Dudu Mimran Blog

Machine Operated Web Applications

2009-12-07T14:34:58-08:00

Software applications have two main perspectives the external perspective where interfaces to the external world are defined and consumed and the internal perspective where an internal structure enables and supports the external interface. Let me elaborate on this:

The internal perspective shows the building blocks and layers within the application allowing specific data flow and processing. To further simply things let's take an example from the real world and that is a real building block. We can describe it in a technical and physical description that will detail the concrete, foundations, electricity tunnels, air conditioning and others. The external perspective of the building is the apartments look and feel, available services for tenants, views from the windows, painting color, type of cupboard handles in the kitchen and others. In general all the things that people experience when they interface with the building. So if we go back to the software story then the external perspective is the application UI, data feeds, APIs and other entities external parties come in touch with.

Twitter with their approach in their API have created something special which can be the basis for a new development paradigm on the web and that would be MOA - Machine Operated Applications. As a background Twitter provide one unified external interface, which is their API and their website UI seems to be built mostly on this API (I might be exaggerating here and they have capabilities in their UI not available in the API but the major functions are also available in the API). The same API that is available for others to consume and operate. The API is split ed into two parts: the first part is a general services API which includes search and other user agnostic services which is very similar to other services other companies provide in their APIs. The second part is the more important one and that is the user driven API where all data and actions available on Twitter's web application for a specific user are available via the API itself. This model allowed the huge surge in amount of applications built on twitter at no time, a developer community that many companies would die for while twitter did it in a snap.

To describe the model I see for twitter in a visual way:

[ Twitter infrastructure ] - Internal perspective which is hidden
[ Twitter API ] - Unified external perspective for the product
[ [ Twitter UI ] or [3rd party applications]] - API consumers and operators having equal rights to the external interface (3rd party apps are limited in the number of queries per hour but it is not too serious if you consider that the limitation is per user and not global)

So how all this long and tiring story relates to MOA - machine operated applications? Well once an application can be fully operated and consumed via a formal API (Which is Application Programmable Interface) then robots can use it too. And I do not mean today's web robots who harvest data , aggregate data and do some kind of analysis. I am talking about Robots that would work autonomously on behalf of real users or companies and will use the product in a meaningful way. For example, I can imagine a robot that will be my social network expander and it will use data from different areas to understand my interest and current network and will expand it automatically by following new people on twitter. Following someone is a meaningful action in the virtual and real world and once a bot will be smart enough to do so then things will change. Twitter with their API approach allow this evolution.

A note: the split of perspectives is similar to the way strategy in companies can be viewed where a company has the internal perspective of operational capability and the external perspective which is the market share, brand recognition, distribution channels and more.

On a lookout for mobile testing company

2009-12-06T12:30:35-08:00

Does anyone knows of a mobile testing company? I am interested in outsourcing mobile application testing with special focus on device compatibility. Anyone?

VCs Wisdom

2009-12-06T12:28:33-08:00

Everyone expect VCs to have some exotic point of view on markets and industries though rationally there is no basis for it. I would expect VCs to provide insight into the market since they are a hub of ideas and entrepreneurs but somehow things got mixed up.

#140conf in Tel Aviv

2009-12-06T12:03:45-08:00

Today on #140conf Google proved again they are the new Microsoft. They talked about their products and technologies instead of praising Twitter and the good change they brought on us. Microsoft are the inventors of the strategy of not acknowledging others' achievements as if that would diminish their position and Google just follows the same path. It always reminds of employers that never give employees a good word or a complement just to make sure they don't ask for a raise.

Amazon EBS Boot

2009-12-06T11:57:03-08:00

Amazon boot option from an Elastic Block is a game changer. Many topics related to dynamic scaling of web apps are solved with this cool new feature. Amazon proves they are the ultimate cloud platform and I can't see other keeping up the race regardless of the big words. It is very nice to see Google not taking over this portion of technology.

Israeli Grid Technology Conference

2009-12-06T11:48:04-08:00

Last week I was on IGT conference which is the Israeli grid technology conference. It was interesting to see the change from one year to another where last year it was all about new technologies and new ideas and this year the main theme was of commercial companies and integrators discussing how to apply it. I personally found it more boring but I guess that is the way new industries evolve.

Jeff Pulver

2009-12-06T11:37:08-08:00

Jeff Pulver is a great man with warm heart and i enjoyed very much today #140conf in Tel Aviv today

The web is changing

2009-11-24T11:28:01-08:00

I have been reading about the whereabouts of News Corp., Google and Microsoft in recent two weeks and I noticed something weird happening here about but could not put my finger on it. To those who do not know the storyline here is a short description posted on Hitwise today:

Two weeks ago we posted on Rupert Murdoch's threat to block Google from Indexing News Corp. content. While at first it seemed as though Murdoch was merely posturing with hypotheticals, reports continue to indicate that News Corp. is seriously considering choosing Bing as the exclusive "indexer" of their news content.

via weblogs.hitwise.com

At first I thought Mr. Murdoch was playing tricks on Google but when Microsoft entered the picture with their proposal to News Corp. to exclusively allow indexing of their sites on Bing only things got clearer. I am not talking about the not surprising tactic from Microsoft's arsenal but on a total different thing.

The new phenomena here is the change of balance between publishers and Google. The status que until today was that everyone just wished Google would index their websites and the more the merrier. Indexing meant traffic which summed up to more revenues from advertising. Industries has been created on this raw desire to be indexed on Google, for example SEO and SEM were millions of dollars have been poured into it. News Corp. as a big website with big assets understood that Google is no less important to them then the opposite.

I am not sure whether Bill Gates got it and talked to News Corp or the other way around (though it smells like Bill's way of thinking) but something has changed here.

Now that this has happened we can contemplate on few directions. For example what will happen if other websites will follow through and will deindex themselves from Google? And also is this happening because Google is no longer the main hub for getting users to websites where social bookmarking and tiny urls on twitter fill the gap? Is this the reason Google is developing operating systems to grab hold on users while they know they loose ground in the pure web market?

I think this is a serious topic for Google to think on.

Dudu

Is Web 3.0 The Right Name for The Next Internet Uphill?

2009-06-30T00:16:10-07:00

I get to see here and there the term '3.0' used in reference to the next internet/technology revolution and somehow it does not feel right to me. I am not sure about this but for me the coined term '2.0' was a metaphor belonging to the concept of software versioning. If the the first internet era where infrastructure was established is called '1.0' implying the first version of a product then what we had recently was a '2.0' where the product, hence the internet, has become more streamlined towards users in terms of services, ease of use and diversity. As in software there are always other versions such as 3.0 and 4.0 etc... but none of these compares to the unique characteristics '1.0' and '2.0' have.

In software usually the 1.0 includes basic infrastructure for enabling core functionality as well as diverse set of features coming from the delirious minds of the developers and maybe potential customers. It is usually very spread out and less focused though very appealing thanks to the creative sense of it. The 2.0 usually is an organized effort to address the needs of specific audiences after getting real feedback and real experience with the 1.0 version. I believe the internet did behave in correspondence with this lifecycle during last two uphills.

If we try to envision the next uphill (assuming there will be one, hopefully) then it can come in two flavors (or more I have to be humble): The '3.0' style where the product/internet becomes less creative and spread out while maturing current capabilities and extending them to address more perfectly different users' needs. The second option is to have a spinoff on the '2.0' product series but actually to create something new which can and should be called '1.0' again.

I personally prefer option 2:)

Bad YouTube Experience

2009-06-29T23:57:39-07:00

Yesterday while I was viewing a video on YouTube I was aggressively interrupted by a video/flash based commercial with sound. I am not sure whether that was a glitch but someone need to pay attention to the fact that people can not hear two different soundtracks at the same time. Two videos is easy since you can focus your eyes on a certain area but two sounds is too much for me:)