More On Browser-Based Desktops

by Paul Sherman on April 9, 2007 · 1 comment

Turns out there *is* a real article, not just a sidebar, about browser-based desktops on CNET. Here’s the link to the story.

You might also want to check out the comment left on my previous post from a goowy.com guy named Alex (they’re the folks who bring you yourminis.com). He makes some pretty interesting points. Thanks for commenting, Alex!

I still get mildly freaked out when I get comments, especially from people who are somehow related to the topic of the post. It’s the “holy crap, people actually read this?!?” kind of freaked out.

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I think the CNet article (and frankly, most of the companies discussed in it) confuse the functionality of the OS with what users perceive as a value in a desktop, which I believe is File Organization. That is, to the average user the value in a desktop is a file explorer and program launcher, pretty much. I don’t think they care about APIs and getting a 5 day weather forecast in a popup.

Let’s take a look at a sample project. Let’s say it’s a project to build your dream-home. And let’s say we’re going to use web services for everything. I may have Writely/Google documents to describe what I want, A bunch of sample photos on Flickr, a google spreadsheet or two of the economics, some Scribd-hosted scans of work permits/official documents, some walkthrough videos videos on youtube, not to mention emails, contacts, schedules, and all the other stuff.

A web desktop should be able to organize all those for me in the way I want them organized: by project, not by site. And they use (and are stored) across many different websites. I shouldn’t need all my files to use the same protocol or all be in the same suite of tools. So, Del.icio.us is the closest website to do that, AFAIK. Delicious doesn’t really do the best job at being a file organizer, but it’s oriented towards bookmarks and self-organization, and all you really need to qualify a site as compatible is make sure they support direct links to your individual documents.

Windows itself goes a step further, actually allowing you to organize both local (saved on your PC) and online files in a single folder simply by dragging URLs from your browser into a folder. Of course, it’s not available from any PC.

So that’s the key to a web-desktop right now, and right now no one’s really going there. Yet.