Up until now I’ve jabbered a lot about how neat frogans are as elements on the desktop, how cool the authoring environment is, the groovy Frogans Player, how the revolution will be televised, etc. It was getting about time to write about that much-neglected third pillar of Frogans technology, the one you’ve all been waiting for, the Frogans Network System Language, or FNSL for the in-crowd.

Rather than being a post, I did it as a static page. So don’t wait another instant! Go to the FNSL/Frogans Network Fun Overview by clicking here!

Nowadays, more individuals than ever are publishing personal content online. User generated content seems to be taking over the Web with services which allow people to set up their own pages, spaces, blogs and mashups without having to deal with a lot of code. Still, there are plenty of folks taking the hands-on approach for complete control of their subject matter. In any case, the Web is an environment very much shared by commercial entities and developers, and by individuals publishing content pertaining to their personal interests.

Things will probably be much the same in the frogansphere of the Internet. While Frogans technology opens up plenty of opportunities for enterprises, the door is also wide open for people who want to express their personal interests, in much the same way as it has been with the Web, but in that ever-so-enticing frogans way.

The nature of your frogans is likely to be determined not only by what you wish to express, but also by the technical hurdles that you choose to jump or avoid.

Regardless of your approach, you’ll always start at the same place: with the registration of a frogans address (ex: “frogans*myname”). Frogans can only be viewed using the Frogans Player, which opens a frogans only by its frogans address. In your frogans address settings, which you can modify at any time, you indicate the Internet location of your frogans root directory, which is where the files that make up your frogans are stored (ex”http://www.myhost.com/mydirectory/”).

The table below shows three levels of complexity for authoring frogans and hosting them on the Internet, where A represents the most basic, hands-on, most technically challenging approach, and C the most passive, worry-free method.

A For those who are comfortable with hand-coding, dealing with Internet hosting services, and who insist on having maximum creative leeway, they can author their frogans from scratch, using image processing software such as Photoshop or Gimp, and hand-coding their documents in the Frogans Slide Description Language (FSDL). They’ll upload their files themselves by FTP or SCP to their frogans root directory, at the Internet location that they’d indicated in their frogans address settings.

B With a little bit of patience these same people might wait for an offline WYSIWYG desktop FSDL authoring tool to show up. I know of one already that is under development, and I’d encourage all able developers to consider giving it a go (and to contact me for additional support if you’re interested). They’d still have to deal with uploading to their host’s server by FTP or SCP, but it’s not the trickiest part.

C With an online authoring service for creating frogans easily online, many hosting services could happily propose it to their clients. For instance, in their frogans address settings, the client indicates that their frogans root directory is on that host’s server. With all of the elements under one roof the hosting service can provide a user interface for authoring a frogans, as well as handling all the necessary file management. Even if the application didn’t offer all of the creative possibilities that one could have in hand-coding, it would sure be nice to author and publish a frogans straight from the web browser.

A service that will fall under this third category is under development at STG Interactive. The idea is to make it easy for anybody to publish a simple frogans right away while leaving the door open for them move on to other hosts and publishing methods if they like. Frogans will be created and customized from pre-existing templates. While the options will be limited (eg.: limits on the number of slides, links, images and themes), the results will be quick. And aside from the frogans address registration fee, the service and hosting will be free of charge.

Something that the social web is proving is that a great number of us have plenty of things to say, whether it’s about our interests, hobbies, work, schools, friends, or just about ourselves. And we’re continually open to finding a better medium for saying them. If it weren’t for that blasted learning curve!

In my Reach Out and * Somebody entry I emphasized a frogans can enjoy a certain permanence on your desktop. A frogans can be reduced to a very small size, allowing it to remain active and maintain a distinctive visual aspect without gobbling up too much desktop real estate. This might put a number of frogans in competition for your attention however, and sooner or later you might have to make that choice between whether you keep that pizza delivery menu frogans up there in the corner, or close it, but keep it in the favorites menu, or (GASP!) forget about it altogether, because there’s a new sub sandwich delivery in town, and they rock!

Since there’s only so much space available on your screen at any given moment, you have to prioritize. It’s at this point that you might start thinking that not only are you what you eat, but what you frogans also, because what you choose put in front of you will be of the subjects in the frogansphere you find to be the most important.

For activists of all flavors this could alter the landscape. It’s one thing to have people on your emailing list and visitors to your site, but having your frogans full-time on someone’s desktop is a different matter. It’s more like having your cause adopted. More than just some desktop icon, it can be navigated within itself, or to the Web. You give it depth with news, images, invitations, and links to everything pertinent on the net.

Imagine a frogans that looks like an AIDS awareness pin. Real-world AIDS awareness pins are worn by people to express to others their support for people inflicted with AIDS, and for the efforts to conquer it. It’s reasonable to suggest also that they serve as a way for these people to remind themselves of what’s most important for them. Having an AIDS awareness frogans on your display might be something like looking in a mirror. You choose to have it there because it’s a priority – it’s a priority because you choose to have it there. What’s more, it’s not just a pin, it’s a navigable site, a gateway to the latest news and resources, a way of keeping up with the community.

This George Monbiot piece on renewable energy that appeared in the Guardian touches upon the need to rally around a cause before any significant action will be taken. For some folks, maybe adopting a frogans will be their first step towards adopting a cause.

Take another look at Reach Out and * Somebody for some more ideas on how a frogans like this can work with its visitors.

This is my first day back from two weeks in the countryside, and since I’m easing my way back into city life and the issues surrounding Frogans technology, I’m going to ease into a pertinent frogans-related subject with a real-life example:

The city of Paris added a new wing, or wheel, to their public transportation service recently: municipal bicycles. This makes sense in a city like Paris where distances are short, destinations are plenty, and rush-hour traffic is an horreur.

The bikes are stationed at, well, at bike stations. Each bike is secured to a post by an electronically-controlled lock. It would take either a welding torch or the jaws of life to steal a bike, which would be hardly worth the bother given that each one is equipped with GPS, and that they’re far too ungainly to be considered a status symbol. Each station is equipped with a kiosk at which you make your transaction and choose a bike. Each kiosk has a display monitor and a numbered keypad, and that’s where the trouble begins.

For procuring a bike, the monitor is your user interface, and the keypad is your input device. Every option presented on the screen is accompanied by a numbered icon which bears a striking resemblance to its corresponding key on the keypad below. But instead of going to the keypad, aspiring bikers apparently prefer to touch the icon on the display. When nothing happens, many give up and take the Metro.

This almost happened to me before it dawned on me that the keypad below might have other functions than just taking my credit card’s PIN number. Getting past that I was free to struggle through an unintuitive maze of instructions that followed. This quickly attracted an audience of frustrated pedestrians, generally over 50, eager to see how I cracked the enigma. Indiana Jones and Temple of Vroom.

“Oh, you touch the keypad.” And there I go explaining in my awkward French all the little steps that only make sense to those too young to remember the rotary dial. I should have kept my mouth shut. This insane user interface is obviously a stealth public safety measure for keeping the old, and old-ish, away from these contraptions.

What’s this doing on a blog that’s supposed to be dedicated to Frogans technology? Let’s call it an example of what can unexpectedly happen (or not happen) in interactive design when working in a new medium. For every medium out there there’s a long implicit list of do’s and don’ts. When authoring a web site DO put a link to the home page on every page of the site. DON’T run an animated GIF under body text. Ignoring these things puts you at high risk of doing crummy work.

While we can expect to see a whole lot of great frogans by years end, some crummy ones are bound to crop up from time to time.

So hey kids, keep in mind that a frogans is not a website. There’s no “back” button unless you put one there. Keep your text short and concise, not like this blog, because the real estate on a frogans slide is precious. Not too many buttons, because you’ll need some no-button room for moving a frogans around on your screen. Frogans are intended to work alongside the Web, so there’s no need to go trying to replace it. And frogans are intended to be for everybody – it’s not like somebody’s going to take one and ride in front a bus.