At One Web Day Austin on September 22, the idea was offered (see video in previous entry) that it would be relatively straightforward to build a complementary currency system on Insoshi. Shortly after that, Rich and I began a new project in github. The latest code can be found in the edge branch of Oscurrency.
Two weeks ago, the Austin Time Exchange made the switch to running this code. Most of the changes you see in github since then are the result of feedback from the members. This site runs on one 256M slice on slicehost.
This weekend, a new slice was created for the demo site so you can test out functionality (In practice, at the ATX for instance, registrations are not activated until a face-to-face orientation is attended). Also, the demo site can be used for new experiments with emerging authorization protocols like OAuth.
The goal is to match needs with resources. Any member can create a new subcategory of service to announce their ability to provide that service. The user interface to the service listing has been greatly improved with a nifty jquery accordion since this screencast was made, but it shows how as a member, I added a new subcategory to associate myself with a new service and then I put a request to get a ride home for the airport. Sure enough, someone found it and I had a great conversation on the way back home.
Besides managing requests and services, there is lots of back end administrative support beyond what Insoshi provides, all in production.
What do you think?
I think building community currencies as apps of social networking platforms is the right direction.>I’m curious as to the use cases you’ve thought about for the use of OAuth.
at minimum, i think it would be neat to show off which categories of service i provide and my most recent services performed to display on other websites. right now, this data is restricted to members of the website running oscurrency. this data could be exposed to other websites with the member’s permission using oauth.>>of course, that example is just reading data and there are more interesting use cases for writing data to oscurrency from other sites – maybe i could make a payment from identica/twitter, for instance.