Blogging, Googling, Syndication: What’s the Web coming to?
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Transcript Blogging, Googling, Syndication: What’s the Web coming to?
Blogging, Googling, Syndication:
What’s the Web coming to?
Ian Graham
Enterprise IT Strategy & BMO Connect, T&S
T: 416.513.5656
E: [email protected]
W: http://www.utoronto.ca/ian/talks/
What this talk is about
The culture of web applications
– What are the new applications about?
– How are they ‘designed’ and put together
– Where are they taking the ‘public’ Web
Examples (Lots)
– That help to illustrate the above
Some conclusions
What the talk is not about
– Banking/financial services, software development,
Web Services (tech details)
Web culture
Location
Connectivity
Discovery
Communication &
Presence
Community
Blogging
Syndication RSS
Google
Jabber, ICQ
Ebay, Yahoo,
Slashdot, Amazon,
Blogspots, …
The right side lists just a few examples: there
are many others …
A) Having a home: Blogging
Short for ‘Weblogging’
– A ‘log’ authored on / accessible over, the Web
» Simple Web-site generation
– Personal (or group) publishing & communications:
» Users often publish regularly (daily, or weekly), and link
to friends / colleagues / coworkers
» Links establish virtual ‘communities’ with shared interests
» Categorization for topics, etc.
– Software is often free to download (and play with)
» Free (or near) hosting available (see list at end)
– Software often supports user-level scripting to
building custom functions, behaviors
Some Example Blogs
http://www.nerdgirl.com
– A ‘normal’ person (purely social site)
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/
[1]
– Inventor of JavaScript – roadmap for development team
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmassy/archive/2004/06/16/1572
63.aspx
– Internet Explorer development team member
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/
– Articles on software development
http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/2003_02_01_dear_raed_a
rchive.html
[2]
– Reported from inside Iraq before and during last year’s war
Uses of Weblogs
Pure social networking
– Post musings and share them with friends
(Semi-) professional information sharing
– Post information for more general communication
(e.g. news, current affairs, professional
commentary)
Work-related networking
– Post status reports, decisions and analyses, etc,
for sharing / cross-linking with others.
Popularity?
– There are millions of blogsites!
Blogspace
• The collection of blog sites all across the Internet
• Unconnected except for hand-created links in the pages
B) Two issues:
1.
Letting people know what you have
– Publishing information ‘about’ blog postings
» RSS, Atom: XML languages for summary publishing
RSS Resource Site Summary; RDF Site Summary;
Really Simple Syndication …) – [ example later ]
– Also used by regular web sites, news sites, etc.
2.
Finding interesting/relevant stuff
– Aggregation sites and clients
» aggregating info ‘about’ published blogs / other sites
» Headliner clients, topic-specific Web sites
– Categorization and rating systems
» Categorize blog items, Web page/sites
» separate wheat from chaff
B.1 RSS Feeds from a blogsite
Time-stamped
‘summary’ about
a blog item
Metadata (for
cataloging,
indexing)
Headline text
A link back to
the original
<item>
<dc:creator>Dave Massy [MSFT] </dc:creator>
<title>Security, Security, Security</title>
<link>
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmassy/archive/
2004/06/20/160649.aspx
</link>
<pubDate>Sun, 20 Jun 2004 12:56:00 GMT
</pubDate>
<description>
<P>This topic seems to be coming up
<P> </P><img
src ="http://blogs.msdn.com/
dmassy/aggbug/160649.aspx"
width = "1" height = "1" /> …more text …
</description>
</item>
… An ‘ad’ for the
original content.
E.g.: http://blogs.msdn.com/dmassy/ RSS link [3]
B.2. Aggregators & Syndicate
RSS
RSS
RSS
or
HTML
RSS
RSS
Retrieves and categorizes RSS from blog (and other) sites
And provides a categorized feed to users, or a Web listing:
http://aggregator.weblogs.co.uk/
http://meerkat.oreilly.com
http://www.newzcrawler.com
(a Blog aggregator)
(an RSS feed aggregator)
(an RSS desktop client)
[4]
[5]
Aggregator APIs:
APIs
for talking to aggregation sites
– Simple, easy to use, often URL-based
– E.g. Meerkat API -» http://www.oreillynet.com/meerkat/
[6]
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/rss/2000/05/09/meerkat_api.
html
-- \ API documentation)
– API based on arguments in the URL (docs above
explain how it works). Here are some examples:
» http://www.oreillynet.com/meerkat/?p=1065&_fl=rss
[6.1,6.2]
» http://www.oreillynet.com/meerkat/?p=1065&_fl=rss10
RSS feed of items in profile
category 1065
Same, but use RSS 1.0
format for feed
And Embeddable in Pages:
( . . . demo.html) [6.3]
<html>
<head>
<title> Example of inclusion of RSS feeds using
JavaScript </title>
</head>
<body>
<h1> Heading For the Example </h1>
<p> Here is some regular HTML -- ok,
i didn't have time to make it pretty </p>
<p> And here is the JavaScript example code:
<script language="JavaScript"
src="http://meerkat.oreillynet.com/?_fl=js">
</script>
</body> </html>
Returned script sent by Meerkat;
writes out HTML summaries into file
Summary
Blogging is for individuals
RSS (and syndication) help build connectivity, and
communities
Aggregators support simple APIs so it’s easy to build
functions that integrate these tools with others
(blogsites, portals, other..)
– Richer communities via richer functionality
– No conscious high-level architecture: people just try new
ideas, and seeing what works (or doesn’t)
– A heterogenous collection of apps, sharing using simple
protocols, APIs.
Each application and protocol is simple (limited
scope, easy to use ), and open (encourages reuse,
extension)
URL as a reference / API is key to this model
C. Googling
A web search engine
– http://www.google.com
– Other stuff:
[7]
» Blogger.com; Google groups, special search services,
maps, Gmail (email) etc.
Some numbers:
– Estimated space
– Number of servers
> 2,000,000 GB
100,000 (Linux)
Access to the index:
– Via several APIs, some simple, and some complex
Google as a service
Via APIs that let you reuse the google
engine as part of your own application:
– A URL-based API (like Meerkat)
– A full-blown Web services interface
– The latter lets you, essentially, use Google
as the search engine / database within
your own applications (subject to
restrictions)
Google’s URL-based API
( . . . demo-google.html) [7.1]
<form id="search" method="get"
action="http://www.google.com/custom">
<input type="hidden" name="cof"
value="LW:600;LH:58;L:http://www.bmo.com/images/
...banner.gif;GIMP:#cc0000;T:black;
...;AWFID:9262c37cefe23a86;">
<input type="hidden" name="domains"
value=“bmo.com">
<input type="hidden"
name="sitesearch" value=“bmo.com">
<input type="text" id="q" name="q"
accesskey="s" size="30">
<input type="submit" id="submit" value="go">
</form>
----- Info ----------------------http://www.google.com/faq_freewebsearch.html
http://cyberzoide.developpez.com/html/google/
Google’s Web Services API
Experimental interface, but widely used
– Requires registration for access key (simple, and
free)
– Provides library and tools for building simple
applications, using SOAP-based web services.
» Java and .NET examples provided
API covers
– Ways to query the google database
– Response formats / error responses
Google Example
[7.2]
public class GoogleAPIDemo {
public static void main(String[] args) {
…
// Create a Google Search object, set our authorization key
GoogleSearch s = new GoogleSearch(); s.setKey(clientKey);
// do search or cache query, then print out result
try {
if (directive.equalsIgnoreCase("search")) {
s.setQueryString(directiveArg);
GoogleSearchResult r = s.doSearch();
System.out.println("Google Search Results:");
System.out.println(r.toString());
} else if (directive.equalsIgnoreCase("cached")) {
….
} else if (directive.equalsIgnoreCase("spell")) {
…
} else {
printUsageAndExit(); }
} catch (GoogleSearchFault f) {
System.out.println("The call to the Google Web APIs failed:");
System.out.println(f.toString()); } }
private static void printUsageAndExit() { … } }}
Google Summary
Simple API focused on single function
– Querying the google database.
Loose coupling
– Google doesn’t care about you, or what you’re
doing.
Coarse-grained
– Here’s a query, and there’s your answer. No details
beyond those needed for business function.
These two characteristics are core to almost
all ‘Web’ development models.
D. Jabber: Messaging & presence
Jabber clients
• Presence
• User directory
• Proxys to Yahoo, ICQ
• Other services
Jabber
server
Jabber
server
Jabber servers
Jabber Example
Jabber client
[8.1]
Jabber
client
Jabber
client
Jabber
server
Jabber
server
• Requests and responses all
• Connect
register presence
• Lookup user
contact database
• Send text message
contact database
•
•
•
sent in XML
Generic XML protocol for
exchanging messages, plus
some services.
Can be extended to non-text
messaging applications
Now used for virtual presence:
lets you know who else is at a
blog or other web site
Virtual Presence
(Jabbber extension: http://www.lluna.de/ [8.2])
1.
2.
3.
1
WS
VP
server
3
2
4
VP
client
5
4.
5.
Web Server registers with
virtual presence (VP) server,
using a URL
VP client gets name of VP
server (URL) from Web
server.
VP client registers with VP
server.
VP server tells VP client
who else is there.
VP client provides chat
service to other users of the
site.
Key features
Simple, single-purpose
URL-based referencing scheme
– Underlying protocol uses XML
Loose coupling between components
– servers, clients – failure is expected
Less-simple protocol / API
– May explain why it isn’t as popular as other
technologies.
And many other examples
Bittorrent - file sharing / transfers [9]
– http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/
Wikis collaborative web authoring
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
[10]
…
An example application
Web page (from web server) that includes
data from an aggregator,
– uses google to provide searching
– publishes new content info using RSS
– Uses jabber to provide presence functionality to
visitors
– Provides bittorrent links to downloadable data
All integrated using URLs, and simple web
protocols.
Conclusions
Social focus on community, networking,
connection, sharing
Technical Software design focused on
– Simplicity of interfaces, and applications
– URL as the key reference for an application,
function, method
– Loose coupling between applications
» Construction of Web applications by integrating these
different ‘application services’ together.
Conclusion II
“A large part of how we think about music is
influenced by the methods by with which it has
conventionally been distributed. We think of pop songs
as being three or four minutes long because 40 years
ago that was all that could fit on one side of a vinyl
single.”
Moby
We
often think of Internet-based computing is the
same way -- in terms of what we know -- not what it is
becoming. It is different, and challenges our thinking!
Couldn’t
be a more fun time to be doing software!
Blogging, Googling, Syndication:
What’s the Web coming to?
--- The End --Ian Graham
Enterprise IT Strategy & BMO Connect, T&S
T: 416.513.5656
E: [email protected]
W: http://www.utoronto.ca/ian/talks/
Some Tools and Sites
Blogging software
–
–
–
–
http://www.moveabletype.com
http://www.livejournal.org/
http://manila.userland.com/
http://www.slashcode.com/
Free blogging sites
– http://www.blogger.com http://newrandom.blogspot.com (Ian’s site)
– http://www.livejournal.com
RSS / Atom Aggregation sites
–
–
–
–
http://aggregator.weblogs.co.uk/
http://www.bloglines.com/
http://www.syndic8.com/
http://meerkat.oreilly.com (Open Wire Service)
» API Documentation:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/rss/2000/05/09/meerkat_api.html
RSS / Atom Desktop clients
– http://www.newzcrawler.com
– http://www.headlineviewer.com
Some Tools and Sites
Google tools and APIs
– Google Hacks, Calishain and Dornfest, O’Reilly and Associates, 2003
» http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/googlehks/index.html
–
–
–
–
–
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2161301
http://www.google.com/faq_freewebsearch.html (Free websearch)
http://www.google.com/services/custom.html (custom search)
http://cyberzoide.developpez.com/html/google/
http://www.google.ca/apis/ (Google Web service APIs)
Jabber
Bittorrent
Wikis
Java Development Kit
– http://www.jabber.org
– http://www.lluna.de (virtual presence extension)
– http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki (all about Wikis)
– http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html