Categories
Weblogging Writing

Won’t be reviewing Radio

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I was in the process of writing a review of Radio for O’Reilly Network when I was aghast to see the publication of a smallish review of Radio by Jon Udell within this publication on Friday. As happens sometimes in a publication that has many parts, one part did not know what the other part was doing.

Though my review was going to be more in-depth and technical than Jon’s, he did cover one aspect of Radio — the community engine — I had planned on covering, but from a strongly different point of view.

After discussion with the lead editor at O’Reilly Network, I will not be continuing with my review of Radio. My apologies to those of you who took the time to provide me your feedback on the product.

Categories
Technology

Radio and P2P – not

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit I’m a mood today, but there’s few things that tick me off more than this application of “P2P” to any old technology that comes along. And then this proud standing back as if all is explained.

Give me a break.

John throws this simple little sentence out as if the word comes from on high:

What’s the killer app for a desktop content management system?  P2P + Web Services + desktop CMS (Radio).  Killer combo.

I posted a comment to the note asking where the P2P was in this equation. I am not expecting a response.

There is no P2P with Radio. Period. Please don’t tell me “full peers” or any bullshit like that. If there is an assumption of a hard coded IP that is online 7×24 then that is a server. I don’t care what you call it.

Web services. Yes. Desktop content management. Yes. But Radio has no P2P element.

It is a good product and I enjoy using it, and I think it’s interesting that Userland has been able to get all these people to do all this work for no pay via the new publishing paradigm but there is no P2P element in Radio!!

Categories
Technology

Radio and P2P

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

John did respond, in his comments, to my query ,in his comments, about Radio and P2P:

I need a real P2P system to pull this off. Something that can go through firewalls and NATs. Unfortunately, most P2P systems are run by people that are only interested in Napster-style file transfer (essentially a file pile). There is more to this: apps and Web Services.

Appreciation for answering, but one request: don’t go there — don’t go with the limitations of P2P as an answer to the question of P2P expectations in Radio. I can point out more than one application that uses P2P based technologies and whose focus is not based on file manipulation, starting with a mainstream app John probably knows — Groove.

What does Userland want from P2P? Web services imply a server, which implies a traditional approach to serving application needs. Been there. Done that. Next page, please.

If you’re talking publish and subscribe, now we know we’ve been there and done that. Can anyone say “channels”? The technology is neat and seems to be coming into its own — again — but how P2P is this? Isn’t this dependent on a Radio cloud handling the intermittant connectivities of the individual Radio installations? Just as Groove does within its cloud?

Really, with clouds like these, I’ll never have iron-poor blood, will I?

The technology is neat and important and a real step in the right direction, but I don’t think this is what John was talking about. Or is it?

What do you need from a real P2P System, John? If you articulate this, you might find there are people out there with an answer. But we can’t take a shot if you don’t ask the question. Given the right information, we’d enjoy the opportunity, you’d enjoy the opportunity, we’d all learn from the experience, and we’d all have fun.

And we might even come up with some interesting ideas in the process.