I’ve uploaded OpenMB v.01 to http://code.google.com/p/omb/downloads/list.  I call this release “Dracula” because the code is still pretty scary.  Once again, it is not secure, however, the polling feature is working well.  I’ve been exchanging messages with myself between two separate instances.

The folks at Automattic have released a very cool theme for WordPress called Prologue.  The theme allows you to exchange Twitter-like messages with users of the same WordPress site.  I’m a big fan of WordPress, and although I borrow heavily from the WordPress architecture, I wanted to keep OpenMB separate from the WordPress codeline.  I didn’t want to force potential users of OpenMB to install WordPress.  I may still try to create a plugin for the Prologue theme that uses the OpenMB concepts, but there are only so many things that I can work on at one time.

A few highly respected developers have visited the OpenMB demo and given it a try.  I’m honored that they took the time to look around.  I’m still a force of one on this project, but I’m hoping that eventually this effort will be wrapped into a larger one or someone will give me a hand.

DiSo – http://groups.google.com/group/diso-project – I’ve been trying to keep up with DiSo, but I’m currently failing miserable.  Too many things trying to grab my attention.  I think DiSo is an important project and something to keep an eye on for future innovations.

 

Polling Process Outline

• From local instance, attempt to GET updates from remote OpenMB address. 
  • Write request signature to local signature table.
  • Include “from” and “last_update” in request.
• Remote OpenMB will verify the request by posting the request signature back to the requestor.  Requestor will respond with ok or fail.
• Remote OpenMB will check the “last_update” datetime against the latest post.  If there haven’t been any posts since the “last_update” then a quick response is generated and the process ends.
• If verification is successful and updates exist, Remote OpenMB checks for private updates.  If the “from” address is a friend, then private messages will be returned.  Otherwise, only public messages will be returned.
• The requestor will receive updates via an RSS feed and will post those messages to the local database.  The messages are then available for viewing in the local instance.
• Every message across all OpenMB systems are unique.  This GUID is included in the RSS feed and is used as a key for each post.

 

I’m now getting to that fuzzy area in every project.  What’s the most important feature to fine-tune?  There are a few other projects that I’m working on, so this may stagnate for a little bit.  I’ll be trying to get others to join me and even have one of my buddies install his own instance.