I just installed a Jabber server on one of my servers and played with a php class for XMPP to interact with it. The goal is to have some kind of tool to "speak" with a NoseRub server. Features like Twitter's track for keywords come to my mind, but also for setting your location or various other things to come.

Then, I'm also thinking about how to integrate Identi.ca with NoseRub. There is some kind of protocol available and I hear XMPP a lot when talking about server-to-server communication and so I start thinking: is XMPP just a better/faster RSS? Should I route every single Social Stream of Identoo.com-Users through this new Jabber server and thus allow everyone to subscribe to it by adding it as friend?

Isn't the Social Stream itself a micro blog? There are so many people pushing their blog updates and new photos from Flickr or elsewhere to their Twitter stream, that it almost is a Social Stream. So, when I add a Twitter user right now as contat on Identoo.com (this works perfectly), I am halfway there, when it comes to a decentralised Twitter. I could support Identi.ca right now, too. The only thing that is missing, are the notifications when someone added my as a contact. And of course, that I cannot add any RSS-Feed to Twitter.com or Identi.ca as a contact.

And this is the Goridan Knot: it is all weaved together, but I think it is very simple to solve. I just didn't find the right sword to do it. Maybe allowing any URL as an endpoint is good enough + being able to autodiscover a XMPP stream instead of a RSS feed.

Still searching for the sword...

Until today, I used a SSL certificate from CAcert.org. They are free and do their job: protecting user input on some pages like login and the settings.

But with Firefox 3, a nasty screen was shown, because Firefox no longer (?) supported these certificates. Many users were distracted by this, although it never meant, that their input was not secure.

Anyway... as the certificate was about to run out this evening, I ordered and installed a new one from PSW / Thawte. Firefox 3 now no longer displays an error message when accessing those protected areas on Identoo.com.

So, NoseRub DevCamp will take place on September 13th to 14th 2008 in Cologne. The location is sponsored by Ormigo, the company I work for. Here's a link on Google Maps

I will try to find more sponsors to cover some costs like drinks and some snacks. Obviously this will depend on how many people will attend.

So please give me a note not later than September 3rd if you will attend here in Cologne, or somewhere else world wide. I will not set up a wiki for registrations, so leave a comment here, or write me an e-mail.

There will be no sleeping within the office, but this hotel is just placed next to our office building. I have no idea how good/bad it is, so this is no recommendation, just a hint, that there is a hotel nearby.

I will set up a new Google Code repository for DevCamp, so that I can give write permissions to that repository for everyone. This way, we can speed up sharing code and don't have too many unverified changes in the main repository.

There are many things to do at the DevCamp, starting by adding new services to NoseRub and improving existing once. But we have a lot of other open issues in our Issue Tracker, some really shamefull like having a password recovery process...

Other things are bigger, like having OAuth for our own API and also being able to act as an OAuth client. This way we could interact with identi.ca, what would really great. Yes, we already could interact with Twitter, but I really don't want to ask users for their service passwords.

We could create widgets to display our lifestreams on our own servers and have PlugIns for several blogging packages like s9y and Wordpress - in fact, work on a Wordpress PlugIn was already started and is waiting for a newer release of NoseRub.

Other things to do are adding the use of HTMLPurifier for any HTML output from third parties, like from RSS-Feeds. This way, we could allow people to add HTML and CSS to their own profile pages, without being in fear of XSS or other malicous code parts. If you're a CakePHP expert and designer, I would love to see a way to have NoseRub itself easily customized when it comes to colors and header graphics.

But the DevCamp is also there for learning how NoseRub works. In means of the software itself and of how the protocol behind it works. I therefore encourage everyone during the DevCamp to monitor our discussion group to help other NoseRubbers out there. We will also re-activate our web absed chat then

The nearer the event gets, the more information will be presented here. So, if any open questions arrives, please let me know: dirk.olbertz (at) gmail.com

PS: Thanks to Alex for the logo. Grab it, if you want to. We also have a PNG and an AI Version available, if you need something else.

In order to end the summer lazyness and actually get some more life back to the project, we will do a NoseRub DevCamp in Cologne, Germany in September.

I already spoke with my bosses at Ormigo and they offered to use the company's rooms for that purpose. The event will take place on the weekend 13th and 14th of September.

The NoseRub DevCamp should not only take place here in Cologne, but although in your very house. That means we will be online via IM all the time, monitor our discussion group and hopefully provide fast feedback.

The goal is to solve some of the tasks in the Issue Tracker, get some more Services into NoseRub and also fix some problems with already existing features.

More information will follow soon, so stay tuned!

NoseRub 0.6 was just released and Identoo.com got that update already. This release contains mainly bugfixes, but also some new services: you can now add your Online IDs from Nintendo Wii, Playstation Network and XBox Live. We also added support for YouTube and Ormigo.

If you have your Profile on Identoo, check it out and see if you can add some more information about you. I'd like to see some of you guys adding me through Playstation Online. Check my profile page out: identoo.com/dirk.olbertz

The new version can be downloaded here.

Has anyone reading this have good contacts to del.icio.us? It seems that del.icio.us blocks requests from Identoo.com, as curl "http://feeds.delicious.com/rss/dirk_olbertz" works fine locally and from different other servers in the UK.

It might be a problem with the Provider I use for my servers. I heard that, at least for email, their IP ranges are on some black lists.

I already contacted del.icio.us' support, but after telling me, that they would forward it to someone else, I did not hear anything and a second reply to that ticket got no response at all.

Right now, even a simple "we blocked you and cannot whitelist your IP" would help me in order to think about the next steps. But rught now, it's just frustating, as users on Identoo.com won't see any updates from their del.ico.us accounts.

So, help is greatly appreciated!

Update: Apparently, fetching del.icio.us feeds is working again. I'm not sure wether this is a temporary thing until I hit some treshold, but if not, I hope this blog post reached someone inside or near del.icio.us, who fixed the problem. If so: thank you!

Right from the beginning of this project, we wanted the following to work:

1. You open an account on Identoo.com and add contacts and web accounts


2. You install NoseRub on your own server and import all your data from the Identoo.com account


3. Afterwards, all the people who added you as a contact, will seamlessly get your new profile URL

With NoseRub 0.6 we're now able to do this!

First of all, you export all your data on Identoo.com. You will find this tools in the menu Settings and there at Manage:


You will receive a JSON file with all your contacts, accounts and profile data. On your own server, you then simply import this file:


NoseRub then parses that file and displays, what you're about to import. If you confirm, all those contacts, web accounts and profile data is imported. Afterwards, you can use your new NoseRub installation, just as you did on Identoo.com.

In order to tell all your contacts, that you moved your profile, you then go back to Identoo.com and set a redirect to your new profile:


You now even can delete your account on Identoo and the redirect will still work.

We have to admit, that the whole redirect thing is currently not 100% perfect. We will change that and then, all the people who have you as contact, will not only be redirected to your new account, but also see your new profile url as their contact.

So, what means your data to you?

I just release NoseRub 0.6 alpha. You can see it in action on Identoo.com or can download the package here: noserub.com/downloads

If you prefer the subversion checkout, you can now update/checkout from the trunk. More information about the SVN-Repository can be found here: noserub.com/code

The main goal for this release was to add URLs as contacts. What does this mean? If you take an URL like http://tantek.com you will see, that his HTML output uses a lot of Microformats - of course, you say :-)

The great thing about this is, that he therefore makes it easy for NoseRub to get information about him (via hCard) and his web accounts (via XFN). Basically, NoseRub already did exactly that when syncing between different servers. We just need to do some minor changes to allow any URL as contact, but we also added support for the Social Graph API from Google. That means that NoseRub does not only rely on finding information through Microformats on that site, but also uses the data that Google's API returns for that URL.

Another good example for a great URL as contact is David's homepage. Working for SixApart, he uses the Action Stream PlugIn for MovableType. The great thing now is, that I can add him as contact on Identoo.com and follow his activities, without forcing him to use NoseRub for himself.

This is a big difference to eg. FriendFeed.com, where you can only follow people that use FriendFeed for themselves. As a matter of fact: each public friend feed URL is great for adding as contact in NoseRub. For instance Johannes Kleske (mostly german content).

Right now, NoseRub ignores any FriendFeed RSS-Feed. Not, because we don't like them, but because they duplicate content in a way, that we (yet) cannot filter them. So, if you add a FriendFeed RSS-Feed to your NoseRub profile and wonder, why it does not get updated: don't worry, you probably are better off, if you just add that URL as contact...

The second big thing in this release is covered in a separate blog entry. It is about being really portable with your data.

Just one quick note, why this release is tagged as "alpha": The two new features heavily use networking features that are difficult to test locally - especially, when you're just a bunch of people dedicating their free time for this great project. We don't expect any old features to be broken. In fact, we fixed some bugs. But the new features might have their problems that we wanted to verify in the wild. So, please be patient and report any problems. Either through the ticketing system, here in the blog, or in our discussion group.

I talked about NoseRub 0.6 a few days ago and was very excited about it. Today, I made the first huge steps toward that release. The main thing we want to achieve with that is, that you can add any URL as a contact!

I repeat this, because it's so important: you will be able to add any URL as a contact!

What does this mean? This will mean, you can add davidrecordon.com as your contact and see what he is doing in your network's social stream. You also automatically get updates about new services he is adding to his site. You will also be able to add users from FriendFeed.com to your contacts and thus get informed about what is going on on their sites.

We do this by parsing Microformats information from these sites. Namely hCard and XFN. For even better results, we use the Socialgraph API from Google to examine the XFN.

On the screenshot in this post, you can see how this looks like. You see Davids photo there, as this is made available through hCard on his website. The broken image left to him is from brianoberkirch.com. That is, because we currently don't copy the images to our own server (but we will do! we are no traffic stealers!) and only David has the same naming convention for the small image, as NoseRub has :-)

You can also see David's updates in the social stream, as the updates from Jörg Kantel are. I just added his account from FriendFeed.com as my contact. We have to think about what to do with the feed from FriendFeed here, as we already accessed the single accounts. But this are just some minor issues that can be solved.

But what really important is, that this is a real distributed social network! And your contacts do not even need to know what NoseRub is. Just add them as your contacts and be able to follow their activities from that moment on. And if you want to, you just install NoseRub on your own server and no one but you has full control over your social network.

We want to release NoseRub 0.6 later this month. Although a lot of work is already done, we need to polish some things and also may add one or two surprises :-)

After a few days of test drive on Identoo.com, the new 0.5.4 release is available for Download.

Here is what you can expect from 0.5.4.

NoseRub 0.5.4 looks good right now on Identoo.com, so I guess there will be a release either tomorrow evening, or on saturday.

And then, I will finally reveal, what we want to do in NoseRub 0.6. Oh boy, I'm so excited and hope you all will like it, as well...

Originally it was planned to release NoseRub 0.5.4 at this weekend and we finished developing on it. But we would like to test a little bit more. We probably will put it live on Identoo.com (and thus merge the development branch back to the trunk) some time this week and make the proper release on next weekend.

As you can see from the change on the minor version number only, this release is not a major breakthrough. We had a lot of new input during the past months and often struggled with what to do next of all the things we would NoseRub like to be. We now decided to make small steps, but therefore hopefully more often. During the step, we made some groundwork for the next steps already - that is the good news.

So, what is actually new in the upcoming 0.5.4? Basically, just four things:

1. Adjustable filters for the social feeds

We had that wish for some time now: allow me to filter out the last.fm updates. We don't do it on basis of an account type, but on the filter type. So, if you want to, audio will not show up any more, when you watch any social stream.

2. XFN and tags for contacts

You now can edit a contact and apply XFN and own created tags. We currently display the XFN tags along with your contacts on your profile page. We started with this feature to allow privacy settings based on this tags, but we're not there yet. So basically, you just can give your contacts that tags, but cannot do any more else with them right now. Sorry...

3. Locations

Do you remember Plazes? Back then, it was a cool thing to show off, where you currently are. I never liked the idea to exactly determine, where I am. I rather want to locate the city, or maybe sometimes only the country. You know can create your own locations and add an address to it, if you like. But basically, it is just some free text. Whenever you update your location, it will show up in your social stream - and of course in those of the people who added you as a contact. Your last location is also displayed on your profile page.

4. API

This more not really a valid point here, as we currently only cover methods to retrieve and set your location.If you want to, you can already have look at the documentation. The authentication right now is not so greatly solved, OAuth would be a better way to do it. But you know: we have only so much time and are lurking for someone to make a nice iPhone or S60 app for setting your location...

So, that's it. After the actual release, we will tell you, what we plan for NoseRub 0.6, which should be out by the end of this month. This is, what we call small steps...

Here are two screenshots. The first one shows a little bit about the location thing and if you look closer, you will see, that All on the filter panel changed to Overview - because it's now obviously not "all" if you adjust the filter...

The second screenshot shows the screen for editing a contact. In the statement above I forgot to mention the notes you now can make for every contact. Notes and tags are also displayed on a profile page, if this person is your contact.

(Click on the screenshots to give you a larger version)

As I'm currently at the SG FooCamp in Sebastopol, I had the possibility to directly talk to one of the heads behind Google's SocialGraph API and it really eases some stuff that NoseRub is trying to do in the current development version.

For those who did not hear of this API, here's the link to the project page:
http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/

What it basically does is to give you URLs that are "socially" connected to a given URL. NoseRub can use this for people being able to add any "social" URL as their contact. When someone adds a blogpage of someone as his contact, Google's API is able to return URLs of other social applications like flickr or magnolia. Of course only if on this blog page, there are some XFN enabled links to those accounts. But with the DiSo Project we will probably see more and more of this stuff seeing grow on Wordpress pages. Livejournal and Typepad had that information embedded for quite some time now.

Google's Timing couldn't be better, as I was thinking about how to implement this crawler in NoseRub for quite some time now. So, this is really a time saver for me. And the API is very clean, so I already was able to add is a component to the NoseRub development branch.

In preparation for SG FooCamp at this weekend, Poolie designed some business card, which I just fetched from the print shop, just two blocks away:



I think they look great and I hopefully can get rid of some of them during the FooCamp :-)

(The reddish look is not part of the design...)

From Feb 1st to Feb 3rd, I will attend the SocialGraph Foo Camp on the O'Reilly Campus and look forward on meeting a few interesting people there.

In the meantime, we're working on some new features inside NoseRub, although we currently don't come so well along, as we planned to. Partly this is because I'm currently without internet connection at home, but this will hopefully find an end tomorrow. Yippeah!

We already implemented a nice Set my Location feature and also the beginning of tags for contacts. Like XFN, but you will be able to define your own tags, too. This will only be the beginning, as you also should be able to define privacy features based on this tags.

And we changed the way you can add accounts. We build an auto discovery of services, so you only need to provide an URL to your del.icio.us profile and NoseRub will automatically know what to do with it.

Currently, the privacy features on tag based relationships are the most important things, next to real data portability. That means we hopefully soon will be able to im- and export your complete NoseRub profile.

Stay tuned ;-)