Re: Needz - a new classified service with federation

Nothing in theory stops Needz being plugged into an existing FSN, indeed in the early days we used status.net then Diaspora to check Salmon was working correctly. As always in software development it's now a case of deciding where we allocate resources to make the most impact, if plugging in to an existing FSN gets to the top we could do it easily enough.

Our search solution is based on open standards (pubsubhubbub) pushing to an open source ElasticSearch instance. The protocol seems to be very suitable for enabling search on an FSN but we don't know of anyone else using it in this way.

Ed


On 6 Sep 2012, at 10:12, Goix Laurent Walter <laurentwalter.goix@telecomitalia.it> wrote:

> I am also very curious about the scenario itself, and in particular on how this could be "plugged" into an existing FSN (if I got the concept)
> 
> Your explanation about the shared search engine also reminds me of an old wish: how to address distributed search in the context of FSN. It seems you have your own solution (could you share some more details about the tech?) and probably peer-to-peer networks have a lot to teach on this, but I am wondering whether someone has already addressed or studied this topic in the context of FSN...
> 
> Cheers
> walter
> 
>> -----Messaggio originale-----
>> Da: Ed Moore [mailto:ed@ocastalabs.com]
>> Inviato: giovedì 6 settembre 2012 10.17
>> A: Michiel de Jong
>> Cc: public-fedsocweb@w3.org
>> Oggetto: Re: Needz - a new classified service with federation
>> 
>> 
>> It's because all nodes push information to be indexed (the Ads) to a shared
>> search engine, then users on all nodes query the shared search to discover
>> offers. For example, if you are on Node A; a search query returns the Coldplay
>> Ad, you then use a standard HTTP call to request the full Ad details from the
>> user database on Node B, then any communication between the two of you takes
>> place using Salmon.
>> 
>> We currently have only one search engine to be shared between all but because
>> of PubSubHubbub it's easy to scale Needz to update multiple search engines if
>> required. Perhaps in future the owner of Node B wants to have their own search
>> engine just for local queries, perfectly feasible.
>> 
>> Regards, Ed
>> 
>> On 6 Sep 2012, at 08:54, Michiel de Jong <michiel@unhosted.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> very interesting!
>>> 
>>> so let me try to understand how this works - suppose i'm selling a
>>> pair of tickets for next week's Coldplay gig. I post it onto node A,
>>> which is the node that i'm on. You are looking for Coldplay tickets,
>>> but you happen to be on node B. How do my ad and your query find each
>>> other? Is there a sort of DHT overlayed over all nodes, where ads are
>>> forwarded to all other nodes, based on keywords?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ciao,
>>> Michiel
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 10:33 PM, Ed Moore <ed@ocastalabs.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I hope people on the list might be curious about a new service we've just
>>>> launched called Needz. It's a classified listing service where anyone can
>>>> list items for sale, items wanted, services offered or free give aways.
>>>> Initially we've released an iOS app for Needz (available here) and it has a
>>>> small web presence here (needz.net).
>>>> 
>>>> Why notify the list? Because Needz has been built with a federated
>>>> architecture, to enable broader distribution. Users can be spread across
>>>> multiple independent domains and we use the OStatus protocols (Salmon,
>>>> WebFinger, ActivityStreams etc) to pass messages and Ad comments between
>>>> accounts. PubSubHubbub is also used to notify the search engine(s) of new
>>>> data to be indexed.
>>>> 
>>>> We've chosen the federated route hopefully for solid business reasons,
>>>> although we're interested in any feedback on this aspect. If you compare
>> the
>>>> large incumbents we're up against such as Criagslist or eBay you can see
>>>> it's not the technology we're competing against but brand awareness and
>>>> scale. Federation should allow companies such as mobile carriers looking to
>>>> offer new services to existing users to deploy a Needz system, hence
>> growing
>>>> their potential revenues while supporting growth of the overall Needz
>>>> Network. If anyone wants to know more, please get in touch.
>>>> 
>>>> Many thanks,
>>>> 
>>>> Ed Moore, Ocasta Labs
>>>> M: ed@ocastalabs.com
>>>> T: +44 7714 242017
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
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