[Nodedb-interop] Freifunk Node Database

[mickey]

Hello world,

triggered by Alx i've stumbled accross the interop project and i pretty
much appreciate this idea.

As some of you allready might know i have recently started a new project
called Freifunk Node Database. It's main goal is to provide a simple and
working solution for maintaining data of our local mesh network. We have
had an installation of FFSomething for quite some time running but
unfortunatly the users kept complaining about bugs and nobody was able to
take care of it properly. This technical hurdle kept newcomers from joining
our network and even let formerly active people leave :-(

The new database follows the KISS design principle and is (currently)
focused on rather "offline" data maintained by the node owners. As i've
experienced with other projects like FFSomething and Netmon the aggregation
of live data and ideas alike takes away the developers focus from the
regular people's needs way too much. Therefore my approach is trying to
keep the perspective of the technically unexperienced user as much as
possible. In the long run i envision a smooth and fancy application that
provides a "new node wizard" with automatic ip address generation and
nearby subnet proposal based on geo location.

The application is written in Rails because this is what i personally like
best for web applications. And there are plenty of plugins that ease even
the more complicated details, e.g. geokit, map_layers, et. al. 

You can find a live "demo" (actually our working copy) at
http://db.hannover.freifunk.net
The source code lives on http://github.com/knox/nodes

I just have contributed some technical info about this project and our
local mesh to the interop wiki allready and i am really looking forward for
a great dialog within the interop project.

Have a nice day,
Knox (Freifunk Hannover, Germany)