Tag: udell

Redecentralize this…

Nurri-network

Adewale once said  (I wouldn’t be surprised if he gives me a kick next time he sees me, but I think this quote sums up so much. And its only the start of the smart things he thinks and talks about)

People’s enthusiasm for federated decentralised $WHATEVER seems inversely proportional to the practicality of their plan for achieving it

However a share I recently was tagged on to revealed Jon Udells post and a giant list of projects trying to solve the problem decentralised social networking.

Going under the notion of the Alternative Internet, there are some quite interesting projects including…

Ampify is an open source, decentralised, social platform. It is intended as a successor to the Open Web and as a replacement for closed platforms like iOS and Facebook by providing a web application framework to create social apps on top of a secure, decentralised core.

ClearSkies is a peer-to-peer file sync program. It is inspired by BitTorrent Sync, but has an open and fully-documented protocol. ClearSkies is a sync program similar to DropBox, The protocol is layered in such a way that other applications can take advantage of it for purposes other than file sync.

Movim is a decentralized open source social network based on XMPP.

Peerm Anonymous P2P inside browsers, no installation, encrypted and secure. The browsers are talking the Tor protocol extended to P2P and are connecting to the nodes using WebSockets, multi-sources and streaming are supported.

Trovebox community edition. Wrote about this many times but didn’t know there was a community edition too.

Twister is a secure and fully-decentralized P2P microblogging platform based on concepts and code from Bitcoin and Libtorrent (as described in this whitepaper).

pump.io Self described as “a stream server that does most of what people really want from a social network”. It’s a social stream with support for federated comunication.

trsst looks and feels like twitter but encrypted and anonymized and decentralized and only you hold the keys.

Plenty of cool projects but very little traction unfortunately, however theres quite a few which can be used to connect to the centralised networks. Looking at the list, I’m left wondering if Diaspora*, Wave and  Tent has gone through the trough of disillusion and might be coming out the other end? A while ago I thought WordPress was going to make moves in this area of decentralised social networking.

Goodbye IT Conversations…

IT Conversations has ceased producing podcats

Since it’s inception, IT Conversations has published over 3300 audio programs. After ten years of operation and six years with me at the helm, all that is coming to an end. Those of us involved in the day-to-day operation and management of the site have decided that IT Conversations has run its course. We will continue to publish shows until around December 1, 2012. We’re going to get the very best of what’s left in the queue out the door before we turn out the lights. You can read Doug Kaye’s announcement and more of my thoughts.

Our goal has always been to publish good, quality shows that will stand the test of time and we’ve always envisioned them being around for a long time. I’m happy to report that the shows we’ve published will continue to be available through an agreement with the Internet Archive. We appreciate your support over the years.

Its a sad day and its fitting for IT conversations to go out with a podcast.

When Doug Kaye created IT Conversations in 2003, most people didn’t know what a podcast was and why they should care. Yet the idea spread and today, all kinds of people and organizations regularly release content to people throughout the world. Doug joins Phil Windley to bid farewell to the Conversations Network. They discuss the background of why Doug chose to be a podcast pioneer and how the network helped revolutionize a new way to distribute interesting content.

ITC and the conversation network was simply amazing and I even got a interview from Jon Udell in the past on to the network along with a early Thinking Digital session.

It will be a shame to see it go and passing all the media on to archive.org makes so much sense, you couldn’t have wished for a better solution. If only all sites would consider something like this when shutting down… I even considered joining Team ITC at one point way back when I was working for the BBC WorldService in 2004. Not for the money, but just because I wanted to help as I was getting so much out of each and every podcast. On top of that, ITC model was what I recommended the BBC should do way back in the early days of BBC podcasts.

Recently I have to say I’ve not listened to a ITC podcast for a while and when I did I tended to skip through it as it was usually not so interesting. I use to spend Sunday evenings listening to them in one go while reading and blogging that got replaced with TED talks. But its worth mentioning ITC bringing PopTech to my brain for the first time. Way before TED had even consider videos, PopTech was making there recordings available via ITC and frankly I was blown away. It might be why I still have a love for PopTech deep down.

IT Conversations brought all these great things to me and anyone who wanted to subscribe or listen.

DougKaye I have nothing but joy and respect for what you created and your decision to stop it and transfer the media. Total respect for everything you’ve done over years… And thanks for feeding my mind with the best of the best. Don’t know how you did it but so glad you did! I know you inspired many of us including the likes of Leo Laporte of the Twit network. You were an inspiration to many… You can hold your head up high forever more…