It looks like it is a framework for pulling together information stored by a lot of different apps and networks. You can then use that information in different ways.

Even though it just has contacts now I could imagine it getting much more advanced. Something like "Have I already visited the top links today shared by my friends?" could be another interesting starting point.

It will be interesting to see if something like this can gain traction.

There is not really much there yet, but the idea seems to be aggregate all your information related to interaction/social-networking/communication in one place. One place under _your_ control. That's feature number one.

Then, it could present this information in a way that is actually comprehensible by mere humans. Keeping track of contacts/addresses/events/news/photos/videos/conversations spread up between Facebook/Hacker News/lesswrong/Flickr/YouTube/LinkedIn/blablablablabla is not easy.

It may be of much less interest to you if you like to just forget about what you've done in the past (as it is practically done outside the digital world). Or if you do have an actually working sync-solution cross all your communications means.

Besides having a better overview of my digital self through this, I think I'd use it to come back and convince myself regularly that yes, I also have said so immensely stupid things in the past.

I think it is a great idea -- but to make it useful, it requires a tremendous amount of work.

I'm not sure where all of this is going to end up, but to me it reads like a rehash of the thick/thin client see-saws that the market has been supporting since the dawn of client-server computing. Where personal information is both stored and contributed will be a big implementation choice as more people generate content about themselves on the Internet.

I believe this is a decentralized social media platform - "Diaspora" but by someone who knows what they are doing.

Why do you say that the author knows what he's doing? If your statement is based his work on Jabber (now called XMPP), then I am somewhat concerned. Several design decisions make Jabber difficult to implement with no benefit to the use cases. My previous comments about Jabber design decisions are here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2071652

> Why do you say that the author knows what he's doing?

Jeremie Miller wrote a popular open source IM server and created a specification for the protocol which has been widely implemented in several different languages (Erlang, C, Python to name a few) for both client and server.

Many of the functions solved by XMPP (instant messaging, presence, federation) fit nicely into the distributed social network problem domain.

So that's why I have confidence that he knows what he's doing. Nits like "I don't like different XML namespaces" more or less miss the forest for the trees.

I agree that my previous rant was about nits, but these nits add up and act as a barrier to entry to development in the space.

You mention that XMPP is widely implemented on the server, but only a few of the implementations are actually any good. To make matters worse, some of the best server implementations are written in fringe languages (Erlang for example).

I think that XMPP would be more successful if it had been more developer friendly.

Have you looked at telehash (http://www.telehash.org), a much more recent project by the same guy?

I'm impressed by how elegant the protocol is. I hate XMPP, but telehash gives me faith.

XMPP? Knows what they are doing?

Does not compute.

Using document markup as a packet based message protocol is just perverse.

These type of comments are pointless. If you have a point to make then make it.

I think the protocol is actually quite nice, I have an aversion to anything XML but that's just a personal preference. Have you used it in development? It works quite well... I know it sucks for binary data but that's not what it's designed for.

edit: I made my comment before axod edited in the last line "Using document markup as a packet based message protocol is just perverse." I somewhat agree with his point so ignore my reply.

Yes I've written XMPP libs at the base level. It's mental. There's 15 hoops to jump through just to say "hello!", forms must be filled out in triplicate, several nested stanzas must be entered into. It's absolutely ridiculous at the protocol level.

I agree it's probably pointless, but I find it odd that XMPP is now apparently 'cool'. I thought it was commonly thought to be an abomination of the highest order.

deal with it, it's established at the RFC level so at this point I'd prefer XMPP to <insert proprietary protocol here>

Agree. The phrase "from the creator of XMPP" never fails to make me cringe, for a variety of reasons.

It's a tribute to the simplicity of IRC that you can write a channel logging bot in like 20 lines of shell (https://github.com/acg/logbot).

Come on, some credit is due.. XMPP protocol is in production all over the place.

Windows is in production all over the place.

Cobol is in production all over the place.

Autocracy... okay, there was that whole Egypt thing, but you get the idea.

I believe it's a self-hosted mashup application for all your social networks. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think it's a pretty neat idea, although most normal people are only connected to 1 or 2 social networks. I myself connect to Facebook for friends and family, and LinkedIn for professional contacts. I don't see the point of sharing personal stuff on LinkedIn too.

-update- From the looks of it, Locker only supports Facebook right now...

Imagine if an open source toolkit allowed you to connect yourself with other wordpress (or whatever) users with all the usual facebook type widgets. Would you use facebook at all?

That investment that Goldman made in Facebook will ultimately prove to be one of the more boneheaded investments in recent times. Just my prediction.

A bit more information is available here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/creator_of_instant_mess...