[Catalyst] Google Summer of Code

[Matt Pitts]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kieren Diment [mailto:diment at gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 8:00 AM
> To: The elegant MVC web framework
> Subject: [Catalyst] Google Summer of Code
> 
> So, it's that time again.
> 
> I had a thought about this.  I quite like some things about
> facebook.   It's a useful way for me to be able to communicate with
> people I've known since before I left school. But there are two
> things that really irritate me about it, these are:
> 
> * Closed single platform with one vendor in control of my data
> * They make me visit their website, and have pretty piss poor support
> for rss.
> 
> Sooo, I thought that it would be interesting to produce a Simple
> Social Network Comminication Protocol.  Essentially gluing existing
> stuff together like OpenID, FOAF, Various levels of access control,
> REST and the like to produce a distributed social networking system.
> That is a web or web-service server to provide a social network for a
> group, but that can also communicate with other SSNCP servers to
> provide a distributed social network system.
> 
> So, I reckon this would be a two year process.  Year one would be
> writing the spec and getting the bits and pieces gathered together
> and functioning properly on the workshop floor.  Year two would
> involve lots of welding, duct tape and hot glue to get the package
> together.  In year one, the benifit for catalyst is that lots of our
> bits and pieces get a nice oil and polish.  In year two we get a
> product with a lot of potential to be influential on the applications
> scene (rather than the architecture scene).
> 
> Any students out there who are up for applying for this?

I'm far from being a student, so I couldn't participate via SOC, but I
did start to write an all-encompassing library to access Google's GData
API a while back for a social networking site that I wanted to launch. I
didn't get very far into the project before life took over, but I'd
enjoy getting involved in something like that again.

Add me to your list of interested folks.

v/r

-matt pitts