Jon Udell, as always, has a very insightful post about the web and the connections that we can make (or can’t make). He talks about web applications and services talking to each other, specifically Dopplr and Tripit, both services I use, albeit independently of each other, although I wish they could talk to each other (I do pipe both to Google Calendar). He paraphrases James Senior
I’ll give you a perfect example. I use Tripit, it’s a wonderful service. You email it your travel itinerary, and it organizes all your information for you. But I’ve been frustrated not to be able to share that information with my friends on Facebook. I also use Dopplr, and Dopplr talks to Facebook, but Tripit doesn’t. Then I realized that Tripit publishes an iCalendar feed, and that Dopplr can subscribe to iCalendar feeds. So I made that connection, and now my Tripit events are showing up in Facebook.
But that is not Jon’s point. His point is that he missed that this could be done, mostly because “wiring the web“ is rather obscure and abstract, and if Jon finds it obscure where does it leave mere mortals like most of us. He goes on to write
From now on, we are all going to be wiring the web in one way or another. And we’re going to need a conceptual frame in which to do that — ideally, a user-interface metaphor that’s already familiar. Maybe it’s as simple as copy/paste. Maybe it’s more like Yahoo!Pipes or Popfly blocks. Whatever it turns out to be, we need to invent and deploy a universal junction box for wiring the web.
Personally, I feel that the very fabric of the web, notably HTTP, HTML5, iCal etc are the fabric of the web and as long as we stick to common protocols we should be able to wire things together using a variety of tools, from Pipes to Pipeline Pilot; from iCal to Ubiquity, etc. It’s why I wonder why more scientific data sources and services don’t embrace these protocols. Wiring together science on the web should be a lot easier, but for that more of it needs to exist on the web, and needs to be ready for wiring as it were. When it is you get shiny new things like Hubmed and Reflect
The web as platform: Making connections
Jon Udell, as always, has a very insightful post about the web and the connections that we can make (or can’t make). He talks about web applications and services talking to each other, specifically Dopplr and Tripit, both services I use, albeit independently of each other, although I wish they could talk to each other (I do pipe both to Google Calendar). He paraphrases James Senior
But that is not Jon’s point. His point is that he missed that this could be done, mostly because “wiring the web“ is rather obscure and abstract, and if Jon finds it obscure where does it leave mere mortals like most of us. He goes on to write
Personally, I feel that the very fabric of the web, notably HTTP, HTML5, iCal etc are the fabric of the web and as long as we stick to common protocols we should be able to wire things together using a variety of tools, from Pipes to Pipeline Pilot; from iCal to Ubiquity, etc. It’s why I wonder why more scientific data sources and services don’t embrace these protocols. Wiring together science on the web should be a lot easier, but for that more of it needs to exist on the web, and needs to be ready for wiring as it were. When it is you get shiny new things like Hubmed and Reflect
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