Access your applications any time, anywhere with Web 2.0

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.’