My68kSpace

[vassilizaitsev]

Should we make a 68k version of the sites of the ilk of myspace, facebook, and the slightly superior IMO imeem?

I know they have there detractions.... but the ability to upload different files and send and recieve messages in one particular website does have an appeal to me..... to be able to upoad a picture in .iff format or a sound in .aiff, these things could be useful & to be able to send and recieve messages simply could be good.

imeem is superior for me, because I can upload different types of media & I've not recieved so much spam from imeem (Puts me hands over me head thinking now the torrent will start!)

 

[aphetica]

NO

 

[QuadSix50]

The RetroMacCast guys have a site on Ning.com that's for the podcast and it has gotten quite popular with their listeners. I think it would be nice, but it might actually conflict with theirs....just my opinion.

 

[ChristTrekker]

I'd never use it. The 68kMLA forums/wiki serve my needs.

 

[Temetka]

NO.

MySpace is the Devil.

The Devil I tells ya!

 

[Cory5412]

Yeah, the forum is good for discussion, and the wiki is a good place if you really want to create a "profile' of sorts.

 

[paws]

What I'd love is a replacement for PHPbb that wasn't only accesible via web.

Basically make it possible to write readers without the overhead and trouble of HTML and CSS. There's really nothing in the basic principle of a forum that requires the web... it's just text in a predictable format, like e-mail. Actually simpler than e-mail. It'd be great to have a native 'forum reader' in the style of a newsreader for System 7. Actually that's pretty near the top of my app wish list for any platform...

 

[QuadSix50]

MySpace and other like it serve their purpose. It's when you start adding people to your friends list like rabbits in heat that it becomes a nuisance. I just have some family and friends on my personal page and that's about it. Maybe a few people that have shown some interest, but it's mainly family, friends, and long lost friends from the past.

I still think it would be nice to have some profile pages similar to those social networking sites where we can highlight our conquests and whatnot. It doesn't have to have a "friends" component per se since we all talk it up here and on the IRC channel. But it would be nice to have something where you can post a quick message to members of the 68KMLA and vice versa.

 

[steve30]

That would be quite good as long as the emphisis is on 68k (and maybe old PPC) Macs, and as long as the site is fully compatible with these. e.g. I would expect to be able to use it without problem on a 68k Mac.

I agree with paws that some kind of programme which could be run on the computer could be used as an alternative to the web. I'm assuming you mean something like Hotline, but for a specific site only?

 

[paws]

I agree with paws that some kind of programme which could be run on the computer could be used as an alternative to the web. I'm assuming you mean something like Hotline, but for a specific site only?

Well, filesharing is very useful but I'm really more interested in the forum/wiki side of things - asking questions, getting answers, writing articles and commenting.. showing off your conquests... Pretty much exactly what we're doing with this bulletin board.

I love the forum format because it's so simple and free form.

Think about how it works in the most abstract terms: I login to the server and enter a post, text with a bit of formatting, nothing fancy at all.. It goes into a database. Other people login and read my posts, and post their replies.

Look at the contents of our posts. Is there anything at all in there that requires the complexity of HTML+CSS+JavaScript? It's wasted! A 128K Mac should be able to handle this! The only reason it requires a huge memory hog of browser is because the presentation of the data is tied to the Web and the technolgies the Web is built on.

A protocol for accessing and replying to posts in plain text or a simple rich text format - or even complicated rich text, with multimedia and what have you - on a remote server is trivial. You could have a web client for those that love the web, or you could have a real desktop app, all interfacing with the same servers, seamlessly.

You gain flexibility (choose the client you want), lose complexity by using existing functionality (think opening videos in QT Player instead of the browser plugin hell I'm sure we all remember), and you kill this horrible idea of making user interfaces with HTML+CSS instead of, you know, user interface toolkits...

I have to go to bed now. This is an idea that's been brewing for a while, and really, it's quite obviously superior to the web in every single way for communities like ours. I'll write more about it sometime soon.

 

[Mike Richardson]

A long time ago I thought of the same idea, except my program worked with any existing phpBB, and "screen-scraped" the information off any ordinary phpBB forum and formulated it into a newsreader type format. I never really started on it though.

 

[ChristTrekker]

What I'd love is a replacement for PHPbb that wasn't only accesible via web.
Basically make it possible to write readers without the overhead and trouble of HTML and CSS. There's really nothing in the basic principle of a forum that requires the web... it's just text in a predictable format, like e-mail. Actually simpler than e-mail. It'd be great to have a native 'forum reader' in the style of a newsreader for System 7. Actually that's pretty near the top of my app wish list for any platform...

Isn't that called "Usenet"?

 

[Christopher]

If we could get online storage so we could like share our software easier, and give out public address for these too, like .Mac basicly but with way lower space. Like 2GB

But I am serious about this.

 

[funkytoad]

I don't think I would really use it, besides, you can do a lot with a wiki profile.

 

[II2II]

Why would a faceless person with no space want a facebook or myspace clone?

NNTP access to the forums would be nice, since that allows the use of any old news reader. And there are a few good ones available for System 7 (and I think System 6), not to mention Unix (if you use a unix shell to do stuff, as I do). And Windows. And MS-DOS. With the appropriate software, you can even have a bridge to QWK message packets, thus allowing you to read messages offline on an Apple II (or was it IIgs). I did the latter with usenet for a while, back in my dialup days.

The other thing is that phpBB supports some sort of theming. It would probably be possible to make a theme that is dead simple for an old browser to parse. That would mean things like getting rid of gratuitous graphics (e.g. buttons that are just links anyway), getting rid of avatars and extraneous user information (user information doesn't really slow things down, but it makes it harder to read on small screens), getting rid of signatures (same as above, actually I think phpBB allows you to have this as a user preference), and replacing the table that the messages are embedded in with something more linear.

It would also make it easier to develop software to parse it and present it in a newsreader.

 

[Scott Baret]

I like the idea! Facebook won't even load on my IE 5-equipped iBook G3 (OS 9) and MySpace doesn't work well on it.

We could have dithered bitmap pictures on there...I already do that with pics of my friends and I so I can use them as wallpaper on my Plus. Perhaps give it a HyperCardish interface?

BTW: Is anyone maintaining the 68KMLA page on MySpace?

 

[Cory5412]

In theory, it might be possible to develop a "ewb application" using filemaker pro 4 as a back-end slash webserver, and claris homepage 3 for design and whatnot. It would be really interesting to see/try, actually.

 

[vassilizaitsev]

I had a feeling I'd get a few replies with this...

I wonder what a wiki is! I thought wiki was just that stupid encyclopedia site that puts up information of dubious validity!

Flixster, the film reviewing/social networking site, is saying it now has a wiki.... but I don't get it, or even know or undersatnd what it is.... I'll have to go and have a look I suppose (I drags my feet & look sullen).

I didn't know we had a myspace page, bugger I don't take enough notice of what goes on here!

my thought was to have a site like the others, but more like imeem (which I accessed fairly successfully on my Quadra 650), but specifically for 68k computers & I was thinking for Atari's and Amiga's to be able to get involved too as well as macs.

I would guess that by the very nature of the machines we'd be running hopefully we'd keep out of the loop of those horrible nasty side effects of the myspace ilk sites, where if you're unfortunate you just get bombarded by fake profiles offering porn, but giving out spyware.

 

[paws]

A long time ago I thought of the same idea, except my program worked with any existing phpBB, and "screen-scraped" the information off any ordinary phpBB forum and formulated it into a newsreader type format. I never really started on it though.

Screescraping presents a load of problems and would still require that at least part of the HTML was parsed... It might work if used with a theme, as someone suggested.

What I'd love is a replacement for PHPbb that wasn't only accesible via web.
Basically make it possible to write readers without the overhead and trouble of HTML and CSS. There's really nothing in the basic principle of a forum that requires the web... it's just text in a predictable format, like e-mail. Actually simpler than e-mail. It'd be great to have a native 'forum reader' in the style of a newsreader for System 7. Actually that's pretty near the top of my app wish list for any platform...

Isn't that called "Usenet"?

No, but it'd look pretty much the same way.