[conspire] Software for making Frappr clones

Rick Moen rick at linuxmafia.com
Thu Dec 29 17:05:03 PST 2005


(With luck, this mailing list post will show up when people search for
"Frappr clone".  There:  Now, I've said it twice.)

I note the coincidence of these two posts today, one by BayLISA
president Jennifer Davis on BayLISA's main mailing list, the other by me
on Usenet.  (I _do_ support Jennifer's initiatives.  I just favour
open source and no dependencies on proprietary company services.)


  Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 14:20:08 -0800 (PST)
  From: Jennifer Davis <sigje at sigje.org>
  To: baylisa at baylisa.org
  Subject: Frappr!

  Borrowing a page from LOPSA, I've created a Frappr group for BayLISA:
  http://www.frappr.com/baylisa

  It would be good to see where people are localized around the Bay area
  so we have a better idea as to where it's good to have meetings/events.
  All it takes is a name and a city to add yourself to the map, so please
  do.

  Thanks!

  Jennifer



  From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
  Subject: Re: frappr for the freeware community ?
  Newsgroups: alt.comp.freeware
  References: <43a803ed$0$21257$8fcfb975 at news.wanadoo.fr>
  Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

  FTR <news.ftr at free.fr> wrote:
  > One of the last gadgets in the community 'business' is to map the
  > locations of community members. www.frappr.com is one which is nice
  > and simple.

  "Frappr" (from "friend mapper") is an example of "social software"
  developed as a Web application "mashup"[1] using the proprietary Google
  Maps application's public programming interface.

  I'm personally much more curious about free software (aka open source)
  implementations of the same general idea -- so that people can accomplish
  the same goals without becoming dependent on some Web 2.0 company to go
  your computing, hold your data, collect logfiles tracking your
  interests, blitz you with advertising, etc. -- those being the way those
  companies make money.[2]

  Looks like this page has information on open-source geographical
  information services in general:  http://www.opensourcegis.org/
  Included in those listings are MapServer and MapServer Enterprise, two
  open-source _engines_ usable for developing Web-based map applications.

  I'll be curious to see if someone comes out with, e.g., a clone of
  Frappr in Ruby on Rails, preferably without the dependency on Google
  Maps.

  > Wouldn't it be nice to see where all the people of this active list
  > live ? To see how the world is populated by freeware activists (or, at
  > least, sympathisers, and users) ?

  Wouldn't it be even nice if they were to do that using their own
  resources, rather than Frappr's and Google's?  ;->

  [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)
  [2] http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/winolj.html

  --
  Cheers,                   Now, it's time to hack the real world, and let other
  Rick Moen                 people write Web sites about it.
  rick at linuxmafia.com                                   -- Donald B. Marti





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