Show HN: Toc Messenger – A distributed messaging app that syncs
toc.im
toc.im
Toc is a project I've been working on for more than a year now. I'd love to hear what you guys think about it. =)
Toc is a proof-of-concept distributed messaging app designed from the ground up to support user data synchronization for use across multiple devices. It uses Telehash for its messaging stack, and is built on top of an Om-inspired architecture oriented around a central app state tree, that gets encrypted using a custom encryption layer for persistence locally, and then synchronized seamlessly between devices using remoteStorage.
Originally, Toc started as our group's fourth year Computer Engineering design project at the University of Waterloo. After we graduated in May, I wanted to polish it up a bit before releasing, but evidently went a bit overboard and ended up working on it for another six months (albeit with a healthy dose of procrastination sprinkled throughout that period).
There's a more thorough technical overview and project history on the GitHub page if you're interested in more details: https://github.com/lewisl9029/toc
Toc is only a proof-of-concept, and has a list of awful issues that makes it rather unsuitable for long term general use. However, I'm hoping that by releasing Toc, we can bring more attention to the awesome technologies for building great decentralized applications that Toc uses, and inspire more developers to take another serious look at building distributed apps, as I hope we have demonstrated with Toc that a decentralized app can in fact have great UX if you design your apps with UX in mind from the start.
With that said, I am now officially looking for work. If you have any openings for a ClojureScript frontend project, or a React project that makes heavy use of functional techniques and immutable data, I'd love to hear about it. You can reach me through the email on my GitHub profile[1], HN profile[2] or through my Toc account[3]. ;) (disclaimer: that last option might not be completely reliable)
[1] https://github.com/lewisl9029
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lewisl9029
[3] http://toc.im/?inviteid=9b0d50b86dd596aa8c7a94bd116c2ed4a24f...