One of the biggest time sinks I encountered while hacking the CoffeeScript Tracker 0.0 was errors with response data. The CoffeeScript that hit dedicated APIs for the most part just worked, and the closer the interaction was to pure RESTful http the better. But problems arose when querying rss and atom feeds due to inconsistencies between the formats.
Tag: open design
The Client Server Class War
Internet traffic is undergoing an irreversible transition from predominantly pc browsing to smaller mobile devices and large displays for streaming video. Client side software has been a hot development area on mobile and novel display surfaces, as opposed to only supporting local device web browsers. Most active SaS businesses build clients for all the primary platforms – web, iOS, Android, etc., enabling customers to access provided services efficiently from any platform they choose.
It’s time to Retire the Spreadsheet
Deep down the community I can most relate to needs a little adventure or wonder in the applications they depend on. One more block of dry predictable text, or another pointless pie chart is the kiss of death for my peers. Tabs, tables, slides, and spreadsheets are the tired manacles of a unidirectional presentation generation. We recognize that data is only truly brought to life in a read write form. Yet so much of what we rely on is mired in old design thinking. How do we break the chains?
Safe Guarding Future Web Evolution
The web and the underlying connected internet are two of the most socially revolutionary technologies in existence today. While reading Tim Berners-Lee long form article this morning Long Live the Web, several themes resonated with my own perspective on what makes the web such an incredibly rich source of information. He discusses a few key design principles that make the web a potent communication and documentation medium (emphasis mine). (more…)
The builders of couchappspora
If you haven’t heard already, there’s a storm brewing on the distributed social web and it’s being lead by a few hackers in Portland. They’re building a distributed social app in response to the public interest for alternatives to centralized servers. They’ve taken the concept of Diaspora and hacked together their own vision of an interface and CouchDB back end. I spotted the git repo on Tuesday morning while waiting for my wife to get out of a minor surgery (she’s fine). There are three active contributors to the project already, and I’m anxious to find a place to chip in.
Open the Factory Doors, Let in the Breeze and Sunshine
Like Features, Like Dueling Banjos
Two talented friends, Kevin Marshall and Brian Hendrickson are hacking out solutions to an open sentiment format in the wake of Facebook’s Open Graph and Like feature. A community project, OpenLike.org has come up with yet another implementation of distributed sentiment sharing. (more…)
Web Servers that Live in Your Browser
This is a pretty amazing find if it’s true. OperaUnite is a browser based server that will allow hosting files, web sites, and most importantly to me, fully distributed social networks. Imagine a one click install personal social server install? I’ll be reading more on this concept in the coming days, as I’ve been wrestling with this from a RubyJS/GWT perspective but pretty clueless on how to connect a database and functional backend framework. A more focused browser may be the missing component of my quest.
Personal Social Gardens that Live in the Browser
Lifestreaming Observer Pattern
Extension of the URL
A project design that has proven elusive for the last month or so has been an open social web reader. The primary information format is web feeds, and the implementation goals are that the tool be distributed, open source, and instinctive to use. The usage pattern is one of quickly locating and browsing lifestreams from people, topics, and dynamic web sites we wish to keep track of. In addition tagging, editing, and curating content will be built into the tool. In short, I seek to lay the ground work for a read write social web layer. The tool will share a few core features with Google Reader, Twitter, and WordPress. The River2 reader has some beneficial overlap with some of the features I’m interested in. Google Wave also shares some of these design principles but due to a number of issues* didn’t become a mainstream utility. (more…)