This is a prototype of the draft IMAPSN client specification found at http://imapsn.github.com/2010/imapsn-client.html.
The hope is that this will grow into a reference implementation.
I think IMAPSN has the potential to see wide spread use. If you want
to write some code that reaches a lot of users please take a look at
the project and see if there is anything you'd like to help
with. There is a rough task list for the java implementation in the
file tasklist.markdown
. If you want to tackle one of the tasks in
that file please send an email to the mailing list
http://groups.google.com/group/imapsn-dev to avoid any duplicated
effort. Other ways you could help out are:
* review the spec and suggest improvements
* review existing java code and suggest improvements
* write tests for existing code
* start a library for python, C++, or some other language
Ideally I think it will be useful to have libraries in java, python, and c++. I'm focusing my limited resources on libraries first with the hope that once they are available, other developers will experiment with developing UIs. To bootstrap intrest I may sponser a contest with a cash prize for the best UI.
Some options for UI's are
* Google app engine
* Thunderbird plug-in
* Outlook plug-in
* Squirrelmail plug-in
* Gmail gadgets <http://code.google.com/apis/gmail/gadgets>
Although MUA's aren't exactly the hot technology of the future, I think there are a lot of existing email users who don't do social networking and who might take the plunge if they can just take an incremental step without having to sign up for anything or check anything new. So I think the plug-ins will be an important part of boot-strapping the platform.