Beyond Widgets: MuseStorm’s Advanced Data Services Vision July 5, 2006
Posted by Jerry Bowles in Ajax, Application Development, Companies, Enterprise Application Integration, Lite Computing, Small Apps, Web 2.0.3 comments
MuseStorm has created a lot of buzz in the past couple of weeks with its much linked tutorial on How to Create an Ajax Homepage and its web site that allows users to customize pre-made widgets, then add them to their site using a few lines of code. I spoke to MuseStorm co-founder Ori Soen by telephone this morning and he gave me an overview of company vision which goes far beyond widgets.
Right now, MuseStorm aggregates content from various Web sources (APIs) and serves data to applications. On the client-side, it provides modules that free the developer from dealing with APIs, Web services, data manipulation and most client-side programming.
MuseStorm widgets allow blogs and web site owners to easily integrate data from search engines, photo sharing services, EBay, Amazon, YouTube and others into their Web pages with no programming required. Web developers can use MuseStorm’s components and service to add dynamic data to their applications with minimal programming, in a variety of development environments.
As more, and more valuable, web-delivered services are developed and deployed in the future, Ori foresees the demand for a middle layer of advanced data management services to function as a “gateway” for customers on both sides of the server-client divide. For proprietary reasons, he is reluctant to name the specific services right now but he did share some of them with me and I think they are solid and have a lot potential. Says he:
It is no secret that the web is emerging as a service delivery platform, not simply a collection of static web pages. Right now, API providers are doing everything themselves. We think that a year from now, maybe a little bit more, these application providers are going to want to add various kinds of business management functionality and metrics to their offerings. That would require a lot of programming and platform- building that is extraneous to their core business. Long term, we see ourselves becoming that middle layer. If you’re an application or data provider, you can plug-in to MuseStorm and we can provide all kinds of valuable services to help you manage and run your business. At the same time, we are making it easy for users and developers to add dynamic functionality to their projects.
My impression is that MuseStorm’s plans to add advanced data services on top of its aggregation and distribution technology looks like an attractive business model.
Cross-posted from my other site Practical Widgets.
Dabble DB and ConnectBeam–Two For the Enterprise June 30, 2006
Posted by Jerry Bowles in Ajax, Application Development, Collaboration, Collective Intelligence, Companies, Enterprise Application Integration, Social Bookmarking, Social Networking, Tagging / Folksonomy, Web 2.0.4 comments
If you’re one of the thousands of people who use Excel as a database, as well as a spreadsheet, you probably realize you are trading functionality for ease of use and economy. Only one person at a time can enter data into an Excel database and there are limits to how much data you can store. Sharing the database with others is not easy or efficient. For individuals this is not usually a problem but these limitations can become critical in companies. A Vancouver-based startup called Dabble DB, which opened to the public yesterday, has come up with an extremely appealing online alternative that allows you to instantly copy data from MS Excel into its web application and massage the data in ways that are dificult to do with Excel. Dabble DB will even turn your data into an interactive relational database and let you share it with co-workers through RSS and iCal.
Dabble DB co-founders, Andrew Catton and Avi Bryant, have squarely targeted the enterprise market with a Web 2.0 solution. The company is well-financed having gotten a rumored US$2-million infusion this week from Ventures West.
Dabble DB is now offering a free one-month trial. You can watch a video of its features here.
ConnectlBeam is a startup that aims to take tagging and bookmarking into the enterprise marketplace which is—in principle, at least–a great idea but also one that faces some formidable cultural barriers. One big fear companies have is that workers will spend more time randomly surfing for items to bookmark and reading material marked by others than they will doing whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing at their desks. Another fear is that they will assign tags that are so uncommon that the system gets bogged down with archives that are not really useful. There is also the security issues involved in inviting others into the tree house—particularly from the other side of the firewall. Corporations do not like the kind of casual, ultimately self-correcting, anarchy that prevails on the consumer side of the web where users essentially police themselves. Companies are going to want to “control” the process to a large degree.
ConnectBeam’s solution suggests tags which is a step toward addressing the consistency issue and co-founders Puneet Gupta and Prem Malhotra have clearly paid a lot of attention to security. The company’s ultimate success will depend upon whether it can convince CIOs and CEOs that its solution delivers a clear and measurable payoff in increased productivity that is greater than the sum of their fears.
Testdriving Musestorm’s Awesome Widget Machine June 28, 2006
Posted by Jerry Bowles in Ajax, Application Development, Companies, Enterprise Mashups, Lite Computing, Web 2.0, Widgets, WordPress.2 comments
If you’re among the millions of people who belong to the curious-but-not-all-that-geeky crowd, the folks at MuseStorm have put together a fabulous AJAX Desktop Tutorial that will give you a hands-on, step-by-step demonstration of how to build an AJAX desktop or homepage in ten minutes or so. I went there last night intending to spend about five minutes kicking the tires and wound up killing a couple of hours moving boxes around and happily turning feeds into merry little widgets.
In addition to the terrific tutorials, MuseStorm also has a collection of customizable forms that allow you to easily create widgets for RSS feeds, Google Search, News and Definition, Technorati, YouTube, Amazon Books, eBay Auctions, Flickr photos and del.icio.us tags. Create a feed, push a button, and MuseStorm generates code that you can drop into your blog or web page. I would have liked to drop some in here to show you but, alas, the WordPress folks are a little paranoid about javascript they haven’t pre-approved.
Once you play with widgets for a few minutes, you begin to realize that this really could be the future of the desktop. What is likely to make the little devils ultimately appealing to enterprises is their simplicity of use and their ability to eliminate a lot of wasted and unnecessary tech fat from the way office work is currently performed.
Imagine going into the office in the morning and instead of firing up the old PC with its cranky, mostly Microsoft office applications (so overloaded that you actually use perhaps 2% of their features), you flip on a networked thin client, which opens your personalized homepage with the lightweight applications you use most often, i.e., a calendar, e-mail, and maybe a collaborative teamspace. If you need something special–a spreadsheet, for example–you go to the widget closet and pull one out and drop it on your desktop. As you work, your output is automatically saved and stored–not on your PC–but on a giant server farm in Montana or somewhere.
This won’t happen overnight, of course. Too many Western companies have too much money invested in huge operating systems designed to run needlessly complex applications. As was the case with telecommunications industry’s shift from landlines to wireless, the countries and companies that will benefit first and most from thin computing will be those who have the least investment in existing infrastructure. China, for example, managed to leapfrog directly from a 19th century economy into the digital age by leveraging Western advances in telecommunications and computing. You can bet they (and many others) will do the same with the new lite computing paradigm.
If you want to experience Web 2.0 firsthand, give MuseStorm’s AJAX Desktop tutorial a test drive. You’ll understand what all the excitement is about.
Software AG Pushes Ajax Enhancements June 21, 2006
Posted by Jerry Bowles in Ajax, Application Development, Companies, Enterprise Mashups.add a comment
One of the most positive signs that Web 2.0 technologies are going mainstream enterprise is that the big software developers are beginning to rally around Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, (Ajax) as the core framework for building next-generation web applications. The German-giant Software AG announced this morning several enhancements its crossvision Application Designer, a design-time and run-time environment that uses Ajax to create sophisticated Web-browser interfaces as part of a Service Oriented Architecture. Version 2.1 of the company's Application Designer includes Generic Web Service support, WYSIWYG layout capabilities and a new, friendlier HTML editor/word processor through Software AG's recent alliance with pintexx.
With the crossvision Application Designer, developers can use Ajax to design and deploy Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that enable desktop-like capabilities without having to code complex JavaScript, HTML or CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
Software AG has been well ahead of the pack on the Ajax front. Last year Application Designer was announced as the first Ajax-based product to include a user interface control for Google maps–just one of more than 80 Ajax graphical controls shipped with Application Designer.
"Thanks to the rapid popularization of Ajax, people are able to create highly functional applications in completely new and simple ways," said Dr. Peter Kuerpick, Member of the Board, Software AG and responsible for the development of crossvision. "The combination of our crossvision Application Designer and Application Composer sets a straight course directly from a Service-Oriented Architecture to the hands and eyes of the individual employee with a vital job to accomplish."
Software AG recently joined the OpenAJAX Alliance, whose mission is to advance the adoption of Ajax.
Attention, Local Retailers. ZiXXo is Here to Help You Sell More. June 19, 2006
Posted by Jerry Bowles in Application Development, Companies, Retail, Self-Service Web.1 comment so far
Our old buddy Mike Hogan is officially launching ZiXXo, the first self-service online coupon service at the Supernova Conference this week. Sounds a little mundane until you realize what an enormous business merchant coupons really are. Last year, some 335 billion coupons were distributed in the U.S., and of those 4.5 billion were actually used so there is no shortage of coupon clippers out there. The problem for local businesses has always been that 88% of these coupons are distributed by national companies through Sunday newspaper inserts, an avenue that the locals usually can't afford. ZiXXo makes it easy and cost-effective for local businesses to get into the game.
ZiXXo has a simple interface that allows merchants to create a coupon online, or upload an image of an existing coupon, and then ZiXXo syndicates the coupons through its own website, custom email alerts, custom RSS feeds and a growing network of syndication partners. Consumers simply print the coupons, on demand, and redeem them with local businesses. The local angle and the RSS distribution are the main tweaks. ZiXXo is launching its service at the Supernova 2006 Conference in San Francisco June 21-23 and is one of only 12 companies selected as a “Connected Innovator” by Michael Arrington of Techcunch.com and The Supernova Group, in conjunction with The Wharton School.
The 5-Minute Enterprise App June 18, 2006
Posted by Jerry Bowles in Application Development, Companies, IBM.add a comment
One of the many things that has the Big Guys excited about Web 2.0 is the ease and speed with which new productivity-enhancing applications can be developed and customized with off-the-shelf components. Rod Smith, IBM's vice president of emerging Internet technologies, unveiled at a trade show a prototype "IBM Enterprise Mashup" based on Web services and wiki technologies that allows users to create a customized application in less than five minutes.
"The embrace of open standards and Web 2.0 technologies is forcing businesses to rethink the paradigm of the proprietary, one-size-fits-all productivity application," declared Smith. "In today's business climate, with business collaborations quickly forming and disbanding, customers are rethinking how they can enable innovation to occur.
"Customers I talk to are abuzz about Web 2.0 and the creation of popular Internet services that seem to quickly appear out of nowhere, becoming instant global phenomena that are enjoyed by the masses — including their employees. They want to apply that new paradigm to make their businesses act faster and grab new opportunities. There's no going back."
