http://times.usefulinc.com/ 2008-06-23T11:37:18Z Edd Dumbill edd-web@usefulinc.com http://times.usefulinc.com/public/read/922 2008-06-23T11:37:18Z 2008-06-23T11:30:04Z

I want to use existing Bonjour-aware tools among an ad-hoc group of people

<p>Tom Morris mentioned the <a href="http://drnicwilliams.com/2008/06/18/what-is-gitjour-gemjour-starjour/">gitjour</a> project on the semantic web IRC channel today and it set me thinking.</p> <p>Gitjour enables collaboration on a local network by tying together Bonjour (aka Zeroconf) and the git distributed source control system. It lets a developer publish the source direct from their own machine, without having to set up a public mirror. The advantages are great for camp-style hackathons.</p> <p>However, I rarely get to such hurrahs and if I do, prefer to spend time talking to others and mining their brains. What I do have though is an extended, continuous "camp" that exists among a subset of my IM contacts, Twitter friends, and so on.</p> <p>What I want is a version of Bonjour that works over a virtual network established from an ad-hoc list of friends and groups selectable from a social networking tool.</p> <p>I know, this is starting to sound like Groove or any other number of peer-based collaborative tools. The point is I don't want to join any walled garden and get "monetized", I want to use existing Bonjour-aware tools, just among an ad-hoc group of people.</p> <p>The hard bit as ever is firewall traversal, but this has been solved more than a few times now. It seems we've got the tools, we just need some enterprising developer to glue it all together.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://times.usefulinc.com/2008/06/23-san#disqus_thread">Join the conversation about this post</a></p>