Former Apple HTML5 Leader Builds His Own Apps Platform - 0 views
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Most importantly, Strobe.js resolves the problem of scripting that applies to multiple domains simultaneously, leading to the kinds of cross-domain discrepancies that security tools presently associate with hijack attempts, and which newer browsers disallow. HTML5 developers will want their apps to include links to functionality from Facebook, Twitter, and other social services. These links seem simple enough, but their security protocols require logins and virtual sessions - which means the domains of these services' URLs must be addressed somehow.
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Strobe.js creates a level of indirection, letting apps use Strobe servers as proxies to authenticate themselves on social services and use their APIs, without having to build OAuth functionality directly into their apps, or to force users to log in separately. This is the core of the Strobe Social add-on, which is key to the company's unique business model.
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Strobe's business model relies on how much and how often deployed apps use Strobe's server-side API. "It works a lot like an analytics system, like Omniture," explains Strobe's Charles Jolley. "Every time you launch an app, it hits our server for an update to see if there's a new version available. That's an API call. If you turn on one of these add-ons to get the server to do social, that's an API call. You buy packages from us based on API calls."
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The articles about Charles Jolley and Strobe continue. This time it's ReadWriteWeb. They do a much better job explaining Strobe and the business model Strobe seeks to implement. IMHO, Strobe's concept for mitigating the exchange of data across server domains could be ODBC for Cloud Productivity. ODBC and OLE are of course inter-application processes essential to the desktop productivity environment and the creation of compound documents. I'll try to contact Charles and discuss this. "One of the big reasons I left [Apple] is because I really believe that the next great app ecosystem for mobile especially, but also for PCs and television, is going to be built around HTML5," Jolley tells RWW. "If you look at the people who are building mobile apps today, 70% of those people will say they want to use HTML5. But a lot of them don't make it to market, except for a few large companies like Amazon and Financial Times, most people aren't able to deliver HTML5 apps." The Apple platform for apps delivery is rich and compelling, Jolley points out. Unlike an ordinary "open" platform that, almost by definition now, is all self-service, Apple provides direct, personal business services to help developers organize themselves and get on their feet, even if their employer is already recognized around the world. Then Apple provides hosting and deployment services, managing user entitlements and licenses. It creates an ecosystem and then nourishes the entities that live within it, and that's why Apple's platform works as well as it does. "Apple makes it very, very easy for someone to build an app and take it to market. You have these small groups of one or two people who can create businesses around them. And today with HTML5, that's simply not possible," says Jolley. "Even though there's a huge benefit to HTML5 - you can be in any app store, you can go direct to the consumers, you can build any kind of business model you want - if you're going to reach all the 1.2 billion p