new project, new blog, new software

This is the inaugural post for my new project, tentatively called shmooze. My goal with this project is to create a new niche social software product that fits into the Knowledge Management space. In a nutshell. shmooze will:

• look very similar to the popular IM clients.
• allow for persistent discussions among three types of topologies (one to many, one to one, many to many)
• provide secure communication out of the box (OOB)
• participation by invitation only
• simple access controls
• public access (non-credentialed reader) via web browser can be toggled on/off
• piggyback on existing standards for tool creation content dissemination and access control. Right now this preliminary list consists of:
• Java (Eclipse, JDIC)
• LDAP
• RSS (Atom)
• WebDAV
• possibly provide some sort of presence awareness (either through popular IM clients or through built-in IM)

I am also thinking along the lines of making the core client (or client/server package, depending on how things shape up) open source. I will expand on the whys of this decision in a later post. I'd like the intial release to take into account the eventual flexibility to support an ecosystem of value-additions. Firstly, I'd like to have the ability to earn a living of the project and I'd like the possibility of the package and the paradigm to be extended in new ways that I can't or don't foresee. In a future post I'll also expound on my reasoning behind my architectural decisions.

Of value is to note that I am using an RSS reader, editor software package called Sauce Reader to publish and digest this blog. Sauce speaks directly to blogger and seems to provide a good functional template for what I am trying to accomlish on some level.

An important undrestanding of this project is the realization that I am not attempting anything radically new here. Indeed the paradigm of collaboartion itself is as old as the internet itself. Rather, I am looking to find a usefully simple nexus of functionality, usability and friendliness (in a grasss-roots sort of way) amongst a sea of similar tools and ideas.

I will also discuss the similar tools/paradigms that I've researched and like minded projects/individuals with whom I lkeep tabs on that have influenced my decision-making process in this regard.