We've recently decided to spearhead some open projects that solve some
of the "big picture" problems that we've been having while managing
Commuter Feed. To accomplish this, we've started a wiki at
http://open.zenjiweb.com.

The two big issues we are trying to solve are 1) that Twitter is
unreliable for mission-critical use and needs to be replaced with a
distributed open protocol and 2) that collecting traffic & transit
alert data from multiple sources is not standardized.

#1 is covered in a proposal for an open microblog API protocol, that
is dubbed "Fire Signal": http://open.zenjiweb.com/Fire_Signal . [Yes,
I do know this subject is being approached (with admittedly more
advanced progress) among other communities.] #2 hasn't really been
fleshed out yet. Its also plausible that some of the software that
runs CF may be open sourced here as well as future projects.

The reason I am contacting you, is that you'll notice the wiki is very
sparse. I'm sure each of you may have some insight on each of the
topics covered, notably the Open Microblog protocol.

What I'd really, really appreciate your help with is to either A)
share this with anyone else working on this, to see if they want to
absorb some of the concepts, B) contribute some of your own knowledge
or C) pass this along to anyone you think would be interested.

If you have any comments or thoughts, feel free to share your thoughts
on the google group I created to support it, here:
http://groups.google.com/group/zenji-open-projects

It would really make my day if you can contribute anything or pass it
along.

Thanks!
Ron (CF Admin)