It would be great to hook this all into Jabber, a new open-source
instant-messaging system that is built for extensions just like these. 
Jabber gives every user some on-server storage space, so for this
problem you could easily store your current IP address on the server.

A "badge" could then have only a jabber userid that is permanent; the
rest of the information on there could very well be downloaded (and
cached) from the Jabber network.  I'm fairly sure, for instance, that
you can publish a "vcard" about yourself, and that vcards can have
undocumented fields added to them.

Overall, Jabber seems like a great substrate for internet collaboration
tools on.  Why reinvent it?  Furthermore, the more things hooked into a
single substrate, the more useful it becomes.

One final meta-comment: we aren't restricted to *just* clients.  To put
up a server, it only takes one nice person with a permanent connection
and a spare computer.

-Lex


Karl Ramberg <karl.ramberg at chello.se> wrote:
> I actually got cable, but it is dynamic IP. I don't know anything about their firewall etc.
> I know that the same company screwed up the firewall in Norway and lots of people got sad computers.
> It costs 300 skr a month, about $30. 
> 
> Karl
> 
> Michael Rueger wrote:
> > 
> > Peter Crowther wrote:
> > 
> > > Hmph.  The two are not always compatible, and the comms technology in much
> > > of the rest of the developed world is years behind the US.
> > 
> > Well, in the US this includes Utah ;-)
> > 
> > No, seriously, a large percentage of the internet population even in the
> > US uses AOL on dial-up lines. At Disney Online every web page has to be
> > tested against 28k AOL (read slooooww), because that's what most
> > costumer/guests actually have.
> > In cities like LA the percentage of people going broadband is growing
> > fast. You can tell this by just watching the number of people in the
> > network equipment aisle at Fry's ;-)
> > 
> > On the other hand, even though it looks like Europe is behind in
> > broadband access right now, it will probably leap ahead by directly
> > going to wireless broadband. I hope...
> > 
> > Michael