justin already covered over here, but I’d like to add that Afrigator was in need of something social networky. We needed to add a communication dimension and as everybody knows, there is no better way to do that other than Twitter. Yes, we could have leveraged off the Twitter API. That is true, but the Twitter API is not without it’s limitations.

Besides that, we also have a few other ideas, such as Twitter recently killed SMS functionality in Africa, and it left a huge gaping gap in that market.

We did not leverage off some Open Source app like Laconi.ca or Jaiku. We wanted to initially, but due to the fact that we want to seamlessly integrate Gatorpeeps with Afrigator and add a bunch of unique features, we thought it best to rather develop our own flavor into the mix. For those interested, it is backed up by the brilliant Kohana PHP framework :). Was it the best idea? The right thing to do? Time will tell.

Now the real work starts. Now we need to do all these promised features and integration… Fun times!

This is an Internet company? Oh, really?

Stii — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:56:54 +0000

Well, you’ve done a shit hot job in fooling me! Well done. Now can we actually just put jokes aside, since some of us actually would love to fix bugs, commit changes to SVN, ag, you know, trivial stuff like that really.

Oh and please don’t worry about Gatorpeeps and Twitter. We just hang around on there to get through our days, on our way to another December debauchery. Can’t wait for December…

That squid proxy is the shit! It pwns the interwebs. No, really. The entire fucking Internet is on there. Only problem is that it is slightly outdated, but that’s ok. I mean, who needs the latest stuff anyways? It is way overrated in any case.

I really find it hilarious when a 3 MB download tells me that the expected time to completion is 3 days 18 hours. Isn’t that just the funniest thing. EVER?

Oh, and yes, I know Telkom is the Devil from hell, but I think they are SERIOUSLY doing a number on your ass! I’ve got a Telkom ADSL line at home, but it is like 1000 times quicker and the SSH port is not shaped half as bad as here! I’d talk with someone, because this cannot be fair. Normally big million dollar corporations get the preferential treatment. Not snotty individuals!

You’re clearly doing something wrong :/