I am biased writing this article because my company is a big user of Amazon
Web Services. But please read on and see why I am so excited about what the
largest online retailer is doing these days. Not only Amazon is the real Web
Services company now, it is becoming an icon for the 21st century software
tools company. Not Microsoft, not IBM not even Google, but Amazon has been
quietly, and recently not so quietly, building the blocks of the next
generation software platform.
At the core of the Amazon strategy are the Web Services. The Amazon team
takes the concepts of search, storage, lookup and management the data and
turns them into pay-per-fetch and pay-per-space web services. This is a
brilliant strategy and Amazon is certainly a visionary company. But what
impress... (more)
Web 2.0 Journal Contributing Editor Alex Iskold (pictured) writes: We are
observing the transformation of the web from an ecosystem into an operating
system. Building blocks such as websites, blogs, web services, podcasts and
RSS are coming together and give rise to a new computing platform. The web
operating system is emerging and it is bigger than the sum of its parts.
Remember your ... (more)
During the nineties boom days, one of my friends told me: Soon your
refrigerator will be connected to the Internet. It will talk to the computer
at the supermarket and send it the list of things that need to be
replenished. It will also check the latest rating information on the products
that you buy and will let you know if there is something better out there.
And of course, it will scr... (more)
In 1998, I got my hands on Mitchell Waldrop's book called 'Complexity'. Ever
since, I've been on an amazing journey discovering one of the most profound
developments in modern science. Complexity, or more formally, the study of
complex systems, is about unifying themes that run through all modern
scientific disciplines including physics, biology, economics, ecology,
linguistics, and soci... (more)
Pattern: Concurrent Document Loader
Problem: Need to load multiple documents and can't proceed until all of them
are loaded
Example: Load configuration files for an AJAX application
Introduction
AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript processing with XML. It is the
asynchronous part that gets everyone excited. Fetching the data without
reloading the page allows AJAX applications to mimic the... (more)