middleman

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middleman is a tool for real time visualizations. It binds scripts, applets, and programs. Its goal is to allow easy prototyping of a new breed of social connectors in virtual space.

middleman is built using the ideas of comet (server push). However, middleman goes further to address issues specific to visualization. Some of its features are support for viewing a subset of the dataset; ad hoc group formation, which supports arbitrarily complex data relationships (e.g. hierarchical); storing common state in the middle, which comes up for services like chat; identification of all objects; mediating unknown visitors with known visitors (another identification issue); and "multicast" and "unicast" connections.

Its design goal is to be simple and conceptually dirty, with a clean API.

updates

Why haven't previous "social proxy" frameworks caught on? Why are social signals not considered part of the virtual design space? The middleman project aims to gain some insight into these questions. We have been talking to developers on forums, meeting with developers in person, and running a survey. A plan to give this survey to people who run artisticly orientied sites has derailed a bit. The idea there is that these type of people would be most amenable to integrating social signals into their design process.