Social Networking on Ubuntu Desktop!

[Hiitch]

We are a software company that develops social networking products. I recently wrote an article on whether to open source our product (Hiitch (http://hiitch.com)) or not at our blog (http://www.hiitch.com/blog/2007/07/03/is-open-source-the-way-to-go/).

And as a follow up to that article I would like to do a social experiment with Hiitch and the Ubuntu community. We hope to see if the Ubuntu community desires a software product like Hiitch or find such a product useful before making our final decision on whether to open source Hiitch or not.

Hiitch's primary development environment is on Ubuntu. Its server also runs on Ubuntu. By the way, only gnome is supported by Hiitch for now. And Hiitch definitely runs better on Linux then on Windows! :-)

We like to invite you to join us for this social experiment. Just go to our website (http://hiitch.com) and download Hiitch (http://hiitch.com/download.html), install and off you go. Your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

[ekravche]

Use facebook.com

[Sir_Penguin]

ekravache, if you're going to say something, say something useful. Anyways, I downloaded it to give it a shot and just a few comments:

Install - If an invalid directory is entered (say for JRE) the installer should not quit but rather give something such as:
Enter another directory or press <key combination>. This is also happens with choosing an install directory, having to go through the intsaller again, while not hard, is a bit annoying.

Registration - The ability to have a custom "secret" question would be nice. People may be a bit "iffy" (well, I was at least) in giving secret questions relating to passwords. I don't know who to trust anymore so this can be annoying. Registration date is fine but still, it is sort of "hidden".

Age - This is what annoyed me most. Having to be 18+ is going to be a real deterrent if you want to get a large audience. I am 14 and I don't lie about my age so having to get there only to have to need to be 18+ is really a pain. I'd consider either removing that, or at least lower the age (ie: 13 seems to be a common age for this sort of thing).

[ekravche]

oops, didn't realize that you were developing social networking software. Seems strange that it's not web based, and has to be installed.

[Hiitch]

Hi Sir_Penguin,
Thanks for your feedback. Hiitch is actually meant for you to create your own desktop communities among your peers and friends from your home network. It is now open sourced and you can hack on it to change anything that you thought was a better option.

Your concern is mainly about our default network which is meant more for developers to collaborate. Anyway, thanks for your comments and we will consider them.

[Sir_Penguin]

Hi Sir_Penguin,
Thanks for your feedback. Hiitch is actually meant for you to create your own desktop communities among your peers and friends from your home network. It is now open sourced and you can hack on it to change anything that you thought was a better option.
I see, sorry for my misunderstanding. That's actually a very nice idea, might reinstall it and give it a shot, just gotta convince some people to get it first...

Your concern is mainly about our default network which is meant more for developers to collaborate. Anyway, thanks for your comments and we will consider them.
Thank you :)

[Adler]

Hi All,

I've been making steady progress on my different Sites, and was doing some forward thinking to social networking. I've bookmarked There, Active Worlds, and [B]Second Life[B]. But, haven't looked into all of them as of yet.

This may be out of context here, but can I just add a social networking to one of my Sites?

Adler