Originally shared by Gary Hodgson I've been working on an idea over the last

Originally shared by Gary Hodgson

I’ve been working on an idea over the last few weeks which I would like to share with the community. It’s a proposal for a way to share designs, projects and “things” within the maker community. To try and present the idea I have created an information website: http://thingtracker.net

To be clear, this is really just a starting point to promote discussion, with the hope that the whole community can provide input, and together we can produce the start of a decentralised Network of Things.

The idea percolated from the discussions following my creating githubiverse [1], and also from the forum thread of +Richard Horne about a RepRap Object Repository [2]. And whilst it certainly isn’t an original idea, I think the time is ripe for something to develop in this area.

I can envision a future where people can develop apps and tools that hook into the Network of Things and offer all kinds of services: search engines; boutique object repositories; personalised lists; and so on. All open and decentralised. Pretty idealistic perhaps, but still pragmatic enough to become reality.

There is a whole host of use cases and ideas surrounding the proposal, as well as many potential issues, all of which I hope we can discuss further, leading to something that really benefits the community. So, if you can find the time, please have a glance over the website and share your opinions.


[1] http://garyhodgson.com/reprap/2012/09/githubiverse-a-github-pages-template-for-3d-printing-projects/#comment-6578
[2] http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,160251,161357#msg-161357