Googlechopped

I look forward to the day when this query produces so many hits that Google has to chop the results into pages. A phenomenon that I propose to call "googlechopping". How long before the query googlechopped is itself googlechopped?

Python Power: Growing Respect for an Open Source Integration Tool

"[...]For all these benefits, there is one other benefit from Python -- compared with many other Open Source technologies -- that stands apart for Finch and other execs. Python is up to the rigors of mission-critical operation.". Nice article on OpenEnterpriseTrends.com.

Spolsky's law of leaky abstractions

Abstractions fail. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. TCP is reliable - except when it isn't. RPC is reliable except when it isn't. Developers building web service apps using the RPC paradigm cannot ignore the fact that the reliability of the network cannot be taken for granted. You cannot "design away" the network, you need to embrace it. Think MOM, thing "reliable messaging" - a significantly less leaky abstraction!

This is the start of something new

An alternative face on Amazon enabled by its web service interfaces. Now this really is separation of presentation from content :-)

The SOAP joke is no longer funny

Finally some reality appearing on the horizon of web services. The premature adoration of the gang of three (SOAP+WSDL+UDDI) I wrote about here is petering out and the RESTian principles I wrote about here are gathering pace. Read my lips, RPC is not loosely coupled.

OpenFlow - open source meets workflow

Openflow has really come on since I last looked at it. My mind is conjuring up pictures of how something like this would play within a weblogging environment integrated around XML-RPC. Its all clouds in my mind at the moment - more when raindrops start to form...

Come back state machines, all is forgiven

An article I wrote about the wireless web has appeared in the ITWorld archives. I make the point that an application that interacts with a user is more than content + presentation. There is a third, vital, dimension dialog. In the carrier grade Pervasive Portal Server I architected (and deployed recently in O2 Ireland) known as Mission Control, dialog is separated from content and presentation.

It won't come as any surprise that the mechanism for doing so is XML based. It is in essence, an XML representation of a state machine and it handles the problem of tuning application dialog to device very cleanly.

This abstraction is so useful that there really should be a standard XML notation for it. Some day perhaps.

Guestmap added

I've added a guestmap to my blog. Very cool. Innovation continues apace in blogspace.

At times like this, I wish I lived in Japan

A Linux based appliance for the home that records TV onto a harddisk for subsequent replay. Controllable remotely from an i-Mode mobile handset. Only available in Japan :-(