I had hoped to make Ode available for download by the end of last week. That didn't happen. Ode itself is done. I'm working on putting together the documentation. More specifically, I'm working on the HTML version of the annotated source code. Why delay the release of the source for something like this?

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In my mind, and considering some of the intended goals of the project, the annotated version and the 'production' script are inseparable. This being the case, the HTML version of the annotated script is crucially important. Why? Consider the differences. While the smaller of the two weighs in at approx 242k and 6500 lines, the larger annotated version (which again largely serves as documentation for the project) is 1.3MB and 37,000 lines. HTML version of the annotated source connects the two, allowing a user to look up a corresponding section in the annotated version by referencing line numbers in the production script.

I'm just about done with this part of the project and now expect to have everything posted by the end of this week. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments (robreed at gmail dot com)

From what I've read so far, and what little I've played with it, Buzz Looks REALLY nice.

It's a lot of what Twitter might be if:

a) The people responsible for Twitter weren't so unmotivated to do anything innovative content to let others drive innovation at the client level.

b) People (users) were a little more savvy.

There is clearly a lot of thinking and technology behind Buzz, and that makes it far more worthy of investment than Twitter (time and effort both as an end-user and a developer).

I'm concerned that it is a little too abstract for a lot of web users. Part of the appeal of services like Twitter is that they seem to be destinations (something like standalone applications). In my experience your average web user doesn't quite grasp the concept web services, nor the notion of the web itself as a very widely distributed application. Consider that Buzz is promoted as 'new way to share' while Twitter (Facebook and others) are something more concrete (interpreted as a specific thing, a place to be, or a thing to do). The majority of us see computers as a box containing a collection of applications and not the more powerful general purpose toolkit that it is. In the same way, we (i.e. most of us) see the internet as a collection of individual sites, not a system. It's not a matter of seeing the forest through the trees, for a lot of us it's all trees and no forest.

Anyway, from what I've seen so far, Buzz looks to be a encouragingly rich service that aims to support:

Atom/RSS feeds (and extension of these - e.g. activity streams, Medis RSS) PubSubHubbub
Social Graph API
OAuth
and more

Ode is a great platform for exploring all of these exciting open standards. That is the precisely the goal of Ode, to help make these technologies simple (understandable) to as wide an audience possible (without resorting to limited easy solutions which only hide the complexity - and most of the expressive potential along with it.) This is the web we should be working toward.

I've had my fair share of critical things to say about Google (and still do) but they are helping to create a better web and that's a good thing. I hope they see this through.

Barring something unforeseen, I plan on having a first release of Ode posted before the end of next week (that is by the end of the day Friday, Feb 19, 2010).

Why not wait until to post this until the release is ready?

I want to give myself a target date.

Question: Could the release date slip?

Answer: Yes, I suppose it could but I'll do my best to see that doesn't happen. I'm thinking of this as a long term project. It has taken a while to get to this point, and I apologize for that, but in all likelihood it will also be around for a long time, and that will ultimately be the more important measure.

What exactly does that mean:

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Ode itself

I'll be posting two versions of the script:

1. A heavily annotated 'documentation' version to used as a reference;
2. An unannotated 'install appropriate' version to be deployed

Themes

I'll also be posting at least one theme initially. The idea is that several simple (understandable and well documented) themes will be available for you to use and modify however you see fit, including one, two, and three column designs - one of which should serve as a good starting point for your own unique designs.

Addins

There will be no addins available immediately but I will get those out asap. You should expect the release of one, two, or more addins a week until I've released everything I'm working on.

More about Ode itself

I said that will be two versions of the script itself, both will be executable (and functionally identical) but you will probably prefer to run the latter on your server as it is a fraction of the size of the annotated file.

I'll also be posting an HTML formatted version of the annotated script (that you can refer to online or download) that will help you to translate between the two by looking up annotations associated with line numbers in either version.

More about Addins

The addins you can expect shortly include:

Markdown - Adds support for the John Gruber's Markdown syntax

Indexette - Adds the ability to index posts to improve performance and other enhancements intended to stabilize post dates.

Twittererer - Adds the ability to tweet posts to the site (automatically or manually) w/ support for URL shorteners (bit.ly to start).

Editedit - Adds the ability to post with a form in a web browser. Includes a live preview of posts (including HTML and Markdown support courtesy of John Fraser's Javascript implementation of Markdown)

Jump - Adds to ability to split posts at an arbitrary point in the body so that only that portion of the body preceding the jump point shows up on category pages with a link to the permalink for the individual post which displays the entire post. Useful from preventing category pages from loading slowly when posts include media (place the media after the jump point) and helpful for analytics (allows a user to better gauge what content people are reading).

Sitemapper - Adds automatic Sitemap protocol compliant http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php sitemaps.

Feedback - Adds support for comments withs support for Markdown, previews, email and twitter notifications, and reCAPTCHA

We'll build from there.

In the future:

Name change - There may be a name change at some point. Expect a post about this.

T shirts - I'm a big believer in project, product, and event t-shirts (and an opposer of douche-y ironic and other 'cool-kid' Ts.). Expect to see a disproportionate number of T shirts relative to the size of the project :) All proceeds go to support Ode and it's community (Ode-fest 2011 anyone? :)

ode-is-simple.com - I plan on splitting the site in a traditional website and a weblog for news and announcements. Currently it's sort of both and kind of neither. That isn't working very well. (Hard to believe, huh?)

More, better Ode - Improvements to the script itself, new addins, themes, documentation, etc.

Community - This is the one thing that's really out of my control. If you build it will they come? Time will tell. I'll do my best to make a case for the project of course (if I don't who will) but whether our not it gets used by others is largely out of my control. I'll persist with it regardless.

Feel free to email me with any questions or comments. (You should be able to find a link somewhere in the sidebar over there -->.)