151 weeks agoNew Web will not kill desktop

At least I hope so. Web apps get more powerful every month and soon we will be able to store all our data online (some people already do, depends on what you do with computers). Even if webapp user interfaces matched desktop in quality and the network lag was gone, I'd still be unhappy if OS was reduced to networking and a browser. We can only say we control our data if we have the originals or a complete copy. They say that control is shifting to the user, but in fact it's not inherent to the emerging web technologies. I use Gmail web interface for my e-mail, but I also run Thunderbird every few days to make sure I have a recent backup. When I first signed up with Bloglines, despite its obvious potential, before I started to use it as a primary syndicator I checked that it allows exporting of my subscriptions. This is a very important point, if we don't want to be played by service providers we need control over our data. Gmail offers users mailbox access via a POP3 protocol. It is only possible because that protocol already existed, was implemented many times and was used by a lot of software out there, would POP3 not exist, my guess is that there would be no way to backup your mail. There's only one reason why every service provider would offer all of the data in a portable format, that reason is demand. POP access to mailbox is demanded because there are POP clients that people actually use, no other reason for that. Some companies offer their data because they see the marketing potential or whatever else they are thinking, but those are few and far in between. Most big websites only added RSS feeds because they had to, because of the competition, because it was demanded. Few people would demand data to be open just because they believe in it or because they look ahead and see the dangers of being locked out. Most people only care about immediate benefits and to make this majority demand openness we, the people who do look ahead, have to create those benefits readily available to those who would use open data. When data are private, like mail, we can't rely on third-party copies and backups (like archive.org), the only ones who we can trust to backup it are ourselves. To make a copy we need to be able to access the original, and again, the only reason service providers would universally offer this access is demand. This demand can be created by having desktop applications to use that data. And once that data is available it will enable more variety and creativity in software technology in that area. That always leads to better solutions and workflow, which in turn makes life better and that is what everybody wants anyway. Hectic logic but true nonetheless.

Questions?