PubSubHubbub + WebSockets + Gowalla + GoogleMaps

For those who ask what it is : PubSubHubbub and Webhooks (HTML5) integrated.

Gowalla publishes its feeds thru PubSubHubbub. I built a small node.js server that can subscribe to these feeds. Then, this exact same server is a WebSocket server. The browser open a websocket connection to the server, which then subscribes to the hub. When the server gets updates it pushes them to the browser.

Code here: http://github.com/julien51/socket-sub/

Subscribe to any feed here: http://julien51.github.com/socket-sub/

So... what's it doing? More explanation would be nice.

Doesn't seem to work in Firefox 4.0 (b3), which should have WebSockets...

(I think it might be a different protocol version from what Chrome supports, which is exactly the reason it sucks when browsers go out there with protocols that aren't more mature yet).

Looks like it's just a visual log of one persons' check-ins.

It's moving way too fast to be entertaining or interactive. If you slowed it down, people could zoom in for a much closer look and it would actually be a cool slideshow style display.

On firefox 3.6.8 for linux, and I see nothing.. is that normal?

I thought websockets have to make a connection to your server from the same domain? How are you getting around this?