The Space Between

It seems that as the Web continues to evolve and as more of our lives moves online, we could do more to broker even richer online experiences.

We've been thinking about this a lot lately. And, in particular, how the blending of the desktop and the Web -- through deeper integration of the browser with online services -- could further enhance the user experience, increase user control over personal information, and provide new opportunities for developers to build innovative online experiences.

For example, it could provide the ability for users to synchronize profile data between computers (with the ability to grant fine grained access rights to third-parties), or provide new tools for interacting with all of the various social networks, building on earlier experiments like The Coop and Joey.

And even though these sorts of things are possible today with existing tools, it requires considerable bespoke development and implementation of things (e.g. network operations, data synchronization, encryption, messaging, identity management, etc.) that should be common and provided by the platform.

And perhaps more importantly, without designed integration points in the browser or on the desktop, and with no guidelines or structure, user experience across the whole of the system suffers.

So, just like we have enabled massive innovation by making Firefox open on many levels, what if we did the same with services by developing an open extensible framework?

And while we've just started to explore this idea, we do have some proposed organizing principles. We would:

• provide a basic set of optional Mozilla-hosted online services
• ensure that it is easy for people to set up their own services with freely available open standards-based tools
• provide users with the ability to fully control and customize their online experience, including whether and how their data should be shared with their family, their friends, and third-parties
• respect individual privacy (e.g. client-side encryption by default with the ability to delegate access rights)
• leverage existing open standards and propose new ones as needed
• build a extensible architecture like Firefox

Early thoughts and feedback are most welcome, and especially from those interested in participating in the further development of this concept.

More detailed discussion and posts to follow.

Comments

[wolfgrrl]

I am very interested in participating in a concept such as this. With the mobility of todays' people, collaboration like this is essential!

[ariadacapo]

Chris, would such an initiative be in the lines of the Data Portability project (http://www.dataportability.org/)?

[Chris Beard]

@ariadacapo: potentially, yes. we've definitely been following openid, oath, etc. very closely as well. the focus first should be on what can and should the browser do as an intelligent agent on behalf of the user and then we can determine how best to get there from here.

[Chris Saad]

Chris, happy to discuss collaboration between Mozilla and the DataPortability workgroup to make sure we are all on the same page?

Drop me a line via email if you are interested

Chris
DataPortability.org Co-founder

[Saurabh Kaushik]

# Saurabh Kaushik

[..]I have been browsing Firefox plugin site for last two years…. for one very important solution to my Bookmarks Sync Up from Mozilla. All this while, I have tried Google Browser Sync and Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer. But I am never satisfied.

I always thought that this kind of user data management can be a big potential for building new services around and we have already numbers of Social bookmarking solutions (del.icio.us, technocrati, stumble upon) out there which makes me happy but confused (which one to use?) At this point of time, Web King, Google has already taken consolidated lead into this area with Browser Syn and Toolbar, it will be a hard to catch run for Mozilla. Reason, why would I change if experience with Google is increasingly satisfying!!![..]

[Saurabh Kaushik]

Blog: http://www.nanosaka.com

[Chris Anderson]

I'm full of enthusiasm for Mozilla Weave, and have written a reply to this post on the Weave forums as well as my blog, suggesting the use of CouchDB as the Weave document store. I'm curious how malleable the project is to the level of input, or if the final version will be extensible enough to allow CouchDB integration as an add on.

My blog post is here:
http://jchris.mfdz.com/code/2007/12/couchdb_and_mozilla_weave