Explaining how to use melative’s contextual micro-streaming service.
Positively ensuring that posts are not lost in the unorganized clutter, use context, and by that I mean denoting posts about a title, onto the title. The above image is the part of the current user stream home on melative, and what we can see is the input asking for a topic, or context.
Advantage
A user may view all stream updates on a given title/creator/character/user or within an specific context-type. This also applies to the friend/follow stream. If a user wishes to view all their friends’ updates on K-ON!, it is aa simple as loading the /stream/anime/K-ON! page.
There is hardly a reason to search, nor is it implemented at this time, but I do plan on bringing in some context-activity statistics eventually. A user should be allowed to see what is the most talked about context among their friends or a specific user.
Perhaps the last advantage is the ability to place information outside of the message (series, episode, etc), which we be shown below.
By the way, melative isn’t going anywhere except perhaps a larger server. It is here to stay as a Social Media Engine! I welcome others wishing to be a part of it. It would be dearly appreciated… if a user wishes for the system to have a certain functionality, I welcome the suggestions
Update
Relatively unimportant, but I must note. Posting to the stream does not require a topic, per say, but it is treated as an @reply to the logged in user and appears like a normal update.
Two other fields to note in this image are the -action- and -context type- select boxes. Actions are various set interactions with contexts (be it media, creator, character, or user), and they include comment and @reply. Comment is the default action, but @ is used when posting without context. @user treats the user as the context.
Using the same engine as the update/action feature, is a type of update called announce, as see below.
Announce
Announce is nearly identical to the standard update, though it allows a broadcast of experience, be it watching episode 02, reading chapter 11, marathoning a season, or listening to a track. Status denotes the experience state (ie. Listening, Watching, etc), basis denotes a more specific section of a title (ie. an episode), and the text input (range) allows for a specific identifier of the basis (basis: episode + range: 02 = episode 02).
Both action/update and announce allow for fixed length messages. The current limit is somewhere around 200 characters, but it may be shortened later (no worries). Messages are allowed certain html tags, namely: i, em, b, big, small, ins, del.
One interesting aspect of announce is that it does add/modify changes to a user’s experience list, though one restriction is that announce must be on a media context, though the context name need not be in the database for announce or update.
Desktop App
I take it one of the many reasons users may avoid this service is the lack of great webui and 3rd party applications (sorry, but there must be balance between backend dev, frontend design, and 5 days/week of school). This isn’t to say these things cannot exist. melative is based on an open, RESTful API, in which anything that can be accomplished on the web interface can also be accomplished by external applications.
As the developer, it’s hard to efficiently match what hundreds of individuals are doing, but if anyone wishes to make something, go for it! I’ll answer any questions/point to any documentation I have ^_~
With the little extra time I do have, I attempted to make a simple XUL desktop application, seen below:
The suggest feature is available on the webui as well as many of the raw API form interfaces (bookmarklet). This helps in suggesting titles without having to type the full name, or select the proper context-type. Type a few characters and click ^^. Of course, this is limited to the synonyms within the database, but things can always be added if one has an account.
Accounts
A current list of users can be found here, and it’s no surprise there are very few and mostly inactive ones. Once again I open the registration, so that this streaming may be used and new features be suggested/developed along the way. The current stream goal is to have a php platform available which can be installed on your very own servers, but still received and send updates about contexts among friends and followers.
The current skimpy registration and login.
The mentioned XUL application can be found here at http://tools.melative.com/melative-stream-latest.zip. For linux users, xulrunner will run the application.ini file. The zip should be extracted and within the melative-stream folder is the application.ini file. For Windows and OSX users, Firefox 3.0 can be used to run the application.ini file.
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe -app c:\path\to\melative-stream\application.ini.
And similar for Mac OSX users.
Some API methods of interest:
http://melative.com/bookmarklet/myImage.xml
Profile image
http://melative.com/bookmarklet/requestFriend.xml
Request a friend by username.
http://melative.com/requests
Authorize requests
There are also other API forms in the bookmarklet interface. [bookmarklet link, similar to Note in Reader bookmarklet].
