Social Applications

Social Media Terrorists

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:00:00 EDT

"Mass psychology" scientists study this kind of phenomena and the "mass psychology of fascism" is of course the most famous lab case. The extraordinary experience SYS-CON Media lived through became part of a Forbes Magazine investigative cover story called "Attack of the Blogs" that found that "Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo." The lies, libel and invective we are living through today is another such episode. Our partners, readers and the industry in general know the facts and what's going on but in a rare example like the email below, we can't be sure if everyone is on the same page as the rest of us.

Ted Weissman and Lois Paul & Partners PR Firm

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:00:00 EDT

I just read SYS-CON's response to the recent attacks in Fuat Kircaali's Social Media Terrorists blog entry. I realized the email quoted at the end of Kircaali's blog was also copied to Ted Weissman of Lois Paul & Partners, a public relations firm with clients in technology. If this email was sent to SYS-CON based on Weissman's advice to his client, then, in my humble opinion, Ted Weissman and his firm are not qualified to operate as a PR agency to serve technology markets and provide advice to any technology client until they sort out their facts from the Twitter mob fiction. After reading Kircaali's response, it sounds like this pr man is getting his news from Twitter feeds of Al Jazeera instead of reading the facts in a magazine such as Forbes before advising his clients about the "documented questionable business practices" of one of the most respected tech media companies in the world. My question is "Is this man in the business of providing public relations or creating public relations disasters for his clients?"

Computer Hackers Offer Free Advice on Twitter

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:30:00 EDT

LIGATT's Hacker for Hire service is now using Twitter, a popular social networking service, to answer cyber crime questions and concerns around-the-clock regarding all aspects of cyber crime. Through the use of Twitter, consumers have the ability to receive feedback at any time of the day and within a shorter amount of time than conversing through email.

Facepalm: Google Wave Choice of XMPP Not the Death of HTTP

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:45:00 EDT

Google didn’t kill HTTP. Neither did Colonel Mustard or Professor Plum. In fact, HTTP is still very much alive.

Okay, folks, it’s time to stop declaring the death of protocols/technologies prematurely. Please? Especially when such proclamations are clearly not representative of reality.

From ElasticVapor :: Life in the Cloud
In Google's announcement what I found most fascinating was the protocol they choose for the basis of their new realtime vision. It wasn't HTTP but instead XMPP was selected as the foundation for this decentralized and interoperable vision. What this means in very simple terms is Google has declared the HTTP protocol is dead, an inefficient relic of the past. A protocol that was never designed with the requirements for the reality of a global realtime cloud. [emphasis added]

If you dig into the Google WAVE Embed API code far enough, you’ll get to a core RPC/gadget library that clearly indicates the API is still taking advantage of HTTP. It’s using XMLHttpRequest as expected and handles all the ugliness of setting up and handling the calls. Following is some code from the init function, but there are plenty of other places where HTTP requests are made and callbacks subsequently called, indicating Google is making full use of HTTP as a transport protocol for XMPP in order, one assumes, to support the browser as a client. The fact that Google offers an “Embed API” for browsers and touts the ease with which waves can be integrated into web sites and pages indicates broad support for HTTP without digging into the code, but it’s always nice to dig in and verify that something new and exciting isn’t happening “under the covers.”

function init(configuration){config=configuration["core.io"]||{}
var httpMethod=params.METHOD||"GET";
if(params.AUTHORIZATION&¶ms.AUTHORIZATION!=="NONE"){auth=params.AUTHORIZATION.toLowerCase();
st=shindig.auth.getSecurityToken()
}else{if(httpMethod==="GET"&&refreshInterval===undefined){refreshInterval=3600

Code snippets have been extracted to show use of HTTP and is not the full code. My apologies for the formatting, but that’s the way it came out of the source file. And if you’re a stickler for meaningful variable names, do not go digging around in this one because it will make your head explode. Really.

Given Google’s extensive support for gadgets/widgets/whatever intended for use within websites then it only makes sense that they’d still be using HTTP because XMPP, while a great protocol, isn’t natively supported by any browser at this time. So Google has to have some way to ensure that browsers – the primary mechanism for communicating with services over the Internet today – could take advantage of its latest and greatest.

Google has obviously chosen XMPP for its application layer data exchange because it’s open, extensible, or maybe that’s just where the dart landed when they discussed their options. But let’s face facts: HTTP is the de facto application layer transport protocol of the Internet and it’s highly unlikely that a company that’s built its fortunes upon that fact is suddenly going to turn around and abandon it. HTTP is the only almost-surefire method of traversing firewalls in any kind of bi-directional communication exchange between clients and servers, and routinely carries on its back any number of “layer 7+” protocols such as SOAP, JSON, and XML.

While XMPP can – and is – implemented directly atop TCP (and is in fact designed to be so) it often makes use of HTTP for many of its core XML dependencies, such as the definition of namespaces and relevant schemas.

The browser is not going away and, in fact, seems to be gaining more and more support as the de facto client platform of the Internet and, by extension, “the cloud.” It is highly unlikely, then, that any provider of software – cloud or not – would even attempt to kill HTTP in favor of some other transport layer protocol.

The chance that Google, whose fame and fortune has been made piggybacked on HTTP and its use, would knowingly and willingly kill HTTP in its choices is even more unlikely.

Technorati Tags: MacVittie,F5,TCP,XMPP,HTTP,Elastic Vapor,Google Wave,protocol,dead,Google,rpc,code,javascript,client,browser,internet,cloud computing,cloud,web,blog

Related blogs & articles:

Categories: Cloud Computing , Development and General , Randomness , XML

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Sun, 31 May 2009 22:45:00 EDT

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Sun, 31 May 2009 22:00:00 EDT

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Integrate Social Media Tools Into Business, Not Marketing Campaigns

Sun, 31 May 2009 22:00:00 EDT

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Executives Spend an Extra 11 Hours a Month Online

Sun, 31 May 2009 16:00:00 EDT

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Google Wave Is Much Better Than Twitter

Sat, 30 May 2009 15:45:00 EDT

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Great New Social Media Marketing Tool: PitchEngine

Thu, 28 May 2009 23:00:00 EDT

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Fri, 15 May 2009 21:15:00 EDT

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Sun, 03 May 2009 16:15:00 EDT

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Ulitzer’s Amazing First 30 Days in Public Beta

Fri, 01 May 2009 14:30:00 EDT

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Virtual Reality

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:00:00 EDT

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Have a can of Duh! It's on me

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:46:00 EDT

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Ulitzer to Pay 200% AdSense Revenue to Its Authors - VII

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:54:00 EDT

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Twitter Fever

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:33:00 EDT

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The Technology Behind President Obama's Historic Victory

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:00:00 EDT

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The Job Hunt

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:15:00 EST

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Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:15:00 EST

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Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:55:00 EST

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Instant Instant Messaging: Just Add Web Sockets

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:12:00 EST

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Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:39:00 EDT

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Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:30:00 EDT

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Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:45:00 EDT

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Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:53:00 EDT

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Sat, 16 Aug 2008 16:45:00 EDT

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Fri, 23 May 2008 15:45:00 EDT

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Thu, 01 May 2008 16:45:00 EDT

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Sun, 09 Dec 2007 23:00:00 EST

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Can afford to take just one day off, get out of your cubicle and see what other people up to these days? Is J2EE still in favor? What's this ESB is about? Have you even heard of using Flex as a Web front end of your Java applications? Do not miss an event in NYC this Monday, that is created for people who think that they are way too busy to take several days off and spend them in the class. Just take one day off and attend the Real-World Java event. The discounted rate for this event is $395. To get this discount, enter the coupon code ?JUGgold' while registering

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Thu, 07 Sep 2006 05:30:00 EDT

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Wed, 23 Aug 2006 22:00:00 EDT

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