sent2null space

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/facebook-tries-to-fight-off-international-clones-good-luck-with-that The ready reproducibility of not only Facebooks "look and feel" but also its functionality is a direct consequence of the light weight technology that the site is built on. Any technologist knows that Facebook is a really well organized web site, the "well organized" part coming from using the built in hierarchical management of xml to collate messages from to users, to add entries to feeds to transform those xml files into rendered display elements for the site, it is quite a basic xml based publishing platform and nothing more. As such building a similar platform for anyone that knows a bit of xml , xsl and html and jsp is trivial. The "apps" that Facebook loves touting are more managed scripts cleverly categorized but nothing about that is patentable and is easily replicated so Facebook must resort to lawsuits to attempt to maintain its distinct advan...

This week Google launched their App Engine Platform to add their hand to the collection of products and services provided by large and small providers of web frameworks. As a developer of just such a framework still in steath, the announcement is not a surprise (if it is to any of the other guys they may have a few things more to worry about) but with this announcement Google also announced a few "proof of concept" applications built using their App Engine. To demonstrate the ability to build apps quickly, three of their developers are said to have worked on their "spare time" to create a free web group chat application called HuddleChat very much like the service provided by 37Signals Campfire product. I am quite familiar with Campfire as in my initial research for developing a collaboration API in my framework 2 years ago I came across their website. The product serves a simple purpose of allowing a team of individuals to come together and converse in a chat roo...