Hi Developer,

Thanks for visiting the Rayt development blog. I am not a developer, so I will need a lot of help to make Rayt a reality.  In a nutshell, I want Rayt to be a Firefox add-on that allows people to write, view, and rate (rayt) comments through a banner at the top of their browser screen.  For this I think I will need:

• 3 dialogue boxes: make a comment, rayt a comment, viewing preferences
• code to interact with the server on which the comments are stored
• a database to organize the comments
• a ranking algorithm to assign each comment a number value (0 to 5) based on the votes it receives (like Digg)
  
• the code for the banner itself: the first 30 characters of each comment will be displayed as a link (the comment links to the rayting dialogue box)
• a Rayt toolbar icon that people can press to make a comment (like del.icio.us)
• I'd also like to have preferences that allow people to act as administraytors (like Wikipedia) and mediate disputes and clean up spam, but that can be done in a later version

There is some code already out there that might useful:

• Del.icio.us Firefox add-on: this is probably a good code to start building from
  
• ThirdVoice: a browser-based web annotation program from the later nineties, though I think the format was sticky notes instead of a banner
• Digg: ranking algorithm

Also, one problem that might arise is difficulty in linking the comments to the right webpage, as URLs and IP addresses are not 100% reliable.  Just a heads up that we will need some serious network and server configuration expertise.

Best,
Mary