Saturday, July 23, 2005

Hacktivity Level

The 'hacktivity level' is way up. Casual services, dynamic scripting and remixing are clearly the theme for 2005. JSON, POX, REST, RSS, etc. have taken hold - they've intersected with client-side contextual applications like Google Maps to create what some people would have called a composite application - you may prefer the terms remix or mash-up. Even Business Week is taking notice.

SOAP & WS-* have turned into the stiff-collared, corporate world, slow to move technologies. Once again, our passionate technology community is breaking all the rules and creating compelling applications - and I love it.

Hacker - 'I need that service and that other service. I need to combine them. I need a server-side aggregation engine. I need to re-serve the combined service. I wonder who will enrich/transform my service? Who cares. I need a client-side visualization mechanism. It has to have easy API's that front-end the data services. Damn this is cool. Interesting - it looks like a 'web of services'. Clients. I need contextual pivoting - Maps - Austin - Concert Halls - Concerts - Reviews - Tickets - Buy - Receipt - Calendar.'


CIO - "Did you see what some hacker did with concert reservations? Can we provide our core services to the outside world? Wait - can we consume other peoples services and create our own application out of them??" - Why yes.

The World Wide Web is turning into the Service Oriented Web. The technologies will be stiff and flimsy; the artists will be straight-laced and no-laced. The intersection will be magnificent; the Web is reborn. The SOAP/WS "transactional web" will be a portion of the new SOW, perhaps a small portion. Our future will be driven by those who have the passion and desire to create it.

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