AroundMe Review

AroundMe is a unique open-source social software package that was written with the goal to provide people with tools needed to "share knowledge and advance open digital society."  These lofty goals have led to the development of a free software suite that provides both an online "Internet Identity" and tools needed to collaborate.

These are the two central goals of AroundMe, to deal with the problem Internet users have where so many ID and passwords are needed to access the huge variety of websites we visit every day.  The second goal is to provide an online space where users can easily collaborate and share knowledge.

AroundMe  Social Networking

The mission statement of this open-source software suite is commendable, however as it stands now, the development of this software is still a long way from being competitive with other social networking software, both open source and commercial.

The "digital identity" concept is what AroundMe uses to set itself apart from the crowd.  This digital identity is based on a web technology called "OpenID", a new standard more and more websites are adopting in order to make it easier for users to utilize a common ID and password throughout the internet.

In theory this should work well, but in reality the system is so new that even though there are over 10,000 web sites that support OpenID log-ins such as Mozilla, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, there remain volumes of websites on the internet that don't use OpenID.  This means that even if you use AroundMe software to create a digital identity, the odds are pretty good that users who create an OpenID using AroundMe software will still be required to enter a different ID and password to access those sites that do not support OpenID.

Additionally, while the social networking feature offers most of the standard networking options that other software has, AroundMe offers nothing unique or different in terms of social networking tools. 

Requirements

Most social networking software packages that need to be installed on your web server have a minimum set of requirements for your hosting service.  In the case of AroundMe, the minimum requirements are as follows:

1. Apache 1.3/2.x or IIS5/IIS6
2. PHP 5.x
3. Curl, BCMath and GD Library
4. MySQL 4.1 or MySQL 5.0
5. A purchased domain

Major Features

Personal Identity Option - The "Personal Identity" option on AroundMe provides users with a single OpenID which they can use anywhere on the internet that accepts it as a standard.  Additionally, a "Personal identity" account offers users:

•-          A personal blog or diary

•-          A personal web page supporting CSS, XHTML and Javascript

•-          Guestbook

•-          Widgets

•-          Website statistics

•-          Email contact form

Collaboration Server - The second part of AroundMe's mission is to provide users with a place where they can share knowledge and collaborate.  The "Collaboration Server" account offers users:

•-          Creates a web based "group"

•-          Blogs

•-          Forums

•-          Wiki

•-          Web page supporting CSS, XHTML and Javascript

•-          Guestbook

•-          Widgets

•-          Web site activity log

•-          RSS feed

Performance

Downloading and setting up AroundMe is fairly easy for anyone with some knowledge of web design and web page development.  AroundMe comes with installation instructions, but these would not be for the faint of heart.  If you have never installed such software before, have someone install it who is more familiar with this sort of web technology. 

After downloading and configuring the software with mostly defaults and a simple setup, we found that when performing a standard five-user test, the software ran fairly well. There appeared to be no effect on performance when multiple users were using multiple components simultaneously.   During the time we were testing the software, no bugs turned up - surprising considering this is open-source software.  Overall the software set up reasonably well, ran fast and efficiently, and without any fanfare it presents users with standard social networking features.

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AroundMe is a very simple social networking software package that can solve the basic needs of any webmaster that only requires an addition of a standard and basic social network to any website or existing web page.  . 

AroundMe provides all of the necessary features required of any group that needs to communicate and collaborate.  There are no additional or unique services beyond the standard blog, forum, wiki and messaging.  The software is free and open source, so if you do use it, keep your eyes open on the Internet for any additional features or widget that some other programmer outside of the AroundMe team might have developed.  This is the magic of Open Source software.