Monday, January 21, 2002

InfoWorld: "During its annual gathering of partners and customers at Lotusphere in Orlando, Fla., in a couple of weeks, Lotus Software plans to further its Web services strategy with tighter links between Domino and WebSphere and to move to embed collaboration components in other applications." Support the Blogger API, then Notes will work with Radio 8. Now of course I know they'll never do it, but what a trip if they did.  [Scripting News] 4:28:12 PM

There is not a chance in hell that SOAP will deliver on it's lofty vision of loosely coupled systems with dynamic integration and transparent interoperability. There are too many XML standards involved and most of them seem unneccessarily complex -- too many degrees of freedom. Especially if the data you're trying to exchange is anything more than a little complicated. That said, I take hope from the fact that SOAP is supported underneath with a well-developed set of tools for XML parsing and generating. It might not work out of the box, but on a point-to-point basis, I'm certain a determined developer can make any connection work. This is a good thing, and relatively unique in the history of data communication standards. People are definitely excited about it -- it's the shiny new set of tools in their toolbox. So, I'm sure we can expect to see people turning lots of problems into nails for their new hammer. In some cases it will be good -- problems that were waiting for tools like these will fall. In some cases it will be bad -- people taking huge performance hits for no reason at all, etc. I think we don't yet know what the killer app for this is in the enterprise, but the fact that we have all these people running around trying to hammer things is, ultimately a good thing (as long as the bad experiences don't overshadow the good) -- we'll get a huge space explored fast. The winners in the industry will be those that spot the killer applications of SOAP and support it best and earliest. The way interoperability plays out will, ultimately, depend on who is first to answer the killer app question and how they answer it. If I had to bet where the killer app would be, right now, I'd say it isn't the between companies, but within them. It's in exposing departmental apps to the rest of the company and letting them hook up to each other -- and in giving people a new way to pull data to their desktops (scripting...). 11:43:00 AM

I think its time to learn more about Jabber - an open instant messaging system that makes extensive use of XML under the covers.  Apparently, they have more in mind than just people talking to people.   Jabber is featured in at least one chapter in O'Reilly's new SOAP book.   I think Radio will be very cool when I can interact with it (and it interacts with me) via IM.   I'd love to get my news IM'd to me. 2:31:42 AM

A great thing about San Francisco is that there are so many chances to go people speak.    We have several prominent booksellers ( Cody's , Stacey's , etc).   We also have the Commonwealth Club and City Arts and Lectures .    I should really get out to see them more.   Maybe I should become a member of the Commonwealth Club.  2:20:19 AM

Malcom Gladwell wrote this great book called The Tipping Point , a book about how things become grassroot phenomena -- very interesting and probably more complicated than you think.   He also writes for the New Yorker.  He's got his own site, with an archive of those articles.   Today, he's on KQED , on City Arts and Lectures .  Interesting. 2:20:18 AM