Service independence in online applications

One of the things that all the internet-enabled applications need right now is service independence. This is to say that the way we connect to a certain application should have no effect on who we can communicate with. As in email, if you're using Hotmail or even your local ISP's mailbox, you can still communicate with any other mailbox. Why not the same with IM or voice chats? IRC started this sort of thing but didn't get too far. The different networks still remained separate even though servers did collaborate to allow users to communicate with other servers' users. Google's shown the intention to pursue this with their proposed sevice independence with Talk. We can only hope that Microsoft and AOL (among others) create a scenario together where an MSN user would be able to communicate with a Google or AOL user regardless of the client they're using. With Microsoft and others going for improving voice capabilities to hold their market share, this needs to be addressed as much as VoIP. What do I care if my friend's using AIM or Talk? I just want to have a conversation.

"Stop Saying 'Like'"

I came across these posters on SquareFree blog. I know a few people who can learn from this. You can replace 'like' with 'you know' too.

My new artwork on Gfxartist.com

I uploaded another artwork on Gfxartist.com after a very very long time. Sami's new camera did a real nice job with a steel glass. I called it Dark Crescent. I'll upload another one soon.

WordPress

I was surfing and came across this really nice-looking blog. I just had to find out how the guy had made it and guess what! It's a free software. Written in PHP and MySQL, it's a very nice software with the best front-end themes I've seen for blogs. It's a pity that I don't have MySQL in my hosting plan or I'd be hosting my own blog. Oh well, I'll keep this in mind and when I get my new hosting plan, I'll be porting my blogs there! Inshaallah.

Paul Graham and Stefan Marti

Just came across these really good links. The first one is for those who hate writing (or are bad at it). Take a look at some very good pointers to good writing: http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html This second one is a real weird link: Stefan Marti (an MIT student) designs a squirrel to answer his phones for him! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4749507.stm

Footnotes in XHTML and CSS

Just came across a very good link for inserting footnotes in web pages. This is extremely useful pages publishing researches and articles. Take a look: Format Sidenotes with Javascript and CSS.

Google OS and Microsoft's .NET

Take a look at this: 1. Google: A company that's been free (to use) and thought of as the darling of the computing community as a whole and who looks really good to challenge the Giant Microsoft. At least in some areas. This company develops (is developing, rather) applications and systems that make people more and more reliant on Google's so-called online operating system. So much so that it's made people develop a 'history of the future' that describes how people grew (will grow) dependant on Google's OS. 2. Microsoft: The company that's thought of as monopolistic and as "closed-source" as it gets. This company develops a software architecture (.NET; especially ASP.NET) that enables all companies to deploy their own web-based applications and sell subscriptions thus reducing Microsoft's own monopoly of operating systems. Albeit from the customer's PCs only if not from the servers. Pretty ironical, don't you think?

Hotmail Beta

Finally! something about Microsoft too! The guys at Microsoft are working on a new interface for the Hotmail engine. It's called Wave 11 and the system is called - as of yet - Hotmail beta! Great codename, eh? Anyway, here're a few screenshots of the system. While you're at it, take a look at the new MSN Messenger 8 too. I hear it's for Windows Vista but can't hurt to take a look at it, right? I believe they're using AJAX technology for Hotmail Beta. If they're not, Microsoft's just wasting her time with this new interface. Hotmail Beta: 1 2 3 MSN Messenger: 1

Some great links about the future of the web

In my opinion, creating a cental, free, cross-platform operating system lies in the very near future of the web. (That free part being optional actually but I like putting it in there.) Take a look at these articles. Some are pretty old but they give a very nice view of the idea: http://www.kottke.org/05/08/googleos-webos http://www.kottke.org/04/04/google-operating-system Will be putting the latest ones in as I find em.

Google Desktop 2 and Google Talk

I've been working on these two for the past few days and I must say that Google's softwares are only getting better! A lot better. Google Desktop is the search solution for my money. (Actually, it's free. So...) It searches in real-time. Just start typing what you want to search for and you get the results instantly. Google Talk is a real early beta but it still shows it's Googleness. It's totally uncluttered, fast and very easy to use. Although there aren't many features in it right now but that's only because it's a very beta-ish release. Hope to see it upgrade quickly! Wish Google will give me a break so I can write about some other company too.

Google goes instant!

Well, it's finally here! Google's instant messaging software. It's called Google Talk and from the look of it, it's pretty cool. Just a 900k download taking less than 5 minutes even on the slowest 28k connections, it installs like a breeze. (When I started using Hello, I was thinking it was going to be used for Google's IM. Well, Talk is better!) Just added the friends to my list. They'd've got the invitation by now (hopefully). One thing I liked from this very very early view of the software is the way it incorporates the Gmail contacts. Very easy to search for any contact from within the main window. Now if only the Google's Desktop search and the web search could be made available in the same way. (I know it's going to be done. After all, this is a very early beta). It does do all the stuff that Gmail Notifier used to do. (Check for new mail and stuff.) The software also includes a voice chat system. Only problem is that you have to have a Gmail account to use the software - let alone the voice chat. Again and again while reading about Talk, the name of Skype (the voice communication software) comes up and the rumours about the buyout keep surfacing. It's not that unlikely. Speaking of buyouts, I believe Google's got an eye on Wikipedia too. It might be just a hunch but I think this one may just turn out to be correct. Here're a few links to read up about.

1. Download Google Talk.
2. Timesonline article about Google Talk.
3. Talk support site.

One final thing: Ever got sick of MSN Messenger telling you to update it like 20 times in a month? Well, take a look at what Google has to say:

Google Talk auto-updates, so you don't have to do anything to get the latest version.

I just hope it works that way.

By the way, if you need a gmail account, just message me. I have tons! (You can do that by posting a comment here).

Harry Potter: Book 6 is out!

Yay! JK Rowling has finally finished the sixth book and from what I hear (er, read), this one's even better than the first five. Can't wait to get my hands on this one!

XML Hardware Processing

Ok! NOW we're talking XML. Intel's started worrying about hardware processing XML data. This should lead to all sorts of interesting stuff. Hardware actually understanding data! http://news.com.com/2061-10798_3-5839599.html?part=rss&tag=5839599&subj=news

More evidenve in favour of browser based "AJAX"

Here's a lil more evidence in favour of my last post. This is Scott Isaacs, a web guru, talking about the problems faced during development of AJAX based apps.

However if you are building a large scale web application there is more to consider when using AJAX than how to create a function that hides the differences between the XMLHttpRequest object in IE and Firefox. Problems that have to be solved [or at the very least considered] include

1. How to abstract away browser detection from each page in the application
2. How to make the site accessible or at least work on non-Javascript enabled browsers
3. How to efficiently manage the number of connections to the server created by the client given the "chattiness" of AJAX applications compared to traditional web applications
4. How to reduce the amount of time spent downloading large script files
5. How to create permalinks to portions of the application
6. How to preserve or at least simulate the behavior of the browser's 'Back' button

Now, see: If the browser based Partial Content Update was done, almost all of these problems will be abstracted out. The browsers (already optimized for most of this stuff) will handle the requests allowing easy devlopment for the web app developers.

AJAX: Is it really that hot?

I've been reading a lot about this AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML). Just recently I discovered the process by which it works and I was astonished to see that it took people so long to actually realize this possibility. I'd put forward this proposal quite a long time back (Althoug I must admit - not that seriously) of loading only partial content in a webpage much like in frames. (For those of you who have no clue what AJAX is, here's a link: AJAX tutorial . Google's Gmail and A9.com are taking this quite far) Anyway, the purpose of this post is to point out another way to do the same thing. Here's the thing: The purpose of AJAX is to load partial content into an HTML page (basically inside a div's innerhtml). This is done through Javascript's XMLHttpRequest object. The browser loads the xml that is requested by the javascript and then the javascript loads it into a div's innerhtml (or whereever, for that matter). Now, here's another option for doing this whole thing that takes at least a few lines of javascript code:

<a href="codepage.php?var=value" target="divName"> Click here to load VAR</a>

Now, I know that this can be a little difficult when the variable's value has to be decided by javascript but even then, why not just set a property 'location' of a div to the desired URL instead of going through the XML routine. This would:

1. Enable easier creation mechanism (even for novice web designers who aren't good with Javascript).
2. Let the browsers do what they're good at! Fetching and displaying data.
3. Not just XML but any form of data, specially binary data can also be retreived on-the-fly.

To explain 3:

<a href="nextCar.png" target="imageID"> Next Car </a>

The same dynamics work for any HTML tag. Another option can be to set not just the default property but ANY property of ANY HTML element.

<a href="divStyle.php" target="DivID.Style">Change Style</a>

I'd love to see comments on this post. Tell me if I'm mistaken. Tell others if I'm right.