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Let me try this from another point of view. What are the qualities
one wants from federated aka, 'mashup' pages built over services?
o Seamlessness: no big glaring boo boos in format or behavior.
o Reliability: no piece mysteriously failing and causing the other
pieces to look bad
o Composability: the ability to put pieces together quickly and intuitively
Web components should fit together as neatly as Ludvig Von Beethoven's
music.
For my Christmas card this year, I recorded Charles Dickens' "A Christmas
Carol", all the characters, narration, sound effects, etc. I used Adobe
Audition to do that in case that is interesting, but the real serendipity
was choosing to use Ludvig Von's music over composing my own. Why? Because
Beethoven and Dickens are close in era, so in timing, tone and theme, they
are quite composable and reliable, but the delight is that Beethoven's
works are seamless. I avoided the 'hits' (say Fur Elise, Moonlight
Sonata, opening of the Fifth, etc.) and grabbed bits of lesser known
pieces and inner pieces of the symphonies. Some of these were composed
years, even decades apart and recorded by different performers in
different periods (had to do some serious click and pop removal but,
that is what Adobe does well).
They fit together seamlessly. The effect is as my wife says, 'enchanting'.
Web Services Should Be Like Beethoven's Music: you can slice it and dice it
and
it just works. The level of knowledge of keys, transitions, melodic
development,
chordal progressions, dynamics and orchestration required are enormous yet
almost
all of his works are memorable, hummable and accessible. When he applied
technical virtuosity, it was in service of the dynamic perceived by the
user as emotional anticipation, fulfillment and release, not the performer's
angst about playing fast and accurately on the device of the day.
That is the challenge for the mashup component builder. When someone puts
the services together, they have to just work. I can get that from
Beethoven.
The question would be, what would be the experience if I tried that with
Beethoven and Mozart and Bach and Schumann. The challenge of today's
software behemoths is exactly that: what happens if I take your components
and mash them together? Will they just work? Will certain melodies stand
out garishly in bad taste where taste matters? Or is it a matter of taste
where taste is knowing what to choose or to stick to one company as I
stuck to Beethoven even with that Mozart CD staring at me like Marley?
If we are to pick common formats, we should choose based on the ability
of the web service builder to compose, mashup, and serve up without seams,
without glaring bugs, and with the ease of putting together slices in
sequencing/recording systems that are to web pages what Adobe Audition
is to audio production.
len
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