Posted by email from kshep (posterous)

Generally, I’d describe a “microblogging platform” as a system that allows someone to share short messages with one or more of their online contacts or broadcast to the public. These messages, when grouped by theme or topic, make up “threads” or conversations. They can also be searched, forwarded, replied to, etc. They’re either little nuggets of our witty and insightful thinking that we want to share with others, or they’re information like “I’m out of beans.”

Twitter

I am mad at Twitter. (To the person I know who works for Twitter, I’m not mad at you. Honest.) I think I’ll leave it at that.

The Answer to Your Prayers

In response to Twitter’s recent issues, many have suggested we need some sort of open, decentralized Twitter-like microblogging network. Dave Winer, for one, has written extensively on the subject. Steve Gillmor, Marc Canter, et al have also discussed some sort of “Plan B”. That conversation has fragmented out over the web and generated some very interesting technical discussions.

Unfortunately, I don’t really enjoy trying to track down and wade through other people’s posts, technical specs, and standards documents. For example, I’d hate to have to read both the OpenMicrobloggingProtocol specification and the Microblogging over XMPP specification and try to figure out how they each work, let alone which is better. So rather than try to address anyone else’s specific points or aggregate all that wisdom and all those differing opinions into some consensus, I thought it would be best to propose a new standard that should pretty much cover everything.

Before I continue, I’ll give you a chance to go check FriendFeed, Google Reader, Twitter, and your email since this isn’t a quick little 30 second comment wrapped around someone else’s article. You might have to set aside a solid five minutes for this. Alright, ready to settle in? Here we go…

Simple Microblogging Transport Protocol (SMTP)

[Note:  I’d originally considered calling this the “Sheppardson Microblogging Transport Protocol” but that seemed a bit too… well… long. Plus I expect lots of folks would misspell my name.]

Unique User Address

We’re going to be building a global distributed system here, so each user will need some sort of SMTP ID that’s good across all the nodes that make up the SMTP network. This is really an address, of sorts, that points to our microblogging “home” node on the web. Our home node is where we usually post and read our microblogging content. If someone wants to direct a message to us, they can send it to the place specified by our SMTP ID. A reader can tell who posted a particular microblog message by examining the author’s SMTP ID.

I propose we use the convention of username (e.g. kshep) followed by the address of the SMTP system on which that users lives (in my case, kshep.net). Let’s string those together, perhaps separated by a special character of some sort, to form a unique address for each user. I’d suggest either a # or a %, e.g. “kshep#kshep.net” or perhaps “kshep%kshep.net”.

Message Content Type & Size

Users will probably want to publish and consume microblog content on a wide variety of devices, so let’s limit content to text. If a user wants to reference a picture or a mixed media document of some sort, I’m sure someone else can come up with some sort of standard for a short (tiny, even) text string that we could insert into a message that will tell us where that document is located on the network. Many users seem to enjoy microblogging to and from their cell phones so let’s say the messages can be no more than 140 characters long, which is apparently the longest message cell phones can display unless it’s 160 characters.

User Interface

It’s likely that users will want to both generate and consume SMTP messages on a variety of devices, so it’s important that we support a variety of use cases and UI layouts. We’re more concerned with the development of the SMTP protocol at this point, so it’s probably not necessary to delve into the UI design too much. However it’s worth noting that we’ll want to support posting/reading in the web browser, cell phone, and perhaps even desktop clients of some sort.

Message Storage, Archiving & Search

Much of the criticism of existing microblogging architectures has been directed at their reliance on relational database systems, and some critics have proposed a file system based approach for the next generation of services. For example, a directory could be created for each user on an SMTP server and microblog messages could be stored as text in this directory. This would facilitate not just indexing and data mining techniques, but rendering this stream of microblog messages in the UI wouldn’t require expensive DB access. Luckily we’re dealing with very small messages here, relative to all the streaming media usually carried across the internet, so the bandwidth and storage requirements probably aren’t that taxing.

Let the Games Begin

As you can see, I haven’t thought this out completely yet. It’s probably 60% baked at this point. I’d encourage you to leave comments, ask questions, and raise issues. For example, it’s not quite clear to me how you’d send an SMTP message to everyone on a particular server, or what you’d do with a message intended for someone on a remote server if that server is down, or how you’d make sure the person sending you a message is who she says she is.

Also, in order to get Steve Gillmor on board (and I do honestly hope he comes on board. Seriously.) we need to figure out how to get track to work. This means each SMTP server will probably need to examine and filter messages based on their content and route those messages accordingly. Again, this is an important area for further discussion and investigation.

I do have one request: Please limit your conversation on the new SMTP specification to the comments here on this post, as I want everyone to realize this was my idea. Thanks in advance.

—

From: k…@aimnet.com (Ken Sheppardson)
Subject: Diary of a New Aimnet Insti.ca Subscriber and an Idea
Date: 1995/11/30 2008/07/03
Message-ID: <49jabf$hj1@news2.aimnet.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 120577770
organization: Aimnet Insti.ca Information Services
reply-to: k…@aimnet.com
newsgroups: aimnet.general,ba.internet

Well I’m in my second week day as an Aimnet Insti.ca subscriber. I’m not impressed yet.

Tonight once again I’m unable to call into their Belmon POP get my XMPP account connected. (Only the second time, which puts this problem relatively low on my list.) It keeps rejecting my login, so I’m in through SF Jaiku again. No answer on the first call, but I’m in on the second. What’s wrong with Belmont Insti.ca I wonder. No explanation in aimnet.announce on Lucindi.ca or any other aimnet group FriendFeed room. It seems the support staff doesn’t read (or at least doesn’t post to) their own groups corporate site.

It’s been five or ten times now that I’ve seen the "Server does not have a DNS entry" message from Netscape Firefox when I try to access http://www.aimnet.com www.identi.ca. Strange that their own name server doesn’t have an entry for their web server. Ah…there it goes. In general I seem to be batting 30% or so in hitting outside sites on the first try. What’s wrong with the DNS server, I wonder.

It only takes 45-60 seconds for my home page to come up when I try http://www.aimnet.com/~kens, http://identi.ca/kshep although it comes up pretty much instantaneously when I try users.aimnet.com. Why so long
to redirect?

Many problems. I’d suggest people stay away at this point. Of course I don’t know if this is typical in the bay area or not. I’ve certainly had more problems than I did with my previous provider: Msen, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Jaiku, now part of Google msen.com � of course they had their share of problems too…this certainly isn’t an ad for them)

If there’s anybody out there looking to provide a great service to the Internet community, I’ve got an idea for you: Get an account with every ISP Twitter clone you can find. At regular intervals try to log into each, check mail, read news, check web pages, check the number of entries in passwd files, check disk usage %s on /usr volumes, then compile stats on problems, busy signals, etc. Put it all together in a monthly newsletter (real paper even) and sell it in area bookstores, computer stores, coffee shops, and anywhere else you can think of. give it away on your blog. I, for one, would pay somebody $10 or so right this second for a
current copy. leave you a comment.

Whadya think?

One very handy but somewhat hidden feature of FriendFeed is the “Imaginary Friend”.

This feature allows you to add a contact with one or more associated feeds for individuals who don’t yet have a FriendFeed account. It’s also handy for bringing feeds from other services into your FF flow. For example, you can create an Imaginary Friend corresponding to a service like Summize, then add feeds for the different searches you’d like to monitor. In other words, you can reconstruct the Twitter “track” feature and have the results appear directly in FriendFeed.

To show you an example, let’s just suppose the Twitter “Replies” tab is disabled and you’ve sworn off Twitter until track and IM come back online, but you don’t want to miss messages addressed to you in Twitter. Your Imaginary Friend Summize rides to the rescue:

Step 1 – Generate a feed URL on Summize

First head off to Summize and perform whatever search you’d like to save. The advanced search features are VERY handy, and let you do things like search for all mentions of your Twitter ID that aren’t in messages from you. For me, that search string is “kshep -from:kshep”.  Once you’ve performed that search you’ll find a link in the upper right corner of the results page with the URL for your query. Right-click on the link and copy the link for future use.

Step 2 – Create your Imaginary Friend

Next, over on FriendFeed go to the “friend settings” tab, choose “imaginary” from the top nav bar, and enter the name of your new friend. Once you’ve created this friend, you can add services associated with the friend just as you would add feeds to your own account. In this case we’ll pretend the Summize search feed is just a blog. Go ahead and click on the “Blog” link and enter the URL you generated in Step 1. If you’d like, you can add multiple feeds to the Summize friend, one for every “track”-style search you’d like to perform. Of course there’s some latency in this approach that you don’t have to deal with when you’re using the Twitter track feature, but with the track feature offline for the foreseeable future and more and more users splitting their time between the two services, sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

After installing several of the FriendFeed Greasemonkey scripts over at Internet Duct Tape, I finally broke down and wrote my own. This script updates all the links in the body of the page so that they open in a “content” window, rather than window where the FriendFeed page appears.

Rather than duplicate a full tutorial on Greasemonkey and FriendFeed, I’d suggest you check out the tutorial on Internet Duct Tape. Once you’ve done that, you should be able to follow the link below to install the “Target Window” script.

[ FriendFeed Target Window Script ]

It appears it’s about time for a “code freeze” of sorts: That’s it. No more new systems. No more changes. It’s time to actually make music, take pictures, and write.

	Avery Clear Binder Pockets (75423) come five to a pack. A pack is just over $3 including tax at any of the big three office supply houses (Office Depot, Office Max, or Staples)
	First, cut the lower right corner from the binder pocket. The sealed length on the side opposite the holes will become the bottom of the card holder. You can cut a rough blank that’s 7 inches or so by 5.5 or 6 and trim it down to size.
	The left side of the rough blank is the original fold in the pocket. The top is open, and the bottom is the sealed section.
	Cut back along the sealed seam on the bottom leaving just over 3 inches intact, then cut the flap off (Just the upper layer, that is).
	Stick as many cards as you’re likely to carry in the pocket as a guide, then fold the cover flap over. You’ll need to crease the cover fold firmly, but as hard as you might crease it, it will likely take several days before the cover sits flat.
	The holder on the left has bounced around from shirt pocket to pants pocket to computer bag and back for the better part of six months. The holder on the right is new.

Public WithEvents SentItems As Outlook.Items
Private Sub Application_Startup()
    Set SentItems = _
Outlook.Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderSentMail).Items
End Sub
Private Sub Application_Quit()
    Set SentItems = Nothing
End Sub
Private Sub SentItems_ItemAdd(ByVal Item As Object)
    Item.Move _
Outlook.Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
End Sub

Google SketchUp–great name, huh?–is a completely separate application from regular ol’ SketchUp 5, which we’ve renamed–get ready for this–SketchUp Pro 5. The free version can be downloaded for $6000 (just wanted to see if you were paying attention) can be downloaded for FREE from Google. It’s perfect for people who love SketchUp but who can’t justify the price of SketchUp Pro. Do-it-yourself kitchen remodelers, backyard rocket builders, basement model train obsessives; Google SketchUp will let just about everyone build and show off their creations in 3D. I think it’s a great day for 3D nerds everywhere, and I mean that in the best possible way.

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Well, Plaxo has finally announced that they�ve harassed enough people into joining and won�t be making it quite so easy to for users to spam their entire address book. The words they chose certainly tell us that, at least internally, they fully knew how miserable they were making all of us�

– TechCrunch � Plaxo: Now With Less Evil

Beyond Compare is a powerful time-saving utility for comparing files and folders on your Windows system.

Use it to manage source code, keep folders in sync, compare program output, and validate copies of your data. Beyond Compare can create a snapshot of a live directory structure, and compare it against the live copy at a later date.

Beyond Compare helps you analyze differences in detail and carefully reconcile them. It commands a wide range of file and text operations, as well as script commands for automating tasks.

– http://www.scootersoftware.com/moreinfo.php

I’ve used BC for years, and I use it almost every day. Not only is it the best tool I’ve found for synchronizing files from my laptop or desktop PC to various servers, but it’s even saved me when I had to replace a bad hard drive and selectively copy the contents of the old drive over to the new one. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

In 2001 Google acquired Deja.com (aka DejaNews). When they did so they brought online and indexed Deja’s entire USENET archive, dating back to 1981. It turns out that archive contained pretty much everything I’d ever written online. It’s more than a little strange and just a bit embarassing to have nearly twenty years of material suddenly surface when you’d assumed it had all floated off into electronic space long ago. I won’t make that mistake again.

To anyone reading this blog in 2026, please ignore everything I wrote from 1986 to 2005 or so. I had no idea what I was talking about.