Web Things, by Mark Baker

“I fully expect that they will release more content-modifying technology soon”. Those bastards.
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At least according to my panel – and the audience – this afternoon.

This was Tim Bray, Adam Bosworth (who’s a total REST-head now it seems), myself, and Fumiaki Yoshimatsu (a Japanese co-worker of Jeff Barr from Amazon, subbing for him), ably moderated by Rohit Khare.

It went well. Very well in fact. Better than I expected. It was largely the Adam and Tim show, of course. Both those guys really know their stuff in addition to knowing how to tell a good story; a lethal combo that a poor-story-telling tech-head like myself can’t really compete with. My little opening statement presentation was well received though. The panel moved along very smoothly, and quickly too; I was concerned with the 90 minute duration, but we could have gone another 90.

The audience feedback was incredible. The first woman up had this huge grin on her face saying “Thank you for that breath of fresh air!”; she had no question, but just wanted to share the love I guess. 8-) But when the only backlash you get from audience comes from Hugo Haas, I think you’re doing ok. 8-) (hugs, Hugo! 8-)

It’s too bad all the WS-* proponents originally scheduled to participate had to cancel, as their participation would have added an extra degree of credibility. But I think the large amount of unanimous-but-for-Hugo glowing feedback we got put to bed the idea – that I was concerned about, in fact – that it wouldn’t be very credible.

“Rather, they should have a few coarse-grained methods and carry no client-specific state”. 8-)
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Here’s my rule of thumb; if the “description language” is used to generate code, you don’t want it. I think that’s the general case.
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Please ignore this article, as the author clearly (“REST message aren’t standardized”) doesn’t understand REST. Thanks.
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Lesson; if you think your systems are beyond the reach of the Web (e.g. because it’s data that a search bot would never see), think again.
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“The more I read and think about it, the more convinced I become that ignoring what HTTP and REST offer leads to re-inventing the same functionality on another layer” Yes, indeed-y.
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“let’s hold off on designing new specifications until there’s a real problem to solve” +1!
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“Where are the birthday candles, the retrospectives, the parties?” … the services? 8-)
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I’m getting pretty jazzed about the coming month. This Saturday morning the family and I are departing for Narita (Tokyo) airport in Japan. We arrive late in the afternoon, so booked a night in Narita, figuring we’ll be spent by then (did I mention the four year old?). The next AM we hop on a Shinkansen bound for Kyoto via Tokyo Ueno station. While we’re there, we’re hoping to have time to hit some of the sights in Kyoto of course, but also Nara and Expo 2005 in Aichi (Nagoya). If we have time, we might also head down to Osaka to check out the famous Kaiyukan Acquarium.

Then it’s back to Tokyo (Chiba) the following weekend for WWW2005 where I’ve got a lot on the go, including a panel called “Web services considered harmful?” on Friday, and Developer’s Day on Saturday which I’m co-chairing. I’m also moderating a panel at DevDay about Microformats and the Semantic Web.

After that, it’s a three day meeting of the Compound Document Formats WG at Justsystem‘s offices in Kita-Aoyama, then home for a day, and onward to Amsterdam for XTech where, amoungst other things, I’ll be updating attendees on the progress of the CDF WG.