Open messaging environment (project OMEN)

OMEN is an open source news and messaging platform. It aims to create the framework
for employees who are working in intensive information related environments. OMEN is
browser based, operating system neutral, free of upgrades or updates.

It is currently implemented for normal computer environments in 2010, but aims to support
Eyetap technology (Virtual Reality glasses, by doctor Steve Mann of U. Toronto) by 2015.

Picture this: you are low on money, mood, and it is freaking raining -1 degree celsius water
sticks in your neck. Your gf just lost you, and life couldn’t be bitcher. Or so you thought!

Oh yes, wait for the real snacks. Since you are traversing in new territory, you do not know
a heck of the geography. Your snappy cool smartphone just choked on a heavy vector
graphics hack of a map, so you are out of web browser help. And was it today that the
bus drivers were implementing their yearly strikes?

This is close to a real world situation I
was once in. I promised I would get even. Finnish IT infrastructure is bipolar in nature;
it is supposedly way ahead of competition, but in a cold and evil way it is also leaving
you hopelessly without help in the worst of situations.

OMENs main message is: get in touch, stay in touch! And thus stay out of trouble!
It employs
single sign on (SSO) for fast sign ons, and no password fuzzes
lost password recovery
warnings for possible multiple session usage (hacked)
realtime broadcast messaging
fast email with easy, powerful search (naturalized grep)
Voice over IP telephony
versioning of all data
autocat categorization system, which keeps your documents and data in a new flexible form

Using OMEN feels subjectively like being in the blessing or some norse gods. You
feel empowered and not lost at all. Things are easy to achieve; you can get
in touch all the time, read your mail, see from a satellite’s bird eye view where you
are, etc. In fact, once you get used to OMEN, it is quite a strange experiment
to live without it.

One of the main things OMEN tackles is the synchrony of time problems (SoTp) in
modern, globalized working places. This means in practical terms that OMEN helps
employees understand how the organization is awake; who is in where, doing what, and
can they collaborate; or when to expect an answer.

main line of focus is at providing a modern, operating system neutral
platform for workers.

Attributes of OMEN

Openness – there is no “system” in that everyone can inspect and question the
architecture. The OMEN framework merely provides a technical basis and structure
for people’s natural communications needs. OMEN does not make people hide or
swear about the system. There are no principles or ideologies behind OMEN.

Practicality – Some reference designs are made for easy, hands-on activity.
Like implementing a VoIP headset / handset with as little $$$ as possible, still
attaining good voice quality.

Ease of use

Visibility
– the qualities of objects are visible; for example, a mailbox: how often it updates, how frequently it gets inbound email; how much data is used by inbox and folders. Etc. Lot of practical meters.

Security
– OMEN is running in a distributed cloud, so its security is based on the access
control to the cloud’s databases. These in turn are based on the authentication and authorization methods used at the client machine level.
– by default, OMEN uses strong cryptography in software implementation.
– Onion routing of data

Little updates — better stability and ease of use
– users can expect the system to be stable in terms of usability, ie. the updates
are not driven in daily, weekly; they are as transparent as possible. Maybe expect
2 or 3 major updates a year. Updates can be distributed as stegonets, driven into
the software with a PCXT agent, or maintained by hand. You are in control of the method.

Definitions
– user
– admin
– architect
– god: the original programmer of OMEN, a Finnish system administrator who goes by the nickname ‘poek’.

Project development steps

Prioritized milestones :: aka what to provide and when
– messaging = basic channel, private, and broadcast messaging
– email kind of functionality
– intellispider, crawling web for articles in a way you want. {lang,length,images,spammy,topical}
– VoIP telephone integration