PePol development project
As part of the growing movement towards a sustainable, peaceful future, PePol is about supporting and inspiring effective, collective action.
PePol provides a set of cross-network tools that make it easier to turn ideas into actions and find what you're looking for, by allowing you to better search, share and collaborate across your existing networks.
The PePol tools will conform to the OpenSocial specification, 0.9 or above.
We are currently at the planning and initial development phase.
Be a part of this exciting project by helping to develop these tools >>
Wanted
People sympathetic to the cause with some of the below:- implementation and deployment of distributed systems and scalable web applications
- user security and privacy
- database design and implementation (especially high accessibility, distributed DBs)
- standards compliant XHTML and CSS authoring
- Java, Javascript and JSP (with clean coding and documentation skills)
- equally important to your software skills are your ability to communicate clearly and collaborate with other developers. Above all, we need developers who can grasp what we're trying to create with PePol.
Fit the bill? Go here and send us a request to join the project.
(see here for various other, non-developer ways of helping PePol)
The tools
The heart of the PePol service is a set of online, cross-network tools. These tools are designed with the principle aim of making it easier to share knowledge, get inspired and take effective, collective action towards a more peaceful and sustainable world.
The Index tool makes it easier to find community and expert rated content on exactly the subjects you're interested in, as well as add new content for others to find.
The PePol Index catalogues items (articles, audio, video, events, groups, ideas, businesses) that are found on the web. Index items are tagged with appropriate keywords, reviewed and moderated by the collective PePol community and may be filtered and sorted by any attribute the user specifies (such as location, date, source, type, as well as key words. e.g. type: video, search phrase: 'how to insulate your loft'. Or, type: event, location: 'within 30 miles of me', search phrase: 'green shopping').
The Daily Action tool is about getting people to share their voice and move their feet on a daily basis.
This tool rolls together personal action suggestions and logging (your 'Daily Actions' and 'Action Log') with a number of key features, like opinion gathering (PePol Policy) and carbon footprint tracking (via services like thecarbonaccount.com).
'Daily Actions' will offer suggestions to save energy, such as placing a brick in your cistern to save water, or using LED lighting, or otherwise further the cause of creating a sustainable society (such as writing to your MP about an issue, or offering a few hours of your time or services to the PePol community).
The Gather tool is for creating an event or project and helping you publicise it.
Gather allows you to broadcast your event, project or other action involving a number of people over your PePol channel and puts it in the Index.
With this tool you can specify details such as what resources and volunteers are required. According to their PePol Receiver settings, other users may get automatically notified of this new Index item where it fits their profile of available resources, geographic location, skills and time to contribute.
The Receiver tool lets you choose exactly what news and updates you get from your networks and from the Index.
You can think of it as an intelligent, highly configurable personal news aggregator. It is the customized path through which you view content on the 'PePol channel'. Each user has their own personal receiving channel (and also a sending one), which they can filter with various parameters for networks, people and content type.
The Receiver can display your friends 'Daily Actions', notification of response to events or discussion topics, relevant new index items as well as scheduled reminders. The idea is the user can completely configure what and how information from their networks and the PePol tools is presented to them.
The Sender tool is for telling either specific groups or your collected networks what you're doing and what you find interesting.
The Sender allows you to broadcast status updates, content, available or requested resources and new events to your PePol channel. Other users in participating networks can receive this content in their Receiver channel according to their personal settings. So, with a single time saving action, you can make relevant and direct contact with a lot of people!
The PePol tools are designed to be integrated into existing networks in as seemless a fashion as possible. The idea is to maximise the benefits to the existing and new users, while minimising the need to get used to a new way of interacting with the existing network. The tools will be fully themable and configurable by participating network providers.
For a broader look at network integration see here. In a nutshell there are two ways to make use of the PePol tools within a network: Participant level integration and Tool level integration.
- Participant level integration is the full monty. It allows you (a network provider) to actually host parts of the PePol service and use them within your network - even if the PePol cloud for any reason goes down. It also makes it easier for your users to learn about the new features available to them through your network. Your network will host a 'PePol node' (effectively some code running on a JVM) which communicates with your network via the OpenSocial specification and handles communication to the PePol cloud transparently. This is the most robust and flexible option.
- Tool level integration means you make use of the PePol tools exactly like you would any OpenSocial 'app'. Users choose to add a PePol tool to their profile and use the tools much in the same way they would use a Facebook app, for example. This is more straight forward, but doesn't allow such close integration as with participant level integration. Generally speaking tool level integration is more suitable for bigger, more general purpose networks, while participant level integration is intended for networks more specifically focused on issues of sustainability.
