In a sense, Frogans technology is open on one end, and closed on the other. It’s open with respect to the use of FSDL. Under the FSDL perpetual license it will always be free to use for creating frogans, and even for creating frogans authoring tools. If a software company decides to create the equivalent of Dreamweaver for frogans, that’s fine. There’s no obligation to STG Interactive.

On the other hand, if someone wants to make an alternative to the Frogans Player – say one that accepts larger images, or can detect the date and time on your system – forget it. Why? Because frogans don’t do that.

I can’t say it enough: Frogans are not widgets. I should add: Widgets are not frogans. Oh no. They should be so lucky.

Here’s a short list of annoying things that will tell you that something is not a frogans:

• If it doesn’t have a frogans address, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it opens up without you intending it to, then it’s not a frogans.
• If you can’t rescale it immediately to the size you like, or hide it, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it slows down the performance of your computer, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it doesn’t function and display identically regardless of your operating system, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it animates without your input, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it passes behind another application, or application window, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it downloads to your hard disk, then it’s not a frogans.

And here’s a list of things that will annoy your computer that a frogans won’t do:

• If it opens up an application unexpectedly, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it contains HTML, JavaScript or Flash, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it interferes with the functioning of other applications, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it depends on the functioning of software other than the Frogans Player, then it’s not a frogans.
• If it puts a wiggle in your walk, then it could be frogans, or it could be what you had with your cereal this morning.

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.