The thing about the Cloud and this site in general is that there is a less tangible aspect to exploring new concepts. Career-wise this has paid big in the past and I need to explore RIA concepts a bit more even if it's just dabbling.

Anything I do to change the site will work just as well locally as elsewhere. I am keeping a retreat in mind should the price be too high.

In the past I had just about everything on this site XML on the back-end with XSL transformations on the front. This wasn't a huge win on the site but I tend to be one of the only people at work who know XSL and XML well so the payment comes back now and then. In fact my first true corporate venture used these skills.

I'm thinking of doing something similar to the XML work of the past only I'll represent the data as JSON instead since it's such a terse markup and so popular with RIA libraries. From there I'll be able to render the data different ways on the front-end, maybe even doing a little smartphone app for kicks. It will also allow me to farm out the data leaving the database basically doing little but drawing current indexes. The speed increase should be very significant.

For a few years now I've had the notion that app servers and N-tier apps are a legacy technology and accordingly we should attempt to freeze our work there and move our emphasis to what's next. I firmly believe this now especially after weighing what's being done out there. The future is just shaping data and rendering in context. Where it comes from matters less.

In a corporate setting this means gateway technology (virtualization, etc.) will reign supreme.

For the DIYer, it means you need less to have more. Of course, I've never used an N-tier platform so skipping this perhaps has proven to be insightful rather than behind the curve as I felt for years. I shape data and render at the perimeter now and always have.

My focus professionally is on security architecture. That's going to be an interesting challenge with the new regime. Seeing how Amazon is doing things is actually very helpful.

Anyway, I hope that explains my interest. It's not just following a trend. It's a mix of motives.

Margin-wise I have some room to play with but not a huge amount before I start taking a loss. It will actually be helpful for what are now hidden expenses to have all expenses related to this site separated. Right now I write off nothing in the way of electricity, for example.

If it's a success, I'd like to see if it can scale. Not sure how I'll draw more people in, but I'll tackle that later.

-Jarrod