Rich Sharples' Blog » Web

The Wayback Web

sharps — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:12:53 +0000

Google have made their 2001 search index available and have linked it to the Wayback Machine. I couldn’t resist and did a quick vanity search to see if I existed on the webertubes back in 2001. Just three hits – a couple from 1997 on a CORBA mailing list (shudder) and another advertising a class I taught to the Scottish Police in Glasgow on the wonders of J2EE, XML and XSLT.

Breaking News : Twitter isn’t broken

sharps — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:09:37 +0000

For a short time today Twitter (the popular social, techno, micro-blogging web site, thingy) was actually working; I even managed to exchange a few Tweets. Which reminds me – how are Twitter going to actually, you know, make money. I’m not suggesting that making money is all there is to life but they have server farms to maintain, lolcats to feed, developers to pamper and VCs to repay. Any ideas ?

Oh – and you can follow me on Twitter when it’s working – @pixelfodder.

Microsoft – welcome to the Web

sharps — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:54:07 +0000

Ray Ozzie gets the Web. Which is a start – now he just needs to overcome the huge burden of Microsoft’s revenue base. That’s going to be the hard bit.

It’ll be interesting to see how far Microsoft go to adopt standards and interoperability and open source – these were fundamental in the rapid growth and acceptance of the web and will continue to be in the future.

btw, I still don’t get the Yahoo bid – it seems wrong at so many levels. Maybe Yahoo consuming Microsoft’s assets into its ecosystem might be more effective but I can’t see that actually happening – the Yahoo DNA just won’t survive.

Head in the Cloud

sharps — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:55:37 +0000

A couple of related articles hit my (nicely organized) feed reader this morning. First, Tim Bray paints a bleak picture of Google’s Developer Platform – some concerns I shared earlier. Meanwhile CogHead are in the news with their Open Definition model – an attempt to build an open and collaborative environment for CogHead customers. Interesting but CogHead is still fundamentally a sharecropping model – once you’ve committed to CogHead – your stuck with it. I’m not saying that’s all bad. It’s a tradeoff – leverage CogHead’s f5g awesome platform but box yourself in. Sound familiar ?

It’s interesting that we’re seeing (at least) three models emerge :

Amazon’s utility computing approach (they’re fundamentally a bandwidth, MIPS and storage utility) – you choose what platform you want to write to (Linux, Java, etc.);
the proprietary SaaS platform approach (SalesForce, CogHead – sorry guys). You trade convenience, agility for complete dependence on the vendor.
a hybrid – Google App Engine, Facebook. I don’t think these hybrids have anywhere near the ability to lock you in as much as the true SaaS platforms. For example – Google is based on Python, Django – if you’re smart you won’t get locked in. Many facebook apps. also support other ‘distributions’ – so it isn’t really a sharecropping model.

As I see it – the only thing that might lock you in to Google and Facebook’s model is convenient access to their huge customer base – that’s what they’re selling. Take it or leave it.

Competition is a good thing

sharps — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:38:40 +0000

Yesterday Google announced Google App Engine – essentially a competitor to AWS (Amazon Web Services) providing storage, execution and secure, reliable “web I/O”. Right now – you have to write your apps. in Python;but they also provide Django (web app framework for Python) – which is pretty neat from the little I’ve seen of it. Looks like they also provide some additional hooks for using Google’s auth. and mail services – which I guess could be Google’s attempt to make these cool new apps. “Google only Apps.”.

Potential Evilness aside, this is a pretty exciting time if you’re developing an app. for the Web – the cost of deploying / hosting your cool idea is no longer a hurdle. Competition is a good thing.