April 30, 2003
.Net P2P

I actually have some time to make an edit to this post (make it make some sense) :)

Here is a cool MS article about .NET P2P I am especially interested in the sample code included.

Here is another interesting link from MS. The most interesting part is The ASP.NET Web Matrix Project which is a free dev tool for developing ASP.NET Web apps (or for taking a look at the sample code from the previous link).

Posted by nathan at 08:36 AM
April 27, 2003
Information Architecture

Here are some links to some IA resources.

jjg.net is the home of the author of the elements of user experience and the creator of visvocab flow charting stencils.

This funtional spec tutorial from mojofat is not bad at all. I've used many of his ideas to form my own process. His resource section is worth a look as well.

There are too many places to mention actually, but I really like boxes and arrows, the argus center for information architecture, Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture and xblog

Look up stuff on interaction/experience design and you will find so much information your ears will bleed.

Posted by reggie at 03:48 PM
April 13, 2003
RIAA's Billion-Dollar Claims

RIAA + wanting $97 billion = scary stuff

this article was slashdotted as well

Posted by nathan at 04:44 PM
April 10, 2003
Competition

Argh - someone doing something similar to what we are:

nowRECORDING is a competitor for sure.

I'll do an in depth analysis of their site once I have a chance.

Posted by reggie at 10:24 PM
MS RealTime Server

A product release that allows hooks into MS Messenger service

Microsoft sets date with corporate IM details how the company wants to approach realtime communciations in the future.

This may be _huge_ for us. If we could write hooks into the MSN messenger service to provide our peer-to-peer networking, I'd be very happy.

I had an eye on Greenwich (as it is a direct competitor to Flash Communication Server, which is my current bread and butter). MS didn't really seem to be doing anything with it though.

This announcement may have long reaching implications for future application development.

Consider that this type of framework may on day allow users to use musicolab in near real time.

Posted by reggie at 12:37 PM
April 09, 2003
Open Source Implementation?

Based on some of the research that I have seen and the fact that most compilers cost money (to obtain as well as licensing) so I am curious if we wanted to go all open source?

I understand that Mono actually has a working open source .NET implementation (complete with a 3rd party dev site). When I first suggested Mono I didn't realise that they had it up (haven’t thought about them for a long time). Also, if we go open source then we may qualify to use some of the code from the P2P Toolkit which may significantly decrease our dev time (the folks over at P2P Toolkit took a year to write there very extensive toolkit).

Another advantage to doing an open source musicolab is using an SQL server like MySQL.

The last thing about using Mono C#/gnu C++/MySQL is that if we do want to go closed source all of the technologies are easily transferable if we decide to buy the compilers/SQL servers.

Posted by nathan at 11:30 PM
P2P tutorial

Begginer Tutorial for developers familiar with C++ and GNU gcc

Check the links on the left hand side bar for code snippets.

Posted by reggie at 07:16 PM
MS Windows Server 2003

Due for release on April 24, 2003 Windows Server 2003 will no doubt add new functionality to the Windows side of the equation.

Posted by reggie at 07:12 PM
More app server comparison

Got Dot Net compares .Net to J2EE with a little help from tests run from middleware.

Interesting stuff ...

Posted by reggie at 07:06 PM
Application server matrix

Quick search on google brought up this great resource:

The server side application server matrix

Posted by reggie at 06:59 PM
Design Patterns

Nathan - this is the book I was talking about that identifies often solved system design problems and offers common solutions.

Design Patterns Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Worth the study I have heard. It may help us get off to the right start.

This page contains a catalog of the patterns discussed in the book

Posted by reggie at 09:22 AM
Brainstorm notes

Download brainstorm documentation

Most important next steps:


  • Investigate server technologies

  • Investigate P2P

Start posting research links here if you gottem (preferablly on the above technologies)

Also, please put the research posted here into the proper category.

Please add any comments you would like to see changed in this document.

Posted by reggie at 12:02 AM
April 07, 2003
Software Requirements Specifications

Here are some useful standards docs: www.automaton.ca/musicolab/

I have posted the IEEE Software Requirements Specifications (SRS) as well as a couple of other docs (a software QA spec, and a software lifecycle spec - both IEEE)

Posted by nathan at 02:38 PM
April 06, 2003
Muse.net

I am liking the work done by the lads at muse.net

I could see this being a huge step forward for online music pay models. I hope that any system I build could work with this, as opposed to against it.

Posted by reggie at 11:57 PM
MS P2P

Give the evil empire their due:

.NET P2P: Writing Peer-to-Peer Networked Apps with the Microsoft .NET Framework appears to be a cogent article on p2p networks.

I am getting excited ;)

Posted by reggie at 11:54 PM
JXTA

Sun isn't standing still in the p2p market.

JXTA is a peer to peer network worth checking out.

In fact, if this would plug into a J2EE server easily, it may be worth checking out as a prefered platform.

Our app-server (as well as our client) will have to interface with the p2p network. The app-server will have to query the network for results while the client will have to manage the file transfers.

Looks as promising (if not more so) than Gnutella.

Posted by reggie at 11:40 PM
Groove network

Groove WSDL specs look promising. It may be possible to piggy back the groove network using the GrooveFilesBase64.wsdl

Not sure if the network is properly tailored to this use. This seems to be more a framework that facilitates realtime office app collaboration. Still, files are files ....

Posted by reggie at 11:25 PM
Orielley p2p site

http://openp2p.com/

OpenP2P is Oreilly.net's p2p page containing lots of great articles on P2P technologies.

This article really helped drive home what a great concept musicolab could prove to be.

Posted by reggie at 11:21 PM
Restarting development

Ok - time to restart and rebuild.

Added to this project:
* Nathan Waddington

Nathan will help me architect the backend systems to this application.
We're thinking P2P network integration to handle file sharing.

Try and build things right from the beginning.

Intial stages will inclued:
* project planning
* system prototyping
* specification

Lets see if moveable type can help us collaborate effectively.

Posted by reggie at 11:16 PM