…It works perfectly well at the moment.”

That’s a good question that I was asked in a recent exchange, and it inspired me to write this post.

A Swiss Army Knife doesn’t replace a toolkit. But who wants to lug around fifty pounds of wrenches and hammers all day?

Simple + secure + cohesive = captivating

The idea of Frogans technology is not to reinvent the Web, nor to replace it, but to provide end-user with a complimentary way to interact with online content that takes user-friendliness to a new level.

Simple

Two elements omnipresent in Web use encumber the end-user: The browser window and URLs. Frogans don’t employ application windows. Every frogans is its own entity on your screen, each being identified by its single frogans address, each containing a potentially unlimited number of slides. Navigate within a frogans, between different frogans, or between a frogans and other layers of the Internet, such as the Web or email.

Frogans addresses simplify frogans navigation. Rather than being tied to hosting-provided IP addresses and their subdirectories, frogans addresses are singular names chosen by the frogans publisher for each of their frogans. This allows the publisher more flexibility with their hosting options, and the end-user less complexity for navigating.

Secure

FSDL (Frogans Slide Description Language), though compatible with all server-side applications, is the only language in which you may author and develop a frogans, and allows no executable scripts, meaning that the end-user can expect more security against malicious online content.

There is no hard disk cache for frogans resources (FSDL, GIF, JPG and PNG). These are loaded into active memory only, isolating them from your system’s resources.

Frogans addresses are looked up and validated through digital signatures in FNSL (Frogans Network System Language) between the end-user’s Frogans Player and frogans networks.

Cohesive

The three pillars of Frogans technology, FSDL, FNSL and the Frogans Player (for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X), work together in complete harmony with the singular goal optimizing the end-user’s navigating experience.

Captivating

Suddenly the end-user can maintain persistent contact with online content without sacrificing the functionality and security of their computer. User-scaleable frogans blend in with your desktop environment. No model for this kind of interactivity exists on the Web.

In advance of the Frogans Player release STG Interactive is going to produce a free AJAX-driven frogans development utility, called the FSDL Online Validator.

The FSDL Online Validator will allow you to write and edit FSDL 3.0 code, and render it as a frogans slide directly in your Web browser. You can start from templates and code examples, or work from scratch. You can even temporarily upload your own image files to use in your frogans slides. To save your work, copy and paste your code into a text editor document. This way, you get to try your hand at FSDL before the Frogans Player becomes available, and start building your own library of FSDL documents and code samples.

Features in the FSDL Online Validator will include:

• Live button roll-overs: Rendered buttons in your frogans slide will react to your mouse as they will in the Frogans Player
• Two size views: See your slide at its maximum (320 x 240 pixel grid) and minimum (80 x 60 pixel grid) sizes simultaneously
• Resource views: Preview your resources (image files, polygon images, text) separately
• Parsing-error messages: Should there be errors in your code, you will know where, and why
• Multi-language support: Choose the language in your interface, including parsing-error messages
• Frogans Player rendering conformity: Rendering is handled by the rendering engine from the Frogans Player

I should specify that what you create and view in the FSDL Online Validator are not complete frogans, but individual frogans slides. How a slide appears is an important aspect of what makes a frogans. But a frogans comes to life when it’s viewed and navigated. It’s an online desktop experience that’s completely apart from what is possible through a Web browser.

Frogans, with an “s”. For some reason, which nobody seems to remember, “frogans” is always spelled with an “s” at the end, whether we’re talking about one frogans or a whole flock of frogans.

It’s funny how this affects the way we talk about frogans. For instance, I could ambiguously say “Look at the frogans”, but it would have been better had I said “look at that frogans,” or “look at those frogans” and be more precise.

Now if I have a red frogans I can say: ” I sure like my frogans’ color.”

With fifty red frogans I say the exact same thing: “I sure like my frogans’ color.”

It’s impossible to know whether I’m talking about one or more frogans here. It might be better to say “I sure like the color of all my fifty frogans. They’re red, by the way.”

In the absence of any clear explanation of this entomological particularity, let’s just make something up:

There’s more to a frogans than meets the eye. Behind that humble home slide may burrow a plethora of amazingly diverse content just waiting to be explored. “Frogan” is so downright insufficient, you can hardly keep that “s” from ssssssslithering out. So rather than rewriting the laws of physics, we all just call them FROGANS, and the world is a happier place.

There you have it. The mystery is a mystery no more. Go home. Get a good night’s sleep, getting back to that excellent reoccurring dream about the upcoming release of Frogans technology.

We just call it the MFN for short.

My promise of a roadmap is turning up empty for now. Most of my time recently has been in finalizing the customer interface text for the upcoming frogans address registration service at frogans.com.

Background info

Key to Frogans Technology is the creation of frogans networks. The first of these is being put into place by STG Interactive.

The Main Frogans Network, which STG Interactive operates, and which is established on the Internet, is accessible free of charge and without restriction to anybody having an Internet connection, and having the Frogans Player (also free of charge) installed on their computer (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux).

To publish a frogans on the Main Frogans Network, one needs to have registered a frogans address ($12 per year, $20 for two years), and to author their frogans in FSDL, which is free to use and distribute.

On the Web, end-users employ Web browsers for hunting down pages, which are written in HTML, and bringing them up on-screen. Likewise, on the MFN, users employ the Frogans Player to track down frogans, written in FSDL, and bring them up on-screen. The Web and the MFN are both software layers, not to be confused with the Internet itself, which is a physical network.

To better understand how STG Interactive operates the MFN, let’s look at this frogans network in three, bite-sized chunks: its hardware and connectivity, its administrative applications, and its database server.

The hardware and connectivity

Servers used for frogans address lookups are called FNS (Frogans Network System) servers. Those for the MFN are clustered Linux servers hosted in a Telehouse data center facility in Paris, France, which is very convenient seeing that our offices are nearby. These servers are connected to the Internet backbone by two 1-GBps connections, one provided by Verizon Business, the other by Level 3 Communications.

To enable routing through these two different providers STG Interactive became a LIR (Local Internet Registry) at RIPE NCC, running its own Autonomous System (number AS39051).

This is already a heavyweight setup, but to be absolutely certain to be able to provide uninterrupted service world-wide at a high volume (that’s positive thinking!) a second data center location is being planned for 2008.

The administrative applications: frogans.com

Here’s where STG Interactive does business. Frogans.com will soon allow people to register frogans addresses of their choice (on a first come, first served basis), and to manage their accounts, including their address parameters for hosting and publishing their frogans on the Internet. (Every published frogans has its own frogans address.)

For now frogans.com’s front end is going to be in English only, but it has been developed to accommodate its translation into other languages to better address Internet community needs as its activity grows.

The database: FDB server

A scalable, high-volume, high performance database server capable of meeting the MFN’s needs did not exist, so STG Interactive invented the Frogans Database (FDB) server.

The FDB server backs both STG Interactive’s administrative applications and the FNS servers on the MFN, for continuous world-wide frogans address lookup service.

Today STG Interactive is capable of storing and looking-up one hundred million (100,000,000!) frogans addresses on the MFN. For comparison, there exist around 146,000,000 Web domain names worldwide (source: The VeriSign Domain Report).

STG Interactive looks ready to deliver the goods for well past the first growth-spurt of the Frogansphere.

…on the outside, but within these walls, a thunderous roar of activity – making it sometimes difficult to get blog posts up in a timely fashion. I’ve been helping out on the Web pages for registering frogans addresses and for managing Frogans Addressing Service subscriber accounts.

Next week I’ll post a wrap-up of STG Interactive’s roadmap for Frogans Technology and the Main Frogans Network for a frog’s eye view of where we’re at, and where we’re going. Just in time for the holidays!

A frogans can be perfectly adapted for generating consumer activity. FSDL (Frogans Slide Description Language) gives frogans creators tons of leeway for making their frogans appealing, and their compatibility with all server scripting languages (PHP, CGI, ASP…) enables them to serve as the front-ends for server applications.

Advertisement is all about getting you to identify with a product. For instance, if you see Brand A enough times within a short period (watching TV, reading a magazine, trapped in a bus), it becomes a part of your natural habitat. It makes Brand A look better than Brand B the next time you get the munchies.

Advertising in an interactive environment (on the Web, in the Frogansphere) works in additional ways. People interact directly with the media, and can even buy something online without getting out of their seat. Even if they prefer hold onto their change, browsing the Web is a lot like window shopping in front of an army of very observant sales clerks. “Oh look, he tried on the hat,” “Yeah, but he didn’t buy it.” “Sure, but he did buy the gnome.”

A frogans can contain advertising as can a Web site. For that matter, a frogans can be advertising media. And a frogans can advertise in a way that’s entirely new. That’s because, up until now, no one has succeeded in giving purely online media a sustainable presence on the desktop, in harmony with your other activities. In publishing a frogans you have the potential to do that.

Although a frogans can be called from a Web page, it is not dependent on that page remaining open. Your Web browser doesn’t even have to stay running. So when a user brings your gnome frogans up on-screen (for example), and they like what they see (who wouldn’t?), they can leave it there indefinitely, pretending to raise turnips on your desktop.

This is a big change in browsing. Up until now Internet browsing has been a linear, page-by-page experience. Multiple browser windows, tabs and pop-ups haven’t fundamentally changed this reality since the page that you’re on generally covers up the rest, making them as out-of-mind as they are out-of-sight. And as long as your browser is visible enough to function, it hides everything else on your screen.

But your gnome frogans might find a happy virtual home on the desktops of millions of gnome buyers and enthusiasts. A frogans won’t fill up any more than a 320×240 pixel region on your screen, and the end-user can instantly scale it down to whatever size suits them. So even though your gnome frogans stays at the front level of the screen, it won’t get in the way of other activities.

But what really makes the difference is that your gnome frogans can end up spending a lot of time hanging out on end-users’ screens. Load it up with a gnome gallery, gnome trends newsletter, favorite gnome recipes and, of course, gnome sales and auctions. But don’t limit yourself to gnomes. You could branch-off into hats also.

Come ye all into the Frogansphere. Let the adventure begin. Frankly, what’s in it for me, the candy-maker, the baker, the man on the street?

To describe your role in the Frogansphere let’s start with STG Interactive’s limited role.

Imagine a community where everyone is welcome to visit (sounds too good to be true). It resembles the Web in that way, and from the end-user’s point of view that’s how we can look at the Frogansphere.

Imagine you want to build a house, a business, set up an association in that community. In the Frogansphere you’re free to do anything (legal) that you like. You can invite as many people as you like, and be as big, small, crazy, conservative, cool, ugly, even as lucrative as you like. You simply need a special address so that the rest of us can find you. That’s the frogans address that you register with STG Interactive. The subscription rate is the same for everybody ($12 per year, $20 for two, plus taxes where applicable, by the way).

The community, the Frogansphere, is built on the Internet. STG Interactive provides the elementary tools at no charge and makes sure that the point of entry stays open to visitors by operating the Main Frogans Network and by making the (free) Frogans Player available to everyone. As a content provider you create frogans of your own and register one or more frogans addresses so that Frogans Player users can marvel at the amazing things that you’ve done.

To be more specific:

What does STG Interactive do?

STG Interactive creates Frogans Technology which is made up of:

• FSDL (Frogans Slide Description Language) for authoring frogans
• The Frogans Player for visiting, displaying and navigating frogans
• FNSL (Frogans Network System Language) for creating frogans networks.

STG Interactive operates the MFN (Main Frogans Network).

• With the Frogans Player anybody can access a frogans on the MFN.
• Anybody who has registered at least one frogans address with STG Interactive can publish a frogans on the MFN.

STG Interactive has set up a frogans address registration affiliation program

• Operated through the Commission Junction platform this program offers commissions on frogans address registrations actuated by affiliates.

What does STG Interactive not do?
(You might think of the following as a list of frogans-biz opportunities ripening on the vine.)

STG Interactive does not create frogans

• Sure, we may do a few demos, but that’s just to help get the ball rolling for everyone else. STG Interactive provides the framework, but not the content. That’s for you to do.

STG Interactive does not publish frogans authoring tools

• We’ll be putting a frogans creation tool online with limited functionality fairly soon: the Frogans Start Service. But again, this is just to get the ball rolling. We’d much prefer that others take the torch. It’s just not our line of work. We’ll do our best to see that software developers have the resources they need for making tools that help the rest of us make frogans.

STG Interactive does not determine the content of your frogans

• Use your frogans to say whatever you want (within the laws of your country). We don’t oblige you to put ads, or anything else in your frogans. Your frogans content is your responsibility and your right, so go crazy.

STG Interactive does not host frogans

• You register your frogans address with STG Interactive, but where you host you frogans is entirely up to you.

STG Interactive does not publish FSDL user guides

• We publish the FSDL Specifications to be as complete and as accurate as possible. Anybody who wants to publish more intuitive explanations (tutorials, books, code examples, FSDL Specification translations, etc.) is free to do so.

STG Interactive will not create a frogans search engine or directory

• Frogans search services can be freely created by anyone on the Internet. Leaving that role to the specialists, STG Interactive will not provide these services to end-users, and will not provide lists of registered frogans addresses to third parties.

STG Interactive does not sell you anything besides frogans address registration subscriptions (or licenses for creating private frogans networks of your own)

• We’re not out for a piece of your action. That’s why frogans address registration fees are the same for everybody, whether you have one, or a zillion frogans addresses, and whether your frogans are visited by the entire world, or by just a few acquaintances.

In short, if the Frogansphere is to grow, it has to be without barriers. STG Interactive provides the addressing service and the format specifications. It’s up to you to decide what you do, and how far you want to go. It’s way cool, so knock yourself out!

Like I’ve said before, despite several visual and functional similarities, frogans and widgets are not the same thing. I like to imply that we live in a happy universe where frogans and widgets can peacefully coexist. Like Rodney King said, “Can’t we all… just… get along?”

Well, wouldn’t that be nice. But can you really, really trust a widget?

According to the Q3 2007 Web Security Trends Report from the Finjan Malicious Code Research Center (MCRC), you can never be too sure if a widget is as cute and cuddly on the inside as it is on the outside:

“Our findings suggest that new attacks that exploit the insecurities of widgets and gadgets are imminent, and that a revised security model should be explored in order to keep users protected from such attacks.
All types of widget environments (OS, 3rd party applications, and web widgets) were found to be plagued with inadequate security models that allowed malicious widgets to run.”

What? Next, they’re going to tell us not to let them get wet; nor to feed them after midnight!

It’s not as if the writing wasn’t already on the wall. All these proliferating mini-apps, cruising the Info-way to and from your computer, often accessing your system resources and running JavaScript of unbeknown intent. Yikes!

Among other things, the MCRC suggests that organizations limit the internal use of widgets, and even go so far as blocking the downloading widget and gadget file types at corporate network gateways.

Is there any hope for those of us wanting an interactive, online desktop pal without fearing that it might stab us in the back?

Frogans, like widgets, have a knack for being cute and cuddly and for displaying content in a small, unobtrusive format. (For a look at their major differences, see “Frogans vs.Widgets”.)

However, in Frogans Technology development, and apparently unlike with widget engines, end-user security has been a major consideration from the start. While not impossible, a malicious attack from a frogans, is really, really improbable. Here are a few reasons why:

• FSDL (Frogans Slide Description Language) – Written in XML this is the only language in which a frogans can be authored. No Flash, no JavaScript. FSDL provides no references to end-user system resources.
• No disc cache – Frogans slides are loaded into active memory only (and they don’t take up very much of that) – never onto your hard drive.
• Image and FSDL parsing – Here the Frogans Player trades off a bit of speed for iron-clad parsing security.(Given the size limitation requirements for frogans resources, this is a minimal speed issue). The Frogans Player simply rejects corrupt files and corrupt images.
• Fonts – The FSDL specifications (v.3.0) permit only certain typographic fonts to be used in a frogans slide. These fonts are integrated into the Frogans Player which has exclusive access to them. Principally implemented as an access and compatibility feature this is also an insurance against corrupted fonts which could eventually be used in an exploit attempt.
• The frogans address – Each frogans publisher on the Main Frogans Network obtains their frogans address at frogans.com and agrees to the terms therein. This allows STG Interactive to suspend a frogans address (and consequently the frogans concerned) should an FSDL document or an image at that address be used in an attempt to exploit a possible Frogans Player security flaw.
  Moreover, frogans addresses are secured by means of digital signatures.
• We encourage the developer community to go looking for any security flaws they can find in the Frogans Player. Anybody who informs us of one will be cited the release notes of patched Frogans Player upgrades. What more could you ask for? A free frogans address with a cool name like “frogans*DemonHacker”? We’re open to suggestions on that front.
• All the above points apply to all three of the principal platforms for Internet end-users. Linux users won’t be left to fall by the wayside. Mac OS X users won’t be out in the cold. Windows users won’t be left blowing in the wind.

We’re pretty sure that Frogans Technology is going to be a hit in corporate environments because of its clear advantages in terms of security, and what’s good enough for them should well do for the rest of us.

So if you happen to come across a cute and cuddly widget, take heed that looks can be deceiving. On the other hand, your favorite frogans can look like Dracula’s nightmare and still be the perfect pet. I’d like to know what the MCRC will have to say about that.

A crazy week has passed since the crazy week that passed since I last posted a word about frogans (or about anything else, which usually has something to do with frogans). That makes two crazy weeks. By my best estimates I have a crazy week ahead of me, making three crazy weeks of near silence on Froganeyes. The up-spin is that I’ll have three crazy weeks worth of info, commentary and pontifications to spill across your browser, kicking off next crazy week.