Beyond Social— Kune
Note: this review was done using the platform in a demo environment. The experience may be different when used in production.
Every so often, we review the dustbin of history to see what ideas and technologies were passed over, and think about what could have been. Kune can be considered a continuation of Google Wave, and it is clear that this project wanted to expand on the initial vision for ad-hoc communication.
Kune is built on the Apache Foundation’s Wave in a Box project, and runs the Wave Federation Protocol. Wikipedia notes that the project is capable of federating with Apache Wave instances, and supports instant messaging with XMPP users.
The project bills itself as a social network, but a more accurate description would be a drop-in replacement for Google Apps. The layout and behavior of this gives the impression that every element in Kune is a document, but also a message. It all has a vaguely Google Docs-like design aesthetic.
The platform tends to emphasize group collaboration in an organizational capacity. Out of the box, it supports documents, collaborative wiki editing, calendars, messages, chats, tasks, forums, and barters.
Kune also features a built-in collaborative calendar, and a task management system for assignments. This could be useful for organizations that need a shared calendar to keep track of deadlines.
The strangest element of Kune so far would have to be the bartering system, which I haven’t really implemented in much of anything before. In a nutshell, this allows users to create mutual contracts of value between one another: This could be along the lines of offering to sell something on Craigslist or Amazon, but in a more localized and decentralized manner.
Overall, the instance that I tested was extremely buggy. None of the Google Gadgets loaded in Firefox, basic image uploads didn’t work, and I couldn’t find anyone to barter with. At this time, Kune feels more like a playground than a ready-for-prime-time communication system. Still, it is an interesting footnote of Google Wave’s own history, and the source code is available for anyone who would like to take a look.
Check out Kune: http://kune.ourproject.org/
Kune is a great idea, and I believe it’s intended to be an eventual replacement for (or complement to) the SourceForge style services at ourproject.org.
The hosted instances available now could be in open beta, rather than being offered as mature services. Would be interesting to get some comments from the developers, for example to know if Kune is still being actively developed, and by how many people.