Future of the Web

The U.S. Feds' home site for XML-related initiatives. Activities include coordination of federal actions to capture the power of structured data information systems in XML formats. Site includes federal strategic plan.

Review of JavaScript Apps and developer approaches for the iPhone. JiggyApp, WebTouch, JSCocoa, and PhoneGap are mentioned. WebTouch is very interesting in that it involves a WebKit instance such as that used by wiki-WORD. It's really simple and gives you a good entry point into the world of hybrid HTML/CSS/JavaScript/Objective-C/Cocoa development.

Many stories focus on what Google Chrome means for Microsoft, Firefox, and the fate of the current online world. But what does it mean for up-and-coming Web start-ups? Here are six implications for the start-up world that I can see. These assume that Chrome lives up to its hype. T

Thanks for that one, Gary. It pushed me a bit closer to getting it about Web Kit. But I still see big issues with web app < > web app interop. E.g., how do we work around the fact that neither HTML 5 nor CSS 2 standardize markup for footnotes, footnote calls, and their counters? And how do we easily edit the content generated by one web app in another without such standardizing markup? Continue creating footnote markup manually and manually renumbering and reordering footnotes?

Must read: "This blog post is part of a new, semi-regular series called Fixing the Web. The goal is to highlight these issues, identify potential solutions, and have a dialogue. I don't claim to have the answers for the situation we are in. However, I do know this -- if there is any community that potentially has what it takes to solve these issues I believe it's the Ajax and JavaScript communities, which is why this is a perfect place to have these discussions. To start, I see four areas that are broken that must be fixed: ..... "

A history of the ArsDigita Community Software System that first introduced the concept of connective Knowledgeware. Today these systems are known as enterprise ready "social networks". The ArsDigita Community System (ACS) was an advanced Open Source toolkit for developing community web applications developed primarily by developers associated with ArsDigita Corporation. The two most current software toolkits based on this codebase are the OpenACS toolkit and the Red Hat CCM.

Yup. They're making noises about moving Flash and AIR into ARM-based appliances. This seems a sound strategic move for Adobe in response to Silverlight, drilling hard for the big computing market that already dwarfs the desktop computer market. It ain't just about the desktop and the Web anymore, folks.

Adobe positioning AIR for a move into embedded systems? E.g., from Wikipedia: "Because of their power saving features, ARM CPUs are dominant in the mobile electronics market, where low power consumption is a critical design goal. Today, the ARM family accounts for approximately 75% of all embedded 32-bit RISC CPUs, making it one of the most widely used 32-bit architectures. ARM CPUs are found in most corners of consumer electronics, from portable devices (PDAs, mobile phones, media players, handheld gaming units, and calculators)." Don't miss page two of the linked article.

This planning document forms the basis for the forthcoming work to develop European Interoperability Framework v. 2.0. It is the overview of things to come, so to speak. Well worth the read to see how SOA concepts are evolving at the bleeding edge. But also noteworthy for the faceted expansion in the definition of "interoperability," which now includes: [i] political context; [ii] legal interop; [iii] organizational interop; [iv] semantic interop; and [v] technical interop. A lot of people talk the interop talk; this is a document from people who are walking the interop walk, striving to bring order out of the chaos of incompatible ICT systems across the E.U.

Full disclosure: I submitted detailed comments on the draft of the subject document on behalf of the Universal Interoperability Council. One theme of my comments was embraced in this document: the document recognizes human-machine interactions as a facet of interoperability, moving accessibility and usability from sideshow treatment in the draft to part of the technical interop dimension of the plan.

As the economy tanks, open source proponents reflexively point to the low capital costs of acquiring open source software. But big customers want more than a bargain. They also want better. Thus, collaboration is more than just staying true to the open source credo of community and cooperation. It's also a smart business move. Drupal and Alfresco show us why.

The author clearly missed that Sun is a full-fledged Microsoft partner and that StarOffice 9, of all OpenOffice.org clones, is the only one that has write support for both ODF v. 1.2 and ODF v. 1.1, the latter of which is the only ODF version being implemented by Microsoft. The other OOo clones write only to ODF 1.2, which is dramatically different from ODF 1.2. So StarOffice will almost certainly have better interop via ODF with MS Office 2007 than will OOo 3.x or Lotus Symphony. For $25 per seat in the enterprise, $34.95 retail. The author simply misses that "pretty much the same thing can [NOT] be had for nothing from OpenOffice.org." There is a method to the claimed Sun madness, methinks. IBM gets left standing at the altar again.

The nine essential considerations of cloud computing. This may be the best article yet written about cloud computing. A must read! ,,, ""What sort of cloud computer(s) should we be building or expecting from vendors? Are there issues of lock-in that should concern customers of either SaaS clouds or PaaS clouds? I've been thinking about this problem as the CEO of a PaaS cloud computing company for some time. Clouds should be open. They shouldn't be proprietary. More broadly, I believe no vendor currently does everything that's required to serve customers well."

Non Microsoft XPS Viewer! I blew up my machine twice trying to install Microsoft's XPS Viewer. The Software Imaging version flew right thru, and works like a charm. Recommended for those having problems with XPS formats.

Superficially, this sounds like an application of the principles won by DG Competition in the Court of First Instance's Commission v. Microsoft interoperability decision. But note that here we deal with an investigation into deliberately-created interop barriers rather than those maintained by withholding full communication protocol specifications from competitors. Notice that the investigation encompasses throttling of internet connections for particular uses, an increasingly common practice by Comcast and other ISPs in the U.S., where both VOIP and P2P file-sharing are targeted uses. E.U. and U.S. antitrust law are similar, as efforts to harmonize antitrust law on both sides of The Pond are now decades old; this move does not bode well for bandwidth throttling in the U.S., particularly when aimed at throttling competition. It takes no giant mental leap to apply such principles to big vendor-dominated IT standards bodies that deliberately create or maintain interop barriers in data format standards. Indeed, DG Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes has already served notice that interop barriers in standards-setting is an item of interest.

By enabling human collaboration and innovation on a scale never seen before, Web 2.0 is becoming Enterprise 2.0. Here's why no business will be left untouched. (This eBook is filled with stats, projections, and analysis)