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Do you believe in Synchronicity?
Posted by Dave Winer, 5/6/02 at 3:16:44 PM.
Background 
This morning two very interesting things happened. First, Eric Soroos released a Frontier tool that also works in Radio that allows UserLand apps to communicate over AIM. I tried it, it works, and it's fast. Very fast. Impressively so.
The second thing that happened today is that Apple announced that the next release of Mac OS X supports AIM in some interesting way. I bet this is what Steve Zellers has been working on. He told me I'd like it. I already do even though I don't know what it is. I suspect that Apple Events and MP3s will travel over the network they're working on. That would be very nice.
Add to that I and others have not been happy with the polling approach we took with the current release of the Instant Outliner, so I want to do a corner-turn now that will link up the Instant Outliner (on Mac OS X and Windows) to AIM using Eric's code.
This means
1. To participate you'll need to create a AIM screenname for your outliner.
2. Instead of polling, when you update your outline, you will send a ping message to each of the people who have subscribed to your outline. (Bennie -- you'll know who's subscribed!)
3. The ping will contain two bits of information, your screenname and the URL of your outline. (Can't send the outline itself, messages are limited to 1K.) On the buddy's machine your name goes bold as before. 2click to browse the outline.
4. Polling for change-in-length of the outline will be a thing of the past.
Notes
At every step along the way there will be an open architecture that allows any IM system to be a ping transporter.
Work notes
I'll take notes here as I write the code.
betty.rpc.server -- working
| | Takes a new optional param, adrHandlersTable, defaults to user.betty.rpcHandlers.
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tcp.im -- new
| | A table that implements a driver-based architecture for instant messaging.
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radio.outliner.macros.subscribe -- working
| | If the "im" attribute is not present, we can't subscribe. If it is present, send a message to the indicated screenname, using the indicated driver, saying please-subscribe to the instant outline.
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Frontier.protocols.aim -- new
| | Makes it possible to call over AIM using this kind of syntax:
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| | ["aim://" + screenname].outliner.subscribe (drivername, screenname)
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radio.outliner.drivers -- new
radio.outliner.macros.coffeeMug -- working
| | The OPML Coffee Mug now indicates the screenname of the person, so you can send them a message to subscribe.
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| | Testing, it works. The coffee mug on DHRB now has an "im" attribute. Note that the drivername is part of the attribute. Per the note above, I'm not building in any assumptions about what transport is used. Important.
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radio.outliner.init -- working
| | Initialize new sub-table, user.radio.outliner.prefs.messaging, with sub-items: drivername, screenname, password.
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| | drivername in the first release is aim., and screenname/password identify an AIM user.
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