Look Ahead: Head in the Clouds

by: Adreana Young

While working towards a PhD in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an idea popped into Ted Benson’s head: “Writing Web software is too much work,” he said. “And then once you’ve built something, it’s too hard to reuse it again.”

Out of Benson’s frustration and through his dissertation, he created a new language that reinvents the way Web applications are created, and from there, Cloudstitch was born.

Cloudstitch is Web programming software that introduces a new layer allowing users to snap together components from tools already used, said Benson, co-founder of Cloudstitch.

“HTML, spreadsheets, Dropbox folders, Word documents, and so on, your spreadsheet stays a spreadsheet. Your Web mockup stays a Web mockup, no change, but the data starts flowing dynamically back and forth between them, all at production speed,” he explained.

Jake Lau, co-founder of Cloudstitch, said the program saves time and money by cutting out the redundant coding a developer or enterprise programmer would have to spend time writing.

“Now, non-technical users can create, manage and broadcast data without dependency on a programmer,” he said. “Cloudstitch reduces the barriers of entry to Web programming down to the ease of a spreadsheet.”

Benson said that although Cloudstitch is intended for everyone on the Web, he and Lau have always hoped to work with journalists and newspapers from the beginning.

“Journalists are like eloquent cousins to programmers,” Benson said. “We’re both kinda nerdy, very precise, and create things to show to other people. Most importantly, journalists are eager to try new software that will help them communicate more effectively, which is exactly what Cloudstitch is trying to do.”

Specifically, Cloudstitch makes it easier for programmers and non-programmers to create and maintain interactive content for newspaper websites.

Benson said the hours Web developers would typically spend rebuilding content can now be spent on other projects because of Cloudstitch’s ability to reuse, modify and archive online content.

“This attention to lifecycle is something newsrooms are just waking up to. Digital media, and especially interactive Web apps, aren’t archived or reused as easily as paper. We hope to change that,” he said.

While Cloudstitch is still in its beta period, Lau said he and Benson are interested in working with newsrooms that want to experiment with them and the software.

Benson said they hope Cloudstitch will do for data what content management systems like WordPress did for text.

“There was a time when only programmers could create and publish text-based Web pages,” he said. “We’re trying to build a future where everyone can look back and marvel that once only programmers could build interactive, data-driven pages. We think that vision touches the entire Web. Nearly everyone has data of some form, and it is only natural that our publishing tools allow us to tell stories with that data.”

If you’re interested in working with Cloudstitch, visit cloudstitch.io/signup or email ted@cloudstitch.io.