Big German company running OpenMicroBlogger!

It's very exciting to see big companies taking advantage of our Microblogging technology! wow http://hallo.sfiv.de/

Theme changes in OMB

We're getting pretty close to full wordpress-theme compatibility and swapping, and I had to make some minor changes to the included prologue-theme.

If you grab the latest OMB you will need to have an updated prologue-theme, here is a list of the changes if you need to apply them to your (customized theme)

index.php sidebar.php header.php have all changed, you can see the diffs (red=delete,green=add)

OpenMicroBlogger version 0.2 released today!

Special thanks to Joss and Scott for your bug-testing and also for using the LightHouse bug reporting system. Here's the download links:

• http://open.srcphp.com/projects/38-OpenMicroBlogger
• http://dbscript.net/omb.zip

Follow your Tweeple from OpenMicroBlogger

The latest beta release has a big new feature: the "Twitter" App has been improved so that you can see your Twitter friends in your Personal tab! Very cool.

To access this feature, click on Apps and install the Twitter App. Add your name/password, and click the Personal tab. There will be a delay while OMB talks to the Twitter API, and then you should see some tweets!

Here's the download link for OpenMicroBlogger 0.2b15

• http://open.srcphp.com/projects/38-OpenMicroBlogger/versions/135

What is OpenMicroBlogger and what does it have to offer me?

OpenMicroBlogger is a multi-user messaging application that works like Twitter, and it's exciting (2000 downloads and counting) because it's one of the available implementations of the new Openmicroblogging protocol. It's a flexible communications tool that supports community by giving people control over their message stream, and it allows them to stay in touch from their mobile phone, laptop or desktop computer. The social-networking-style "I friend you and you friend me" feature makes it spam-resistant, and it is easy to install on any standard Web server.

First of all: Microblogging. How is that going to help you?

• Intranet/Extranet: Greases the wheels of communication by allowing some electronic communications to happen "out in the open" where everyone can hear (think blogging)
• Everybody decides who they want to "Follow"
• Forums: Microblogging makes forums better because participants can pick and choose who to add to their own stream. (Open) Microblogging takes that one step further, lets people "follow" people at many different Web sites, and choose any service for their "home base".
• SMS/Mobile: OpenMicroBlogger has a simple config setting to enable Zeep Mobile's ad-supported SMS gateway.

OpenMicroBlogger features:

• Communications: Choose any person you are following and forward their notices to your mobile or e-mail with a simple checkbox.
• Tags: not #hashtags but standard blog-style category/tags
• Uploads: it's a simple config setting to host files in the cloud (Amazon Web services)
• Broadcast: Post to Twitter, Identica and all of your OMB followers at identi.ca, army.twit.tv or elsewhere.
• Apps: Just a few so far, but our OpenAppStore is actually on-line. We want to have the best platform and putting money in the pockets of designers, plug-in authors, scripters and programmers just makes sense. http://openappstore.com
• Privacy: Despite its lightweight design, features a sophisticated, granular security model which we will use to power rooms, direct messages and other features in the near future.
• IDE: IDE? We publish a simple, graphical database-development utility, it can be used to generate a complete jQuery/MVC app for OpenMicroBlogger. (which you can turn around and sell for $$ on OpenAppStore) http://codestylist.com
• Aggregate: (coming soon) Our new aggregated feed lets you see your Twitter friends' updates. We'll be expanding this to work with any RSS feed.
• XMPP: (coming soon) We're still in wait-and-see mode while we come up with a stable/simple architecture.
• Uses a clone of the WordPress theme API to make itself skinnable
• Web services API instead of a WordPress back-end.

Twitter to implement Openmicroblogging protocol!

Wow, I can't believe my ears but here's the story:

• Twitter Planning to Implement OpenMicroblogging Standard

New tutorial: build a Photo Wall App for OpenMicroBlogger

It's a little bit long, but also not too complicated, and we would love to hear your feedback about our new Tutorial. Here's the link:

• http://openappstore.com/?posts/10

new release of OpenMicroBlogger offers open source, installable Apps for microbloggers

The latest 0.2 beta (download) features the first App for OpenMicroBlogger.

Apps are neatly organized into RESTful MVC code structures. They use jQuery and OpenID-driven model security.

The first app, Twitter, is a wrapper for Alex King's Twitter Tools WordPress plug-in. Your tweets can be saved in your personal OpenMicroBlogger database, and then forwarded on to your Twitter and Identi.ca accounts.

Help us test it

You can help, just sign in at [[ http://openmicroblogger.com ]], it's very easy! Your password is always encrypted, too.

Click Profile >> Applications and you'll find Twitter there.

Type your username and password and you can post to Twitter, attach files, and anyone on army.twit.tv or identi.ca can Follow you. NICE

Having a problem? Send an e-mail to info@openmicroblogger.com

0.2 Installation Notes

• Migrate your database by browsing to yoursite.com/?migrate
• In /app/config/config.yml make sure "twitter" and "identica" are listed in the apps section

1002 downloads! first donation! 0.2 still pending...

That's right, we cracked 1000 downloads in about 5 weeks, amazing!

Another great thing happened today, Randy at http://randulo.com made a donation to support OpenMicroBlogger. My wife really thought I was crazy to work so hard all summer in my free time, and this one event seemed to make it all ok. Thanks!

Work on 0.2 continues, the openmicroblogging space is moving fast and with all of the support we've received we are excited about the prospects for the new version. We'll keep you updated here as 0.2 nears completion, hopefully this week.

Zeep Mobile SMS coming in Version 0.2 this week

We just finished implementing the first PHP client for Zeep Mobile's SMS platform. This will allow any site running OpenMicroBlogger to put an API key and secret into config.yml to enable 2-way SMS texting. Pretty sweet!
I am waiting to hear back from Zeep about submitting the OMB/Zeep client code to their Google Code project. OpenMicroBlogger version 0.2 should be ready mid-week.

0.2 changeset

• [working on] Twitter simul-post
• SMS 2-way text
• pretty URLs
• fixed mysql-create-table bug
• utf-8 support
• fixed failed-identi.ca-post bug

First release! version 0.1 is in the wild

Special thanks to Sebastian and Scot for helping get this out the door.

And all of you downloaders have made it the #1 app at open.srcphp.com. Thanks!

Media Coverage

Jesse Stay kicked off coverage of OpenMicroBlogger with his 8/15 article:

• Laconica's not the only cool kid in town: Introducing OpenMicroBlogger

On 8/19 the P2P Foundation featured a story by Michael Bauwens:

• Has open microblogging arrived?

And Aldon Hynes followed up with a favorable first-glance on 8/21:

• Latest Tech News from Orient Lodge

Leo Laporte interviewed Evan Prodromou and Evan being the (really) big man that he is, mentioned OpenMicroBlogger 8/23:

• Evan on Twit.tv with Leo Laporte [750k .mov]

How to download and install OpenMicroBlogger

Thanks for checking out OpenMicroBlogger, we have made a lot of progress in the past 2 weeks and we now have a complete implementation of the official http://openmicroblogging.org protocol.

Known issues:

• some broadcasts to identi.ca are dropped due an Invalid OAuth signature error
• see the bug reports for the complete list

Requirements:

• MySQL or PostgreSQL
• PHP4 or PHP5

DOWNLOAD LINKS:

• http://open.srcphp.com/projects/38-OpenMicroBlogger
• http://dbscript.net/omb.zip

Installation steps:

• edit the file app/config/config.yml
• change the development database settings to your MySQL or PostgreSQL (adapter name can be "mysql" or "postgresql")
• change the e-mail settings: email_from (From address) and email_name (Name of sender) at the very least
• save your changes to config.yml
• create a /cache folder with 600 or 777 permissions
• point your browser to the URL where OpenMicroBlogger is installed on your Web server, and the database tables will be created
• register with your e-mail address or an OpenID to become the site administrator (the first registered person is in the "administrators" group, subsequent registrees are in the "members" group)
• that's it! now you have a site where registered people can subscribe to people on remote sites (identi.ca, army.twit.tv) and post notices to them as well

notes

• by default, file uploads are saved as BLOBs in the database. this can be a security advantage for sites uploading small files
• there are 2 more upload modes: Amazon S3 and /uploads
• to use the /uploads folder, open app/config/config.yml and change the "collection_cache" location for "posts" from cache to uploads
• for uploads, you will need 2 folders: /cache and /uploads, with 600 or 777 permissions
• to change to Amazon S3 edit app/config/config.yml and set the collection_cache location for posts to aws
• also, in config.yml set your awsBucket, Key and Secret options

introducing OpenMicroBlogger

http://openmicroblogger.com and http://openmicroblogger.org are the new Web sites where you can find out about OpenMicroBlogger, a new implementation of the OpenMicroBlogging.org specification for site-to-site Microblogging.