Mule - How RESTful?

Huh, just noticed this (I think this is the first time I've noticed this... ) I'll have to investigate and report back how RESTful this is.

Mule - Universal Messaging Objects:

REST API to provide technology agnostic and language neutral web based access to Mule Events

Skyping a good deal on eBay

When I heard about eBay and Skype, my first reaction was how they could integrate buyers and sellers in an Internet enhance community. Sort of what this article from on ZDNet talks about. (emphasis added)

I realized that in some ways, what Oracle and eBay are doing is similar, although they're operating at opposite ends of the longtail: they're both selling tools for people who sell things to interact with the people who want to buy.

Hmm. What other companies likes to build tools for people who sell things? Google has Froogle and Google Talk - I wonder if those would be integrated following an eBay and Skype integration (whatever that might turn into).

More interestingly, Skype, with it's huge installed base and proprietary protocol would make a marvelous P2P auction platform.

I doubt Skype would morph into an auction platform - it's a phone and buddy list application. I could see integrated customer service, but that would cost a bunch of money and most eBay sellers don't have the profit margin for that. I think Skype is just a good business bet all by itself - the integration with internet commerce is just icing on the cake.

eBay has always been a walled-garden because eBay is afraid, and rightly so, that if they let merchants and customers contact each other directly, the transaction could happen off-network with eBay not getting their cut. Having control of the client on the desktop gives them better control and consequently enables richer merchant and buyer interaction–that's a big win for eBay.

Hmm, yes. Direct connect between buyers and sellers (disintermediation) is their big bugaboo, but Craigslist does this already and eBay has something like a 25% stake in Craigslist, so they are no strangers to that channel.

Internet scale integration on the rise

It's so thrilling to see a Microsoft employee promoting REST as an Internet-scale and Internet-friendly integration approach - almost as if he invented it.

From Dare (I'm not fired yet) Obasanjo's blog:

An interesting challenge I've faced at work is convincing some of the developers on my team that just because we use SOAP for the services we use internally, this doesn't mean we may not use alternate appproaches for Web facing services. This issue first came up when we decided to go with the MetaWeblog API as the blog editing API for MSN Spaces and I'm sure it will keep coming up.

When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. SOAP/WS-* are not the answer to every problem and just because they can't be used in a particular problem space doesn't mean that problem space any less valid than others. The sooner people understand the dichotomy that is intranet vs. internet service development, the better.

It lets people develop ideas you couldn't even think of before.

From an AlwaysOn article about disruption in Enterprise applications and a 'new platform' that will enable building new collections of applications:

It lets people develop ideas you couldn't even think of before.

Now where have I heard that phrase before? Are there any existing technologies have been observed to have exactly that characteristic?