oauth

The Web At A New Crossroads

chris&jyri

Guest post by Chris Messina and Jyri Engeström (thanks to Brynn Evans for editing and Brad Fitzpatrick for comments on the draft)
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Around 2003, things began to change.

Technology was then the black sheep, having left overnight millionaires destitute and without change to afford their $4 lattes. Even the posers had left San Francisco and gone back to suburbia to be office managers at Walmart.

It was a sad time for everyone — that is, except the die-hards and the hackers. The web for them had never been about making money, but about reshaping culture and toppling the old order. 2003, therefore, was the perfect time for a resurgence: the people who kept pushing on in the Valley and elsewhere were a concentrated motley crew of innovators and builders. They cared about technology for technology’s sake and about developing and advancing web culture.

What they didn’t realize, however, was that the services and technologies that they were destined to build would need to be cobbled and sewn together using a system that would fight them every step of the way — not out of spite — but because of its architecture. By definition the network available was decidedly anti-human: in 2003, there was only the document-centric web.
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Jaiku still to move to Google App Engine

We’ve been speculating about Jaiku moving the Google App Engine and on Wednesday when Jaiku came back up after a period of down time many believed the move had happened. Yet, Jyri clarified that this is not the case yet and the actual move is still ahead.

During the weekend and early this week when Jaiku was down, it was only moved as far as to the Google data center. Nevertheless, as it came back up it was already lighting fast compared to what it had been before and equally important the invitations opened up and are now unlimited.

And there’s more in the cards. For example, the new Jaiku API will support OAuth, which in itself is already fantastic. If the service can also handle an ever increasing user traffic without slowing down significantly or crashing it will be interesting to see whether it can still make itself a serious competitor for Twitter. We certainly hope so.

Edit: If you’d like to have an invite, ask for one in the comments (and do leave your real e-mail in the field provided) – we’re more than happy to spread the good around.