Where to discuss the Coop

You can discuss the Coop here, but you'll probably get more response if you post in the Labs forum on the Coop.

A late night IRC chat with vlad ...

... in which our hero proposes that we use XMPP as a data transport mechanism, and then also mentioned how that sort of generic infrastructure could be really useful for a lot of other extensions as well.

02:38 <beltzner> https://intranet.mozilla.org/Labs:SocialProject
02:41 <vlad> reading
02:43 <vlad> I would toss some IM in there, honestly
02:43 <vlad> even if it's not real IM
02:44 <beltzner> like, gtalk?
02:44 <vlad> you could -greatly- simplify the entire thing by saying that all
             coop users create an at the henhouse
02:44 <vlad> which would provide an xmpp service
02:44 <beltzner> hm
02:44 <vlad> but you wouldn't let them use that for general talk
02:44 <beltzner> (do you like the chicken coop metaphor?)
02:44 <vlad> you'd use that to communicate between the coops
02:44 <vlad> er, between chickens
02:44 <vlad> so you don't have to futz with delicious etc.
02:44 <vlad> since you can send chunks of xml through xmpp
02:44 <vlad> and process it intelligently and stuff
02:45 <beltzner> yeah, you want to add a bullet to implementation notes? I'm
                 done with that section .. :)
02:45 <vlad> hm
02:45 <vlad> this Yahoo! section
02:45 <vlad> is this a moz project or a yahoo project?
02:45 <beltzner> is for baz, 'cause he's meeting with a friend at Y! and wants
                 to see if there's synergy
02:49 <vlad> oh.
02:49 <vlad> yeah, other than "we'll let you pass flickr and delicious stuff 
             around" I don't see much synergy
02:49 <vlad> I mean, the plumbing could be provided by yahoo
02:50 <vlad> but I'd rather see this thing support other stuff, and not purely 
             yahoo services
02:50 <beltzner> yup, agreed
02:50 <vlad> this would be a great lead-in for .moz
02:51 <beltzner> definitely
02:51 <vlad> basically a generic platform to tie users together
02:51 <vlad> and let people build collaborative stuff without needing to do all
             sorts of server crap
02:51 <beltzner> collaborative how?
02:51 <beltzner> like, comment/annotate?
02:51 <vlad> multi-user collaborative
02:52 <vlad> sure, but more than that
02:52 *** beltzner is tired, and likely missing nuance :)
02:52 <vlad> anything that involves "users" and "communication between users"
02:52 <vlad> like give an easy way for extensions to find out who your friends
             are
02:52 <vlad> and to communicate with your friends that are using the same
             extension
02:52 <vlad> so if you and I are on .moz
02:52 <vlad> and we install Frobulator, and we're friends
02:53 <vlad> We both tell firefox that Frobulator can access our .moz
02:53 <beltzner> oh, huh, cool
02:53 <vlad> and then our Frobulators can talk to eachother
02:53 <vlad> when we're online
02:53 <vlad> I just came up with this, mind you
02:53 <vlad> but, uh, it sounds pretty awesome
02:53 <beltzner> and this basically enables extensions to do fun things like
                 online gaming, sketching, etc
02:53 <beltzner> yeah, it *does* sound pretty awesome
02:53 <vlad> yeah, but even way beyond that
02:53 <vlad> like for example that meebo or whatever it was thing, the stalking  
             thing
02:53 <beltzner> me.dium, yeah
02:54 <vlad> that thing :)
02:54 <vlad> could be done as purely an extension on top of .moz
02:54 <vlad> well, maybe not entirely
02:54 <vlad> the stalking part could be ;)
02:55 <beltzner> so, we can't be the first people to have thought of a service 
                 aggregator
02:55 <beltzner> I guess blizzard's thing is sorta like this, too
02:55 <vlad> yeah, I don't think it's an aggregator though
02:55 <beltzner> but we have the advantage of being able to tie it in tightly 
                 with the browser itself
02:55 <vlad> like the best example really is xbox live
02:55 <vlad> but you don't have a 360 :)
02:56 <vlad> and nintendo's friends thing isn't quite what I'm thinking of, 
             since they don't do much with it
02:56 <beltzner> I've seen 360 live
02:56 <vlad> it's a way to offer extensions a bunch of infrastructure that they
             don't have to replicate
02:56 <vlad> and instead can focus on the cool parts of their extension
02:56 <beltzner> or at least, the "see what my friends are playing, what their 
                 high scores are, if they're online playing the game I'm
                 playing"
02:56 <beltzner> is there more than that?
02:57 <vlad> the games all use xbox live to do multiplayer
02:57 <beltzner> right
02:57 <beltzner> so we'd offer similar online presence infra to extensions?
02:57 <beltzner> and data connection primitives?
02:57 <vlad> but they get all the stuff like "who are you" "global high scores" 
             "who are your friends" "which friends are online" etc. for free
02:57 <vlad> yeah
02:58 <vlad> hm
02:58 <vlad> I'm pretty tired, but we should sketch this out tomorrow or 
             something
02:59 <beltzner> I am going to dump this chat right into the talk page, too
02:59 <vlad> k

comment from karanmg

What if there was another way of achieving what you want here? An external program that works with Firefox? It will be capable of having a lot more functionality, won't it?

comment from Canarsie

I hope you inclice more than entertainment as a socializing reason. Catagorizing ourselves by reason for joining helps.Find specific others is essential. Also instantly talk via chat or voip is nice...Another platform for yahoo-like groups we already got.MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Me.dium, comment from jvaleski

Coop's looking pretty cool so far. Sharing is obviously a key piece of being online; always has been. There are better ways than "File->Send Link..."

How me.dium was referenced above is unfortunate. We, me.dium, flew out to Moz a few months ago to walk about a dozen moz developers/folks through our model and idea. Too bad vlad wasn't able to attend, I think he would have gotten a much better picture of what we're trying to do. There are plenty of reviews out there on me.dium, so searching for me.dium will get you those. We've linked to some of them at our site: http://me.dium.com/media .

As for the XMPP comments above, me.dium went this route, and would obviously therefore agree it's a good way to go :-). http://www.virtual-presence.org/news.html?Title=me.dium_Beta

I'd also note that we have built, by far, the coolest Ajax UI I've seen to date; everyone assumes we built it in Flash. Building a real-time map of the internet (not to be confused w/ an index; e.g. search engines) has the added benefit of getting to build UI to reflect it!

We're still in private Beta, but anyone who wants to judge for themselves, what we're up to, check it out at http://me.dium.com/from/1bdfda/ . You will be "auto-friended" to me in the process, so you have a "friend" in the system.

Dai.sy

http://dai.sy

Coop Community, you ROCK!! Very excited to see what you produce and even more excited to help. Our goal is to see Dai.sy mature into a beautiful young Add-On within the land of FireFox. We and a growing number of users are quite happy with what the Mozilla platform has allowed us to do and very much welcome the opportunity to support Coop in any way. Keep churning out the great ideas and let us know where we may help (info at mayopi.com) - Federico ViCaDi | Dai.sy Creator

Dai.sy allows Instant peer2peer Meeting, File Sharing and Blogging between you and anyone else visiting the same site, without the need to sign-Up or become a member. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3293

• Dai.sy also works with Flock and we plan on releasing a SongBird version very soon.