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StreetNet [Nov. 19th, 2007|12:43 am]
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(Pre-bed stream of consciousness. Working name: StreetNet, a mashup of Neal Stephenson's "Street" and Microsoft's .NET framework, which is accessible on Linux and Mac thanks to Mono and Rotor. Based on the Storm Worm, which [info]thandrak brought to my attention a while back.)

Imagine a world where everyone readily accepts that their PC, XBox, TiVo, AppleTV, etc. is going to be infected with a trojan. The best you can hope for out of your machine is 75% of what it should be, because the alternative is to install antivirus software and only get 50% of it. That's the world of StreetNet.

Some people still write desktop applications. Some people still write web applications. Some people still write mashups, LSL scripts, and stuff. The cool kids, though, they write StreetApps.

StreetApps are completely distributed applications that run on/in StreetNet's virtual computer/memory. You need four things to write a StreetApp: (1) the skills; (2) the compiler, because StreetNet ain't some scripting language for punks; (3) an app key, which you can get from one of the major StreetNet Keygens, for a small fee; and (4) if you really want you app to run, you need to be cool.

StreetNet app keys come with enough wuffie for your first "Hello, Foo" applications... That is if you donate your machine to your Keygen's corner of the Street. But beyond that, if you want your app to really kick ass, you need to have people on the StreetNet forums vote up your app.

The biggest apps that get run are filesharing systems and social software. Piglets, a completely anonymous and encrypted music sharing system is one of the most popular ones. It has a six-figure userbase, and they regularly vote it up, to maintain the bandwidth and storage requirements for their library. SexXxond Life is the second largest StreetApp out there thanks to the Furries, Goreans, Lolis, and Land Barons. It's actually a little Street within the Street, run by event coordinators and hype machines who keep it voted up by giving out free trinkets OGLE'd from Second Life and World of Warcraft. The third largest is StreetTalk, the IM'dujour of today's youth.

Don't expect your StreetApp to get that much wuffie, but then not all apps need that much to get along. Bush Spotter, a little desktop/web page/blog/phone widget-wiki that tracks the movements of Former President George Dubya Bush and his family, typically hovers around the 120's and it has enough bandwidth and storage for a curious person to dump Dubya's geocached automatic-biography from the last day of his precidency up to his last dump consistently.

So don't worry if you're not #1 or even #100. Chat it up on StreetTalk, post in the forums, rent out a Facebook spambot for a couple of days. If your StreetApp's schway enough, people will check it out and vote for it. If it's not, then try, try, again.

Or, you know, you could always go write an OpenSocial widget, square.
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