Vyrotek|Bridging the gap between code and wealth

I recently published an article over at Neude.net about an interesting concept called The Distributed Observer Pattern. Since then, I have been giving this idea a lot more thought because it wasn’t enough to find a solution to a problem. Now I want to see if I can squeeze any money making ideas out of it. This is one idea i came up with…

A Push Service Hub

Here’s the elevator pitch:

A central hub that connects people that have data they want to push to multiple subscribers with people that want to have data sent to them only when certain criteria are met. The criteria could be only when there is new data, at timed intervals, etc. Essentially elimination the need to make multiple requests for data. Both sides benefit by having an intermediary since neither has to expose their destinations or webservice information to eachother. This service would manage all the security and authentication as well as provide a wide range of possible destinations that could include email, sms, post to url, invoke webservice method, twitter api, instant message, etc!

How does that sound? There isn’t much meat to the idea but that’s because its really just about enabling communication through the means that users choose. It might resemble SMTP or Twitter in some aspects. Perhaps to understand it better, think of subscribers as followers. But instead of just 144 characters you can basically send and receive any kind of data. It’s like SMTP in that you send data to one server and the service will figure out how to get it to the subscribers. Some might want to be notified through email while some may want to have data actually posted or pushed to their own webservice for processing.

Today, many sites and services exist to help users exchange information, status or content with eachother but each one ends up implementing their own api’s and notification systems. This system could be used professionally between businesses as well as socially between users and allows each party involved to choose their own method of sending or receiving information. All this while still adding a level of security between the actual endpoints involved in the communication process since neither side communicate directly. Features such as re-pushing data again later when a destination is unavailable or perhaps the ability to charge for subscription access could be implemented.

Some Examples

Sharing your status and other bits of information quickly with friends is all the rage these days. But there is a bit of disconnect between the various services such as Twitter, Yonkly, Jaiku. It would now be possible to broadcast one message to the service hub and have it push the message to all your accounts on each of these services as well as enable other people to programatically subscribe to your new messages. Your friends could now choose to have your new tweets pushed to their own destinations such as a webservice to be used in an entirely different application if you allowed it.

A business that deals with inventory could use this service to broadcast new inventory count when new stock arrived or when items have been purchashed or are out of stock. This data could be used to track trends and events as they happen as opposed to waiting for a weekly report.

 The service could also mimic push capabilities for webservices that do not support it. This service would be responsible for making multiple requests throughout the day to constantly check for new data while only sending notifications to subscribers when there is new data.

A wordpress plugin could be created that would enable push RSS capabilities. Whenever you write a new article on your blog, subscribers could now be notified of the new post instantly without having to check their feeds over and over for new content.

Research

As I discover sites and articles related to this subject I’ll post them here.

Web Hooks
PUSH RSS
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP/Jabber)
Distributed Observer Pattern with REST
The Publish-Subscribe Framework with WCF
Beyond REST

Lately I’ve been getting excited about a new startup that is based here in Salt Lake City and about to go live. They are called S5 Wireless and they track stuff without GPS! They have essentially created a small microchip that can be attached to almost anything which enables you to track its location with GPS accuracy. Another amazing thing is that it works great indoors. They sell their service OEM to anyone who wants to track something. They expose a simple webservice that when queried with the identifier of the chip they will respond with its current location. They aren’t quite live yet but I did speak to them on the phone for a few minutes to try and learn what I could. They informed me that they plan to have their webservice API and marketing details polished and ready for use around 3rd Quarter.

So, how does it work? How much does it cost? Check out their site for a bit more information.
http://www.s5w.com/Products/FAQ.html

Also check out some other articles people have written about them.
Gizmondo - Poor Man’s LoJack
ABC News - Utah company takes crack at problem of tracking

UPDATE:

I found a article that covers a Q&A session with the CEO of S5 Wireless and its very interesting. There is a bit more information in this one. Check it out here - S5 Wireless Interview with David Carter, CEO

Here are some parts I found the most interesting:

“If you just imagine all of the things that are of value to you, would you pay $10 or less for a tag and a couple of dollars a month to keep up with them, to know where your children are when they’re out with the family car or on a camping trip in the mountains with the Boy Scouts or the Girl Scouts?”

“The location and telemetry information is then sent to the customer in near real-time. The tracking accuracy is comparable to GPS, and we can deliver about 60 bits of telemetry with every transmission, enabling monitoring of fuel levels, temperatures, heart rate, etc.”

If you haven’t heard Amazon is putting on an awesome competition. Until I heard about this competition I didn’t know anything about all the different types of web services that Amazon provided. I had heard that you could make your own type of store front using a service they had but I was never interested in trying to sell books. Then, with the announcement of this challenge I started to investigate the services they had. I wanted to learn what the big deal was because in the details of the challenge it mentions:

“The Amazon judges’ panel will review all applications and choose five finalists, based on originality and creativity of the idea, likelihood of long-term success, how well it addresses a need in the marketplace, and implementation of pay-as-you-use Amazon Web Services.” (AWS Start-Up Challenge)

I had no clue what they meant by ‘Pay-As-You-Use’ and I was defintely intrigued. What I learned is that Amazon provides some incredible services that have nothing to do with selling books. So the idea is to come up with some great idea that uses their services and Amazon will give you some cash and invest in your project. Below is a list of the services that are available to use:

• Amazon E-Commerce Service (Amazon ECS)
• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) - Limited Beta
• Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) - Limited Beta
• Amazon Mechanical Turk (Beta)
• Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
• Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
• Alexa Site Thumbnail
• Alexa Top Sites
• Alexa Web Information Service
• Alexa Web Search

I am personally interested in the new Flexible Payments Service. You could basically create your own better PayPal type service. The incredible thing about it is that it allows you to make Micropayments!