User Tools

Site Tools


Sidebar

Jump to
AmbientTalk
CRIME
iScheme

at:urbiflock

This is an old revision of the document!


Urbiflock

What is Urbiflock?

Urbiflock is a Facebook-like application framework written in AmbientTalk. The framework takes care of managing a user's buddy lists, called “flocks”. Flocks define “proximate” groups of buddies, where “proximate” can mean physically proximate or abstractly proximate (e.g. in terms of being friends of someone). The framework is currently still under development, which is why this page only lists development information thus far.

Terminology

  • Flock: a group of proximate users
  • Flockr: a user of the urbiflock framework
  • To flock: to become part of a group

Modules

  • Discovery: manage discovery of nearby urbiflock users
  • Profiles: manage user's profile and cache profiles of other flockrs
  • Flockr: a representation of the user
  • Proximities: “functions” that determine whether or not a user is proximate.
    • isNearby: physical proximity
    • isFriend: static encoding of friendship relationships
    • doesProfileMatch: tests an attribute of a user's profile, form ATTR OP VAL, where ATTR is e.g. age, name, gender, hobbies, …
    • combinators: and, or, not
  • Flock: a group of 'proximate' users
  • Applications: manage applications
  • Application: define the API of an “application object”

A flock is defined as a list of references to 'proximate' Flockrs. The definition of 'proximate' is defined by Proximities, which may define proximity in terms of physical distance or in more abstract terms.

Predefined Flocks:

  • friend flockrs: isFriend
  • nearby flockrs: isNearby
  • nearby friend flockrs: isFriend & isNearby

Architecture

An ad hoc RETE-network. Events are triggered by:

  • discovery: joined(uid,flockr) / left(uid,flockr)
  • profile changes: changed(uid,flockr,updatedProfile)
  • friend changes: friendAdded(uid,flockr) / friendRemoved(uid,flockr)

These events are received by the local flockr user object and propagated to all local proximities. Proximities translate these events into addUser / removeUser events to be processed by flocks. To process these events, flocks register themselves on their dependent proximity.

As a first implementation of the RETE-network, maybe we can start from the oo matching that Tom implemented, so that functions are templates. For example:

def flockrTemplate := template: {
def name := *; // wildcard, can be anything
def age := constraint: { _ < 25 }; // must be younger than 25
def address := template: {
def street := *; // any street, but street name must be filled in
def city := "Brussel"; // city must equal this string
// address may have arbitrary other data
};
def greet(); // person must have a greet method
} taggedAs: [ Flockr ]; // object must be tagged as a Flockr

Applications

  • Application Manager: allows the user to view installed applications, launch apps and install new ones.
  • Flock Viewer: a viewer and editor to view existing flocks and to create new flocks.
  • IFlockU: a friend suggestor based on profile similarity and time spent in proximity.
  • Guanotes: a messenger application that sends post-its to flocks.

To think about

  • Persistence: saving/loading framework and application data and prefs.
  • Privacy: restrict access of applications to a user's flocks
at/urbiflock.1220538087.txt.gz · Last modified: 2008/09/04 16:22 (external edit)