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Recently I read and brainstormed some things about interesting ways of\r\ncreating a decentralised network (social or otherwise).
\r\nTent.io is still coming out on top as having the most\r\npotential for something I could actually implement and build upon. Tent\r\nserver is originally Ruby, but there are already Python and PHP\r\nimplementations. PHP might be the most useful as the mostly widely supported\r\nby cheap shared hosting providers, reducing the barrier for people wanting to\r\nrun their own Tent server. Depot in particular has the\r\ngoal of targeting the technical lowest common denominator, and making\r\ninstallation and maintenance as easy as possible for a non-expert.
\r\nProblems with having nodes of a network, whereby people who don't want to set\r\nup their own node can sign up to someone else's node, include ensuring\r\nconsistent URIs for things. If someone wants to up and move to another node,\r\nwhat are the best ways of maintaining connections? Obviously anyone who buys\r\ntheir own domain name and hooks it up won't have a problem, but not everyone\r\ncan or will. A centralised permanent URI service like\r\nPURL (or just use PURL..)?
\r\nUnhosted and their\r\nremoteStorage protocol are interesting. The idea\r\nis that a user registers with a remoteStorage provider, then signs into\r\nUnhosted apps with that identity. Unhosted apps are all frontend JavaScript,\r\nand no data is sent to a server. Anything that needs to be stored - content\r\nyou creating whilst using the app - is sent to your personal remoteStorage\r\naccount. There are only two remoteStorage providers listed though, and one of\r\nthose is a test one that could get wiped at any time. The other,\r\n5apps.com, doesn't appear to provide an interface for\r\nbrowsing and exporting what you have stored with them. Obviously this is an\r\nearly project, and since anyone with a webserver can theoretically set up a\r\nremoteStorage service, has lots of potential. In the short time I spent\r\ninvestigating, I couldn't work out possibilities for sharing data in your\r\nremoteStorage, so Unhosted apps might just be useful for personal, non-\r\ncollaborative activities. Some examples they have are a simple text/code\r\neditor, a really pretty simple writing interface, to-do lists, time\r\nmanagement, favourite drinks list. Oh wait, friendsunhosted.com is like a\r\ntwitter service. Because I don't know anyone else using friendsUnhosted, I\r\nhaven't tested it properly, but it appears to offer a stream of peoples'\r\nstatuses, which are presumably stored in their personal remoteStorage. I'll\r\ninvestigate better. The mailing list is active and the main developer seems\r\nto be on top of things, so this is something to keep a close eye on.
\r\nIdea: Possible to set up 'remoteStorage' on peoples' own Google Drive accounts, via that API?
\r\nI don't know anything technically about peer-to-peer, but it seemed like a\r\ngood avenue to pursue with regards to very established, very decentralised\r\nnetworks of people and files.
\r\nAt an extreme end of 'owning one's own data', I'm curious about storing all\r\nyour files (eg. linked data graphs) locally and sharing them / accessing other\r\npeoples' only through a browser interface. Drawbacks obviously include your\r\nfiles only being available when you're online.
\r\nI read a handful of good things about the G3 protocol and API used in\r\nFilesWire, by Dreamsoft Technologies. I got really excited for a little\r\nwhile, before reluctantly giving up because the whole project seems to be old\r\nand very dead. I did track down the developer on LinkedIn and facebook, but\r\nI haven't decided yet if it's worth pursuing at all.
\r\nI investigated Freenet, and their freesites.\r\nThe Freenet network is all about anonymity; any data you upload is broken up\r\nand stored on many nodes in the network. You can't identify where it\r\noriginally came from, or where you're pulling something from when you retrieve\r\nit. There were some messages from 2000/2001 on a mailing list about RDF on\r\nFreenet, but nothing seems to have come of that. Requires a software download\r\nof course. Again, I don't know enough about the technicalities yet to judge\r\nif something like this would be a viable approach for a decentralised linked\r\ndata sharing network.
\r\nI also came across (the now deceased) Opera\r\nUnite, which is a webserver running\r\ninside Opera that lets people share files and serve webpages without the\r\nhassle of paying for or setting up their own server.
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