The internethas been dead and boring for a while now. It has reached a point of stability where flashes of technological creativity are rare, but every now and then some new technology can put a spark back in the ole gal (no sexism intended).

If you haven’t heard ofWebHooks or PubSubHubBub its about time you did. Both are designed to simplify and optimize the web.

Webhooks let applications talk to each other using very simple HTTP. Webhook enabled applications run (so far) on app hosting sites in the cloud. What makes them different is that they constantly scan for POSTS to a designated URL. To use the application, you register your application with the other webhook enabled application and provide a callback URL. You POST data from your app to the url of the receiving app, and monitor the callback URL for its response. Your app then takes the POST it received and processes it.

I will give you a simple example. Your accountant sets up an app for all their customers that has all the sales tax rules for every community in every state. Every time your company makes a sale, your oline store application sends the transaction ID, amount of taxable goods and the long zip code where the sale was made. The webhooks enabled app receives it, calculates the correct salestax and immediately sends back the result to your online store which incorporates the local sales tax information it received in the invoice as the customer checks out.

Continues @ http://blogmaverick.com