WebHome. Update.

We've launched WebHome.org a few days ago, and comments from Unity members, for the most part, mean that the whole thing is just not clear enough. So, I'll try to clarify a few points...

1) "distract attention away from Dolphin/Trident"

For many years now, we have always been working on Dolphin and "something else" during the day. Trying different things, trying to innovate, learn and change the world. Spending entire day just on Dolphin would have burnt out all the motivation long time ago. We will keep trying different things, no matter what.

Dolphin is a platform and even if it gets super-perfect, it would still be a platform, and if eventually it becomes irrelevant because of market change, nothing would save it. With WebHome, we are trying to look into the future and work towards keeping Internet free. WebHome is one of the most important parts of Dolphin project success - it's a motivation, a way to keep users coming to Dolphin sites and a way to prevent entire SN market from being swallowed by 3-4 companies.

2) "Most people aren't going to purchase a domain. They just won't."

Right. WebHome is not about domain. The idea is to connect ANY social profile as a webhome, be it a Facebook profile, a hosted blog, or your own site. You just choose one webhome for yourself and off you go. We expect companies offering easy ways to build webhomes, like for example, Tumblr offers weblog creation service.

I could be using the following as my webhome:

http://www.andrewboon.com

http://www.aboonhome.com (for example)

http://www.bazooka.com (if I have to)

http://www.boonex.com

http://www.facebook.com/boonandrew

http://www.twitter.com/boonex

http://boon.webhomes.com/

http://boon.we-host-webhomes.com/

etc.

3) "Using a real name is going be a problem with a lot of people. They won't do it."

That's the beauty of it. Nobody can possibly impose any rules on your choice of webhome URL or username. You can use anything you want, your name, somebody else's name, or a nickname, whatever. Just like in real life, you're free to name yourself as you please when you meet new people. Nobody is policing you.

4) "Many, many people have the same name - meaning the domain won't be available."

johnsmithwebhome.com

smith-home.com

johnnysm.name

jsmontheweb.net

mike.me.com

matt.ning.com

profiles.google.com/sam

etc.

5) "Even if this were to start to take off, every company on the planet is going to copy it and dilute the market. This is problem with social networking to a large extent. Making it open source will just give them a head start."

There's no point for different companies to start it. There may and will only be one, since it's not a company or a project or a software, it's like a phenomenon, it's either there or not. Like, say, p2p file-sharing - we've just agreed to the name "torrents" and to some rules to identify them. Now, we can use any software, any servers, etc. it's unstoppable.

6) "Permission Problem of Webhome.org forum and OpenID login there."

Permissions didn't allow posting to "Announcements". Fixed now. As for OpenID, we've installed Vanilla Forum, that happens to have no OpenID plugin. We'll do something about it shortly.

7) "you do not even own all of the TLD's - and specifically the most important one"

We only need one and .org is fine.

8) "By doing this, isn't Boonex concerned that this might paint a bullseye on itself (retaliation from the big social networking sites to try to take down Boonex/Dolphin...... because in a way, this is like launching an attack on them)?"

Large networks will have to understand the need for uniting. Friendster and Myspace are about to die because ANY site is fashionable only for a while, then the crowd moves-on. Facebook will go out as well, eventually. Internet is an oligopoly now - FB, Twitter, eBay, Google, Apple, Amazon,etc. The future of the Internet is in freedom and peer-2-peer sharing. Artists will sell their music from their sites, writers will publish their books on their sites, and our social network profiles will be ours.

9) "if you want this to catch on, you'll have to come up with a better presentation than a website called webhome.org that is nothing more than a few wordpress blogs and a few Wordpress social plugins."

Agreed. We only have prototypes now and need help to make sure we're doing a right thing.

10) "$200,000, is the annual salary for a half decent developer - I suggest you hire one and use them to fix Dolphin. How much has been budgeted for producing your actual software --- Dolphin 7 (in progress), and the evidently frozen Trident platform? With $200.000, you could have a team of code monkeys chipping away at $20/hour for a grand total of *ten thousand working hours*. You could even get your next-generation Trident plaftorm for the budget if you wanted."

We spend about 0.5mil annually on Dolphin and we already hire enough developers. Adding more doesn't help at all. We used to have over 20 Dolphin-only developers and that's when the worst things happened. We're budgeting in our own savings money into a project that we believe in and that will help Dolphin stay relevant.

11) "there are too many hurdles for people to jump in order to use it."

Yes, it's now for techs only, because it's not ready. Companies will wrap it into a more conceivable form in the future and we'll make sure it can be done.

12) "Boonex won't care to work on the improvement of Market at Unity, but is wasting time in resources in such projects."

We are working on Market at Unity, but changes are not evident. There're some issues and upcoming improvements but it's not always possible to tell what exactly should be done to actually solve problems. Specific suggestions are welcome. Right now we're preparing a new Jobs section and improved "reputation-based" rankings, and a better search.

13) "BoonEx can do whatever will motivate them to finish Dolphin. This is one of them."

Well said. WebHome launch has given the biggest boost in Dolphin development activity we ever had. More details on that coming soon.

14) "Personally I do not think this is a good idea and something boonex should not invest in. The concept is the same as openID, with more information stored about you by webhome.org (if I'm right). Having all this information stored by this organization takes a lot of responsibility and seen the track record of boonex so far, I do not believe they are capable of being trusted with all that information."

Webhome.org doesn't store any information at all. Everything is stored on your computer. Once it takes off we may shut down webhome.org, smile and enjoy the freedom. It's all peer-2-peer without lock to any software.