Two posts ago, i worked out the idea of a webtop, as suggested by someone who believed that it is the future of most graphical interfaces.
Well, i found this article, saying that no, they don’t think it’s going to happen.
Why it won’t work, according to them:
- the whole ajax thing is too heavy on memory
(ever tried the hyped Yahoo Pipes ?) - it doesn’t really add any functionality as a trade-off for all the effort
I can add a few points of my own
- security: we’re not out of the woods yet with javascripty applications
- the sandbox: a browser normally limits your access to the machine – so any in-system checks like for instance showing your memory and cpu usage, or processes are not possible
On the other hand, there’s some nifty and fast web-applications out there – a lot of them by Google (whom most suspect will introduce an all-web desktop someday soon).
So i can’t really say how it will turn out.
I can only say that i like my desktop local, varied and open source, thank you very much.
On a more cheerful note: the bizarro link of the day
(Truman show frat-boy version. looks like he’s a chick magnet as well, could be the camera on his ear, sexy or what)
Now somebody please explain to me why this is a successful startup 
I want to react to this: “it doesn’t really add any functionality as a trade-off”.
I believe it does. Making webbased applications, you can add some things that are not possible on the desktop:
- access to my data any time, any place, any device
- take away the hassle of installs, updates, patches
- put the responsability for backups on someone else
This alone is sometimes enough reason. People are willing to sacrifice features/quality for convenience. (Look at the mobile phone: we’re paying a higher price, have louse reception and lower quality of speech – but we have the convenience of carrying the phone wherever we go.)
But most of all, you could add THE killer feature: social connectivity.
Imagine this: a Photoshop where your ‘patterns’ (the way you make layouts) are stored, and shared online with like-minded people.
Social aspects will be the killer application/feature for the webtop.
mmm yes, but the social connectivity is already possible now, without needing to restrict the desktop to a web interface.
).
To me, webtops are a limitation of what you can do on a computer (unless there’s a cheat code to get to the command line
On the other hand, for non-IT people, it probably wouldn’t make any difference, and could even be prettier/more ergonomical.
And i wouldn’t mind seeing it on mobile devices, since we don’t need that much functionality there anyway.
the future is there already
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/20/170211&from=rss
If you can read dutch, read the predictions I made in 2004:
http://www.netlash.com/log/trends_in_e-business
spot-on, zou ik zeggen. respect.