LiveMeta signup is currently by invitation only during our alpha / development stage. Please check back soon when we will be announcing our limited Beta sign up!
Meet Thy Maker(s)
All the words you see written here are the work of our project lead Tom.
He is a guy from the UK with a rather obscure day job (even we haven't worked it out yet!) and a secret passion for web development.
He's the public face / contact for LiveMeta so if you have an queries, thoughts, abuse, legal challenges or cash then drop him a line.
Oh and it was his idea too.. damn him!
The rest of the team is made up of:
- 2 other web developers (TBD, Motorhead)
- a UI engineer (Monica)
- a database engineer (Zek)
- 2 *nix sysadmins (Alex, Ruth)
- and a I'm-not-a-programmer alpha tester (Ben)
Media contact will be dealt with by Tom - check the "press" page (when we launch it)
Please respect this request
Contact
..coming when one of us gets unbusy enough to sort out some email addresses!
This Is Not A Blog
Which is a bit of a sore point between the team members... we argued for a bit but no one could decide on a blogging system we all were happy to use. So we built one! So, um, that means no trackbacks, pings or comments. Clever huh? Enjoy...
On The Road
Well today is an exciting day! Hi, I am Tom and I am the project lead for LiveMeta.
Today we launched the design for this website - along with a deliciously obscure description of what we are and what we aim to be. The truth of the matter is a bit more mundane: we probably have about 10% of the actual code laid down and the final list of features is still a work in progress. Not that this is a bad thing. As a team we have been working together on this project for almost 2 years and to have got this far is a credit to everyone here. Till now we have been planning, schemeing and cajoling for funds - opportunities to be doing what we really WANT to, programming, have been few and far between. This week all that changed. We finally got finalisation on all our funding and had a (beautiful) deposit in the teams bank account.
The cash is going to allow us to push forward extremely fast with the site development: currently we are nodding our heads at 8 weeks. 2 years of plannign means we all know where to go and what to do in that time.
The first stop for me is going to be to put together a dedicated system to host LiveMeta on. At the moment (rather embarrasingly) it is stuck on a shared hosting account (mine to be precise) - and will stay there during our initial Beta. Then around Xmas we plan to move onto a brand new, multi-server, fault tolerant design: using some custom programs and interfaces created for the purpose.
But what about LiveMeta itself? Well we hope for it to be the new word in social interaction. A single place to store your personal data: allowing you to control access to that EXACTLY as you want. But thatis not all. By employing some (still secret) methods we intend to build a network of trust: a way for you to be very certain that "John Smith" really is John Smith in the real world! We are drawing on the good bits of PGP, OpenID and current social networks to build something better and safer.
It's going to be a VERY long road - but also an exciting one. For me this is the next stage on a journey that started nearly 5 years ago, and it is great to see things finally taking shape! Back then (in 2003) when the idea first came to me (in it's initial form) I was a one man band - and failed miserably to get anywhere. Now the LiveMeta "plan" has the benefit of 5 years experience and thought - as well as the input of a superb team. I see great things coming!
My hope is that I can keep this blog updated with our progress - to interest those of you intrigued by our ideas. So stay tuned!
Tom
these wordz by Tom on 17/10/2008
Filed in: