Sunday, June 6, 2010

Clique Space(TM) progress report.

Indeed, I feel vindicated. My confidence in the strength of this concept has been steadily growing since I decided to give it a go back in January 2008 - three and a half years after it was conceived by me while jogging.

It appears as though the administrator Client Device and the Agent Device are working well together. Because of this, I am now thinking about moving my code base to an SVN installation on my IBM desktop running Ubuntu that I bought from my "work for the dole" employer last year, and running instances of the Agent and Client Devices on separate hardware after I replace the hard-coded reference to localhost from both to a true IP address.

Utterly wonderful.

I'm still using a console interface for the display of both Agent and Client Devices, and I imagine I will be for some time yet. Still, I imagine that the console interface will prove a valuable permanent component at least for the administrator Client Device. Any GUI will assist operators checking out the activity of the devices they control, and the devices others control as long as those others have given them permission to do this, but the console feed may be seen as being too convenient to let go of.

Anyway, I think I'm soon to have an environment that I will be able to present to others which will make some sense. I'm going to see if I can schedule a presentation of Clique Space at Wollongong uni after I get the Agent and Client Devices to work on separate hardware. In my presentation, I'll use my laptop at the podium to run one of two Client Devices. I'll start the other Client Device on one of two PC's inside the presentation room. On the other PC I'll start an Agent Device. My podium laptop and the two PC's will be networked together, and both Client Devices will be connected to the Agent Device. My laptop will be displaying the output of the Client Device through the projector that I will have run my presentation on, and the two presentation room PC's will be displaying their output on their own display.

I have been considering what other devices I might start developing Media Profile customisations for. Skype and an IRC client are good candidates. I'll do some more investigation on this. I also have my upcoming M.InfoSys research degree to consider this and other Clique Space related questions in. I have to contemplate some design theory related research directions for my degree, and indeed, I will get round to doing this before the degree starts in July.

While, from the above diatribe, it can be seen that I'm upbeat about the implementation, I'm perhaps a little philosophical about patent licensing.

I am in the process of finalising national phases for Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, but I do not have any more money to pay for registration in other jurisdictions. This is unfortunate, because I feel that a wider scope protection (Europe if possible, India if possible, China, Russia, Canada, Africa, and South America as some of the major ones) may only increase the attractiveness for business investment. But then, the collection of royalties from three jurisdictions would see me living in relative comfort; hence the philosophical disposition. I wonder if I'd still be recognised as the concept's inventor for the jurisdictions in which I didn't secure licensing...

Still, the PCT expires 15 July. That still gives me a bit of time to find finance, and I've still got a few lines of enquiry to follow...

Time will tell on Clique Space's future...

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