by Jesse Stay — published on June 21st, 2010
Several months ago I talked about a concept I call the Building Block Web. It’s the next evolution of platforms, with all different types of services able to communicate with each other and work together. Where Web 2.0 is “the Web as a platform”, the Building Block Web is “the Platform as the Platform.” I talked about the MVC model of the Building Block Web, and how different elements represent different layers of that paradigm. From Amazon Web Services, to Facebook Graph API, to Twitter API, to even Google App Engine and other cloud-based, API-focused architectures, we’re able to all include our biggest strengths in each others’ applications. Today, Utah-based Kynetx released its own strength into the Building Block Web and essentially provided what I consider to be the first programming language of this new Platform.
Dr. Phil Windley (or as employees of the company endearingly call him, “Doc”), Kynetx’s CTO and co-founder, described the new “feature” of their event-based language KRL as “A Big, Programmable Event Loop in the Cloud”. Windley, also a Computer Science Professor at BYU, has taken his deep understanding of language theory and created a new language intended to basically allow all these different building blocks to talk to each other and provide a more relevant experience for users on the web. He calls it a Purpose-driven ecosystem, one where users go to the web with specific purpose in mind, and the web adapts to help them achieve that purpose.
The new feature (it may as well be called a new revolution, as it is much more than a feature – it could completely change the breadth of what Kynetx can accomplish for companies, developers, and users) enables developers to basically create their own “endpoints”. These endpoints can be anywhere from Google Calendar, to my own SocialToo API, to your Sprinkler system. When developers create endpoints, they are essentially, automatically providing an API that developers using Kynetx’ cloud-based platform can tie into and use in their own applications. So, let’s say for instance I created an endpoint for my sprinkler system (since that’s an example Phil used), which is being installed today. I could enable you to turn on my back sprinklers, turn on my front sprinklers, and turn them off again. I could then tell Kynetx’s platform how to do this.
Once Kynetx knows how to turn on and off my sprinklers, I could open that up to other developers using the Kynetx platform, and now someone could easily build a plugin that, whenever you visit Twitter.com and it sees the word “sprinkler” in your stream, it turns on my sprinklers, getting me all wet. Another endpoint Kynetx itself has provided for developers is one that interacts with Google Calendar. If you wanted, you could make Kynetx’s endpoint for Google Calendar talk with your endpoint for your sprinkler system, enabling you to schedule your sprinkler system in Google Calendar and have it automatically turn on and off your sprinklers at home based on your Google Calendar schedule.
Or, let’s say you’re Target.com and you want to make your products available to other apps on the Kynetx platform. If you create a Target.com endpoint, other developers can now tie into it, bringing the option of Target.com into their own applications on the Kynetx platform so your products will now also appear in their apps. This portable, 2-way, programmable API in the cloud, enables both programmers providing content, and programmers receiving content, to meet in the middle, providing a completely contextual experience for the user. Basically, developers can both create the API, and consume the API all in the cloud. The concept is very powerful!
With Kynetx, soon you’ll be able to use one language, one API, to both provide and consume the services you are providing to your users. Add a little flag to your app, and soon users will be getting just the experience they desire, with little to do on their part. Or, perhaps Kynetx will enable users to do this for themselves, providing users the option on Kynetx.com to specify the apps they want to enable as they surf the web. The possibilities are endless. Kynetx is making API development really simple with their new API to the Internet!
Have an idea for the Kynetx platform? What would you create with such an opportunity?
View the original blog post at www.staynalive.com.
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