The web-browser is not an easy platform to program against. I realized this in Dec 2008 when we decided to change the architecture of one of our products at Directi to a pure JavaScript client talking to a REST API, and even more so in Apr 2009 when we decided to build our desktop product [...]
The PDC 2010 got over last weekend and there seems to be some interesting stuff that has come out of Redmond. While most of the big changes are on the Cloud side, the roadmap on the web and mobile platform is much clearer now with some important changes in strategy. Cloud Ok, I’m gonna stick [...]
Facebook these days reminds me a lot of Microsoft of yore. For one, they are taking a platform approach exactly like Microsoft – Facebook Connect is the most powerful and widely used identity platform on the Internet today – as enticing to developers and businesses as Windows was in its heydays. They have succeeded where [...]
We recently augmented the team working on our desktop product. At the core of the product is XMPP – the protocol that drives several instant messaging servers and clients, sites like Chesspark and now Google Wave. Since XMPP is not known by many people, let alone be understood well enough, every time we on-board someone [...]
When the Twitter reply feature tweak story started breaking, my first reaction was – this could be us in future. Watching Twitter struggle with the change and the backlash it generated was a big public lesson in product design, tech implementation and communications, and I thought I should document it here, lest I ever forget [...]
One of the cornerstones of the .PW platform is the Wall – the real time aggregate of activities being done by an entity and its network. So while I am personally rather inactive on the various social networks (way too distracting), the recent announcement by FB on opening up their feed via activity streams led [...]
I have never been a UI guy, my focus being mostly on databases and middleware. Sure I know HTML / CSS / XAML, but my knowledge here is far less than what I know about the other tiers. In any case this is from a development point of view – whatever little I do know [...]
Just got back to my hotel room from the Web Innovation Conference 2008, and despite being really tired, I am feeling quite happy since this was one of those rare conferences that I really enjoyed – both as a sponsor and as an attendee. The crowd was quite diverse and knowledgeable and I had [...]
I have now been away from the blogosphere on yet another extended leave of absence. The reason is that I have been in the midst of change – I now lead Web Strategy at Microsoft India. The web is evolving at a very fast pace and Microsoft has a unique position amongst all technology vendors [...]
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