It has a lot of the same challenges that you have to deal with when developing in flash. In one of my current projects, we load an array of images from the database without refreshing the page. It “seems” as though you are paginating from page to page but you are not. Instead, you are clicking on icons (page 1, page 2, page 3 and so on) and Ajax handles the content processing without the post back. We thought that was an elegant solution in this case.

Except for the broken back button. Say you see a photo on page 3 that you like. You click on it. You get a preview. Then you decide you don’t like it so much after seeing the larger version so you hit the browsers back button. Where would you expect to go? Page 3 right? Wrong. Ajax sends you back to the originating page 1. Thus, the harsh reality about Ajax sets in. You cannot do three obvious things easily.

* Click back from an AJAX enabled page page
* Clickforward to an AJAX page
* Try bookmarking an AJAX page.

One URL refers to one page of content right? Isn’t that what we’ve learned? Not so in this modern age. Time to rethink our thinking.

In the AJAX world, unlimited documents can have the same URL and that’s the intended point! There’s the originating document as well as your newly requested information created on the fly through a DOM change. All on the same page. Lovely in most cases.

In my view, the understanding is simply that “the Back button takes me back to where I was before I clicked that last thing“ though the hard-core among us know that Back doesn’t mean “return to the state before the last click” rather it means “go back to the previous page”. It’s all semantics.

Web tennants are:

* HTML and variants for rendering the client side experience (throw some flash in if you like)
* Addressing of targets is done via URLs.
* Client-server communication is done via HTTP

The major difference between Ajax applications and traditional Web applications is that Ajax applications can handle user interaction without page reloads. Loading data from the server via the XMLHttpRequest object is one example but there are many other examples as you can see from a review of the freely available Dojo classes which are very popular. Drag-and-drop tricks using java script on the client side is a pretty common example these days.

As discussed, the state changes without generation of a new URL. Therefore, clicking the back or refresh button will have unexpected effects, and there is no “deep-link URL in the address bar”.

Therefore, we need to figure out how to create a history of where we were and how we got there.
We need to save that state.
We need to create a URL that refers to that state.
We need to push that URL to the browser.

Without some event handler that creates a new URL which stores the information to recreate the previous state you cannot move forward through the surfing process. Basically, what you’re seeking to do is detect an address change from the back button and regenerate the previous state that you were expecting in the first place.

Now, you have to do this in a cross-browser way
Not fun for the developers.

I’m really pleased to report that thePlatform has been purchased by Comcast. The deal was made public today that thePlatform will stay as an independent unit within Comcast Interactive. Rafat Ali of the popular PaidContent.org was among the first to get the news via a highly controlled distribution of information from Comcast and thePlatform which did not include the actual price. In fact, very, very few knew the actual purchase price and I do not believe that Rafat’s sources are among that group. While it was suggested in that post that thePlatform was sold at an amount that was not most beneficial to investors the reality is that the real figure will not be published but significant shareholders are going to be extremely pleased with the actual purchase amount. thePlatform has a long history and I’m also glad early investors that are related to this deal will be getting some pleasant news that they weren’t expecting.

But, the main thing is that I’m very proud of my wife Tricia who worked hard over the years to bring the customers to the table. I’m also very impressed with the management team at thePlatform who I’ve gotten to know over the years. They are one of the most impressive teams in Seattle…soft-spoken but amazing talent that surely must be one of the best technology teams out there. I’d love to work with any of them again but for now, Comcast has acquired an amazing team of people.

The bright future of internet video is in the forefront of my mind this week for so many reasons so I took particular pleasure noting that the boys at JibJab raised some money from Polaris this week. This is one of those classic cases of a media company being born not from your television set but from your PC monitor. Credit goes to Gregg and Evan Spiridellis who basically built a brand off of some cult creative work and to Mika Salmi at AtomFilms for being one of the first to promote them. Every once in awhile Mika will see something special and will still forward around a personal email promoting the clip. JibJab was one of those clips. It didn’t take long before Yahoo paid them a bundle for their next “release” and the rest is history. Or, the rest is just starting. Either way, the Spiridellis brothers have a shot at launching a new mainstream media channel. Mobile video and IPTV are still just in their infancy so while the Microsoft vs. RealNetworks battles seem like distant memories I like to think that we’re maybe just coming out of the first or second inning.

I have an idea that just might be crazy enough to work. For the most part, people agree that economic sanctions don’t work. Well, it probably did have some effect in Libya’s turn-around but in generally sanctions are a blunt instrument that negatively impacts millions of innocent civilians. There is nothing surgical about it. And, we know how our military likes to be “surgical”.

So what of North Korea?

Follow the new concensus of industry tech CEO’s! Competitors are your new partners.

Think North Korea doesn’t look at Samsung in South Korea and wish they had one of those?

Capitalism is the fulcrum of diplomacy. We should embrace North Korea with business opportunity. It’s a huge market. Let’s trade with them. Let’s incent them with something more than threats. People have a funny way of changing their perspectives towards those who benefit them financially. China has nuclear weapons and a great deal of military resources yet we work with them because it’s in our best interest to do so. As China makes more money from the US over time, they will have increased motivations to capitulate to international demand as it relates to human rights issues. We haven’t had any true cooperative spirit with North Korea in 50 years. How has it served us? Same for Cuba. How has it served us? We had sanctions on Iraq for years and how had it served us? We’re there now in war!

People respond to econominc benefit and the spirit of growth. Not the threat of stagnation and death. When we start to let big business between US and North Korea invoke better cash flow throughout the country, then it is probable that we will have more leverage with North Korea.

People don’t like to bomb their investors. I mean, even when we were feeding bin Laden during the Afghan crisis he worked hard to achieve our means against the Soviets.

I think it’s just crazy enough it might work.

I just finished writing a post on the Curious Office blog about great start-up partners. I mention a few folks I’ve known for years and a few others I’ve recently met.

The other day I knocked a picture off my desk accidentally and shattered the glass frame. It was a print of this photo taken a few years ago while heli-skiing near Whistler BC. I intended to simply print another copy but after a lengthy search I realized that I have somehow lost all the original digital pictures. All that is left are the smaller, resized versions that I had posted on my website. But, these are the things memories are made of so I scanned the photo and re-captured a decent hi-res version. In the picture is my friend Mika Salmi (back, third from left) who founded AtomFilms. Mika and I started at RealNetworks the same week back in 1995 and had since become good friends. When he left Seattle to live in San Francisco, my wife and I purchased the house they lived in up in Queen Anne. Before they left town, we had shared a house in Whistler for a few years and have made it a bit of a ritual to re-connect up there each New Years. I broke the ritual last year by spending that week in Sun Valley…a first in about 7 or 8 years. Anyway, Whistler is still the best and this is one of those pictures you want to have around to look at when you’re too old to go to the bathroom by yourself. Good memories!

Prized possessions are a funny thing. They tend not to be the most expensive thing you own like your house. Prized possessions are those few things that really have sentimental value that exceed their actual dollar value. I have several things like that. One of my favorites is this original Prost Formula 1 sweater given to me by a team executive. I’m a car guy. Much more so than most of my friends save a few. To be a Formula 1 fan in Seattle is a funny thing. I say it is the most televised sport in the world and has the highest paid athletes in the world and people look at me like I’m crazy. Anyway, amongst the Formula One World Champions Alain Prost is one of the most successful with 4 World Titles, and only Michael Schumacher and Juan Manuel Fangio have won more. He competed in 199 Grands Prix, 51 of which he won, and accumulated through his career 798.5 championship points. In 1997 he bought the Ligier F1 team and renamed it Prost Grand Prix. Of course, great drivers don’t necessarily make great businessmen and so it proved to be with four times world champion Alain Prost. The tens of millions needed to keep the team afloat just were not forthcoming once key sponsors dropped out. In the end nothing could save the ailing team and it went into liquidation in early 2002. I received the jersey two years before. This team wasn’t one of the most popular but they were one of the most quirky and for that I thank the person that gave me this jersey. Sometimes I wonder what it would be worth on eBay. But, I’ll never sell it. It represents a small slice of auto racing history that is most unusual. Interestingly, I traded one of the team managers for a signed Seattle Mariners baseball jersey. Believe it or not, the French team executive was an American baseball fan. A friend took it to Monaco and exchanged it personally and then mailed the jersey back to me.

I’d love to know what others consider to be prized possessions. I bet the responses would make for some very interesting trivia.

This is one of those unassuming looking sites that you get in spam mail. For some reason though, I clicked on this site because it promised live tv from outside the US. I hate most US news channels and this does have some other interesting things you can’t get on your cable lineup. I am sure there must be dozens of other sites out there that stream live TV from other countries.

Have a lot of music? I’ve been collecting music and other files like a pack rat for years. Now, I’ve got about six external USB drives of various sizes lying around the house and it is getting a bit ridiculous. Then, a friend turned me on to this:

It does all manner of file sharing.
It does RAID without you knowing.
Simply plug a new disk in, and the automatic volume expansion takes over, securing your data while the expansion takes place.
Gigabit Ethernet.

This is the bomb.
I am getting one.

My wife’s cousin who lived in Hawaii died last week at the age of 21 years old. An expert surfer, he passed due to “shallow water blackout”. Shallow water blackout (SWB) is the sudden loss of consciousness caused by oxygen starvation following a breath holding dive. Unconsciousness strikes most commonly within 15 feet (five meters) of the surface, where expanding, oxygen-hungry lungs literally suck oxygen from the divers blood. Once you lose consciousness you are likely to drown. The blackout occurs quickly, insidiously and without warning. This syndrome is not something I’ve heard of before but can be common amongst divers and surfers who develop a penchant for holding their breath a long time under water. Surfers learn, sometimes without even being aware, to use techniques such as taking excessive deep breaths (pre-hyperventilation). However, blood CO2 may be lowered so much by pre-dive hyperventilation, that it takes a relatively long time for CO2 to build up under water and cause “air hunger.” Deep dives are often prolonged but at the swimmers peril. Blood oxygen will fall relatively quickly under water compared to the buildup of CO2. A critical hypoxic state can be reached before there is any drive to breathe, i.e., before there is any sensation of air hunger. This critical hypoxia is often reached on ascent, near the surface, hence the term “shallow-water blackout.”

Henry was young but passed being in the water doing what he loved. He was surrounded by friends and over 600 people attended his funeral.