Goodbye Kwwika. Hello Pusher!

If you follow me on Twitter or if I've met up with you in the past few weeks you'll probably know, or have guessed the news. I'm leaving Kwwika, and have joined Pusher. Whilst it's disappointing to leave a project that I've spent the last one year and three months on behind, the move to Pusher couldn't have happened without it.

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Glug, Glug: Guzzle Ayup a Hosted PubSubHubbub Hub Service

PubSubHubbub has become the standard protocol for real-time RSS and Atom feed subscription and delivery. But not everybody wants to host their own PubSubHubbub hub in the same way that hardly anybody hosts their own website, and why cloud services in general have become so popular. Guzzle Ayup has entered the market to offer a [...]

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Dundee Web Standards - Fleet Collective and Browser Warfare

A couple of nights ago I want to a Dundee Web Standards event. The events are organised by Chris Leckie and has been running since around October 2010. I've attended once before to see Chris Mills of Opera give a talk on HTML 5 so this was only my second time at a DWS event which is held once a month at Braes, Perth Road, Dundee.

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Are .NET developers scared of the tech community and cutting edge technologies?

I'm a .NET guy and I'm excited and interested in cutting edge technologies. I've found the lack of a .NET community (particularly in Scotland) and not seeing enough developers who primarily using Microsoft technologies getting involved with tech communities really frustrating . My feeling is that there aren't a lot of regular .NET events or general tech meetups involving .NET. This is for a number of reasons; bad feeling towards Microsoft, difficult access to Microsoft technologies due to cost and Microsoft's undoubted focus on enterprise to name but a few. With the exception of Aberdeen techmeetup (due to all the Oil companies up there) the majority of developers at techmeetup events don't seem to be using Microsoft technologies. That doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't the developers - my feeling is that they just don't go to those sorts of things. Techmeetup Edinburgh, Refresh Edinburgh and Techmeetup Glasgow is full of non-MS guys.

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PublishMyData Helps You Set Your Data Free

The number of “as a Service” types continues to grow and we are even seeing services that help you build your own service. PublishMyData falls into this category as it offers Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which enables you to offer your Data as a Service (DaaS). The company's focus is to help those with data share it in a standard format and in an accessible way.

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Who Curates the Real-Time Web?

SXSW was the source of a flood of real-time information on the web. Information flowed from attendees using social media tools to share what was being discussed, their thoughts and their experiences. This information was amplified further by the information be re-shared (retweeted on Twitter) and by other opinions being expressed about all things SXSW. But how is it that you ensure you don't miss an important piece of information from within your social media connections or even outside of your normal social media circles? From an earlier post on Cadmus, an algorithmic Twitter feed service, you may be aware of the idea of curation - filtering content to ensure that you don't miss the most relevant information. But who performs this curation and what roles do technology have in the process?

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Real-Time Web or Right-Time Web?

Real-time and the real-time web continue to be a hot topic of conversation but is the term "real-time" getting used correctly? When we talk about real-time technology are we truly describing what the technology is delivering or is it being used and abused as just another marketing buzz word? Can we class any of the current technology solutions as truly real-time and can other solutions be defined in any other way? Is it too late to save "real-time" or will it forever be lost to marketing?

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Should Cloud APIs Focus on Client Libraries More Than Endpoints?

Cloud APIs are all about the endpoints: some services follow the current trend of providing a RESTful end point, others use older protocols such as RPC or SOAP, some use newer – push focused – endpoints like WebSockets or HTTP Streaming, others may offer a number of different endpoints to meet different requirements and some just use what seems to be best for a specific job which might mean not strictly following protocol rules. But is providing an endpoint to a service alone good enough? Should a developer really have to care about how a service is built or accessed when they can use a client library?

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