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AS OF 7/4/2008 8:34PM EST
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Curling Up With a Good Web
New SurgeLab development environment fosters Curl's notion of executable Internet
By David Rubinstein
December 15, 2001 —
Curl Corp., inventor of a client-side runtime that implements its vision of an executable and extensible Internet, has finally released its SurgeLab 1.0 content development environment.
The objective of the Curl runtime, which was introduced in April, is to combine the richness and functionality of a client-side application with the flexibility and ease of deployment of a server-based solution. "People can't put up with delays over the Web" created by downloading ever-larger files, according to Bob Batty, Curl's vice president of sales and marketing. The company's technology leverages the power in desktops, making plug-ins a one-time problem, he said.
One of the advantages of the Curl runtime, Batty claimed, is reduced consumption of bandwidth. By generating the presentation layer's content on the client, rather than transmitting it down from the server, Curl applications can pass data and instructions back and forth rather than rich bandwidth-intensive content. "Oracle applications, for instance, download an entire JVM with the applications, and overwrite what you had before," Batty said. "If you can create structures that don't consume bandwidth, you're offering huge value." Another advantage, according to Batty, is the ease "of making 250,000 seats compatible. That's not ideal for client environments."
Batty took a swipe at Java, claiming it is "not a high-performance client-side environment and it's fracturing. Sun made an early mistake when it licensed the source code and enhancements of JVMs but failed to control the implementation. They made a homogeneous platform go away."
The difference between Curl code and HTML, Batty said, is that where Java or Flash are compiled at some intermediate stage, Curl content is compiled at a client-side plug-in, creating an implementation of the notion of an executable Internet.
Curl is targeting IT shops, looking to achieve high performance in Web-deployed applications, as well as the few surviving dot-coms, which must enhance advertising revenue with subscriptions and need a higher level of production quality in their content to have an end user pay money for it, Batty said.
An early user of the Curl technology is adisoft AG, a German company developing banking applications. "Curl allows us to combine the sex appeal of multimedia user interfaces with the speed of traditional character-based applications," said adisoft CEO Karl Schlagenhauf. "Curl not only makes our programs run much faster, but it's also a bandwidth multiplier." Curl claims to have 15 enterprise-class customers, but could not yet provide any names due to licensing and nondisclosure restrictions, according to a spokeswoman for Curl.
Although SurgeLab has been developed to ease the creation of Curl code, Curl "is not a tools company," Batty said. In fact, Curl code, which is delivered as ASCII source files, can be created in any text editor or browser. "We hope to encourage other tools makers to create development tools."
Curl is hoping to make the runtime and IDE ubiquitous by offering them for free atwww.curl.com. Curl charges five-hundredths of a cent for a kilobyte of executed content, and expects to hit the break-even point for cash flow some time next year, Batty said. Curl runs on all Win32 environments, and a prerelease of a Linux version was due out at the end of November, Batty said. The company also is working on a Mac OS X version as well as implementations for handheld computers and mobile phones, he said.
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