Among the dynamos, My Data and advice for startups.
SaaS / DaaS / WaaS (Whatever As a Service) and Mashups
Nick Carr quotes Henry Adams in Among the dynamos
“One lingered long among the dynamos,” he wrote, “for they were new, and they gave to history a new phase.
Pointing to SaaS Platforms trends, Clive Keyte write about "SaaS Management Platforms"
"Force.com is not on it’s own offering ‘cloud development facilities for SaaS applications though, there are a plethora of smaller companies entering into the fray including Bungee Connect"
Among the dynamos indeed...
And SaaS by the numbers: Salesforce.com: 24 Billion API Calls So Far
"This statistic along with others like 130 million transactions daily, 61,200 custom applications, and 750 AppExchange apps"
Bray Forrest informs us even Your Car Gets An API
"At the end of the month the Dash will get a RESTful API. At the user's initiative lat/long coordinates can be sent to a server. The Dash will consume a GeoRSS feed. This is just the first release. In the future they may add HTML pages, search and even the ability to poll. The device I saw did not have any API-driven apps loaded, but I can imagine great ones (update my location and finding out who from my YASN contacts are nearby)."
So what will we do with all these APIs? Mashups of course! What is a MashUp?
"Potatoes + beans + a little bit of beef + pork, and then you pour Smithwicks over the top of it."
Ah...Microsoft Research project alert: Rotunda: Profiling the Cloud
"the goal of the project is to be able to profile the performance of a Web application from the time a user clicks on a link and triggers an event in the browser—which triggers a database lookup—through each point of the resolution of the transaction."
Sounds a lot like Bungee Connect instrumentation designed to measure every transactions from user's browser interactions and server-side roundtrips, through to the app's service calls, triggers, events, response times, etc...You see, our business model demands we and our developers know this...we have this today :-)
My Data
The UK gets some relief from the ID Card madness, for a while anyway...turns out National ID cards scheme will delayed until 2012:
"The Government’s national identity card scheme was “in the intensive care ward” after leaked documents showed plans to issue UK citizens with the cards have been delayed until after the next election."
Phew! Seeing stories like this seems to be knocking sense to those who are living in cloud-cuckoo land...
On the other end of the "my data" equation: cries of "we want our data, when we want it and where we want it" are getting heard...
Here's video intro to DataPortability.org initiative: DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix.
"DataPortability gathers existing open standards into a blueprint for a social, open, remixable web where your online identity, media, contacts and content can follow you wherever you go."
Niall Kennedy's take on Data Portability, Authentication, and Authorization.
"Data authorization is the first step in data portability."
Enter OpenID and OAuth.
How will DataPortability.org keep from being hijacked by Microsoft? Now Microsoft has joined the fray, so does the inevitable questioning begin:
"So is the nascent DataPortability.org group at such risk from Redmond? Not according to a source inside the group."
News of Last.fm's on demand since CBS's acquisition hit the mainstream tech media yesterday. But what next? CBS Will Try To Convert Last.FM Acquisition To Video Value
“One of the reasons we liked the idea of buying it is, if we can develop a great social networking site around this music content, why couldn’t this extend in to entertainment, in to news sports, all businesses that we’re in"
Kaching!
Martin Plaehn's Quick Hits: Do's and Dont's of Entrepreneurship. 16 pieces of advice for start-ups.
"6. Do always accumulate choice; two by definition, three of four is better; then make decisions and have a back-up"
More Investments Into Open Source
News that Alfresco Gets Another $9M for Open Source Content Management
"Alfresco Software, an open source content management alternative to software created for large companies, has received an additional $9 million in a third round of financing, led by SAP Ventures and existing investors Accel Partners and Mayfield Fund"
However, not all the shareholders are happy with the Alfresco deal...Matt Asay wrote in New open source venture funding and the importance of SAP Ventures and Intel Capital
"But since we didn't need the money (not even remotely) and I didn't want the dilution, it's not my favorite news of the day."
Amen to that.
Uh Oh...
Mobile phone radiation wrecks your sleep
"Radiation from mobile phones delays and reduces sleep, and causes headaches and confusion, according to a new study, reports The Independent"