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8 October 2007
More Thoughts From FoWA
Posted by Julian Higman at October 8, 2007 09:08 AM
The recent Future of Web Apps conference provided some food for thought regarding current approaches to building web applications, and how those approaches will change in the future.
Small Pieces..
Matt Biddulph (Dopplr) described the way in which the internet is genuinely becoming a network of "small pieces loosely joined" (from the Dave Weinberger book of the same name). Matts experience building Dopplr around open apis, where lightweight XML descriptions of travel itineraries can be mashed-up with maps (Google apis, kml formats), calendars (iCal), Yahoo pipes etc was interesting. His main point was that you don't know in advance how people will use your data, but if you build open interfaces, then you'll allow other developers and users to incorporate your data into wildly different applications. This kind of approach (using fairly ad-hoc combinations of technology - XML, XSLT, lightweight REST web services, microformats etc) seemed to be a lot more popular with the majority of the speakers at the conference than anything quite as structured as a "Semantic Web" (though that probably depends on your definition of "Semantic Web"). The general feeling was that current work-arounds for data inconsistency will get us through, and that any efforts to regularise the structure of data on websites is doomed to failure (mainly because there's no obvious immediate payback for website owners).
Who Are You?
Of course, there are still some other hurdles in the brave new world of open data. One of them is authentication - Dopplr currently has to jump through various sign-on hoops in order to be able to access some of the feeds they need. Luckily, there are loads of open authentication and access standards to choose from! BBAuth from Yahoo, AuthSub frm Google, Authenticate from flickr, OpenAuth from AOL.. and of course, OpenID. There's also a new open source development called OAuth, for providing access to data (the official description is that "OAuth talks about getting users to grant access while OpenID talks about making sure the users are really who they say they are"..).
The Market Will Tell You Your Business Plan
Elsewhere, there were further calls for openness. Dick Costolo (Feedburner, and now Google) had an interesting take on how startups should approach building new applications. He said that creating an open api to your data allows the market to tell you what your business plan is (rather than starting with preconceived ideas of where the value is in your business or app). His viewpoint is that you should build an extensible architecture for your app, and only then launch a minimal version. Then you can follow up by iterating often to build out the functionality in the app faster than other people could, and continue iterating quickly as the app matures.
Twitter Ye Not
Leisa Reichelt, discussing Ambient Intimacy, described how the stream of open data coming from Facebook, IM, RSS feeds, Skype status, flickr, last.fm. mySpace, Dopplr, Twitter etc. give people and their friends a "continual partial presence" with each other and facilitates "phatic expression" (speech used only for social purposes). And people either love or hate the whole idea. Either way, the notions of community and social contact are changing rapidly.
Into The Valley
Meanwhile, Paul Graham (YCombinator) had some radical ideas to share on the future of web apps - he believes that educational qualifications are probably no longer relevant, and that education right back to secondary school will change as a result. In a world where everyone works in a startup, there's no point spending time getting grades simply to impress companies for whom you're not going to work anyway. (He didn't address the issue of the other segment of the population, who may not work in startup-land). And he also said that you no longer need to raise funding to begin a startup - it's cheap enough to start the company, get some traction, then point the VCs at Alexa to show how well you're doing - at which point they'll give you money. And he claims that you shouldn't worry about having a business plan when you start out - it will emerge at a later date (sounds like the good old days pre-dotcom crash!). His other suggestion was that you have to be located in Silicon Valley, because only physical presence will allow for the serendipity required to meet and connect with others who can help your business.
And Some Techie Stuff
Throughout the conference, there were plenty of mentions of the technologies which people are using to accelerate the building of web apps - Amazon S3 for storage, memcachced for caching, Dojo and jQuery for Ajax, HyperDB for in-memory databases, Django for Python web frameworks, etc. etc. The overall message was that, if someone has already solved a problem that you have, then you should be using those existing solutions and concentrating instead on building the bit of your application which will add some value to the data you have.
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