Smarterware

The Pushbutton Web Now in Google Reader

August 5th, 2009

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There's no doubt in my mind that Anil Dash has a crystal ball stowed away somewhere at his place back in NYC. While his piece on the Pushbutton web almost two weeks ago was inspiring in concept, it's exhilarating to see it come to fruition.

(Seriously, if you haven't read his piece, GO THERE NOW: The Pushbutton Web: Realtime Becomes Real. I'll wait.)

Back? With me? Good.

Tonight, Googler Mihai Parparita announces that Google Reader now sends realtime updates to FriendFeed when you share items using the PubSubHubbub protocol.

Huh-wha? you ask. Yeah, I know. It's no Google Wave. But that's what makes this exciting. This kind of small Pushbutton implementation is how real web pages will easily use existing technology to notify one another of new updates. The Google Reader/FriendFeed integration is just the first tiny step in what will be a broad deployment of realtime-enabled sites. These sites and services will let one another know when they have new data to share without the sucky inefficiencies of polling. Check out how fast FriendFeed updates when you share an item in Google Reader in this video.

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