The initial proof of concept went well. (even got a mention on the offical trackback blog.) I'm still tweaking the implementation, so things could break at times... however, the interface is almost stable enough to use elsewhere, and other help will be necessary... I'm just one guy, ya know. Here are some things that need to get done sooner or later... if any of them strike you, let me know.

1. Coding - You know... actually writing the application. PHP, Javascript, and MySQL are being used.

2. Design work - coming up with a name, logo, and site design. I'm not opposed to using "Remote Trackback" as a name. The design would have to be geared towards low bandwidth usage.

3. Research - I want to find out from some of the remote commenting folks where the bottlenecks are in their service. Most have stopped taking new users or are severely limiting their growth. Is this because of bandwidth? is it a matter of the code being to heavy on the processor? Disk space? All three? I'd like to know what the limiting factors are to growth ahead of time. If I can learn from them, awesome!

4. More Research - Also, I think I'm just going to buy a hosting plan for this beast... but I've gotta find a good, cheap, reliable host. My
host is good... but the service is a little sporadic... some of their machines run beautifully, some have regular downtime.

5. Alpha Testing - While the code is in the very earliest stages of development I want to have somewhere between 6 and 12 "Alpha Testers". The code is starting to stabilize to the point that I'd be willing to have it put on a site that I don't control. Probably within the next day or so I'll have it ready for the first group of users... it'll still look very bare bones, but the content will be there.

So there you have it. Again, interested parties should email me: rtb@holidian.com
Posted 7/09/2002 04:08:00 PM by Pete Trackback []

A few weeks ago Ben & Mena (over at moveabletype.org) released the newest version of their extremely popular blogging tool: Moveable Type. The newest version of MT had a cutting-edge feature called "Trackback" which allowed blogs to keep track of who was writing about them or about the things they wrote about. Almost like a reverse bibliography, in a sense. The only problem is that currently, implementations of Trackback outside of Moveable Type are scarce.

Because trackback is such a great feature, and I'd like to see everyone using it, I've decided to come up with a Remote Trackback system (much akin to the remote commenting systems that so many use today) so that the rest of us can participate in the fun! This blogger account on blogspot is going to be home of the proof of concept for that system. Stay tuned!
Posted 7/09/2002 08:44:00 AM by Pete Trackback []