Google Buzz has been getting a lot of attention today, and the buzz (awww!) has drowned out a much more interesting piece of social technology that was announced at FOSDEM 10.What has been the big problem with social networks? They are walled gardens. Being on Orkut didn't help you with Facebook at all, and your data was fragmented. IM has many of the same problems. E-mail doesn't, though. Why is that? E-mail is federated. Servers talk to servers, and using one important character ("@"), you can route your message to the person you want to reach. You can even set up your own e-mail server and control all your own data.