We'll see how right/wrong I am in the New Year : )
Many of you have been loosely following my development of Speech.is but I have been terrible at communicating what Speech.is actually does. Speech.is just serves up a client-side Javascript application (speech.js) which navigates the web using the following syntax:
Code: Select all
http://speech.is/#example.bitSpeech.js is more akin to a browser than a website, making .bit websites interoperable on the ICANN root without hosting or linking to any potentially controversial materials directly. Combined with primarily non-illicit use-cases, Speech.is avoids all of the legal issues inherent to .bit mirrors and proxies.
A worst-case analysis of the threat-model would limit Speech.is use cases to low security ones, i.e. read-only websites. However, the limitations on the security Speech.is can provide are the exact same limitations as that of any CDN such as Akami, cdnjs or Google's javascript CDN. With only a couple of trivial enhancements to the browsers (read only access w/ CORS and hashes of page content) we can remove the threat of an MITM attack due to a vulnerability in Speech.is servers.
Speech.is/javascript DNS gets us 90% on security, UX, interop, legal and political requirements. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to meet the minimum requirements for each of those conditions. It's the final piece of the puzzle we need to make Namecoin and other decentralized domain name systems go mainstream.
I am graduating from college in the spring and for the next 6 months I will be working on my "capstone" project – Speech.is! I need to build interest so I can recruit other students, if not my entire graduating class, to choose Speech.is for their capstone as well. I'm going to launch the developer Alpha on Christmas day and announce a roadmap which includes a beta in a few months and a 1.0 candidate by the spring (I won't let anything exit beta status until the security has been thoroughly vetted). While the developer alpha not meant for public or mainstream consumption, I plan on contacting technology focused media outlets like ArsTechnica and Wired.
I looked up capstone on Wikipedia and it was a big letdown: it's akin to a railing on a bridge. I think of Speech.is as a keystone: the center piece of an arch. It is the smallest, least difficult stone to create but without an the arch cannot transfer gravitational forces to its massive foundational stones. It may seem ornamental, but it is crucial.
So, would like to propose "Project Keystone": a final push to get Namecoin, .bit, and Speech.is polished up for Christmas day:
- Move namecoin forums to new (preferably managed) host
- • Change URL to forums.namecoin.info
- • Cconvince the owner of Namecoin.org to let us use his domain. You can email him at [removed by phelix] - BE NICE! (sorry, I thought that was implied!)
- • Something with a valid TLS cert
- • I would really like to see us move away from phpBB and towards Vanilla Forums
- C/P content from the old spam-ridden wiki to the new Github wiki.
- Overhaul the Namecoin.info introduction page
- Overhaul the Speech.is explanation page
- Get a few major sites to volunteer as demo sites for speech.is
- Get history/back/forward navigation working on Speech.is
- Rewriting the jsDNS spec
- Uploading the latest binaries for all platforms
- Automating the build system
Ben` and Mationn have been working on the switch to the new Wiki.
If you are an artist or have experience with interactive one-page sites, Jeremy_Rand/Biolizard has been working on a new namecoin.info site and I could use help on Speech.is's about page.
If you have Javascript experience, I could use a hand with the history part of Speech.is (it's actually a pretty self-contained project.)
We've only got 3 days, so be bold in your edits![/s]