NoseRub

We just released a new Version of NoseRub on Identoo.com, a downloadable version will be made available within the next couple of days.

If you usually just do a svn update to get the update, don't do it this time!

We had some problems with the trunk in the last release and therefore completely removed and added it from scratch. Your svn will not be able to handle that! So, here is what I did on Identoo.com and what I suggest you all do, instead of the svn update:

1. mv the old directory, eg. mv noserub noserub.old


2. make a fresh checkout of the trunk


3. copy noserub.php and database.php from your old /app/config/ directory.


4. copy all the files from your old app/webroot/static/avatars/ to your new NoseRub installation.

If you made any changes to CSS or other layouts, you can copy those files from your old installation, but if you changed forms.css, make sure you have the following statement in it:

.micropublish textarea {
width: 500px;
height: 28px;
line-height: 14px;
padding: 5px 10px 5px 10px;
vertical-align: middle;
}


If not, your What are you doing? box will look funny.

Now call the /system/update/ URL and follow any instructions like making directories writeable.

Sorry for the mess, I also thought updates through svn update would be a good idea, but I'm no longer so sure about this...

As mentioned yesterday, there is now a section on NoseRub.com called Sites that use NoseRub.

We want to show people, who is using NoseRub already and show them people to contact from all over the world.

We therefore also introduced a new public API call, that returns the number of users on a NoseRub installation:

host/api/json/info/

For Identoo.com the output looks like this:

{"data":{"num_users":804},"code":0,"msg":"ok"}


But you don't need to worry that this information is now leaked on every installation of NoseRub 0.7. This is an opt-in solution where you actively have to set the following line to your noserub.php in /app/config/:

define('NOSERUB_API_INFO_ACTIVE', true);


If you don't add this line, or set the value to false instead of true, a number of 0 users will be returned instead. If you site is listed on < href="http://noserub.com/sites/">noserub.com/sites it will be displayed there with 1 user.

In the future, this directory will be very helpfull when we want to do a distributed search. Searching your local installation is currently in development, but you also would like to search on other sites, too and aggregate this results with your own search. Discovering of frends on other NoseRub installations will also be possible, when we can get information from other NoseRub sites.

And therefore, we need this directory. And don't be bothered: all new features that involve your installation will be opt-in, so we will not surprise you at one point with something you don't want.

As result of the NoseRub DevCamp last week we are proud to present you today the release of NoseRub 0.7!

It already runs since yesterday evening on Identoo.com and since some SVN problems were resolved, it runs like a charm now.

Due to the changes on how we handle feeds, you will see an empty social stream after you upgrade to NoseRub 0.7.

But after you first run the cronjob to refresh the feeds, or go to a profile page, when you want to handle the updates manually, new feed entries will be stored to the database and from that on being displayed.

Plase make sure to read the notes carefully when updating and calling /system/update, as some constants were changed.

We will post more details about the new features of NoseRub 0.7 in the next days.

We then will also introduce a page on noserub.com/sites/ that will show a directory of sites all around the world that use NoseRub. So, if you have a NoseRub installation running, please contact me (dirk.olbertz (at) gmail.com) and send me the URL. I will then add the site to that upcoming directory.

Although this actually is a normal behaviour of OpenID, our new NoseRub PlugIn for WordPress makes it really easy:

1. Download the Plugin
2. Follow the installation instructions
3. Enable the checkbox Use this blog as OpenIDin the settings for the NoseRub PlugIn in your Wordpress Blog
4. You're done!

From now on, you can use your own Blog-URL as OpenID, for instance to enter the NoseRub Chat.

And while you're at it: why don't use one or two (or even all!) of the great widgets of this new and shiny PlugIn? :-)

Our first NoseRub DevCamp was small, but very successfull.

On both days, Dominik and Lance were in Ormigo's office space and helped enhancing NoseRub. My special thanks goes to Lance who flew in from England - now, that's what I call commitment :-)

Markus joined us on Saturday and I hope we could tell him a little bit about what the big idea behind NoseRub is.

Also during both days, Daniel was working on NoseRub from his home in Switzerland. Our Chat was a good tool to keep communication alive.

So, what did we achieve? Actually, a lot, as you can see from this list:

• Daniel added OAuth support for our API, although I yet need to learn on how to use it :-)
• Dominik worked on a Wordpress PlugIn for NoseRub
• He also rewrote on how we retrieve data from other servers and so we now use curl when possible instead of file_get_contents() (Dominik said he needs to test this issue further)
• Lance did an excellent job on writing up a description to develop you own NoseRub services and he used this description a lot:
• Support for Blip.tv, Glugg.no, HemiDemi.com, Identi.ca, Disqus.com, Ffffound!, Blippr and Picasa has been added, while support for Plazes has been fixed.
• Instead of uploading a photo, you're now able to tell NoseRub to use your Gravatar image.
• Lance also made a new Screencast of a tour through NoseRub
• If you want to, you now can enable a generic RSS-Feed of all your updates.
• The RSS-Feed for the public social stream of all users had been fixed.
• An experimental XMPP feed for all public updates has been introduced. If you want to, you can add fullfeed@jabber.identoo.com to access a full feed from preview.noserub.com. There isn't much happening and the bot only goes online when he has to send something, so please be patient.
• We rewrote how NoseRub handles feeds and now stores every item seperately. This way, we now can look forward to search and a XMPP track-feature like Twitter used to have it.

I might have forgot something, if you're interested in the details, have a look at the changesets from this weekend.

We plan to release this version sometime next weekend. Until then we probably will make some more changes, but mostly smaller ones.

I think this DevCamp was a great success and I plan on doing another one early 2009 - but that does not mean, that development on NoseRub will halt until then. Quite the opposite! I think everyone in the team is now even more motivated to enhance NoseRub even further.

A final thanks goes to Ormigo who let us use their office and gave us access to their internet connection.