Phil Leggetter – Software Consultant

Latest Updates: real-time data RSS

• Google have integrated Facebook fan page status messages into latest results

  Phil Leggetter 10:02 am on February 27, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Bing (3), Facebook (2), Google (3), real-time data

  According to this article by Read Write Web, Bing have exclusive access to the data created by Facebook user status updates and Google have access to the data from Facebook fan page updates. It’s interesting to see that this data is so highly valued that there is clearly a bidding war over access to certain types of data. Which is more valuable?

  As of today, Facebook Fan Page status updates will begin appearing in Google search results, according to a tweet by Google. The announcement means that we will begin seeing results from the nearly 3 million fan pages, but not from the more than 400 million users.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
   

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• Why Comet is key to the Truly Real-Time Web

  Phil Leggetter 9:01 pm on November 14, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: comet (3), http polling, http streaming, real-time data, real-time web (15), truly real-time (3), truly real-time web (4)

  A lot of websites use HTTP Polling to update data on on their website or application without the need for the user refreshing the website. This is clearly better than a purely static page, but during the time between each poll the data on the page has the potential of being out of date (stale) so to make a decision based on the information on a potentially stale page can be a risky one.

  The normal example given to show the benefits of using Comet to achieve full HTTP streaming and the importance of non-stale data is of a trader making a trade on an out of date price. Another example is given where a person places a bet using odds that are on screen but do not match up with the odds in the betting system.

  I just read a post on Comet Daily about a company called Frozen Mountain who have just released a component that adds Comet Support for IIS. Along with this they’ve released a video which doesn’t cover the standard example.
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• Which Rich Internet Application Technology will dominate?

  Phil Leggetter 1:34 am on November 7, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Ajax (2), flash (2), Flex, JavaScript (5), PHP (2), real-time data, real-time web (15), RIA (2), silverlight (7)

  I’ve been a member of the RIA Developers Group on LinkedIn for a short while now and the other day Patrick Bay posted a link to an interesting article on Computer Weekly about the prominence of RIAs. A few comments were posted and then Patrick questioned which RIAs would “bubble to the top”.

  I think the UI revolution’s already here; now we see which ones bubble to the top!

  This got me thinking about the criteria that may determine which RIA technology would be most successful.

  I think there are a number of things that will determine which one will ultimately win, or at least become the dominant choice. At the moment I can think of three categories; Technology buy-in, Development environment and Data access capabilities and choice.
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• A Real Time Rich Internet Application (RTRIA) Example

  Phil Leggetter 8:12 pm on November 3, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: MSDN (2), real-time (5), real-time data, real-time web (15), RTRIA (4), silverlight (7), Twitter (64)

  I’ve just had an article published in the latest UK MSDN Flash newsletter on How to consume real-time data in a Silverlight RIA. As part of writing up the article I developed a sample Real-Time Rich Internet Application (RTRIA) that consumes real-time data from the Twitter real-time data feed. I also put together my first ever screencast. So, you can start by getting hold of the code or watching the screencast.

  The Code

  First, and this is Important:

  To get the sample application to stream real-time data from the Twitter real-time feed you will need to use Fiddler to trick Silverlight into allowing a crossdomain Web Request.

  Now that you are aware of that, you will also need the Silverlight development environment. You can get everything you need via the Silverlight Getting Started page.

  You’ve now got everything you need to run the RTRIA example. To run the sample application you should set the MSDNFlashRTRIAExample.Web project as the startup project and the MSDNFlashRTRIAExampleTestPage.html page as the startup page.

  

  Setting up the solution to run the application

  If you’d like to find out a bit more about the code then read on. If you’d rather jump straight into the code you can download it from the TweetStreamer Google Code project.
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• Using Fiddler to trick Silverlight into allowing a crossdomain Web Request

  Phil Leggetter 11:06 am on October 30, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Microsoft (4), real-time (5), real-time data, real-time web (15), RTRIA (4), silverlight (7)

  If you are trying to make a web request from a Silverlight application the first thing the Silverlight runtime will do is request a security policy file (see Network Security Access Restrictions in Silverlight) from the root of the server you are making your web request to. This happens if you are making your request using the HttpWebRequest or WebClient class. If the Silverlight runtime fails to get a security policy file your web request will fail. If your Silverlight application relies on this web request then you are going to need to contact the server owner and get them to add a security file but until then you can use the Fiddler HTTP Proxy to trick the Silverlight runtime into believing that it does have permission to make the request.
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• Real-Time Rich Internet Applications (RTRIA)

  Phil Leggetter 10:15 am on October 29, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: flash (2), pubsubhubbub (2), real-time (5), real-time data, real-time web (15), RIA (2), rssCloud, RTRIA (4), silverlight (7)

  Real-Time Rich Internet Applications (RTRIAs) are RIAs that consume and display real-time data. They have all the characteristics of an RIA with the added feature that data is being pushed to them in real-time as soon as it becomes available. This is in contrast to the current polling solution employed by most RIAs or other web applications that display updating data.

  I mentioned RTRIAs for the first time back in April 2009 in a post called “What is the real-time web” on the Caplin Systems Platformability blog, and since then there has been a real-time web explosion. The “real-time web” is now the buzz phrase around the Internet that everybody is jumping on. Back in April I set up a Google Alert for the term “real-time web”. Back then I got maybe one Google Alert a day for this term, probably less. Now, I get at least two dense emails a day from Google with people using the term for all sorts of things; real-time web stats, real-time analytics, real-time search, rssCloud, pubsubhubbub, the list goes on. This is not the real-time web! Whilst some of the things on this list will help  the web become truly real-time (rssCloud and pubsubhubbub may even form the back bone), none of these things give the user a truly real-time web experience.

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