Blab-lab on Rails
After taking a many-month hiatus from Blab-lab, I'm undergoing crafting a version 1 of Blab-lab using Ruby on Rails.
Why am I starting over from scratch when I had so much done already?
1) The first version was massive and was trying to do too much for a first version
2) I know a lot more about web development now and I can best apply my new learnings in a Rails environment
It just makes sense given the rapid speed at which I'd like to get a prototype up and how much I have learned about the Rails platform in the last year or so. The number of extensions for it alone makes it worthwhile, such as Geokit.
Version 1 will be very basic. I've cut it down to the core feature set so I can get something out of the door.
Features:
* Basic profiles. No walls, no 'friending', etc.
* Search for collaborators by location and skill.
* Users can have...
- associations (such as labels, organizations, etc)
- skills (chosen from a preset taxonomy of skills such as Music Production, Guitar, etc)
* Basic messaging capability.
So essentially it'll be a networking tool. Not so much a social network as we know them today, but a social networking tool that provides a very specific service: finding people with which one can do creative work.
I wanna get this up in two months and I believe that's very realistic. I plan to pop banners up top only to cover my hosting costs initially.
If it goes well and adoption by the community happens I might be able to expand it to serve some of the other purposes I originally had in mind for the organization.
Why am I starting over from scratch when I had so much done already?
1) The first version was massive and was trying to do too much for a first version
2) I know a lot more about web development now and I can best apply my new learnings in a Rails environment
It just makes sense given the rapid speed at which I'd like to get a prototype up and how much I have learned about the Rails platform in the last year or so. The number of extensions for it alone makes it worthwhile, such as Geokit.
Version 1 will be very basic. I've cut it down to the core feature set so I can get something out of the door.
Features:
* Basic profiles. No walls, no 'friending', etc.
* Search for collaborators by location and skill.
* Users can have...
- associations (such as labels, organizations, etc)
- skills (chosen from a preset taxonomy of skills such as Music Production, Guitar, etc)
* Basic messaging capability.
So essentially it'll be a networking tool. Not so much a social network as we know them today, but a social networking tool that provides a very specific service: finding people with which one can do creative work.
I wanna get this up in two months and I believe that's very realistic. I plan to pop banners up top only to cover my hosting costs initially.
If it goes well and adoption by the community happens I might be able to expand it to serve some of the other purposes I originally had in mind for the organization.