Social Software Explored

So I have been using Del.icio.us more and more these days. I am not so much using it as a place to store the links that i use on a daily basis but more like a place to store information in a global place that I will someday have time to digest. In addition, I have been very pleased with the capability to “send” links to other people.

I find sending links to other people through Del.icio.us is such a better medium then say email, or even IM. It goes into a central repository, they know who sent it to them, they can share it with other people. It just works. I have even found myself trying to get people I know to use Del.icio.us just so I can send them a link. It just makes sense.

Anyway I had a passing thought today. I am a bit of Del.icio.us “whore”. I want to have more and more people in my network so I am constantly trying to convince people to get an account. Then I thought, well wouldn’t it be funny to have a place where people could post their profile and say something to the effect of:

Technology geek looking for other users to share links with. Must be versed in Web 2.0, Socially Connected, 10 + years experience with the Internet, knows the following terms: RSS, Gopher, Mosaic etc…

Kind of like a Classified or Personal Ad.

I know that I can “discover” people that have marked pages that I have also marked, but it seems a bit weird to send a bookmark to someone that I have never met or talked to before.

Just a random thought.

Social Bookmarking, Web 2.0, What I am reading, funny, society

Details for the much anticipated Salesforce API 2.0 have been released and I will have to say that my first impression is that there is a whole lot of marketing going into this. As an example they have registered a new 1-800 number (didn’t all 1800 numbers become extinct at one point) - 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

The number gives away the whole idea behind Apex (afore mentioned API upgrade). General idea is that a subscription to Salesforce allows all out of the box capabilities (Account, Contact, Lead’s etc. management) of the standard CMS, with an extremely flexible architecture which allows unique custom application development. The tag line is “Develop. On Demand.” I have some mixed opinions about this but before I weigh in let me talk a bit about some of the features it does have:

Java based development interface
Essentially, what they have done is taken the application tier and opened it up to interact with Server Side applications that you build. If you are familiar with the current Java API, they look very similar. The difference being that you can:

1.) Bind business logic coding to almost any user interaction - buttons, views, forms, reports etc…
2.) Build triggers to update data to enhance the Business Process Flow (something that was very lacking before this).
3.) Expose interaction as Web services
4.) Completely write compile and execute code in a “test” environment without the cost of hardware/software licenses (this is the marketing side)

Some of the extension coding that you can do (outside of the previous SOQL language and Salesforce Object instantiation) now is incredible, especially for this individuals that use or have built custom objects. For instance now you can:

Create a custom object and allow content that is updated in that custom object directly modify content located in standard Salesforce Object. In our case, we have built a custom Statement of Work object that we bound to the Projects custom object. When a Statement of Work is created it would be nice to update the Project’s Statement of Work delivery date. Or, if you have a Time Entry objects against a Statement of Work object, each Time Entry can update the Estimated Statement of Work and Project Tasks Custom Object.

All tasks that you would do in normal application development.

Questions currently unanswered
What about security? Since users will essentially be loading scripts to a server that is technically available to everyone, how do we prevent people from uploading miscellaneous scripts to extract data from other accounts?

What about the interface? It would seem likely that this would fit nicely into the Eclipse platform. A plugin that allows a developer to enter their SForce username and password and develop “locally” with no startup hardware/software costs.

What about .NET developers? Not that I care too much, but the syntax for this API is based on the constructs of Java which means users that have currently built applications that integrate with Salesforce and are written in .NET will be missing out (unless they want to learn another language).

What about access for Professional level accounts? Currently the extensible API calls for Salesforce are only available for Enterprise customers. Salesforce would have a larger audience if they opened this API up to Professional Level subscribers.

In retrospect?
Is this really that new of an idea? What if you compare this to say ColdFusion (or the like). ColdFusion applications can be pre-compiled server side objects that interact with data. What about the Building Blocks API in Blackboard where you have a core set of data objects, interface objects and global methods for data manipulation. Is Salesforce building something revolutionary, or are they putting a lot of marketing behind a few ideas that have been around before but that nobody has positioned correctly for proper public acceptance?

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AppExchange, SalesForce, Service Oriented Architecture, Software Development, Web 2.0

Before we begin we need to be clear on the definition of on Ad-on.

Ad-on’s ARE:
1.) Applications that offer time saving benifts and enhance your online experiene
2.)
Applications that are integrated directly in the browser (Developer’s
tool kit, Flickr upload tool, Sage RSS Reader, GMail account tracker,
IE View etc..)

Ad-on’s are NOT:
1.) Links to external applications from within the browser
2.)
Applications that add completly no value or have no clear definition of
purpose (this definately comes from both sides of the camp - IE:
Developers Toolbar - Firefox: US Department of Homeland Insecurity
Idiocy Level)

General
Ad-on’s are becoming a hot topic especially with the impending launch of IE 7 (which appears to be next month). Currently there are 1800+ Add-on’s available for the Firefox browser and approximately 435 available for IE7 (which is not to bad considering the browser is still in beta). The idea behind the growth of Ad-on’s is pretty simple - improve the experience of the online user. We are constanly on-line working in or around our browser. Whether we are searching for information on the web (hopefully work related) or we are using the Web to access information from various Web based applications. The Web browser is our window into the world of information.

A while ago the notion of the “Web browser as the desktop” became a popular topic of discussion and quite frankly it makes a lot of sense. For instance, right now I have at my finger tips (i.e. without leaving Firefox), the ability to check my email, look at all of my RSS feeds, post to my blog, upload pictures and find any information I want. Although I have other tools opened (One Note, Eclipse, Outlook and IE 7 - doing some comaprisons), a majority of what I need is all right here. Why would I leave.

Sophistication
The main difference between the IE7 and Firefox “tools” are the level of sophistication. Firefox has been at it longer and the developer’s community has responded. Additionally, the API’s available for the Firefox browser require “lite” programming knowledge (you don’t need to know Com Objects, Java Objects or true Object Oriented programming). I will admit, there is a lot available to you in Javascript that has an Object oriented feel (and I may be bias because I like JavaScript so much) but it seems easier to understand.

With the launch of the Windows RSS Platform, Windows and IE7 are starting to tip the scales a bit. You can details here, but the general idea is that your OS would manage a Common Feeds List. Firefox Add-ons currently can post your RSS feeds (and bookmarks) to various placess, but there is no central repository. One that I feel is important. While this Platform is interesting, the only application that is currently taking advantage of this is the “Desktop Sync” application which is not truly an Ad-on since it breaks rule number one of the Ad-on’s definition.

What is interesting though is the concept of the Platform. What I could envision are many RSS applications tied into the browser as Ad-on’s that utilize this common-feeds architecture.

Accessing the outside from within
The idea of updating a hosted Web application from the browser is not totally new. Firefox has allowed developers to build unique tools which keep users up to date with their information stored in various applications. For instance, there are a few GMail extensions available in Firefox which will notify you when a new email arrives and will even show you a snippet of that email. I am actually a bit surprised that non one has written an extension which allows for easy uploads of RSS feeds to NewsGator (would be really nice if it also notified you when a feed is updated).

IE Addons - http://www.ieaddons.com/default.aspx?cid=4&scid=79 (also available from within the IE 7 browser)
Firefox Addons - https://addons.mozilla.org/ are also available within the browser.

The edge clearly goes to Firefox here and that goes even without talking about Themes (Azerty III for me currently).

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Blogging, Microsoft, RSS, Software Development, Web 2.0, firefox

Finally, Windows has stepped up to the plate and has begun to leverage their OS to enhance their Web 2.0 offerings. As a part of the launch of IE7 (and with Vista), Windows XP will have a sub layer for RSS communications called the “Windows RSS Platform”. As RSS becomes more and more a part of our daily life (with or without or knowledge) a subsystem integrated in the OS will offer some unique benefits. NewsGator has already begun to take advantage of this with a new beta project which will constantly update your NewsGator online site with RSS feeds and notify you when feeds are updated.

From the “MSDN“:

As part of the RSS support in Windows Internet Explorer 7, users can
discover and subscribe to RSS feeds within the browser. When the user
subscribes to a feed, it is added to the Common Feed List,
which is available for clients to use in addition to or instead of
their own list. For example, in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, the
user’s subscription list can import feeds from the Common Feed List.
This enables the discovery of feeds within Internet Explorer and then
for those discovered feeds to appear in other applications.

I have been trying various approaches to managing my feeds (see the posts I had about Sage and the almost defunct News Reader from Flock). Everything from Web sites to applications. The key features for me are:
1.) Display the feeds that I subscribe to and how many new posts there are
2.) Allow me to easily add feeds to my list (this is the most challenging portion so far - without FeedDemon this is next to impossible)
3.) Let me mark either an individual post as read or an entire feed as read
4.) Display a formatted post (HTML please) in the browser pane. I prefer the full post but will settle for excerpts as long as they are longer than Digg excerpts
5.) It would be nice to post a feed item directly to del.icio.us without actually downloading the feed
6.) This would be essential - download the contents of the feed and allow me to read it off-line (this one is only available in applications now)
7.) The ability to group and order  feeds at will

When you use Firefox a lot (like I do) and you want to have a single source list of Feeds then you are out of luck unless you commit to one company for feed delivery. Sounds like the “Common Feed List” approach is the right one. “Store all of my feeds on my computer in a common directory and then add API calls to that feed list”. That way service providers (Feed Readers) can offer their features without applying a burden to the user to “constantly” import/export the feeds. Don’t get me wrong I am fan of OPML but it gets a bit annoying having to keep a constant updated OPML file every-time I want to demo a new Feed Reader.

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Blogging, Microsoft, RSS, Software Development, Web 2.0

I have been using del.icio.us for a bit now (around 9 months) and while I don’t seem to have the number of links that I see others having (I have two sets of bookmarks - those that I use on a daily basis and those that I like to keep in my list and share with others). Being on the road a bit, I find myself talking to others about this link or that link or this article describing this technique or whatever. And it brings me back to the early days of the Internet (boy do I wish I had my bookmarks from my first years in college) and how horrible it was to find things (before bookmarks were popular). The only way that I could find a page again was to remember the “steps” I took to get there. I not find myself “promoting” sites like del.icio.us to users that have either never heard of it or have never used it. Like I am some Social Bookmarking whore.

I try to describe the benefits of the process (share links with your friends/colleagues, see what other people who tagged your same pages are reading etc…) but it never really seems to catch on. I still have to send them the link via email (arrgghh). Good news is that I am starting to see a change…

When you see the following links on an article that you are reading, it is a good bet that the editors that maintain this Web site know what is going on in the world of Social Bookmarking.

Above are a few of the popular links that appear on most good technology news sites. I happened to get these from a favorite of mine - New Scientist. The idea for the links above is for you to add this article (I was reading this one when it hit me) to your list of favorites and in addition to others that may share your same views.

This process is bound to increase the number of social bookmarking users out there. It however occurred to me that the above list is missing a few very popular links:

Netvibes
My Google
NewsGator (makers of the popular FeedDemon reader)

So I wonder how long before Social Bookmarking will become mainstream and when we will see the hundreds of sites dwindle down to several very usable sites. (more on this topic to follow)

RSS, Social Bookmarking, Software Development, Web 2.0, What I am reading, society