6 ms·

Technically email isn't the web. That's not to say the web isn't being AOL-ized. How many firms do you see these days advertising their presence on Facebook or

by ris 12y ago

Technically email isn't the web. That's not to say the web isn't being AOL-ized. How many firms do you see these days advertising their presence on Facebook or Twitter over their own website (over which they have full control), in the same way we used to see companies everywhere advertising their "aol keyword"? The reality of "the cloud" is we're squeezing things back into a few giant silos.

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
It's a shame, because we could have lots of little, highly interlinked, clouds, not one massive one.
- danbruc 12y ago
  That's the same as with SOA - sounds awesome on the paper but just does not work well in practice. You can have one standard for linking all the things together on paper, but in reality you will get ten slightly incompatible implementations all with their own quirks and enhancements and extensions and suddenly integrating them is all but fun.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    If SOA doesn't work for you, you aren't doing enough of it ;-). You know, "the cloud" worked great as a fully distributed set of systems using standard protocols like SMTP, FTP, DNS, etc. It's not impossible to standardize interfaces. Our industry just needs a reawakening of its anti-silo past.
Already__Taken 12y ago
> The reality of "the cloud" is we're squeezing things back into a few giant silos. Which is fine so long as you can move between silos freely. I think some services are just always going to have t pool resources everyone can't have their own.
JohnTHaller 12y ago
Firms advertizing their presence on Facebook and Twitter took a while to catch on. It's an interesting way to stay connected since websites don't do that (and RSS never caught on with non-techies outside of certain applications like podcasts and people are loath to give out their emails for monthly newsletters). Unfortunately, you have to pay for every posting on Facebook for your 'subscribers' to be able to see it.
hawleyal 12y ago
Email via APIs provided by Google and Apple iCloud is the web. It's not IMAP/SMTP.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  No, it is network communication protocols over HTTP(S).
stronglikedan 12y ago
> over which they have full control That may just be the problem. When everyone has full control over how they present themselves, then everyone presents themselves differently. The problem with this approach is the inconsistency - a user has to learn their way around a different UX for each entity's presence. With Facebook and Twitter, it's a familiar UX for the end user, and the information related to different entities is presented in more or less the same format for all entities. This makes is easier for the end user to find the information they are looking for, and sometimes that's better than branding. So, while it's important for an entity to have a branded web identity, I think that it's equally important for an entity to have and promote a presence on popular social media as well. It's a sort of dumbed-down identity for the masses.
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
>Technically email isn't the web. I see this very same things on the web. Heaven forbid you use internet explorer as your browser or are a version behind. The amount of smarmy, "Use a real browser" messages I've gotten when testing things in IE is unacceptable. I have no love for IE, but lots of people use it, and I need to support it at work. Just because its difficult to write html for for certain use cases doesn't mean its useless. I understand when using something IE doesnt support yet, but that didn't seem to be the case with these websites. Often these sites are run by 20-somethings straight out of school with some kind of 'stick it to the man' identity politics. Yeah if you're a middle class person who went to college, have healthcare, have a non back-breaking computer job, etc guess what, you're the man. I feel like we've never transcended the proprietary mindset and popularity still rules. This email client may be an extreme example, but the web is pretty unfriendly if you're not using firefox or a webkit based browser. Oh, the opposite was true in the past? So what. That doesn't make the current status quo acceptable. I love how we justify the various ways we refuse to learn from history. On mobile its even worse. We're not even shoving things into silos. We're saying, "Look, this featureset which could be trivially be put into a HTML5 webpage is now a local app proprietary to this platform. Install it, deal with its constant updates, its crappy UI, etc." Does every newspaper in the world and forum really think I want to install their app? I'd have hundreds of apps on my phone if I did. I really think we're regressing a bit. The cloud-ification and foolproofing of things just leads to a handful of megacorps providing near-mandatory services and applying their own policies and politics onto those services. We keep losing ground to them on things like privacy, stability, ownership, etc for convenience. Not sure where this is going to lead to in the end, but it won't be anything like we're used to. I doubt it'll be for the better. MSN and AOL tried to build a walled web garden in the 90s and were laughed at by the tech-savvy. Now the tech-savvy are the ones sporting ipads and android phones and willingly entering these new walled gardens.
- teacup50 12y ago
  It's interesting that you target mobile, while HTML/webapps are actually one of the largest drivers of silo-ization and proprietary lock-in around: - The code is all stored server-side; you stop paying, or the vendor loses interest, you lose the app. Poof. I can still run applications from the 1990s for research, but I can't run a webapp that disappeared last year. - The protocols ("REST" not withstanding) are all proprietary. Given any two competing webapps, they almost certainly vend two entirely different protocols. - Everyone gets the latest version whether they want it or not -- and whether it's a benefit to them, or not. If the company wants to insert ads, or revoke a useful tool that no longer fits their strategy, or take any other action that diminishes the value of user's investment in the app -- they can. - Lock-in is standard; data is heavily welded to the particular application, and even where data export exists (a rarity), the formats are proprietary and ill-supported elsewhere. For all the talk of "openness" for developers, the web has created what might be the most open-hostile environment for users we've seen since AOL and Compuserve.
na85 12y ago
Not to mention the scads of mostly-useless javascript needed to present every damn site these days. It's Flash all over again. I can't wait until the js fad dies.
- lilsunnybee 12y ago
  Having core functionality dependent on js, if it is trivially avoidable, seems regrettable. But for enhancements, a lot of the experimentation and deviation from strict html in the early days and into the present, has ultimately led to best practices and new useful features being written into the standards. Ideally there should be a balance between interoperability and innovation.

by ris 12y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago

It's a shame, because we could have lots of little, highly interlinked, clouds, not one massive one.

danbruc 12y ago
That's the same as with SOA - sounds awesome on the paper but just does not work well in practice. You can have one standard for linking all the things together on paper, but in reality you will get ten slightly incompatible implementations all with their own quirks and enhancements and extensions and suddenly integrating them is all but fun.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  If SOA doesn't work for you, you aren't doing enough of it ;-). You know, "the cloud" worked great as a fully distributed set of systems using standard protocols like SMTP, FTP, DNS, etc. It's not impossible to standardize interfaces. Our industry just needs a reawakening of its anti-silo past.

Already__Taken 12y ago

> The reality of "the cloud" is we're squeezing things back into a few giant silos. Which is fine so long as you can move between silos freely. I think some services are just always going to have t pool resources everyone can't have their own.

JohnTHaller 12y ago

Firms advertizing their presence on Facebook and Twitter took a while to catch on. It's an interesting way to stay connected since websites don't do that (and RSS never caught on with non-techies outside of certain applications like podcasts and people are loath to give out their emails for monthly newsletters). Unfortunately, you have to pay for every posting on Facebook for your 'subscribers' to be able to see it.

hawleyal 12y ago

Email via APIs provided by Google and Apple iCloud is the web. It's not IMAP/SMTP.

pjmlp 12y ago
No, it is network communication protocols over HTTP(S).

stronglikedan 12y ago

> over which they have full control That may just be the problem. When everyone has full control over how they present themselves, then everyone presents themselves differently. The problem with this approach is the inconsistency - a user has to learn their way around a different UX for each entity's presence. With Facebook and Twitter, it's a familiar UX for the end user, and the information related to different entities is presented in more or less the same format for all entities. This makes is easier for the end user to find the information they are looking for, and sometimes that's better than branding. So, while it's important for an entity to have a branded web identity, I think that it's equally important for an entity to have and promote a presence on popular social media as well. It's a sort of dumbed-down identity for the masses.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

>Technically email isn't the web. I see this very same things on the web. Heaven forbid you use internet explorer as your browser or are a version behind. The amount of smarmy, "Use a real browser" messages I've gotten when testing things in IE is unacceptable. I have no love for IE, but lots of people use it, and I need to support it at work. Just because its difficult to write html for for certain use cases doesn't mean its useless. I understand when using something IE doesnt support yet, but that didn't seem to be the case with these websites. Often these sites are run by 20-somethings straight out of school with some kind of 'stick it to the man' identity politics. Yeah if you're a middle class person who went to college, have healthcare, have a non back-breaking computer job, etc guess what, you're the man. I feel like we've never transcended the proprietary mindset and popularity still rules. This email client may be an extreme example, but the web is pretty unfriendly if you're not using firefox or a webkit based browser. Oh, the opposite was true in the past? So what. That doesn't make the current status quo acceptable. I love how we justify the various ways we refuse to learn from history. On mobile its even worse. We're not even shoving things into silos. We're saying, "Look, this featureset which could be trivially be put into a HTML5 webpage is now a local app proprietary to this platform. Install it, deal with its constant updates, its crappy UI, etc." Does every newspaper in the world and forum really think I want to install their app? I'd have hundreds of apps on my phone if I did. I really think we're regressing a bit. The cloud-ification and foolproofing of things just leads to a handful of megacorps providing near-mandatory services and applying their own policies and politics onto those services. We keep losing ground to them on things like privacy, stability, ownership, etc for convenience. Not sure where this is going to lead to in the end, but it won't be anything like we're used to. I doubt it'll be for the better. MSN and AOL tried to build a walled web garden in the 90s and were laughed at by the tech-savvy. Now the tech-savvy are the ones sporting ipads and android phones and willingly entering these new walled gardens.

teacup50 12y ago
It's interesting that you target mobile, while HTML/webapps are actually one of the largest drivers of silo-ization and proprietary lock-in around: - The code is all stored server-side; you stop paying, or the vendor loses interest, you lose the app. Poof. I can still run applications from the 1990s for research, but I can't run a webapp that disappeared last year. - The protocols ("REST" not withstanding) are all proprietary. Given any two competing webapps, they almost certainly vend two entirely different protocols. - Everyone gets the latest version whether they want it or not -- and whether it's a benefit to them, or not. If the company wants to insert ads, or revoke a useful tool that no longer fits their strategy, or take any other action that diminishes the value of user's investment in the app -- they can. - Lock-in is standard; data is heavily welded to the particular application, and even where data export exists (a rarity), the formats are proprietary and ill-supported elsewhere. For all the talk of "openness" for developers, the web has created what might be the most open-hostile environment for users we've seen since AOL and Compuserve.

na85 12y ago

Not to mention the scads of mostly-useless javascript needed to present every damn site these days. It's Flash all over again. I can't wait until the js fad dies.

lilsunnybee 12y ago
Having core functionality dependent on js, if it is trivially avoidable, seems regrettable. But for enhancements, a lot of the experimentation and deviation from strict html in the early days and into the present, has ultimately led to best practices and new useful features being written into the standards. Ideally there should be a balance between interoperability and innovation.