Vyrotek

A while ago I wrote a couple of articles called Pushing Some New Ideas and Distributed Observer Pattern which talked about implementing a sort of Observer Pattern using HTTP. Soon after, I discovered that there was an existing term for the thing I was trying to describe and create. They are called Web Hooks. The idea being that you can push consumers new data instead of having users poll you over and over.

I think as the number of consumers for realtime data increases we will see a shift in how data is delievered to consumers. Its much more efficient to push when there is something new and relevent. But, until everyone decides that it is a good idea, adapters will have to exist that will poll data from sources and push them to other locations. Is there any money to be made here?

Here are a couple of resources that popped up just recently on Web Hooks:

http://blog.webhooks.org/

http://www.slideshare.net/progrium/web-hooks-and-the-programmable-world-of-tomorrow-presentation

http://blogrium.com/2007/05/03/web-hooks-to-revolutionize-the-web/