

XMPP is the future for cloud services - nreece
http://www.jivesoftware.com/community/blogs/jivetalks/2008/01/24/xmpp-aka-jabber-is-the-future-for-cloud-services

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iamwil
Probably like everyone else, I found this great because it gave me a way to
think about something familiar in a different way. I'm use to thinking about
XMPP as just an IM and presence protocol, used by applications that let humans
to communicate with other humans. But I didn't take it one step further and
think of it as a messaging service between machines, mostly because I was
under the impression that polling problem was solved (by the likes of Comet).

By the same token, one should be able to run a "IMsite" over XMPP, analogous
to a "web site" over HTTP. It's just that there currently is no "browser" for
XMPP. If there were, you can technically send DOM updates or javascript (or
whatever the browser can interpret) over XMPP. I imagine one should be able to
take the mozilla engine and tack XMPP instead of HTTP in front (probably
easier said than done).

That way we should be able to build browser apps that need near-real-time
updates. The obvious one is chat. In fact, most of our XMPP clients are
specialized to do that. Other applications are collaboration software, like a
shared whiteboard (if sending SVG over XMPP would not be a bandwidth hog).
Video lectures with auto advancing slides might be another one. Fleet tracking
might be another. MMORPGs would also be easier to write on such a platform.
It'd be interesting to see where this goes, or if something better comes
along.

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bct
> I imagine one should be able to take the mozilla engine and tack XMPP
> instead of HTTP in front (probably easier said than done).

Already done: <http://dev.hyperstruct.net/xmpp4moz>

It's really cool, it's a pity it doesn't get more attention. There used to be
a whiteboard demo on that site somewhere.

~~~
iamwil
Sweet. Thanks for the info. Goes to show you you're almost never the first to
think of something.

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1gor
Well, I was intrigues first. But then I found
[this](<http://about.psyc.eu/Jabber>)... Which points out that

>"I have been Jabber server administrator and a Jabber advocate for a few
years and most complaints about Jabber I have heard was about its link-level
inreliability"...

> From a protocol and architectural point of view Jabber generates a lot more
> traffic than is necessary

>It's not a question of religion - it's not true that one format is like
another - there are clear and logical technical reasons why XML is plain wrong
for this purpose.

>XMPP isn't XML, really...

Other than that - XMPP is cool, and we get to write servers in Erlang!

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Tichy
Very interesting, although I think some other alternatives to polling are also
emerging, like Pingback and Trackback for Blogs. XMPP might be more general,
though.

