Logan 05 Oct 05

Funny, several months ago I pitched that same article idea (word for word title) to Business 2.0. I guess they simply decided to skunk me on writing it and put another writer on it.

Anyway, congrats.

Mark 05 Oct 05

I wonder why no kudos was given to Jesse / Adaptive Path, since the coining of the term which, arguably, provided the tipping point is attributed to him.

Rich 05 Oct 05

Read the article:

“… Yet Jesse James Garrett of San Francisco-based Web consultancy Adaptive Path, who came up with the name Ajax, believes its real impact will be in enterprise applications — speeding the work of remote employees.

Mark 05 Oct 05

Yeh, I saw the mention in the article, I was more referring to the “key players” callout at the bottom of the article.

Sorry I didn’t make that more clear in my response.

Jamie 05 Oct 05

Hmm. Don’t tell me you guys are gonna get acquired by Yahoo! too?

Rich 05 Oct 05

Good question Jamie. So tell us 37Signals, is there a price you would sell the farm at? For a few million, I sure as hell would. I like developing, I like the web, I like interesting technology, but there are a million non computer things I’d rather be doing. If I had the shot to get a quick few million, I’d take it in a second.

DaleV 05 Oct 05

Google: yes
Yahoo: no
Microsoft: not a chance
Amazon: pretty much
Tibco: Tibco?

Will 05 Oct 05

Great news! You guys and gals and 37Signals really promote designing easy to use interfaces that work for everyone, not just us geeks. That’s your most important assest from what I can tell. Keep up the great work and let me know if you are hiring!

bild 05 Oct 05

So far, I only use Basecamp. Is there Ajax being used there? I haven’t noticed anything, although I have seen tasteful use of DHTML in reordering To-Do list items.

So, what kind of Ajax-y things are you guys up to?

tibco 05 Oct 05

Tibco? From their site:

“TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ:TIBX) is a leading business integration and process management software company that enables real-time business. Real-Time Business is about helping companies become more cost-effective, more agile and more efficient. TIBCO has delivered the value of Real-Time Business, what TIBCO calls The Power of Now�, to over 2,000 customers around the world and in a wide variety of industries. For more information on TIBCO’s proven enterprise backbone, business integration, business process management, and business optimization solutions, TIBCO can be reached at +1 650-846-1000 or on the Web at www.tibco.com. TIBCO is headquartered in Palo Alto , CA .”

Adrian 05 Oct 05

Asynchronous Javascript And XML.

AJAX is a subset of Javascript == ECMAscript == DHTML.

Except Javascript is a misnomer and you don’t need XML.

I take it that’s clear? Now who’s buying?

I haven’t had this much fun since trying to work out what “Flash” means in Ruby on Rails.

Jamis 05 Oct 05

Ah, bild, you just paid us an enormous compliment. The fact that nothing jumps out at you and says I AM AJAX indicates we’re definitely doing something right.

Just for the record, Basecamp employs Ajax in: adding people to a company, adding companies to a project, adding/editing/deleting/reordering/completing to-do items, adding/editing/deleting/reordering to-do lists, adding/editing/deleting time items, and renaming attachments to messages.

DaleV 05 Oct 05

RE: Tibco:

My point exactly. I think 37Sig should be a little careful about being lumped in with so many dorky companies (market caps be damned).

Next thing you know, SvN will prove its enterprise backbone … then there’s NO turning back!

Elliott Rosenthal 05 Oct 05

Wow, they are THE big guns.

congradulations.

Darrel 05 Oct 05

How does Ajax change everything?

rumred 05 Oct 05

Ajax changes your bathrooms and kitchens from dirty to clean.
This is done by using a sponge or scrubber, or one of those fancy scrubber sponges. (If you are crazy.) Plus something called “elbow grease” :)

Dave Simon 05 Oct 05

Could Tibco’s copywriter please use more worn out buzzwords and corporate-speak?

“TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ:TIBX) is a leading business integration and process management software company that enables real-time business.”

Just in this sentence: “business integration” “process management” “enable” “real-time.” Why not throw in “solutions” and “innovative” while you are at it?

I read that paragraph four times and I still have no idea what the hell they do. Just say it: We make this. It does this. Here is why you need it. Don’t hide behind the buzzwords.

Like the Bobs said to “What, exactly, do you do here, Tom?”

As far as 37signals being with that company, does that mean you guys are rich now? :) I find Basecamp, Backpack and Writeboard more useful than pretty much anything Yahoo provides.

Mickeysoft I could do without. I see 37signals as the antithesis of Microsoft. Where they pack more and more features into each new version, making it slower, more painful to use and more expensive to maintain, you guys make lean, clean and easy to use stuff that does one or two things, and does it well.

Google, I can see on that list. Although I’m curious to see where they’ll go in the next few years. They have to grow beyond search (and are) - but until now, everything they’ve done has been golden. Can they keep that winning streak going?

Chris Carter 05 Oct 05

How are this Gartner-inspired Tibco and Amazon considered key players for Ajax?

I get the references to MS (don’t forget who originally implemented RPC over the web), Google, and yes, even Yahoo (considering some of the apps Yahoo is pushing now). But those other two? I had no idea Amazon was doing anything AJAX and Tibco must own Business 2.0 or something…

JP 05 Oct 05

Amazon’s A9 is full of AJAX

Don Schenck 05 Oct 05

AJAX is great and all that … but it won’t take off until a major player releases a complete AJAX IDE. Microsoft is hard at work on this, and in fact has included some AJAX-y stuff in the next Visual Studio.

Congratulations, Jason and crew. And I’m glad my encouragement has gone a long way toward helping you guys along.

*COUGH*

Don Wilson 05 Oct 05

Congrats. It looks like we’re reading more and more news articles regarding this excellent company.

Don Wilson 05 Oct 05

Oh, combined Market Cap - $418.31 Billion, giving 37signals a very generous $0.01B (less than 1/40000).

Adam James 05 Oct 05

Congratulations!

adam 05 Oct 05

ouch - must hurt to be grouped with so many non-Web2.0 companies using a non-Web2.0 technology.

ed fladung 06 Oct 05

you guys should most certainly wait for apple.

Ah I love all this web 2.0 schmata. feels like the good old days, even smells like the good old days. i can’t wait for the bubble to burst. fool me once, can’t get fooled again.

adam 06 Oct 05

Ed —

I was referring to The top 10 things that aren�t Web 2.0

Anyways it is tough to see where 37signals stands. They brag about being grouped with Microsoft, Google, etc as key players in AJAX, write after posting an article listing AJAX at the top of things that aren’t Web 2.0. Look elsewhere on the site, and the say they are “..fueling the Web 2.0 revolution”.

Which is it guys?

Personally, I don’t know what Web2.0 is, and I really don’t care.
I will just keep doing my job, and strive to keep up with all of the new stuff being released out there.

Elliott Rosenthal 06 Oct 05

An exercise in clarity: Web 2.0

JF, How bout it

Darrel 06 Oct 05

Microsoft is hard at work on this

No they’re not. They’re half-assing it to add it a bulleted feature. AJAX.net has already surpassed any planned features that MS will be providing us.

Hell, I’m just hoping the new VS.net 05 can write valid HTML. I know MS only has a few billion dollars left in the bank, but you think they could have made their premiere web development tool figure out HTML a few years ago.

Darre; 06 Oct 05

positioning Tibco to vie against Macromedia�s widespread Flash and Flex technologies.

AJAX can certainly be useful but this smells more like ‘hey, our competition is pumping out bloated, features-that-no-one-really-needs-laden, overhyped, bells and whistles so we need our own spinning 3-d crap to compete!

I don�t know what Web2.0 is

It’s called ‘companies using buzzwords to impress VCs’.

Don Schenck 06 Oct 05

Microsoft is hard at work on this … but you won’t see the results in the next version of Visual Studio.

An aside: The start.com site is a pretty cool implementation of AJAX.

Darrel 06 Oct 05

Microsoft is hard at work on this

No. They’re not. If they were, they wouldn’t be years behind the rest of the web. The NEXT version of visual studio? What? in 2007? 2008? Hardly hard at work IMHO.

I like .net, but it has never been on the leading edge of web standards/trends.

My biggest grip about AJAX is pretty much the same as Flash. We’ve come a long way in finally getting people thinking about universal accessibility and then AJAX comes along and a majority that use it are enamoured by the bells and whistles (ala Flash a few years ago) and end up using it for all the wrong reasons. I know, I know…not AJAX’s fault, but the developers…

That start.com site *is* cool, but quickly become akward to use like a messy frames site. Some links load on top o fcontent on my page, some go to pop-up windows. I can’t open a link into a tab. Just seems like another ‘AJAX used in the wrong place’ example.

Alex Aguilar 06 Oct 05

DaleV
Yahoo: no

wait until you see their next version of mail

warelock 06 Dec 05

My biggest grip about AJAX is pretty much the same as Flash. We�ve come a long way in finally getting people thinking about universal accessibility
>>>

The Web isn’t about universal accessibility, and it never will be. The Web is about market accessibility, where the market is both as ‘mass’ as possible and as ‘segmented’ as possible.

AJAX has nothing to do with any of that. It’s just tech that makes page data load faster. That’s convenient, and actually worth money to some people, but it will not change ‘everything’. But it provides an opportunity to improve the way we do things - sometimes - and that is a good thing.

TIBCO also makes (well, OK, bought) an AJAX IDE, so I guess they are serious about it. I’m not sure what a major ‘play’ is, myself. I think it represents a writer’s attempt to make this stuff sound exciting and cool and Hollywood-ish instead of the mind-numbing XML-parsing tedium it actually is.