Coty's Weblog

Are RIAs trying to be too rich?

I was reading this post regarding Adobe Chief Software Architect Kevin Lynch’s comments at Fortune’s iMeme conference on a “fourth generation” of applications that would return to the desktop and enable offline access but would be built with HTML, JavasScript, Flash, and other standard Web tools. Reflecting on that statement reminded me of something that I’ve thought for some time: namely that too much effort is being spent on new programming models like AIR, Silverlight, etc. and not enough on desktop integration for standard web apps.

What do I mean by desktop integration? Well, a number of little things, really:

• Desktop icons
• Separate processes, comand/control-tab switching, etc.
• Drag-and-drop
• File associations
• Etc.

The applications that really point the way in my opinion are a number of the WebKit-based applications that have been built to access web-based applications like GMail (Mailplane), Campfire (Pyro), Pandora (PandoraBoy), and others. Mailplane is arguably the best example. Though it doesn’t have an off-line mode, it does have extensive desktop integration—including drag-and-drop file attachments, iPhoto integration, Growl notifications, etc. I’m a big fan of PandoraBoy, as well. It’s use of global hot keys for voting, skipping, etc. makes it possible to use in the background in ways that the standard Pandora app cannot be.

As nice as all those fancy desktop integrations are, though, I think what I like most about these applications are that they are separate processes from my browser. It is a small thing, but it makes a big difference. It means that if my browser crashes, they don’t, and vice versa. It means that I can switch directly to one of them with command-tab and back to my browser the same way. They let me get back to browsing in my browser and using applications for more specific tasks.

Of course, AIR does aspire to all this desktop integration. I haven’t followed Silverlight closely enough to comment. It just seems like there should be something simpler, more open, and more standard, though—some browser feature (and associated application descriptor) that would let a standard web app be “desktopized.” For the simplest web apps, it could be something like the Web Clip feature due in Leopard but creating applications rather than widgets.

There is a lot to consider regarding all this RIA and desktop integration stuff. Coté’s Update from RIA-land: AIR & Silverlight, What is an RIA?, Better GUIs, the Killer App is worth checking out. It was his del.iciou.us link that directed me to the post that inspired this. For more WebKit-based apps like Mailplane, as well as other related projects, check out WebKit on Rails.

Freebase Invitations

I hesitate to post this because I really need to post something more substantial about Freebase, but I have six Freebase invitations. Comment, e-mail, IM, tweet, or whatever if you want one.

Google acquires JotSpot

Just got an e-mail from JotSpot letting me know they’ve been acquired by Google. I’ve played with JotSpot a good bit, but it has never stuck. Free, though, might change that.

Perhaps Google could pick up DabbleDB for me, too.

Perhaps they could resurrect JotLive, as well. I thought it was even cooler than JotSpot itself.

Congratulations to everyone at JotSpot. In addition to Google’s ability to “accelerate our team's vision of offering users the best collaboration platform on the web,” I hear they also have a bundle of cash, which probably doesn’t suck in an acquirer.

Delicious stalking and BarCamp Atlanta

Or del.icio.us stalking, more precisely. That is how I knew Haynie had tagged TorCamp and was probably thinking about BarCamp here in the ATL. You can read what happened next in Jeff's BarCamp Atlanta post.

I'm generally interested in revving up the geek/startup culture here in Atlanta, and I think it is a shame we haven't had a BarCamp or something like it here already. (I mean, BarCamp Birmingham has already happened!) Of course, I can't really complain too much, as I haven't made it happen, either. I'm hoping that Jeff's interest will help build a little critical mass.

So, if you've got $48...

you can now get nearly immediate access to 20 machines for 24 hours, each with something a like a 1.7Ghz Xeon CPU, 1.75GB of RAM, 160GB of local disk, and 250Mb/s of network bandwidth. This is made possible by Amazon's new Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

The $48 figure is relatively arbitrary. I picked it because you apparently need to get some sort of authorization to fire up more than 20 simultaneous instances. Amazon is charging $0.10 per instance hour. So, 20 instances x $0.10 instance/hour x 24 hours is $48. I'm not accounting for bandwidth charges, but the point is that you can get some serious computing done for not much money—or effort.

A few weeks ago at a dinner that I should have blogged but didn't, Jeff Haynie was talking about how surprised he was at how cheap dedicated hosting was. Jeff was quoting some GoDaddy prices, and they were pretty compelling. This EC2 thing, though, takes it to another level—particularly because of its elasticity. Let's say you want to do some web crawling, for example. All of a sudden, you can have 100 machines go to work for 10 hours for about $100 (plus bandwidth charges). That is pretty cool.

I haven't been able to play with EC2 directly, yet. The beta program was filled by the time I got there. Jesse Andrews did get in in time and has both written an article on Exploring Amazon EC2 and fired up a Rails app on an EC2 instance.

And on the off chance your browser groks microformats...

do note the use of hCalendar and hCard in the previous post.

Below is what you'd see using the Tails Firefox extension in Flock:

What Skype should really do

Peeter Mõtsküla posted the provocatively titled Naked Skype? to the Skype Developer Zone Blog recently. Alec Saunders commented on that in the less pruriently but more descriptively titled post, Separate the Skype Engine From the GUI.

This is something that we've talked about at Vocalocity a number of times and that I've been surprised has gotten so little discussion elsewhere—at least that I've seen. To me it has seemed a bit much to talk about a Skype API, when that API doesn't really give you access to the core of Skype's feature set: Voice over IP. All the Skype API really does is let you control the Skype application—and even then you can't get access to the audio stream without doing something hokey. Weak.

It is nice that everyone is getting free phone calls over the Internet and cheap calls over the PSTN, but having the Skype protocol locked up within the Skype application—with or without a GUI—is, overall, bad for innovation in the space. Skype needs to open the protocol.

Think about how many more interesting voice applications could be deployed on the Skype network if it were possible to do so without having to route through either an instance of the Skype app or the PSTN. How disappointing that you cannot.

What do I know, though? I didn't sell my company to eBay for $2.6 billion.

More interesting than Google Calendar...

is the news of Google's voice search patent filing—at least for me. Granted, I work at a company in a related space, but this is something that would interest me regardless. I use Google all the time. I even use it in my car, but that isn't very safe. I would love to be able to search and hear results on my Bluetooth headset.

Google, if you're listening, please make it an option to receive results via SMS. Full-on multimodal interaction would really be the way to go, but we're not quite there, yet. Enabling some way to push a result to Google Local for Mobile would be great, too.

Oh, also, when you get around to enabling voice conferencing via Google Talk, it would be great if you could offer the option to record and do ASR on the call. Maybe pump the recognized text into a Writely document for collaborative editing. Put the contents into my Google Desktop index. Etc.

Google Calendar

For some reason I decided to take a look at my NetNewsWire Smart List for "Google" and noticed Mitch Kapor's post that Google Calendar would launch tonight. Well, InfoWorld's prediction back in December was a little premature, but Mitch was dead on. I went to http://calendar.google.com and logged in with my Google login and password.

More after I've had a chance to poke around.

Best T-Shirt Ever

You can buy it here.

Given this news, perhaps He is listening.