Programming Jabber
Yesterday, I said "Jabber is a pretty cool thing. More later."
Well, it's later now.
The book
Programming Jabber
is currently at the top of my "books to buy" list.
I've never had the slightest interest in instant messaging,
preferring the more thoughtful response-time involved in
communication via email and USENET.
Jabber is an instant-messaging protocol.
So why do I think it's cool?
Many people will just ignore it, figuring its only
use is for online "chat-room"-style person-to-person
communication.
But it's much more than that. It's actually a distributed platform to
enable collaborative applications across the Internet.
Here, "collaborative" includes people and processes/programs in
computers, anywhere.
The two things that raise Jabber up to the level of an idea
with an enormous amount of potential are these:
- its communication protocol is XML, which makes it
relatively easy for programs to use it and to parse the
messages sent via Jabber; and
- the idea of "presence management", which keeps one endpoint
of a communication informed about whether there is someone (or
something) at the other end, ready to receive messages.
Together these give Jabber an edge at encouraging inter-program
communication, where the programs can be anywhere on any machine
that's on the Internet.
Naturally, there are security issues;
some are addressed
here.
There's more info in the
Jabber Advantages PDF file.
11:38:23 PM
I've seen the "normal" off-road skateboards occasionally, at Wilder.
They have knobby tires, five or six inches in diameter. This newer
design has a teeny bit of suspension. I don't quite get what the extra
four wheels buy you, though.
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