You don’t have a lot of time. On the operating system market, there are lots of great products, like Linux. With Linux, you can easily customize the look and feel of your system, tweak every aspect of the desktop to your specific needs. What many people forget to tell you is that this can take hours of work.
So how will you get your favorite daily comics to show up on your grandmother’s old ThinkPad?
If you have a passable Internet connection, there are ways of keeping everything on a server, instead of on your computer. Besides this, there is a growing range of web services, apps and sites available, which allow you to manage your daily lightweight computing and entertainment. Data security is an issue, although if you’re really worried about your documents, you can easily host some web apps on your own.
Web Operating Systems
Why not? Your tasks are performed mainly by the server your Web OS is on. In most cases you get a full desktop which you can tweak to your hearts desire, a basic office suite, and other everyday apps, like mail readers, FTP clients and other useful software. But the best part is, your fully customized desktop is available anywhere, anytime, in any (mainstream) browser, at its web address. I’ll name a few of my personal favorites: EyeOS (it got a Yahoo! tech award just recently, congrats!), Cloudo (still in alpha) and G.ho.st (3 gigs of space).
Of course, as always, Mashable compiled a mammoth list of +46. This guy scares me with his lists.
Mashups or customized jumping-off pages
More famous bloggers put these sites into the same category as Web operating systems, but I disagree, you will se why. Netvibes is one of the best data personalized data sites out there. There’s also iGoogle and Pageflakes. I use Netvibes, though (least kludgy). With an account at sites like these you can create a mashup of all the data you need to start and organize your day. Be it a simple Gmail checker, RSS feed, or a full-fledged to-do list, calendar, calculator, the possibilities are limitless. The community also creates its own widgets, and there are already thousands in the directory to choose from. So, while you don’t get a desktop, you can, theoretically, get a similar functionality.
Online apps
Zoho Office, Google Docs, Buzzword, Conceptshare, ThinkFree Office: all attempt to replace the software you are using now on your desktop. While they may not have all the features you notice in your full Microsoft Office 13, most people don’t even need them and a simple app like Google Docs can satisfy your word-processing hunger. At least the gOS team thinks so…
So there you have it. Even though there are other ways to synchronize your desktop software, you will always have a big advantage if you manage to keep them on the Internet and in your browser window.
And now a question for the readers:
Do you use any of these services? Why?
I’m writing this post on my Macbook in a hotel, using a 30 min WLAN coupon. Luckily, I stored all of my crucial sites I must have access to immediately as I log on, at Nevibes. It’s very simple stuff, everyone can do it. Of course, those using Firefox are always ahead, although Opera enables you to synchronize your browser.
Here are some tools which help you manage and store your online bookmarks:
Do you still keep your bookmarks the old way?
Most of my readers probably know I’m not very fond of Microsoft. Although, sometimes, an extremely rare thing happens: it’s when the talented people working at Microsoft actually get a chance to create something cool. In this small patch of cool between all the other Microsoft un-coolness is also the idea of making Microsoft Office more Web-capable.
Office 14, the next Desktop Office Suite (coming first half of ‘09), will feature more online power than the previous versions, which had the online capabilities of a dead frog with a 28.8k modem duct-taped to it.
Of course, Office Live Workspace already provided basic collaboration and synchronization for Word, Excel and PowerPoint (I wonder why people still use this piece of fecal matter for presentations), and there’s always Groove, but we still don’t have that for Access and other additional programs. So Gates said that this is about to change in Office 14.
Hooray for those still struggling with Windows, I guess.
InfoPath Services and Groove Services are fine, sure, but who has time to setup a server?
What I’m trying to say here is not that Microsoft should become Google Docs, but that there are easier ways to do it, for people who do not have the money and/or time for investing into servers. That’s what Google does right.
I just found about about a new start-up on the social media scene (in beta) , called Hurox.
Normally, what should follow is a description of this web 2.0 ’service’ website, but I’m still deciding what to say. Roughly said, Hurox wants to be everything.
The sheer wealth of information and apps, which Hurox provides, is a bit overwhelming for the newbie user, and that’s why I think it won’t be as appealing to such Internet users. Instant messaging, listening to music, selling art, they even managed to integrate a friggin’ online desktop environment!
Upon signing up, Hurox asks you a few questions to learn about your interests. This enables you to customize Hurox to some degree (I still see a lot of ‘coming soon’ labels on the site).
I’m still getting used to the interface (waaay to much information), I’ll probably post an update later and we’ll see if Hurox will avoid the dreaded Dead-pool.
And no matter what others are saying about it, I think the guys at Hurox made a brave step towards creating the ultimate entrance to the Internet. Props for that.
P.S. I don’t know why, but I find the site to be extremely amusing, reminds me of the “999,999 games in 1!” cartridges for the Sega Mega Drive 
Yup, Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s $44.3 billion bid. I kind of saw it coming, that’s why I didn’t post about the news in the first place. The Yahoo! Board of Directors now what they are doing. Yeah, sure, Microsoft attempted to sweet-talk them into the deal, but Yahoo remains independent. Whew! Thank goodness… what would it look like if Flickr were owned by Microsoft.
Now Yahoo… do the right thing and OPEN THAT SEARCH ALREADY!
