Bits And Buzz, by @JeremyChone

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A new executive from Adobe is expected to say:

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Nowadays, any Internet-connected organization is either running its services on a cloud, providing a cloud service, or both. From infrastructure cloud, to platform cloud, to on-premise cloud, cloud computing is everything and everywhere, and this omnipresence begs the two following questions:

How did the Internet work before cloud computing existed?

And, where does cloud computing come from?

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Over the last 12 months, there has been a tremendous amount of buzz about HTML5, and like everything that gets buzz, some good and some bad are coming out of it.

On the good side, the industry is now unanimously agreeing that HTML is a technology of the future and not a legacy one, and there is an amazing competitiveness among its implementers (Mozilla, Google, Apple, and Microsoft). The bad side is that lots of people tend to misinterpret what HTML5 really is, and this confusion is a great source for its detractors to spread FUD around it.

To make sense out of this chaos, it helps to know that HTML5 can be split into three façades, and depending of which you pick, you will have a different appreciation of its readiness and potential.

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Nowadays, building [rich] Web applications can be quite challenging, as the proliferation of Web technologies has become overwhelming and confusing. The real challenge is that many interesting new Web technologies are being promoted by various groups, and it can be quite difficult for a developer or architect to filter the practical and future-proof ones from the cool and volatile ones.

As a rule of thumb, open technologies tend to be more pervasive and longer lasting (especially for the Internet) than proprietary technologies, which tend to bring more advanced capabilities early on. Consequently, Web application developers need to be pragmatically-open, by choosing open technologies whenever possible, but also by not hesitating to use proprietary ones when required. It is not about being religious about openness or anything else, but rather about being diligent so that one is able to choose the right technology to maximize the chances of success of the target application. In other words, it should not be a personal and emotional decision, but rather a business and rational one.

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Disclosure: This article has some drama, which I usually try to avoid on this blog. However, I think this drama leads to good content and an interesting experiment.

The Drama: L’Arroseur Arrosé

Popular tech bloggers tend to have an inner capability to manufacture drama, and that is exactly what Michael Arrington did [again] on the Leo Laporte Live video show last Saturday. While Michael was very fast to give his version of the facts on his blog, commenting back has proven to be a little bit harder—at least, it was for me.

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Although there is evidence that the two styles will converge in the future, enterprise and consumer Web architecture and technology are quite different today. If one talks to an enterprise application architect, he or she will probably say that while consumer Web applications are cute, simple, and sometimes useful, their architectures and technologies are merely a bunch of scripts and hacks put together. If one talks to a consumer Web architect, she or he will probably say that enterprise software is overly complex, often unusable, and based on over-priced and under-performing technologies (i.e., JSF or Portal). (See the previous post about Web Developer Spectrum.)

Having lived in both worlds, I can see some truth in both arguments; however, I think that most of the divergence comes from a different set of requirements that leads to separate technical routes.  

I see six main differences between consumer and enterprise Web Applications:

1) Scale (Users vs Applications)

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Tagging has been a relatively popular, human-driven method for organically categorizing information on the Web. Users are now accustomed to tagging the content that they are publishing or bookmarking.

However, by design, tagging requires users to have some sort of writing privilege, which greatly limits its reach potential. Practically speaking, it means that if a user wants to tag an item on a system (e.g, Youtube, Flickr, or delicious) he or she must have an account on that system and be logged in at the time of the operation.

While this is probably not an issue for major Internet services, it can be a chicken-and-egg issue for new, upcoming services that do not yet have a large enough community to build a meaningful tag cloud. How can a new service maximize its community tag cloud if it doesn’t yet have a community?

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With the emergence of new technologies such as AJAX, Flash, and Silverlight, and popular applications such as Google Map and iPhone, the temptation for developers to fully and deeply animate their upcoming applications has become almost irresistible.

While slick animations and transitions are certainly useful for emotionally driven applications, such as car configurators, and some applications or components such as Google Map and charting, they should not be used as a substitute for a good interactive design. Application developers need to realize that these animations and transitions come at an extra design and development cost (no matter what tool they are using). 

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As mentioned in the "Web 0.x to Web 2.0" post, outside of IM (instant messaging), voice chat and voice-video chat, and some illegal P2P (peer to peer) file sharing software, most Internet applications are still based on a traditional "Client/Server" model that is analogous to the "Browser/WebServer" model. While today’s Web applications have dramatically improved their user experience and community aspect, this "Client/Server" paradigm brings some unfortunate limitations to technology providers and users.

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