Soashable Web Application

IP Chat

It stems from the very first application I made beyond my "AOL Proggie" days (~1999)--an IP chat application. It was simple, you typed in the IP address of a friend's computer who was running the application, and it would connect and open a chat window. Eventually I added Rich Text and the ability for many people to connect to a single computer.

LoopyTOC

After that, I decided that a stand-alone, centralized server would be the way to go to avoid any confusion about what an "IP Address" is from my friends and their friends. I was armed with new knowledge of AOL's open TOC (Text to Oscar) protocol, and decided I would make my client use the AOL network. I carried on development and eventually released an ActivceX control called LoopyTOC, around the same time as another fellow by the name of "dos" released a TOC client that went on to win Planet Source Code's code of the month award. The timing led to accusations that I stole his code (I didn't), and me eventually being 'booed' off of Planet Source Code--the issue was cleared up with the other programmer, as I sent him my source code to examine the differences.

COSMACS

With TOC behind me, I started a new server that supported everything my original version did, but was also "open source"--a new term I heard about while I was changing from a flat-file database to MySQL. By this time I was 16 years old (2001), and the new project was called COSMACS--Community, Open Source, Messaging and Chat System (@archive.org). Around the same time, I had built a website called iSpooge which ended up taking most of my attention away from COSMACS, because COSMACS didn't give me instant gratification like running an "E/N" site did (Entertainment/News is what Blogs were called). My interest started drifting towards PHP CMSs (Content Management Systems) geared toward E/N sites.

iSpooge

iSpooge put me in touch with the more social aspects of the web, beyond just instant messaging and chat. The site had a variety of Javascript games to which I programmed a score-keeping backend, and "coolness points" that were gained for various actions on the site. It was a small community of friends from high school and unconnected circles of friends on the internet, but the comments gave people a place to chat and the coolness points gave them reason to interact. It excited me to come home at night and read all the new posts and comments on the site.

As iSpooge became more popular, I tried a strategy called uSpooge, which filtered blog posts by user, in essence giving them their own blog. I believe this may have been a reaction to LiveJournal, which was barely taking off around this time. The rise of LiveJournal, however, meant the downfall of i/uSpooge. My theory is that with more options, the novelty of my blog wore off :(.

Flirting with the Devil

Sad to say, at about this time I also started getting into girls and the project laid dormant until about 2 years ago.

OsSpace

The next incarnation was called OsSpace (Open-Source Space), a clone of the ridiculously crappy and proprietary, yet successful MySpace. It was slated to use open standards like OpenID, FOAF, RSS, xCal, Jabber and a slew of other technologies to form a federated social networking system. The principle idea was to give freedom to users and developers by allowing them to make friends with anybody on any network, and to move between networks without losing those connections. The open nature of it allowed different networks to cater to different demographics without isolating them. Sites could cooperate and have high levels of integration with each other, simply play nice without inter-operating anything more than identity, or completely isolate themselves (Intranet).

In order to make OsSpace real, I placed an ad on Craigslist searching for anyone interested in learning technologies X, Y and Z that I had planned to use, and enlisted a friend from high school to help out. We drew up a lot of plans, but our shortcomings caused the project to lose steam and eventually no more progress was made. From that experience, I learned that not everybody needs to (or should) be involved in every aspect of a project; perhaps they should only be involved in what they're good at. I also found that feature creep was a huge problem, because things would get partly done and then I wanted to change everything to incorporate new feature CX3750. As a programmer for a small web firm, I should have been more conscious of that, being that so many projects I was on ran orders of magnitude over budget and past deadlines due to feature creep.

Soashable

This time around, with lessons learned from OsSpace in mind and a network of people with diverse skills that I can identify, as well as potential business connections, I think Soashable can be as successful as I try to make it. The principles from OsSpace remain the same, but the limited scope is an important part of the grand strategy. A Meebo clone it is, and if I can stick with that then it might actually get done this time.