Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

Everyday we create more and more digital files that record our lives.  We take selfies (with and without our loved ones).  We record our baby's first step.  We take pictures of things that we have or would like to have.  The number of digital file and artifacts we create grows and grows and the places where we can store them seem to have almost infinite capacity.  Smart phones with 64Gigabytes of storage, could hold almost 20,000 MP3 files (roughly 1,000 hours of listening time, or about 6 months of listening 8 hours a day).  Amateur cameras can have the same amount of storage, and depending on image size and frames per second can store days of continuous recordings or about 500,000 still images.  We can and are creating more digital artifacts than we can manage.  Being able to create so much, means we don't care about what we create.  We create because it is easy.  We create because it is fun.  We create because we have a new toy...

We often encounter web services that take a very long time to respond to our HTTP requests. In the case of an eventual network failure, we are forced to issue the same HTTP request again. We frequently consume web services that do not support REST . If they did, we could utilize the full range of HTTP methods while retaining the functionality of our application, even when the external API we utilize in our application changes. We sometime wish to set up a web service that takes job requests, processes long running job queues and notifies the clients individually or in groups. HTTP does not allow multicast or broadcast messaging. HTTP also requires the client to stay connected to the server while the request is being processed. Introducing HTTP Mailbox - An Asynchronous RESTful HTTP Communication System. In a nutshell, HTTP Mailbox is a mailbox for HTTP messages. Using its RESTful API, anyone can send an HTTP message (request or response) to anyone else independent of the availabi...