A small Massachusetts company headed up by some of the best brains at MIT, including Tim Berners-Lee, has released a new Web-building technology it says can replace HTML and JavaScript.
Named after the curly brackets that frame its commands, Curl 1.0 from Curl Corporation has generated more geek buzz than a Palo Alto Starbucks, and it's easy to understand why. With Curl's software, websites become faster by a factor of 10 times or more. Additionally, development time on a Curl website is significantly less than sites that use HTML and JavaScript, and is far easier to maintain, the company claims.
"Curl is a novel software environment," Curl's CEO Bob Young said. "Because it incorporates basically arbitrary kinds of content, it's being called a content language instead of just a programming language. Curl lets you insert any functional elements featured on the Web today -– but all working from a single language."
Curl Corp., based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is raising expectations industry-wide, not only because of its promise of speed, but also because of its all-star lineage. Curl's development team includes the "father of the Internet" Tim Berners-Lee and MIT tech luminary Stephen Ward. MIT tech guru Michael Dertouzos, who died in August, was also on the team.
Indeed, Curl's association with MIT's best minds has been a key factor in the company securing financial backing from the U.S. military's R&D arm and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), among others.
Curl's silver bullet is boosting the speed of browsing and developing websites. Websites that use a single language will provide a significant increase over today's sites, which utilize a growing number of different software tools such as C++, HTML, Quicktime, JavaScript, Shockwave and Flash and other plug-ins that enable content.
Once a site is up, visitors only need to download a single plug-in called Surge to view the accelerated pages. The plug-in is available free from Curl's site. The plug-in is currently available only for Microsoft Windows PCs. Versions for Mac OS X and Linux are being developed.
A second speed gain is found at the CPU. The Surge plug-in ingeniously uses the CPU to process pages built with Curl for page redraws, graphics processing, database duties and other tasks. In current technology, these bandwidth-hogging duties rely on distant servers and are constrained by the speed of the user's Net connection.
One company already reaping the benefits of Curl is Siemens. According to Young, Curl was used to build a new executive information system for Siemens.
"The application they wanted to replace took 300-man months to build and countless hours to maintain," he said. "But users wanted more function, and the engineers simply couldn't deliver them cost effectively with existing tools.
"The new application written using Curl was constructed in 300 hours. In the process, Curl provided vastly better speed, was tremendously efficient from conception to final development and will create the same kind of ongoing savings in site maintenance."
Besides Siemens, Curl is working with high-profile customers like the BTexact Technologies, a division of British Telecommunications, and Synergy Logistics.
"From our initial research into Curl, it sounds very attractive as a Web software platform," Louis Cardenas, creative director at Blonde Creative in San Antonio, Texas, said.
"Right from the get-go, it looks like we can save a lot of time -- building sites for our clients much faster and more cost effectively using (Curl) than with the current tools like HTML and JavaScript. The only stumbling block may be selling our clients on the idea that visitors to their site will need one more plug in, with the upside being a vast increase in speed. Once past that, Curl looks like a real winner."
While increased Web-browsing speed, heavyweight MIT name dropping and DARPA funding can't hurt Curl's chances, the company still has an uphill battle if it hopes to displace HTML and JavaScript as the Web's dominant language, especially in the Internet sector.
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Curl and a bevy of startups in this burgeoning sector is Microsoft. With its .NET software, Bill's minions could very well stomp in and eat Curl's lunch. Even without the threat of the Gates menace, companies may not have the resources, the time or the inclination to learn Curl to build sites. Users are generally reluctant to spend the time downloading plug-ins, and Curl could very well burn through its startup money and never be heard from again.
Plus, Curl isn't alone in trying to transform the market for Web software. Companies such as Fineground, Kanemea, Altio and Into Networks are all pushing forward with unique software tools intended to make the Internet faster.
Forrester Research CEO George Colony suggested that none of these companies will reach critical mass by winning one user at a time. Instead, he suggested their future will be secured in one fell swoop –- with an adoption by a mega provider such as AOL.
"Curl and the others can't make it by winning small battles," he said. "They have to get a big win early. I think that the biggest kingmaker in this sector will be AOL. If AOL were to choose Curl to build their version 10.0 (of the AOL browser), the Web landscape could change overnight and create a major setback for Microsoft's .Net and Sun's SunOne effort. Perhaps it would even elevate Curl as the next big language."
Analyst Peter Christy at the NetsEdge Research Group in Los Altos, California, said that Curl's growing adoption by the financial services market could be a major galvanizing factor in its success. Given Curl's all-in-one approach and speed increases, this market could loft Curl on an initial gust of market upside.
And in a strange twist, today's hostile tech market conditions might help Curl's chances at potential success, Christy said. "It's worth noting that this kind of slowdown has historically been a great time for looking forward, and a great time for grabbing market share when things defrost," he noted.
