Web apps/services
In all the hubbub, I think the real definition of Web 2.0 has gotten lost… Don’t you see? It’s about REALLY BIG type. Oh, and bright colors ;)
Web Application Solutions: A Designer’s Guide is a nice comparison of different web app technologies of varying “thicknesses.”
From the mind of Steven Johnson (by way of Rael Dornfest) comes a nifty Google-based metric: Googleshare. And here’s another version of the app which doesn’t require you to have a Google API key.
Web Services, Part I: Introduction… If you thought it was bad using web apps and having them be slow and/or down for maintenance just when you needed them, imagine what it’s going to be like debugging your code when it’s strewn all over the internet. (don’t get me wrong, I like the impulse a lot, but here there be monsters).
A Web Services Primer is technical, but sketches the landscape of the emerging distributed web services model and for some reason makes me want to sing: “I’m a service. She’s a service. Wouldn’t you like to be a service, too.”
Probably shouldn’t admit this, but I can’t remember if I ever linked to A Young Person’s Guide to The Simple Object Access Protocol: SOAP. [via cam]
This is old, but O’Reilly has a good rant about Web APIs: Meerkat: An Open Service API. Here’s a quote from Brian Behlendorf (think Apache):
I think it’s fine to have a world where open and closed source software speak—by far the most important thing is that the protocols and APIs be stable and open and free from encumberance, that the software source code is open is secondary.
Desktop.com has some usability problems, but they’re publishing their API. Neat.
Activespace is a database web app which allows you to design databases. It seems to be a bit more templated than Desktop, but they let you export data to halfbrain which is rad. When we get data flying back and forth between many apps, with RPCs and all, thing’s start to get interesting.
IBM: Web Application Client Programming Model.. A bit specific at times, but a nice overview of the web app framework (via cam).