The MyStatusTool project was on hold for a period of weeks while I was developing a glossary plugin for Micro.blog (and specifically for John Philpin). That appears to be working at least for John and me, so I am resuming work on this project. In conversations with Colin Walker (developer of MST-PHP), I am planning to move to update my user interface to match Colin’s, so our tools will be more common to users. I made a start on this by getting the simple version of username/password authentication using Passport.js set up (since my initial version did not have this). I have also spent some time familiarizing myself with how MST-PHP styles its user interface. The following is my projected list of tasks:

Login feature (in progress)

Display static set of feed items on home page

Display items on login page

Read feeds, add to posts file, update display on home and login page

Create admin page to manage feeds

Add posting feature and create a feed for posts

Add static pages for each post

Watch out – Colin Walker and I are developing tools that could be the first apps to meet Dave Winer’s Textcasting proposal! Both are available on Github…nothing stopping anyone from trying them out!

This weekend, Colin Walker and I were able to have a conversation using our respective microblogging tools (MyStatusTool and MST-PHP). It was a cool and fun experience. I felt like we were taking the first steps to explore how to use these tools.

I sent email to a number of friends when I announced MyStatusTool, and one of them replied that he did not know what problem this was trying to solve. I thought about it and today realized what is it – a bootstrap to develop something new. Dave Winer has been referring to bootstraps throughout his blogging career (this essay is an excellent summary, and it is over 20 years old). The concept of MyStatusTool is a specific type of bootstrap:

My Status Tool is an application that provides the basic posting and reading functionality within Twitter, but using RSS and rssCloud as the enabling technologies.

from https://github.com/andysylvester/myStatusToolDemo

So, really, this is a bootstrap of a new type of Twitter. Dave Winer had a post about this in 2010:

Anyway, to answer the question posed by this piece — you bootstrap the federated 140-character loosely coupled network the same way you bootstrap anything. Let’s start with something very very simple, like two tin cans separated with a string. Something that is useful, perhaps minimally so, and can be federated. Then we use it. Then we think. Then we improve it. Start with working code. Start tomorrow, not next month. 

from http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/10/howToBootstrapFederated140.html

I will have more to say about this in the coming days – let me know if you want to be a part of this bootstrap!

Colin Walker has hit on a good point today – it is fun and energizing to work on a project with someone else, or to riff on another project. I am hoping to get some time in on MyStatusTool today!