Phil Leggetter

During the past four months we've seen not one but two well known real-time search engines disappear. First there was OneRiot, which in October 2010 decided to focus on advertising. More recently, Collecta closed it's real-time search engine and API to focus on alternative real-time products. Digging further into real-time search offerings you will also discover that crowdeye has also decided to pull its real-time search engine. This now appears to leave Topsy, a OneRiot partner, and of course Google as the main players focusing on building a real-time search destination. Does this trend signal the end for all real-time search engines or just that their focus has been wrong?

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I did my first ever TechMeetup talk yesterday in Aberdeen and my chosen subject, unsurprisingly, was The Real-Time Web. We started out discussing what real-time was, then what The Real-Time Web is and when receiving information in real-time mattered. I also went on to cover some of the key real-time web technologies including HTTP Streaming, PubSubHubbub and WebSockets and then on to real-time web services and platforms.

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A core feature of the real-time web is the continuously updating real-time streams of information. These streams are commonly generated by social networks and with the continued uptake of social networking the amount of information is only going to increase. This will continue to introduce opportunities for companies to create products and services that extract value from that vast amount of data. Some of the most common services built around these streams include trend and sentiment analysis, data storage, aggregation, sorting, search and filtering. DataSift is a service that offers a host of exciting features including the ability to let users browse, build and share their own real-time streams using social media data drawn from a host of sources.

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Brightwurks, who develop Feed My Inbox, have just posted a blog article explaining the Real-Time Delivery of blogs, feeds and news to an email inbox. The article discusses polling and real-time protocols. They list the Twitter API as a real-time protocol although they do know it's not actually an example of a real-time protocol and explain this later in the post. I've just posted a comment clarifying that although the Twitter API is not a real-time protocol it does use a real-time technology that we are starting to see being used more and more to deliver data in real-time.

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I've just posted a comment on a really good article by Kate Ho of Startup Cafe about her predictions on the rise of multi-user, multi-device table applications. Obviously my comments are focused really on the technology behind such a rise. Here's my comment in full, slightly edited to be a bit more readable as a blog post.

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Delivery as a Service and Data as a Service (both DaaS) are definitely going to be big in 2011. Things really kicked off in 2010 with the emergence of companies focusing on real-time data delivery and mobile. We also started to see really exciting services focused on delivering real-time client push notifications to web browsers. I would put Kwwika in both of these categories.

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A lot of people have written up their thoughts on 2010. Whether the thoughts are personal or a look back at specific things such as real-time web products the purpose is the same; to reflect on what has happened during the year, an opportunity to realise what's been achieved, what hasn't, what could've been and how things can be learnt and bettered. So, six days into 2011 I'm writing this blog post. It's purpose is all of the above but it will hopefully also act as a reminder to me about why I made some decisions. Why I'm here, and not there. What it is that drives me and what I want. And how my decisions were made after consulting and considering others. I also hope that it will explain a bit about work/life integration by demonstrating the problems that I've faced and that things can be achieved (ongoing) and opportunities created by following what you are passionate about (I'm midway through writing and reviewing this and there are definitely ups and downs).

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There are a number of ways of delivering data in real-time but until recently it has looked like PubSubHubbub, with the backing of Google, was going to be the preferred method. However, the past couple of weeks have seen a couple of interesting developments which could indicate that the developer community may actually prefer HTTP Streaming.

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In a world where real-time data streams are becoming much more common, and with the volume of that data continuing to increase, it makes sense that a framework would be developed to increase the ease at which that data can be processed. Yahoo! S4 isn't the first such framework to be concieved, or even open sourced, but it is likely to massively increase awareness that such frameworks exist, what problems they may help solve and get developers thinking about how they could use the technology and potentially increase the likelihood of somebody moving S4-like capabilities into the cloud and offering it as as service.

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I've just been involved in a twitter conversation with Nick Halstead of DataSift on Twitter. This all started when I tweeted that I thought Kwwika would be a great way of distributing data from DataSift to any web-enabled device. The conversation continued: The main thing here for me is Nick's point that "you just need a client-side library". This is an assumption that a lot of services make. Services tend to offer one or a number of server APIs; maybe a REST one and now luckily we are seeing a HTTP Streaming and WebSocket support. That service may then release some example code that can be used to call the web service. I see a number of problems with this mainly when it comes to HTTP Streaming and WebSockets.

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