On Tuesday March 26 2013, at Thoughtworks NYC office, the Internet Society’s New York Chapter (ISOC-NY) presented “It’s the Web, Tim, but not as we know it” in which guest Michiel de Jong explained unhosted, an open source solution for privacy and security in the cloud.
The web started out as a platform for static documents. It then evolved into a platform for hosted software, that runs “in the cloud”, outside the user’s control. But html5 technology allows for a new option: “unhosted web apps”. Like documents, unhosted web apps are served as static content, which makes them cheap to publish. But like hosted software, they can have all the interactive functionality of a software application. In this new paradigm, the web is used to deliver the source code of the application, rather than delivering its user interface. Two years ago Michiel de Jong quit his day job as a scalability engineer, to work on free technology in exchange for donations. He now lives as a digital nomad and will be giving this talk remotely. This is a followup to the 2012 ISOC-NY/NYTECH event “New Techniques for Protecting Cloud Data and Security”
Before Michiel spoke, there was brief presentation by Mozilla System Adminstrator Ben Kero on the new FirefoxOS for mobile devices.
“MTA BusTime: Real Time GPS Tracking of New York City Buses” at BK Tech Talks Meetup at NYU-Poly DUMBO Incubator, Brooklyn on Apr 2 2012.
Speakers:
Michael Frumin, Systems Engineering Manager, MTA
Jeff Maki, Head of Transportation, OpenPlans
Benjamin Stein, CTO, Mobile Commons
Scott Kolber, COO, Roadify
http://bustime.mta.info/
A Wired article reports on the relative demise of the hypertext protocol as other means of content acquisition / delivery (i.e. apps) begin to predominate. A convenient diagram illustrates the point.
The writers conclude:
The wide-open Web of peer production, the so-called generative Web where everyone is free to create what they want, continues to thrive, driven by the nonmonetary incentives of expression, attention, reputation, and the like. But the notion of the Web as the ultimate marketplace for digital delivery is now in doubt.
The Internet is the real revolution, as important as electricity; what we do with it is still evolving. As it moved from your desktop to your pocket, the nature of the Net changed. The delirious chaos of the open Web was an adolescent phase subsidized by industrial giants groping their way in a new world. Now they’re doing what industrialists do best — finding choke points. And by the looks of it, we’re loving it.