Flutterby™! : Share Some Sugar

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Share Some Sugar

2010-05-13 17:27:01.706064+00 by Dan Lyke 2 comments

Like the concept behind Share Some Sugar, but I'm suspicious of handing over yet more data to some third party arbiter, and I have this "doesn't feel like the way it should work" notion about building those relationships with neighbors.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

comments in descending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2010-05-19 15:32:59.655862+00 by: Dan Lyke

I guess the question is why I should give it to some third party. In my neighborhood, Freecycle, which is just a simple mailing list, serves much of this function. Yeah, there's a bit of management that could be automated, but it's not a "I'm about to upload a list of valuables in my house to somewhere else" sort of thing.

Having Facebook Connect (not really interested in letting Facebook control any more of my identity than they do) or yet another freakin' username and password to get started is rather a turn-off. I realize there aren't any good solutions for this, but if you can't rework the app to get started without a login, OpenID would at least get me past the "yet another freakin' account" feel.

But I guess the real issue is that I'm happy to put a list of some of my tools and other resources that I'd let semi-strangers in my neighborhood borrow up on the web, but if I'm going to do that I don't want to have yet another database on someone else's servers to maintain. Let me put a list on my server. You're welcome to retrieve it regularly and do with it what you will. The best way for you to find it is probably some link in the header of my identity URL (http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke) to an XML file. If you want to integrate that into your databases that's fine but at least that way I'm still controlling the publishing of my data, and not building an identity on yet another freakin' third party web site that I have to control.

And, I guess the final thing is more a critique of society than anything particular to this particular thing: I need a web site to get me to say "hi" to my neighbors?

Sorry that there's not a clear thesis or argument in those thoughts above, I just wanted to toss some of my reactions out there in the hopes that they'd be helpful.

#Comment Re: made: 2010-05-19 00:47:16.137446+00 by: Stacy

Can you say more about handing over data? What way do you think it should work if not this way?