wordpress plugins to connect across installations

[Peter Krautzberger]

Hi,

As I wrote earlier, we recently started a project at http://boolesrings.org.
The idea behind it is to make a case for wordpress as a technology for
homepages of scientists.

We are looking for good plugins that we can either use ourselves or
suggest to people who want to host their own wordpress. Besides
technical tools (such as kcite, mathjax, epub export etc), we're also
looking for tools that can help build connections between different
wordpress installations.

The perfect example for the latter are pingbacks -- they connect
unobtrusively, across different wordpress installations. We don't want
to build yet another fenced-in "social network" (say, using
buddypress) but rather find some elementary tools and best practices
that work wordpress installations. The key for us is the independence
and control of researchers over their content.

So I'm writing here in the hopes that some of you might have good
ideas for plugins that can be used to share and connect information
across wordpress installations, alternatively plugins that can be
'abused' for such purposes.

I have begun a Google doc visible at http://goo.gl/FKnwE in case you
want to take a look.

If you have any suggestions, we'd be very grateful.

Best,
Peter.