you mention SUP resource but not XMPP - here are some: http://xmpp.org http://metajack.im/ http://stpeter.im/ http://ralphm.net/blog/ - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Mike: I just added those to the post, thanks! - Robert Scoble

Robert: on Leo Laporte's FLOSS Weekly they covered XMPP with one of the developers and the guy who writes the documentation for Jabber is a great overview of XMPP and more info: http://twit.tv/floss49 - Jonathan Jesse

Jonathan, thanks, just added that to the post too. - Robert Scoble

thanks Robert - and I'm now reading about SUP to see if it is a good fit for Seesmic - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Robert, you should check what we do at Notifixious : http://notifixio.us and let's meet to discuss it! - Julien

Brilliant. I like it. I think the whole faster web is upon us. As is the need for a meta web, LIKE what we're doing in FF and in BrightKite, etc. What if that were a "layer" of sorts? - Chris Brogan

When I read that Disqus was using SUP, I checked to see how fast Disqus comments were reflected in my FriendFeed. Surprisingly fast. But we'll have to see what users will demand a year from now; perhaps by that time 30 seconds will seem intolerably slow (it's way too slow for computer aided dispatch/911 folks and some stock traders, for example). - Ontario Emperor from fftogo

A real-time system for corporate info (earnings releases etc) would be a big advancement over current PR wire service distribution, which is slow and unfair to the masses. Companies could cut out the middlemen and deliver their stuff direct to consumers who want it in real time. Just saying there's potential business opportunities here... - Dominic Jones

With props to Arthur C. Clarke, any sufficiently advanced/frequent polling may be indistinguishable from real time... to the end user... but it's not real time, and it won't scale nearly as well as some form of notification. "Do you have anything new? How about now? How about now?" doesn't scale. "Please tell me when you have something new" (via XMPP or some sort of HTTP callback or post, for example) is still the gold standard. - Ken Sheppardson

It depends on what's scaling, surely. If service X is watching 2 blogs then it's not hard for that service to ask repeatedly; if it's watching 2 billion then it's harder. Likewise if blog Y is providing updates to 2 services it's not hard; if it's providing updates to 2 billion then it's harder. - Deborah Fitchett

Deborah: I'm talking about scaling the overall system. Providing updates to 2 billion services is certainly easier [ok, maybe not easier for the system providing updates, but more efficient for the system overall] than 2 billion services polling. - Ken Sheppardson

two links on http callback/webhooks http://webhooks.pbwiki.com/ and http://joshua.schachter.org/2008... the advantage of this method is that it is based on the well known http infrastructure, while xmpp still has to find its breakthrough for content delivery - Peter Hoffmann

@Domic/IRWebReport: I would subscribe to that service, google alerts works ok for news about specific companies, but it is as slow as rss - Jonathan Jesse

Ontario Emporer, it's easy to adjust the frequency of SUP updates, so expect it to settle at whatever is good for that particular service. If you're using a service whose SUP interval is longer than you would like, ask them to shorten it. - Bruce Lewis

Julien: let's get together soon. Where are you located? - Robert Scoble

Bruce, thanks for the info. - Ontario Emperor from fftogo

Thanks for bringing this up. I've been thinking about real-time, but haven't seen SUP yet. - Adam Kinney

Maybe something like HTML 5 WebSockets will even the field a little (http://www.whatwg.org/specs...). It's a standard defining a bi-directional connection for pushing and pulling information between the browser and server. - Todd Hoff

Great post Robert. One more SUP resource worth mentioning is the SUP FAQ: http://code.google.com/p... - Paul Buchheit

Great post, but I think SUP and XMPP aren't the solution. Going lower to something like AMQP is. - Kirk Wylie

Agree great post. Didn't know SUP data was available on Google Code. Thanks Paul (and FF crew!) - Charlie Anzman

I'm the developer of ToastedRav.com and I've been looking hard at getting some sort of realtime activity on the site for our social news feed or something, but getting the XMPP setup is a big obstacle. - Mike Flynn