Here's the presentation that we were going to give at Mashup last Thursday... before we realised we only had 60 seconds and weren't allowed slides.
A little bit about Hemlock
1. Ummm... if you are on this site, you probably know who Mint are. Fearless social software pioneers, etc.
2. Hemlock is our new framework. The aim is to allow easy development of real-time many-to-many apps, following the inspiration of Ruby web frameworks like Rails and Merb.
3. It can be used for applications such as games, play, collaboration and betting.
4. To date, almost all websites consist of an HTML front-end on an SQL database. Any 'real-time' actions are simulated through polling.
5. There are a number of problems when this is used in 'real time' situations. The main two are that it results in high server load and much unnecessary traffic.
6. Hemlock deals with this differently. A client registers for message and is only contacted when a relevant one arrives.
7. We have built a couple of demo applications with Hemlock. This one is a collaborative drawing tool, allowing users to work on the same canvas together.
8. This is a version of the much-loved game Trumps, allowing up to four players to play and chat in real time.
9. We plan to release Hemlock under an open-source licence in February. Our first real Hemlock application, Football3s, will beta at a similar time.
Watch this site for updates or get in contact for more information.
UPDATE: Visit hemlock-kills.com for more info.