Weekly progress #17: Unhosted CouchDb

[Michiel de Jong]

Hi!

This week I set up my unhosted storage on CouchDb. It is not compliant with the current spec (http://unhosted.org/spec/dav/0.1), but it is for a subset that is big enough to be functional.

This triggers the discussion about what the next version of the spec should look like. I think we should bring the spec down to its bare minimum of required features, so that a maximum number of services can be used to implement it. Full report of the learning curve that was involved in installing CouchDb and using it to save MyFavouriteSandwich sandwich ingredients is here: http://dogfood.unhosted.org/

In other news:

- Jack wrote a really cool ToDo app, which I'm now using in production myself, to maintain my own ToDo list. I'll leave it to him to publicly announce it. :)

- StatusNet have accepted Flyingmana's patch for cross-origin webfinger. This means unhosted web apps will soon be able to read the webfinger identities of diaspora, wordpress, and statusnet users.

I will soon update the website with all the latest insights, so that people who haven't followed this mailing list regularly, can just visit our website and know what's going on, and what we're about. I hope to integrate the website, wiki and dogfood blog all into one editable website whose content is itself unhosted. I think an important part of the content at this point should be HowTo documents that explain how to make different types of unhosted web apps and set up different types of storage nodes.

I have also been drafting a more powerful client-side library that adds "asynchronous synchronization" to html5 web storage ("localStorage"). That way you can easily design an in-browser app that uses localStorage, and sync it to your unhosted storage whenever you have connectivity.

Until those two things are ready, the SDK that's currently on the website is still the route to go by if you want to get started - but do come to the IRC channel (#unhosted on freenode) if you have any questions about how to do stuff.

Cheers!

Michiel

[Thad Guidry]

- StatusNet have accepted Flyingmana's patch for cross-origin webfinger. This means unhosted web apps will soon be able to read the webfinger identities of diaspora, wordpress, and statusnet users.

This will certainly help keep momentum going.

 

 

I have also been drafting a more powerful client-side library that adds "asynchronous synchronization" to html5 web storage ("localStorage"). That way you can easily design an in-browser app that uses localStorage, and sync it to your unhosted storage whenever you have connectivity.

Hey, look at that, my donation is already paying off ! ;)

Keep up the great work Michiel and team, a lot of bets and helpful folks are waiting in the touchdown zone once you get there.

--
-Thad
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/thad_guidry

[Michael Aufreiter]

Just for inspiration:

I also did some groundwork on offline sync. See http://substance.io/michael/offline-applications-with-datajs

[Michiel de Jong]

great! let's unhost it. :)  should be as easy as making data.js get the url for your remote storage from your user address instead of from one config file that is the same for everyone, and adding an oauth dance. If the user doesn't have their own remote storage, the app can still offer a default fallback of one centralized CouchDb instance, hosted by the app provider. with the option to migrate away later.

this is a good test case, too!

On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 2:28 AM, Michael Aufreiter <m...@zive.at> wrote:

Just for inspiration:

I also did some groundwork on offline sync. See http://substance.io/michael/offline-applications-with-datajs

 

Thank you for publishing https://github.com/michael/data as free software! That will allow us to benefit from all the groundwork you did. I'll probably have more questions for you as i dig in.

Cheers!

Michiel

[Michael Aufreiter]

Yeah. Feel free to catch my on GTalk (ma[at]zive[dot]at).

Eventually, and that's a bigger deal, I'd like to have Substance.io unhosted, which is backed by Data.js as well.

Until now, I'm working on the core, which is essentially a web-based document editor. However eventually Substance isn't intended to be just an editor (we have those already... Google Docs et al.) but an open publishing platform allowing authors to get read by the right audience, while ensuring readers get what they need and nothing they don't. That's in anticipation of the information overload problem ;) 

Okay and there's this one major demand in the long run. Privacy & Anti-censorship. Thus, Documents should get unhosted. :)

-- Michael

[Michiel de Jong]

Great! I'll get some lunch first, and ping you in the afternoon. Let's unhost substance.io! :)