Soon we'll be able to access all our everyday applications and data via the Internet

Wouldn’t it be great if you never had to install another piece of software? Or how about being able to avoid upgrading your favourite applications every time a new version is released?

What if you could access all the software you want to use with nothing more than an Internet connection and your trusty web browser?

Well, you can – almost – with a new breed of applications that are discarding the Microsoft Windows desktop in favour of an Internet-based platform that can be delivered to any user, anywhere, anytime.

The web is changing. New technologies that are often dubbed Web 2.0 are being developed rapidly. Users are embracing blindingly quick Internet connections that are becoming ubiquitous, and asking why they can’t use the applications they rely on every day as easily as their favourite websites.

Desktop application developers and the new start-up companies that are embracing the ‘webtop’ will soon go head-to-head, to win the hearts and wallets of users who are becoming increasingly frustrated with desktop-bound applications.

Old-guard developers such as Microsoft and Adobe will have to look at their business models and modify them, so the webtop becomes more central to their products’ functionality and relevance to users.

However, there is a shark circling these leviathans.

The great white Google with its massive user base and inherent evolution on the Internet could steal more than just market share. What would your computing world look like if there was a Google operating system (OS), for instance?

Google has had its chequebook out recently and snapped up Writely, the online word processor. This purchase fits well with the company’s online business model. And with advances such as Gmail, who needs Outlook?

Add a few more applications to its shopping list and the idea of a web-based OS doesn’t seem too far fetched.

Now broadband access is almost ubiquitous, the desire to make even more use of this massive data pipe attached to people’s homes is encouraging developers to come up with more than just new desktop applications.

The massive take-up of the Firefox browser, the demand for more computing power on the move, plus the need to access and use heavyweight applications such as word processors from any location, has ignited a new paradigm that has no time for the foibles of a desktop-bound operating system.

So what are these new applications, and what can they do for you that your trusty group of desktop applications can’t? Think about your last computing session.

Chances are you used your word processor, maybe did some accounts, made a few notes about the things you need to do this weekend, sent some emails and checked your calendar for any appointments you have to keep. All these tasks required you to start a variety of applications that rely on the operating system you’re running.

Life on the webtop is somewhat different. New web-based applications are challenging the foundation of desktop applications.

Flickr takes photo storage and blogging to new levels. Box enables you to store your digital files online and reach them any time you like. Writely is, in effect, a full-featured word processor you access via your browser, and is now part of Google’s empire.

Think Windows Wordpad that you access via an ordinary Internet browser and you’ll understand what Writely is offering. You could also try Ajaxwrite or Zohowriter.

Backpackit, Basecamp, Writeboard and Ta-da List all come from one innovative company that is placing a number of desktop utilities online.

Kiko is an online calendar application. If you use Hotmail, for instance, and want an Outlook-like calendar, Kiko offers just this feature. Protopage gives you a web page that can contain a wide range of information including news feeds and links.

And if you have a memory like a sieve, Rememberthemilk is an online things-to-do application.

If you always get stuck taking notes at meetings, look at Jotspot. And if you need to build a quick website and want to update this often, you don’t need Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage with Edit My Site Online.

Apart from being web based, all these applications have one thing in common: they can all be updated instantly. This is a radical shift away from the traditionally long software development lifecycle.

Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, who is widely credited with starting the debate about Web 2.0, stated: ‘The open-source dictum, “release early and release often”, has morphed into an even more radical position, “the perpetual beta”, in which the product is developed in the open, with new features slipstreamed in on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis.

'It’s no accident that services such as Gmail, Google Maps, Flickr, del.icio.us and the like may be expected to bear a “Beta” logo for years at a time.’

Cal Henderson, the lead developer at Flickr, said that it releases new builds up to every half an hour. The traditional application development cycle is being turned on its head.

It’s still early days for all the Web 2.0 technologies and the companies that are developing them.

But according to Clem Chambers, CEO of Internet businesses ADVFN, Microsoft had better keep an eye over its shoulder: ‘Almost unbelievably, the nerd fantasy of “death to Microsoft”, dreams of Apple ascendancy and the web as the platform all seem to be coming to pass.

Both Google and Apple are just a version away from becoming a credible replacement for Office and Windows.’

Chambers described the threat to Microsoft. ‘Office in particular looks like a dinosaur poised on the brink of a meteor strike of generic, free net-based spreadsheets and word processors. To consider Microsoft a monopoly any longer is to miss the fact that its hegemony is dead.

‘While Google is destined to quickly replace Microsoft as the new Bogeyman, Gates will have to pull off a most brilliant manoeuvre to stay anything like on top.’

Yet Chambers concluded: ‘Real-world inertia is still well entrenched and, while the “Internet messiahs” may see this future bright and clear, it may take until Web 3.0 for the reality.’

As applications migrate to the web, companies such as Microsoft must change. Otherwise, just as evolution breeds out those who don’t adapt to the prevailing environment, the only thing it has to look forward to is a steady decline and then extinction.

This certainly won’t happen overnight, but if there is one thing the rapid development of the web has clearly shown, things happen very quickly online.

When Gates failed to see the significance of the web, with the might of Microsoft behind him he was able to regain ground and stake a claim on the new online market. Can he do it again? Not many would bet against him.

You can see what Microsoft is thinking about for its move to more web-based applications at Windows Live Ideas.  

But with the next version of Microsoft’s operating system delayed and the changes afoot with its arch rival, Apple, where Microsoft moves next is open to debate. Its recent announcements of new applications that encroach into markets in which it has had no previous interest may suggest a desperation to hold onto its desktop-bound users.

With a rash of new beta releases, Microsoft has staked a claim in these established markets. The software giant's Expression Acrylic Graphic Designer competes with Adobe’s Photoshop; Expression Quartz Web Designer competes with Dreamweaver 8; and Expression Sparkle Interactive Designer competes with Macromedia’s Flash.

Whether these applications can unseat the established applications is yet to be seen. But if Adobe moved Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash to the webtop, this would leave Microsoft with little choice but to react to the changing market, where previously it had shaped it.

Microsoft, it seems, is facing a dilemma. Take its Max program. Designed as a platform for sharing photos, it competes with the Web 2.0 application Flickr, but the Microsoft application demands that users install Max on their computers, whereas Flickr can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection.

As users demand flexibility, can Microsoft continue to lock them in to desktop applications?

Office 2007 will soon be with us, sporting a new look and supposed improved usability. As one of Microsoft’s cash cows it’s certain to rake in millions in update fees, but how long can applications like this continue in the face of web-based versions such as Writely?

O’Reilly concluded: ‘While Microsoft has demonstrated enormous ability to learn from and ultimately beat its competition, there’s no question that this time, the competition will require Microsoft (and by extension, every other existing software company) to become a deeply different kind of company.

'Native Web 2.0 companies enjoy a natural advantage, as they don’t have old patterns (and corresponding business models and revenue sources) to shed.’

Whatever Microsoft does to fend off the attack on its desktop dominance, one company that looks set to govern the web-centric world is Google.

The company doesn’t have the baggage of the Seattle giant, and is trading in a very different market. No matter what Microsoft does with new operating systems, or radical interfaces to its established applications such as Word, it may be too little too late.

What would happen if Google released its own version of Microsoft’s Office suite? Word is a mature product, but with the resources available to Google, it might not take long for it to make Writely just as good.

When the time comes to upgrade to the next version of Office, a web-based alternative such as a much-improved Writely might prove more attractive to users.

Some industry watchers are even predicting that Google could go one stage further and develop its own operating system. The consequences of this event would mean a seismic shift in the way applications are developed.

Google is already building a suite of applications that includes Writely, Desktop Search, Gmail and Sidebar. If it bought companies such as Kiko, Backpackit and Box.net, it would have a suite of programs that would be tough to ignore.

And if it offered these for free, integrated with Gmail and Sidebar, it would then have a framework for a new webtop office applications suite, which would be just about irresistible.

The desktop, on the other hand, has always been a complex environment to deal with. Windows XP may be the most stable OS yet developed by Microsoft, but bolt on a few dodgy pieces of shareware and that stability can quickly go right out of the window.

With a web-based OS, the user would be oblivious to such concerns. The technical prowess of Google would see to it that the server you’re using is always up and stable. This would banish software conflicts forever.

This is, of course, just speculation, but if Google did offer an OS plus applications you could access anywhere, any time with any browser, it seems unlikely users would turn their backs and continue to install desktop applications.

So, if you wanted to move all your desktop applications to the webtop, could you do it today? The short answer is not yet.

It’s still early days, but these new web-based applications will develop at an astonishing speed.

The web-based applications we have now may not be as sophisticated as their desktop cousins but don’t forget, unlike desktop a pplications that need lengthy development cycles, an application on the web can be updated daily with nothing for you to do except use the new features.

Writely may not be anywhere near Microsoft’s Word yet, but keep an eye on it. One of the reasons Word is getting a radical makeover is that users were asking for features which were already present in the current version, yet they couldn’t find them as the program had become too complex.

Online applications such as Writely may be all you really need.

Clearly power users will stay with their tried and trusted applications. It will take nothing short of a nuclear blast to shift some users from Excel, for instance. The fact that it’s a cornerstone of many businesses should ensure its long-term future, but nothing is forever.

At some point an Excel killer will appear, and you can bet your shiny new dual-core PC that it will be entirely web based. Gmail has shown how a webtop application can free you from your PC’s desktop. If it had more of the capabilities of Outlook 2003, would you continue to buy upgrades to Outlook?

Another development, hand-in-hand with web-based applications, is how the data each application generates is stored. After all, crunching a spreadsheet in a cybercafé somewhere is great, but not if the data you need is back on your home or office PC.

The solution is to move the data your applications generate to the web, and this is precisely what is happening.

Companies such as Box.net are illustrating how you can store all your data online. Businesses have used online backup for years to secure data, but increasingly everyone will want their own slice of cyberspace to store their data.

Couple this with usable online applications and you begin to see how Web 2.0 and the webtop could free you from the current desktop paradigm. Users of Google’s Gmail service are already using their server space allocation to store more than just emails.

Costs are high if you want to store more than a couple of gigabytes, but prices will fall. Eventually the hundreds of gigabytes you have on your local hard drive will be online, ready and waiting for you to access the data with whatever web-based application you need.

Today the applications you use, the computer you bought and the operating system it runs have a symbiotic relationship. In the world of the webtop, this bond is broken. The move away from a desktop-bound operating system could finally give companies such as Apple a chance of cracking the mass market.

If you could have a Mac on your desk running its universally heralded operating system, you could have the best of both worlds. You’d have a great-looking PC, running a great OS, but you’d use the OS to run your favourite web browser as all your apps would be online.

Apple could find that the move to the webtop has a great knock-on effect.

Web-based applications are inevitable, but how far they penetrate into the bunker of the desktop has yet to be seen.

Andrew Betts, co-founder and director of software development company Assanka, offered his conclusions about what the future of Web 2.0 could be: ‘Sites that provide outdated features and poor interfaces often have to rely on the quality and comprehensiveness of their databases to get people to use their service.

'This is changing, as more and more information providers are seeing the benefits of opening their databases and casting their data as far and wide as possible. As more sites provide other features that add to and enrich the data, everyone is better off.

'It’s exciting stuff, but we’re not quite there yet. Perhaps this is only an intermediate release, a Web 1.5.’

The membrane that separates desktop applications and the webtop is becoming more porous by the day. We can now create our own news feeds, website links and blogs so we take only what interests us from the sea of information that is online.

Web 2.0 means more control over this content. But it also means that as consumers we can become creators. Podcasting, music mixing, blogging, portal websites and mobile access all become one, using the tools Web 2.0 is offering.

If documents, emails, presentations, calendars, photos and all the other digital content we produce was online, you could not only get at it more easily, but you could also share it with others.

Placing the applications we all need to create and control this data is the next logical step. But it’s a step that will mean a tectonic shift in how we use the web.

Web 2.0 technologies: Building Web 2.0

Ajax
The new breed of web-based applications is not being built with just one technology or language. Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) is a collection of tools that includes some familiar languages such as XHTML, XML and XSLT, but it uses them in new ways to harness the power and versatility that the web offers.

Programmableweb
One of the central themes Web 2.0 supports is that the web becomes a development platform in its own right. In order to do this, new APIs have to be developed that allow developers and users to take code and, as with digital content, create a ‘mashup’ that results in Web 2.0 applications.

Flock browser
The Flock browser is one of the first realisations of social networking that has come to define what Web 2.0 is really about for the end user. Simple HTML links give way to more meaningful searching as users determine what is relevant in the images and data they place within the Flock browser.

Ning
Ning is another application builder that allows you to construct your own social applications with a point-and-click interface, but you can edit the code if you want to. Developed by Netscape’s inventor Mark Andreessen, its ‘playground’ allows interactions between users and applications to be managed under the playground application.

Resources
Will Microsoft lose in the race to Web 2.0?
PCW interviewed Joe Wilcox, senior analyst, Jupiter Research, to get an insight into Web 2.0 and Microsoft's role in its development

Wikipedia
If you’re looking for an overview of Web 2.0, the Wiki entry is a good place to start.
Tim O’Reilly: What is Web 2.0?
Tim O’Reilly really started the whole Web 2.0 debate. Read what he had to say on his site.

Web 2.0 for web designers
Designing for Web 2.0 requires a new skill set and an insight into the new paradigm.

Semantic Web
Web 2.0 could be what Tim Berners-Lee always intended the Internet to be. Read about the semantic web here.

Techcrunch
If you want to keep bang up to date with what’s happening with Web 2.0, bookmark this site.

Emily Chang: eHub
Want to see the latest sites with Web 2.0 capability? Emily’s eHub collects the very best.

Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog
Part of the Web2 Workgroup, this blog has up-to-date information and comment.

Cluetrain Manifesto
Many of the central themes of Web 2.0 can be traced back to the Cluetrain Manifesto.

What is Web 2.0?: Views from the industry

Esther Dyson, editor, Release 1.0 for Cnet Networks
‘To me, Web 2.0 means apps that rely on the users to add value, and where the data they trade has meaning: it’s places, people, times, tags, often items with unique identities, instead of simply sequences of 1s and 0s or even strings of text or images.

‘That makes things not just easier to find, but much easier to manipulate. To the user, Web 2.0 applications feel more intelligent and easier to use.

‘Instead of typing or pasting stuff in, you can expect one app to recognise data from another and use it accordingly – in mashups and in all kinds of transaction-processing applications.

‘Another Web 2.0 approach is the presence of people: it’s not just you and your data, but you and your friends and their data, too.’

Robert X Cringely, author and commentator
‘Web 2.0 is the same as Web 1.0, except Web 2.0 works.

‘The Internet industry came into being in the mid-1990s with the idea that everyone was going to eventually be on the web and doing so would change all our lives. That was true but it took about a decade longer to happen than people expected.

‘What we underestimated back then was the bandwidth and processing power required to, for example, bring acceptable video entertainment over the Internet.

‘It took that long, too, for the web to fill up with enough knowledge and disinformation to be an adequate substitute for an encyclopaedia, a telephone directory, a department store or a supermarket tabloid.

‘Nearly all the ideas being pushed by Internet start-ups today are the same ideas that led to the birth and ultimate death of a previous generation of start-ups. It’s just that this time we know how hard it is to accomplish these feats and we have an even larger audience eager for us to do so.'

Simon Crab, creative director of Lateral
‘Web 2.0 promises to fulfil the original expectations of the Internet: Remember “The greatest social revolution since the Guttenberg bible”? Instead we got 10 years of broadcast model brochureware.

‘Web 2.0 is a “many-to-many”, user-controlled, platform-neutral (mobile, web, RSS, GPS, VoIP, blogs, search, podcast, gaming devices) paradigm – made by everyone, for everyone, everywhere.’

Andrew Betts, co-founder and director, Assanka
‘Web 2.0 is often considered a name in search of a technology, and I think it’s more of a philosophy than a technological innovation.

'Website developers have long tried to engage their audiences, interactivity being one of the driving forces behind the success of the Internet, but Web 2.0 is really about making websites interact with each other as well as the end user.

'Sites no longer necessarily succeed because they have the best data, but because they offer users the best ways of interacting with it.’

Kara Pernice Coyne, director of research, Nielsen Norman Group 
‘Web 2.0 is a conference, a magazine and a concept. More importantly, it is an organic platform that changes and responds to everyday additions and transformations on today’s web. So rather than discuss what Web 2.0 will be, I’d like to consider what it needs to be.

‘In the current web there are few instances where users can benefit from knowledge transference as they move from site to site because interfaces – even those that accomplish the exact same goal – are wildly different.

‘Why do we have thousands of variations on a simple ecommerce checkout process?
‘In the future, deriving a few great design alternatives (which would of course be usability tested and iterated to the hilt) and standardising some of the most basic website design elements would keep readers and customers productive, happy, and spending money.

‘And Web 2.0 designers would be free to spend more time and creativity doing greater things.’

Peter Morville, Semantic Studios
‘What is Web 2.0? I have no idea. I’ve studied the manifesto, the checklist, and the validator. It’s about tags, feeds and mashups. It’s a technology, a business model, a way of life. It’s about everything and nothing.

‘Seriously, while it’s good to celebrate the Internet’s evolutionary successes, the Web 2.0 hype goes too far and not far enough.

‘On one hand, the technorati are just plain wrong to suggest the demise of publishing and the end of hierarchy. Books and blogs and folksonomies and taxonomies will coexist in rich information ecologies.

‘And on the other hand, they are missing the real revolution that’s beginning at the crossroads of the Internet and ubiquitous computing.

‘Is this Web 2.0? Web 3.0? Who knows? Who cares? We’re creating an Internet of objects we can barely imagine. Let’s forget the semantics and enjoy the ride.’

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