Ajax Push

Push technology has been around for what seems like a decade and in the late ’90s it was supposed to revolutionize the web. It has become extremely useful for instant messaging, but there seem to be very few applications that use push in a web browser. About 5 years ago Macromedia released Flash Communication Server (now Flash Media Server), which enabled developers to easily create persistent connections between a client and server. This was all capable using the ubiquitous Flash Player. Since version 5 of the Flash player developers have been able to create socket servers that push data to clients.

This evening I stumbled across Lightstreamer and decided to dig into their product a bit. It appears they’re doing an Ajax push that updates the page without having to manually refresh. You can view some of their demos by clicking here. This is accomplished by creating an HTTP stream to the client. With as much buzz Ajax has received over the past year I’m certain this will create even more hype. The term Comet has been coined for Ajax push applications and I’m interested in seeing what innovative applications will leverage the technology.

I know that we could potentially leverage push at SensorLogic where we build enterprise applications for remote asset management. All sorts of devices and machines can talk to our platform over many different wireless networks. Some of these devices report frequently where operators need to monitor their condition or location. This data is made accessible to the operator through a standard web browser. Now think about the operator having to refresh to look for new data every couple of minutes or so. It would be nice to have the interface automatically when new data is received. A lot of technology is involved to make this happen, but that’s the concept.

Back on track. I know of a few push initiatives that seem pretty interesting:

1. Pushlets
2. Realtime on Rails
3. Lightstreamer

I’m sure there are plenty of others, but these are the ones that stand out in my mind. Stay tuned into the World Wide Web of Push.