Grand Unified Theory of Microblogging
by Joe Brockmeier - Oct. 30, 2009Comments (0)- Related Blog Posts
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Reduce, reuse, recycle. It's not just good for the environment, it's also good for open source. In that spirit, open source developers looking to tap into microblogging services can reduce redundancy by reusing the new D-Bus library, Microfeed. The idea is that client applications can focus on the user interface and use Microfeed to fetch and update feeds. The Microfeed library takes care of the backend cruft and developers can focus on differentiating on the front end.
The first application to use Microfeed is Mauku, a Maemo application for Nokia's handheld devices. Mauku is written by Henrik Hedberg, incidentally the creator of Microfeed as well.
Microfeed seems to be very well documented and Henrik is encouraging others to use it with other applications. Ryan Paul, FOSS reporter and creator and maintainer of Gwibber, has indicated that he might be interested in using it with Gwibber.
Having a unified application that handles multiple services is a really good thing for users, too. Heavy social media users often have to keep up with two, three, or even more services. Apps like Gwibber mean that you can interact with Twitter, Facebook, Identi.ca, without having to visit each site. A backend like Microfeed means that you can use multiple apps like Gwibber without having to enter your credentials over and over again. In theory, once Microfeed has your info, you should be able to use any front-end that supports it.
While Microfeed is still evolving, it seems to have some strong interest already. Here's hoping it catches on.
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier is a longtime FOSS advocate, and currently works for Novell as the community manager for openSUSE. Prior to joining Novell, Brockmeier worked as a technology journalist covering the open source beat for a number of publications, including Linux Magazine, Linux Weekly News, Linux.com, UnixReview.com, IBM developerWorks, and many others.
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