Douglas Crockford on Google Gears and the Mashup Problem

Douglas Crockford is always an interesting speaker. At AjaxWorld last week he gave a talk about the good parts (there are a few) and the bad parts (there are many) of the current JavaScript standard. (That talk was similar to this Yahoo! Video of the Keynote from the 2006 Konfabulator Developer Day).

My favorite pearl of wisdom from that talk: The best thing about JavaScript is that there have been no new design mistakes since 1999 (when spec was last updated).

In addition to being highly knowledgeable (Brendan Eich called him the Yoda of Lambda Programming and JavaScript, he “discovered” JSON) he’s also entertaining, funny, and thought provoking.

In this video, after about 10-12 minutes of broad background on why the fundamental nature of security on the web is broken, he dives into the specific problem of mashups, the same origin policy in JavaScript, the global namespace and shared DOM, and suggests a method for using Google Gears to craft a solution.

The $3.97, Mobile, Web 2.0, Infrastructure Appliance

As a consultant who travels a fair amount, this device gets my vote as the single most important discovery this year:

When you’re at a conference (I’ve been at both Ajax World West and Garnter Open Source / Web Innovation Summits in the last week) or in an airport, electrical outlets are at a premium. There are countless web 2.0 knowledge workers wandering the halls seeking power. (Ampires, or wherevolts).

This little device turns that moment of potential conflict – where you spot an outlet but all the available sockets are in use – into a moment of collaboration. (In case it isn’t possible to tell from my hotel room photograph, this translates a single three-prong outlet into three. Simply approach the user of one of the existing outlets and ask to unplug them for an instant – they get to stay plugged in, you get to plug in, and you get one bonus plug for a third person or a second device.)

It’s “just good enough” – carrying a real powerstrip with fault protection, etc. would be better, from the point of view of protecting your laptop – but hey, you were plugged directly into the socket already, so this doesn’t make things worse.

It’s small enough to put in your computer bag and travel without problems.

It’s cheap enough that if you leave it somewhere by accident you can just go buy another one.

It’s even in RSS orange.

AjaxWorld West Presentation: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

I presented earlier this morning at Ajax World West. The title of the presentation was “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Back to the Browser Wars.”

Not sure how valuable the slides will be in the absence of my commentary on them, but here they are:

• Two Steps Forward, One Step Back (4.3MB, in ODP format for OpenOffice)
• Two Steps Forward, One Step Back (3.3MB, in PDF format)

Thanks to those who attended and feel free to contact me with any questions.