Recently I ran across Rawkets, a slick site taking two emerging web technologies -- HTML5 Canvas and WebSockets -- and combining them in the most obvious way possible: a multiplayer space shooter.

Why Canvas? No plugins -- graphical Yes; and why WebSockets? Low latency -- multiplayer Yes.

Sadly, every time I join the game, nobody else is there. If I wanted single-player HTML5 gaming, I could check out another project by Rawkets' creator, Rob Hawkes:  straight-up Asteroids, using the HTML5 game engine Impact.

But WebSockets won't help Asteroids, because Asteroids runs totally on just one client. 

Rawkets, on the other hand, has multiple clients running Canvas, with their own JavaScript, connecting via WebSockets, all taking through Node.js on the server, producing something like this:

I can't tell whether the game is any fun, because I've never seen anyone else in there. (Also, it doesn't seem to work in Chrome). But as a tech demo it's a cool idea, and conceptually straightforward enough to inspire. (If you're impressed, Rob also links from the game site to to his HTML5 Canvas book -- though apparently the book assumes virtually no knowledge of Canvas or JavaScript, and doesn't progress all that far.)

Check it out, and maybe shoot someone else's ship down -- fairly fairly, of course, because WebSockets will keep multiplex channels persistently open...