cloudmike

We were recently acquired by Automattic, and we're now putting more resources into the project (for example to make it work on Android as well). If cost for the hosted service is a concern for you, you can get in touch and we'll work something out (info@simperium.com).

Your analysis is accurate. Actually, one of the features we're preparing to launch is sharing/collaboration/groups, which will allow data in Simperium to flow across users the same way it currently flows across devices. But you're right in that having more ways to perform queries outside of a known data set would be useful too.

We've already been down the path of using a more traditional RESTful approach to syncing data with earlier versions of our app Simplenote. I agree it seems like it should be easy to just cache some offline data locally and send it up to a server at first opportunity. And you can write a prototype of that system pretty quickly. But in our experience at least, conflicts, errors, duplicates, etc. arise a lot more often than you might think and it's very hard to make a system like that reliable, not to mention scaling and maintaining it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#MINIX

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#Foun...

Having done that, we're excited to start opening it up and we don't view this as pasting on a strategy. We've been proactively considering the implications for our technology and business from the beginning. I think a great, open circulating system for the internet can be as significant as an operating system like Linux.

The niche we chose to start with is device syncing, based on our experience building Simplenote (which is to Evernote as Twitter is to Facebook). We know there's a need for something more flexible and powerful than iCloud in this regard, so that's what we focused on initially. But we believe a good solution for moving data between devices is also a good solution for moving data between people and 3rd-party apps.

Simplenote's 3rd-party ecosystem looks similar to Twitter's in the earlier days. We're taking the path they didn't take. Rather than shoring up Simplenote vertically, we're focused on extending our backend data layer horizontally and generalizing it for a variety of apps and services (though specifically not as an all-encompassing "backend-as-a-service"). We'll be announcing our open source strategy soon. This is all really hard though, both technically and as a business.

You can model relational data in Backbone quite effectively, or use another library (or your own). For example: https://github.com/PaulUithol/Backbone-relational/

Core Data relationships (including their inverses) that come over the wire can be lazily resolved by Simperium if necessary.

An example of where read-only permissions are useful is the live dashboard you see at simperium.com after you sign in. The "number of syncs" and alerts at the top are all pulled live from Simperium, but the token used on that page is a read-only token. We just need to expose the ability to create these read-only tokens to developers.

Actually, as a Simplenote user, you might be interested to know that our alerts and blog posts are pulled from Simplenote via Simperium. When we tag a note as "Alert" or "Published" it instantly appears on the dashboard.

Regarding querying, we're working on something for apps that can't or don't want to keep all data locally. In the meantime you can locally query however you'd like in your database of choice.

Whereas CouchDB does master-master replication among instances of itself, Simperium can accomplish something similar with any database: e.g. sqlite on iOS, to MongoDB in our backend, and to whatever database you use in your own backend.

Right, we hear that quite a bit. A few comments:

- Here's our Backbone sync adapter: https://github.com/Simperium/simperium/blob/master/javascrip...

- Dealing with subsets is a priority for us

- OT and versioning are generally helpful for managing changes/deltas

- We're using MongoDB for storage

A great quote!

There's a lot of good feedback here, particularly regarding playing more nicely with other code. We'll do a pass, thanks.

* You can add overrides in your model's userInfo but this isn't documented yet. We'll do that after cleaning up the naming a bit more.

* The next major release uses NSNotificationCenter for the reason you mentioned.

* We chose a single repo for now since our samples tend to span languages/devices. We'll revisit this eventually. Your point about submodules is a good one.

* We're not currently using NSIncrementalStore for the same reason as you (needed < iOS 5 support).

This extra degree of control, though not absolute, lets you develop your own solution (or integrate someone else's) in parallel should you stop using Simperium.

Our libraries are designed to have a small footprint; they're easy to both add and remove. And we plan to open source them in the future.

Beyond that, you cite valid concerns for any service.

You do have control over the granularity of your updates. For example, we spoke to a game developer who would want to disable Simperium while a game is being played, and then enable it again at the end of levels. These coarse changes are supported since they'll resolve automatically when the client comes back online.

The editor is Sublime Text 2: http://www.sublimetext.com/2

Releasing more libraries is a priority.

What do you think about Urban Airship's model based on active monthly users? What we like is that the costs are obvious and map clearly to your business.

That leaves room for improvement, including some low hanging fruit like eventually giving you the ability to disable versioning for certain kinds of data (like multiplayer updates).

You can also reach us at contact@simperium.com.

To young people, I agree: start now.

I realize this seems circular, and there's probably a better way to make my point. My motivation is all the non-programmers I meet who think programming is scary. I don't believe it is (hence the mention of codecademy.com at the end of the post).

As for payment, you're right: making something people want is a better measurement of value, regardless of whether others pay for it, and even that's not a complete measurement of your ability. But Mozart made money early, which is why I mentioned it.

The discussions below about sports are interesting, though. Lots of kids seem to play basketball even though (or arguably because) the stars are put on pedestals. But not everyone plays basketball.

The problem is that Apple already did that recently. The iPhone was Apple's Wii, and now it seems incredibly difficult for Nokia to innovate that much that quickly without creating something the world might not be ready for, like the N-Gage.

I hope they pull it off though. Respect for the candor in the memo.