[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZefmK1tndc&w=560&h=315]
Update (June 15): Cyberwire on Google Play App Store
Cyberwire is an open source proof-of-concept for OpenTransact on Android. In the screencast, we see the Android app used to transfer 10 imaginary coffeebucks using one OpenTransact provider implementation. Even with a different OpenTransact provider implementation, we see the same functionality accessed by the same Android app.
OAuth Dynamic Client Registration Protocol is used to allow the Android app to start communicating with a new OpenTransact provider. A custom application_type request parameter is set to “noredirect” to indicate to the provider that instead of the client providing its own redirect_uri, the provider should choose a uri within its own domain and after authorization, the client will snarf the authorization code parameter from that uri instead of its own.

[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/AYKm5RsA]

See this video on blip.tv.

This is a 10 minute explanation of the feature changes in the groupy branch. The motivation and design was discussed in RSpec And CanCan Authorization for Intentional Economics three months ago.

[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/AYHa62oA]

The last post was a proof of concept. Proof of concept has matured to a working system on Heroku thanks to our friends at the Bay Area Community Exchange (BACE). These improvements allow a lower cost, easier to deploy system. With these benefits, it was a no-brainer for the Austin Time Exchange to abandon the edge branch and merge changes from the BACE fork in master.

This screencast shows the new 3 step heroku installation:

Click To Play

“Anyone can run their own financial system.” - Bernard Lietaer at the Naropa Intentional Economics workshop.

Thanks to Lee Azzarello, oscurrency can now be deployed to heroku with the master branch. For production use, the edge branch is preferred as previous testing in development and production has been done with edge. Also, two more items need to be worked on for heroku deployment. In edge, search is done with sphinx which heroku does not support. Since a community currency system generally does not need industrial strength search, perhaps this can be replaced with standard database queries. Also, the edge branch uses workling and starling for background processing of newsletter and forum post emails. Heroku uses DJ workers.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiakCvGXMZQ&hl=en&fs=1&]

Here’s another OpenTransact demo. Last time, Nubux, a simple reference implementation, was the financial service provider. This time, OsCurrency is the FSP.

Comments

Author: Guillaume Lebleu

Date: 2009-07-27 23:05:53

Great Tom. Was wondering where the translation from “credits” to hours happens? If I remember correctly the OpenTransact spec, you post to a currency-specific URI. Do you have a /hours for OSCurrency?

Author: herestomwiththeweather

Date: 2009-07-28 02:44:24

That's right. Assuming the FSP site only has one kind of asset type, then it can just use /transacts (spec draft) like the demo did. However, in reality, demo.opensourcecurrency.org allows members to create their own currencies so i need to make friendly urls for each currency.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvlPTPUhHGU&hl=en&fs=1&]

There’s been some good discussion on the Agile Banking list which includes simple web payments. This is like what we did on the previous screencast but simpler (mostly because we’re not using oauth).

The use of the callback to confirm the payment can be trouble. The callback could timeout or maybe the merchant is inside a firewall for some reason and can’t be contacted from outside the firewall. In either case, If I’m selling pizzas, I’m not going to make the pizza if I don’t get the callback.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r-1MiN3lY4&hl=en&fs=1&]

OAuth support with the OsCurrency API was first demonstrated in January. Ruby on Rails developers may have noticed that I didn’t use ActiveResource with OAuth. Instead, in both the January screencast and the Twitter OAuth Consumer screencast, we coded in raw JSON. This was a bummer because, as easy as it is to write JSON, it is difficult to test, maintain and support. It would be much better if we could use ActiveResource.

Like the last screencast, this one is a result of a feature request. About 9 months ago to the day, I met Johnny & Eva Barnett at Spiderhouse Coffee through Karen Gifford, a board member of ATEN. Johnny suggested a groups feature be added to oscurrency. This happened one week after Rich and I presented the idea of using insoshi for a currency server at One Web Day Austin and first started checking in code. Multiple improvements made to oscurrency have been a direct result of Johnny Barnett’s help.

The previous five screencasts have been experimental. Anyone who knows Ruby on Rails can install the code and, since it is open source, anyone can make improvements to it. We have seen how the application programming interface (API) allowed for an independently developed killer app to be built. However, until today, to my knowledge, none of the new features shown in these “Stupid Currency Tricks” screencasts are actually enabled on real systems. Why? Because real people in real communities have not asked for them!

Staying with the same theme as the previous screencasts, this one again shows how you don’t have to navigate back to the portal site to participate.

Sometimes requests are very time sensitive so it’s important to contact others ASAP about a need. This is a perfect application for Twitter or Identi.ca. When someone creates a request, either through the main website or through another site using the OsCurrency API, the request can immediately be sent out to Twitter.