So Long and Thanks for All The Fish

At the end of March Wikidentity will go offline, mere months into its innocent little life. I have been neglecting it, basically since it was launched, which probably has something to do with ADD. Web apps are so fun to develop, and can be so dull to maintain and pay for. Thanks to everyone who gave it a try and sent me positive feedback. Incidentally, if anyone is interested in the code, email me here: bill at wdlindmeier dot com.

So what’s next on the agenda? I’m currently re-writing my blogging software, and I intend to open up the source. More about that should be posted on my blog, Post No Bills.

Laterz!

No More Private Domains

I’ve totally removed private domains from the app, now that there is a background process checking the visibility of each submission. This allows the submitter to toggle the visibility of any submission. I’ve also moved the blocked domains from the (now non-existent) preferences page to the domains page, where it belongs.

Beta—The four letter word

In Beta—the four-letter word of Web 2.0 Caroline McCarthy writes:

To the Web 2.0 crowd: I’d like to have a few words with you.

We’re well into January, and I’m guessing that by now you’ve probably ditched your New Year’s resolutions or, at least, are “reconsidering” their feasibility. Don’t worry because I have a new one for you.

You’re going to get your site out of beta this year.

I know it sounds impossible. You’ve probably come to rely on those four little letters, positioned snugly next to your site’s cerulean-and-pink logo.

That hits pretty close to home. Right down to the logo!

Privacy Checking

There has been some discussion about how to protect the privacy of submitted data to Wikidentity, since the client basically enjoys any access/privileges that the browser has. That sometimes includes private data if the user is logged in. Private domains went part of the way to solving this issue, but I’ve improved my methodology by adding a background process that tries to anonymously download the same hCard that was submitted. If it’s found, the hCard is marked public, otherwise it’s set to private. In some cases a public hCard will be marked private, if the page has transient data, but that’s a small price to pay to preserve the privacy of the data. In the short future, I’ll add the ability for users to toggle the visibility of individual hCards that they’ve submitted.

XFN Linking

I’ve added some support for the XFN microformat to Wikidentity. If you are a user, you can create XFN Relationships between yourself and the “profiles” compiled from hCard data that is submitted. You can add a person to your network from any hCard submission, search result or profile found on Wikidentity. There is a link to view your XFN network from your account page.

Uptime

Servers back up! Woo hoo!

Now users can create their own hCard. Visit your account page to begin.

Downtime

My host (media temple) is refusing database connections at the moment, which seems to be an ongoing problem. So, the webapp is down for the time-being. I’ve filed a ticket, but it may be a day or two before it’s resolved.

On the lighter side, I uploaded an hCard creator today, so users will have the ability to edit and publish their own hCards once we’re back up and running.

iPhone rules!

Search and Account pages

I just made a bunch of updates to the Wikidentity production servers.

First, I’ve ported the search to the webpage, allowing you to search for people without using the client. It’s still pretty rudimentary, but it’s there.

Second, I’ve added a MyAccount section. You can view all of your submissions to Wikidentity, remove submissions, and flag domains. If you’re a FireFox user, there’s also a nifty graph (a la scruffy) that shows your average submission count. More user tools to come…

Remember, it’s all BETA, so let me know if you see any bugs.

Perpetually Bouncing Icons

I just committed a patch which fixes a bug that was causing the flash client to stall as it loaded. If this is happening to you, it should clear up once you empty your cache.

Domain Wildcards et al

The pace of development has been slow over the past few weeks, but I’ve managed to get a few things done:

• Added wildcard domain filtering. For example, “ma.gnolia.com/people/*/tags” is now a transient domain.
• Updated the database structure and some queries to make the privacy layer a bit more efficient.
• Alphabetized hCard results for current page. (Cache clearing may be required).

The “Related” tab is becoming ridiculously slow in some cases, and it isn’t all that relevant in the first place, so I may replace that with XFN data in the coming weeks. I’m also working on some user tools to allow people to view and manage their own submissions.