[Commotion-dev] application captive portal

[Benjamin Chodoroff]

On Thu 30 Aug 2012 03:40:33 PM EDT, Seamus Tuohy wrote:
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> Hello All,
>
> While working on the OpenWRT application suites I put together a
> simple bit of code to get applications advertised on nearby nodes.
> (This is merely the node's advertisement of where apps exist in a user
> friendly way, not a scheme for advertising applications to the node.
> We will start that second piece in late October or November, and reach
> out again.)
>
> I would love feedback on this from either the brief explanation in the
> e-mail or on the wiki page for this project.
>
>  https://code.commotionwireless.net/projects/commotion/wiki/Meshable_Applications
>
> What I have is a captive page that parses a application UCI document
> to auto-generate an application portal. The main components are a
> controller that parses the UCI into arrays based upon their type, and
> a view that iterates through the arrays to display the available
> sections with apps in them.
>
> Because the only model used is the UCI document all icons and longer
> user descriptions will be requested from the applications as needed
> and only temporarily cached. If anyone has ideas on how to best handle
> this using existing processes I would be interested in hearing them.
> Any applications that cannot send back info will be removed from the
> public listing because it is an easy indicator of lack of good
> connectivity.
>
> I am debating whether or not to show incompatible OS/Device specific
> apps to users. I want to make sure a lively, but  OS specific, network
> still looks lively without being frustrating the user with apps they
> can't access.
>
> I would like input on both the design and ideas on how to best build
> the back end to make it secure. Attached are two mock-ups Since the
> dev site is down while we upgrade it.

Cool ideas here.

I remember some earlier mention of user case studies regarding the need 
for security and privacy - what came of these studies?

What are the basic security goals for these mesh applications?

Should it be the application bazaar's job to broker a secure 
connection? How is initial trust established when connecting to the 
bazaar itself?

-ben