Push

If a site should go down or become compromised, we want exports and backups of user's personal data.

We trust that large companies will be reliable and stable, but this is not always the case.  There are countless examples of sites going down, shutting down properties, or losing data in error.

In the last few years I've played with a variety of open source platforms that allow various types of publishing online.  Some are better than others, some have died while others now flourish.

While I don't actively use these all now, looking back here are a few I've experimented with:

CMS and Blogging

Wordpress

Joomla

Drupal

Stacey

Chyrp

Tumblelog (Tumblr Alternative)

Gelato (no longer in development)

Bazooka (no longer in development)

Micoblogging (Twitter Alternative)

Jisko (no longer in development)

Lifestream

Sweetcron (no longer in development)

Storytlr

Lifepress (no longer in development)

Bookmarking (Delicious Alternative)

Scuttle

Semantic Scuttle

Ecommerce

Virtuemart (Joomla)

Magento

osCommerce

CRE Loaded

Social Media Metrics

ThinkUp

When I rely a lot on a third party platform, I try to note that.  I would feel a lose if my data or my access to the product went away.  I also try to note when existing platforms or third party options don't quite provide the set of features I'm looking for in a service.  These are areas where I might be able to develop a customized solution.

Among the long list of alternatives and personal solutions I hope to experiment with in the future, these are a few of the areas that I'm interested in:

• A self-hosted URL shortener to replace Bit.ly
• A self-hosted photo album to replace Flickr (Open Photo might be an option)
• A photo-sharing Instragram alternative
• A Dropbox alternative (ownCloud or SparkleShare might be options)
• A Foursquare alternative for general geotracking
• An event or group calendar platform
• A contact book to replace contacts on my phone or Google Contacts
• A to-do list in the flavor of Wunderlist
• A visual bookmarking platform like Pinterest
• A Pocket or Instapaper alternative (Bookie might be an option)

I'm using an install of Storytlr at both erinjorichey.com/push and erinjorichey.com/pull.

On Pull, I'm bringing exhaust data from various networks back onto my personal domain.  For me, this currently includes Foursquare checkins, Tweets, posts from my blog, pins from Pinterest, pictures from Instagram, links from Delicious, articles from Pocket, and liked songs from Pandora.  Storytlr supports a variety of networks, and others can be added if they produce an RSS feed.

With Push, I'm publishing short updates and pieces of content.  At some point I hope to be able to publish this content on my own site and then automatically syndicate these to social networks like Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.  While this automatic syndication isn't currently implemented, I can manually post references to these updates on social networks. 

Further into the future, I might have a platform that would allow me to syndicate my own check-ins to Foursquare, send pictures to Instagram or Flickr, etc.