Difference between revisions of "Distributed TiddlyWiki"
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Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) is essentially a bitttorent client with a built-in browser. I don't know the specifics of its data structure, but it is essentially a multi-page site whose content indexes videos and their metadata, and then efficiently loads videos (and apparently pre-fetches previews on the current content page). Vuze by default uses an incompatible DHT but a plugin is available that integrates it with the Mainline DHT. It also can use magnet links. However, Vuze is proprietary, and although it is possible to upload videos, it is not clear (to me) how one goes about creating html content for the Vuze network, if that is even possible. | Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) is essentially a bitttorent client with a built-in browser. I don't know the specifics of its data structure, but it is essentially a multi-page site whose content indexes videos and their metadata, and then efficiently loads videos (and apparently pre-fetches previews on the current content page). Vuze by default uses an incompatible DHT but a plugin is available that integrates it with the Mainline DHT. It also can use magnet links. However, Vuze is proprietary, and although it is possible to upload videos, it is not clear (to me) how one goes about creating html content for the Vuze network, if that is even possible. | ||
| − | But the concept shows that it is | + | But the concept shows that it is possible to create a distributed site, or at least, distributed video content that is indexed in the DHT, with existing technology. |
==Opera== | ==Opera== | ||
Revision as of 03:39, 17 November 2011
- A distributed wiki that might work
Frustrated with the progress of *Diaspora, an idea kept nagging at me: why can't a TiddlyWiki be distributed via Bit Torrent? I've been wanting to start a blog that is serverless and I thought there must be a way using existing technologies.
The foundation of my blog would be some implementation of TiddlyWiki, probably mGSD (previously known as MonkeyGTD or D3 ("D-Cubed"), which I tried before and found to be quite impressive.
TiddlyWiki is essentially an index html page that is loaded with ingenious javaScripts that load flat datafiles, called tiddlers. As I understand it, every time a new page is created, it is stored in a new tiddler, and every time a page is edited, a new tiddler file is created that, rather than replacing it, supersedes the previous version. Thus, each page has a version history.
It is the index, or base file and its collection of tiddlers that need to be distributed.
Distribution
GitHub?
My first idea was to distribute this collection of files using Github, which nicely deals with files added to the collection. But one must have a Github account and set up crypto keys to use it - not really easy for the marginally-technical person. Worse, after I upload or sync my files to GitHub, in order for anyone to read my wonderful blog/wiki, they too must set up a GitHub account, which is really expecting too much for the average reader. Not only that, but this wikiblog will only be found by search engines as a director on GitHub, with no easy way for someone to discover what it's all about.
BitTorrent
Far more people know how to use a bittorent client - at least for downloading - than know how to use GitHub. A very small subset of bittorrent users know how to create a torrent file and upload it to a tracker on a torrent index site. Not only that, but trackers and torrent files are quickly being replaced by trackerless sites using magnet links, and many bittorrent clients now can distribute and search for magnet links on a DHT (and for the Vuze client, a special messaging network called PEX.
The advantage of magnet links, is that there is no .torrent file to download; it is simply a URL specifying the hash of the file, and its title and some keywords. Indexing sites that use magnet links don't have to store .torrent files and use less bandwidth. Even better, magnet links can be stored in the Mainline DHT, and all major bittorent clients can search the distributed database directly, without the need for an indexing site like TPB. Their only downside is that the links are long and ugly, and not easy to read or share.
The average web surfer or blogger does not understand all this, and the amount of maintenance to run a site this way is significant. And merely making a torrent file available does not a site make. Unless one knows where to look, readers will never find it, never download the torrent, and never read the site.
Also, since a torrent is a static file that describes static content, it is not possible to add new tiddlers to an existing torrent - this changes the hash of the file collection, and necessitates creating a whole new torrent, and somehow revoking the old version. This problem also applies to magnet links, since they are a hash of the entire distribution, not its individual files.
This means that it would be necessary to create a new .torrent file, or magnet link for every single tiddler, and somehow associate it with the rest of the dynamic distribution (which is not a challenge for GitHub) -- perhaps using a common namespace in the magnet links sent to the DHT. But using a bittorrent client won't do, the reader would continually have to find a way to download the newest tiddlers to keep his mirror of the site up-to-date.
There has to be an easier way. To begin with, what is needed is browser integration with Bittorrent.
Vuze
Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) is essentially a bitttorent client with a built-in browser. I don't know the specifics of its data structure, but it is essentially a multi-page site whose content indexes videos and their metadata, and then efficiently loads videos (and apparently pre-fetches previews on the current content page). Vuze by default uses an incompatible DHT but a plugin is available that integrates it with the Mainline DHT. It also can use magnet links. However, Vuze is proprietary, and although it is possible to upload videos, it is not clear (to me) how one goes about creating html content for the Vuze network, if that is even possible.
But the concept shows that it is possible to create a distributed site, or at least, distributed video content that is indexed in the DHT, with existing technology.
