Years ago, people were talking about a future full of web-based applications. No, I don't mean all those high end pay-as-you-go business oriented tools. I'm talking about replacements for applications installed on your personal computer. I was kind of dubious about this prediction.
Not long ago, I started maintaining a couple of my email addresses fully on web-based mail accounts (and not, not just gmail and yahoo, though I have those too). One account is for professional oriented mailing lists. Having the account, and the archives of sent and received messages, available via the web just made the most sense. I can then access the account fully from home, work, or where ever I am.
About two years ago, my Palm Pilot croaked. I've been meaning to get a replacement, but I just haven't had the funds. In the interim, I've been keeping all my calendaring and contact information on Yahoo. I think there is a way that I can sync up that info with my cell phone. I just haven't gotten around to it. But, during the meanwhile, I can get my contact info and check my calendar from any where. Also, when I enter appointments in Yahoo's calendar, I can have it email me twice to multiple email addresses to remind me of the appointment.
Today, I found out about a new product in beta from Google. Writely is a web-based word processing and collaboration tool. You can create and store documents using their interface, or you can upload MS Word compatible documents and edit them using their interface as well. In addition, if you would like to work on a document collaboratively with one or more people, you can grant edit access to any document to any number of people. What's more, you can 'publish' your document so that limited people can see or, or you can make it available to the world. There are other features as well. It is definitely worth checking out. I might find it handy to have some key personal documents available through the site, since I can't connect my personal USB thumb drive into my workstation at my new job (due to security policies).
It sounds like Writely is the first of several planned desktop-replacement applications coming from Google in the coming year. Check out the intriguing story from Techcrunch. I'm definitely going to keep my eye on them.
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2 comments:
Yet, strangely, I don't hate Google the way I do Microsoft. Why is that?
The cool thing about web-based personal applications (mail, calendaring, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.) is that you should be able to use them with moderate hardware and any operating system. As much as I despise Microsoft, they did bring computing to the masses with their GUI. However, they also increasingly brought bloat and instability to the OS, security issues on the desktop, and the need for ever-beefier hardware. If Google, and others, make it so people can have their standard applications regardless of the hardware and OS they're using, computer use will truly be open to the masses.
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