This NYT article NYT article describes the new AJAX-driven GAP shopping experience (deployment of which apparantly required shutting down gap.com for THREE WEEKS!) More blog coverage here, here and here.
AJAX debuting on the shopping cart actually makes perfect sense. Shopping cart bailouts cost ecommerce companies millions, so the ROI of improving the shopping experience is extremly high.
Month: September 2005
Yahoo! delivers on the promise of AJAX
I hinted in my last post that one consumer company is showing signs of embracing the “just like the desktop” AJAX approach. That company is Yahoo!
Enterprise AJAX
There’s something very interesting going on right now in the enterprise software world. For the first time since the invention of the personal computer, the UI paradigm being used by coders building business applications is richer and more powerful than the approach being used by coders building consumer applications (which usually get all the glory). There has never been a better time to be in an enterprise UI developer.
TechCrunch meetup
TechCrunch (an awesome new web2.0 weblog) is having a meetup/barbeque this thursday. RSVP is via their wiki.
Cell phone as disruptive innovation
Amit has a great post on cell phones as a disruptive technology. Indian carrier Airtel yesterday announced support for person-to-person payment by cellphone (which will be a BIG deal in terms of opening up an electronic payment method to millions of Indian consumers).
Mobile Monday Trip Report
Yesterday’s Mobile Monday meetup focused on mobile imaging, one of the most exciting topics in the mobile world. Below are my notes from the meeting (which was on the Yahoo! campus and had about 120 people).
eBay and Skype: two great tastes that taste great together
As everyone knows by now, eBay has agreed to acquire Skype. A lot of smart people are saying this is a dumb move, while others think it was brilliant. I’m happy to see skepticism (it’s a good antidote to the naive internet cheerleading that caused the original boom). But as a heavy Skype user, and as someone who has done a lot of consulting work for eBay, I think this deal is a master-stroke for eBay. Here are my reasons:
Allurent: FLEX-based shopping cart?
Allurent just emerged out of stealth mode today. Their product? An RIA shopping cart for ecommerce stores. They seem to be doing their development in FLEX.
AJAX latency
Jep Castelein of backbase has written a nice summary of current thinking on AJAX applications and latency. He points out that most AJAX developers are taking the easy way out, having synchronous logic execute when the user performs an action. This causes a delay as the data is fetched from the server, which is exactly what we are trying to avoid by using AJAX!
Google sightings: adding richness to results
A query on “subversion” now surfaces links for download, UML, FAQ, and project page as sub-elements of the first result. Nicely done! Google is building more useful data into each results (searches on company names now reveal the current stock price, for example), but this is the first time I’ve seen the most useful subsections of a site called out like that. Click on the image for a larger view.
