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51 Comments
- mindcrime, on 10/10/2007, -0/+51Online apps are nice, but there are still good reasons to use desktop software:
1. don't have a net connection everywhere
2. network connections are unreliable
3. there's no escaping latency
4. guaranteed perpetual access to your data
5. better control over security of your data
6. able to take advantage of local processing power - Bob042, on 10/10/2007, -0/+30Because sometimes I really prefer to have my data in a box in my room rather than in 743 other boxes strewn about the world.
- Jforsyth89, on 10/10/2007, -0/+24Until the internet can stream hundreds of GB's of porn almost instantly, than I will still be tethered to my computer.
- shifty2, on 10/10/2007, -6/+29well, *technically* you still need a harddrive. not just to run the OS w/ a web browser, but also you need a hard drive to store the internet cache which contains the online app. this is a misleading title and discription.
the main advantages of online apps is (in this case) are free, accessable w/ any computer w/ an internet connection and your files/documents are stored with that service. - mattmcm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+16"Why is it that despite the fact that you can do virtually anything from anywhere through the Net, most of us are still tethered to our computer because of the need for access to basic desktop software?"
Because not everyone is connected 24/7. - bpmdub, on 10/10/2007, -1/+14not technically true you could use a Live CD from most Linux distros(although very slow) or Live OS from a flash memory device
- edjay, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Oh yes, and people can pay by the month, by the week, by the day, hour, minute, and the big goal..............pay for every second of their computer time, at the same time as doing exactly what they're told to do, with what computer stuff! Sound like a familiar algorithm? :(
- ricree, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Not to mention that I'd much rather be "tethered" to a computer I own than to be completely at the mercy of someone else's server.
- shifty2, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9true, but regardless, you need some kind of storage other than a hard drive, flash memory, etc.
im sure there is a linux distro' live CD that you can install exclusively in RAM w/ NO other storage medium. sure, you'd need at least 1~2 GB of RAM... - Homunculiheaded, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5RAM alone would be enough, also distros like DSL can be entirely loaded into memory making one hell of a fast OS (only 50megs).
- wirelesshnic, on 10/10/2007, -0/+57. Business standards
while I am for the idea of online apps. With such a large group of choices there is no way to say send a meeting request in outlook and have people respond and organize it unless everyone uses the same app.
Also i dont think anyone would take you seriously as a professionally. Not that that is right. But its just the image you give off. - manitoba98xp, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5That's how just about every Live CD works. They'll use swapspace if available, but generally, they just create a ramdisk to store all written data.
- superguysteve, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4When did fake words like 'calendaring' replace actual words like 'scheduling'?
- NickSentowski, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Not all of the sites listed are free.
- uselessexpert, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Just 100 other ways were everything you do online can be tracked by to you!
Hmmm....anyone ever read Neuromancer?
Big brother, he is all over the place now, and becoming more intertwined in our every day lives. Just another reason I want to keep a lot of my personal matters off line... - robmclay, on 10/10/2007, -0/+48. Forced upgrades/downgrades
Would hate to fire up the browser and find a feature I depended on was gone, or changed significantly as to make me have to change my workflow. - eleven, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Anyone notice they seem to have left out one important category. Where the hell is the data storage section?
- thedragon4453, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Probably about when we decided that we didn't think funding our schools were that important :)
"Me fail english? That's unpossible!" - CaptainHarlock, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Password management. Did I miss something? Storing your passwords on-line somewhere sounds like a very bad idea.
- redboydotcx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I like some of these apps, but what several posters have said about giving away your data and relying on a third party is a big deal for me. I've got a lot of the functionality running on my own server:
Mail: Roundcube. The latest release fixed search, and seems much faster. Its not GMail, but its as close as I feel like I need to come.
Bookmarks: Scuttle. They implemented a lot of the del.icio.us API, and it works really well for me. They haven't released in a couple years, though, and based on the amount of spam on scuttle.org, I'm worried about spam bots finding my install and battering it.
Task management: TaskFreak!. It rocks, exept that it can't send you reminders.
RSS: Gregarius. Love it, love it, love it! I added a plugin that puts a Flash MP3 player in front of MP3 enclosures. No more downloading podcasts unless I actually listen to them!
Misc: TorrentFreak for downloading Linux isos, and I've while there really aren't any good web-based music managers that I've seen, KPlaylist seems to suck the least. Not exactly a web app, but SamePlace is a Jabber client implemented as a plugin to Firefox; not full-featured, but its a good chat app, and its lead developer has some amazing ideas in the works.
I'm still missing a good calendar app, and way to have my system ping my phone or Jabber client. Its not anywhere near perfect, but I use these in place of desktop apps in several cases. I can SSL-ify everything, and I still retain full control over all my data. - BGPEREIRA, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Its a great idea; to be free of the OS and heavy hard drive! You could use a USB or flash drive for the OS. Will go well with a LIGHT WEIGHT (below 2 Lbs.) computer like the Azus E3 PC, or the Toshiba R500. But it must cost below $500. None of the name brand manufacturers are really pushing these specs & price - sad!!
- tsunamisteve, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3The revolution will not be televised. It will be webcast and available in iTunes.
- thedragon4453, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yeah, I was thinking kind of the same thing. Lots of digg stories lately about storing your stuff online. But when you can find HDD's for nearly .25/gb, why bother? I run out of space, and I go slap down 75 bucks and get another 200gb.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Unless i can play CS:S using my web browser then i give two hoots about web application. I said it before and i am saying it again. Web Apps != real Apps.
If you want an office on the go then just get a damn memory stick and install a linux OS fully customized to your needs on it or if You can have executables of your favorite Apps for windows on it. hell there are some many Office, Media and internet apps that directly run of and exe and done even need to be installed on a system.
Also carrying one flash drive around is far far more superior then remember your account id on 100 ***** websites. - pantuky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2No more hard drive!?!?! BAH! What rubbish! I will never have a machine without a sizable quantity of fixed, local, not-networked storage.
- ThisIsMyName, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3***** that *****! There was just another story on Digg earlier today explaining how to use Google securely as they default to regular (ie, insecure) for connections for everything except your initial login, and now another article's here trying to sell me on all these wonderful online tools. Hmm...
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Only a fool relies on online, 3rd party tools for their important data.
A lot of people see no problem with such things, and happily store their most important data, as well as their everyday emails and such online because it's so convenient (and it is!). But ask anyone who's been cyber-stalked, or who's had their identity stolen whether they would trust such services, and the resounding answer is always no. People only trust online services until they're confronted with the reality that there are thief’s out there, there are service outages, and there are no guarantees from these companies.
Remember all the stories when Gmail was in beta (The original beta, with limited invitations. Not this "production-ready" lifetime beta they use now to get out of lawsuits), about people losing months worth of emails, with no warning, and no backup to fall back on? This is the same thing right here waiting to happen. You can now (or soon will be able to) store 9GB's of email online via your Google account, but what would you do if you lost all that email? Do you have 9GB's of data backed up elsewhere?
Do you think that these companies really care about you? They’re there to make a buck 99% of the time. That’s the only reason they exist, and their forte is in product development. Not customer searvice. If your data is lost, and you haven’t planned for this eventuality, then you’re *****, plain and simple.
And you can threaten them all you want, but they owe you nothing. All of the free services have disclaimers and fine print which absolves them of any responsibility when it comes to you and your data, and most of the pay services have similar disclaimers, if you take the time to read them.
But some of these sites do have uses. You just have to learn about them, and plan your strategy.
For example, I use Gmail to store files offline using an app which treats my mailspace as a virtual drive. But before I do this, I encrypt the hell out of what I'm storing there, and I only use this as an off-site backup. My local copies are always here, and the online service only serves as a backup to the backups, so-to-speak.
And this makes sense, in the sense that if my houose burned down, my backups would go with it, but my off-site backups would be safe. This also protects me in the event that the company hosting my files suddenly gets hacked, loses the data, or just goes out of business, as my actual backups are not store on them.
I could ramble on, but I’ll finish with this:
If you’re going to be taken in by the marketing gurus of this “new wave” of Internet-enabled apps, keep several things in mind:
1. Always encrypt your data. If you’re using Google, make sure you use a https: connections, and monitor this (clicking links within secured Google apps will still redirect you to a non-secure connection). If you can encrypt stuff locally before sending it through any of these services. If you allow them to encrypt it for you, and your connection’s insecure, then so it your data before it reaches their servers!
2. Only use only services to store redundant backups. If you don’t have another copy of it, your original should not be stored online. And if you do store documents online, see point #1 above.
3. Investigate alternative offerings. If one company’s offering something, then it’s almost a guarantee that some other company is offering a very similar offering, often with some free perks to lure you away from their competition. Always shop around before deciding who to go with, and if you don’t want to bother reading their privacy and service contracts, you should at least search online to see what others are saying about their experiences with this company. You can save yourself a lot of aggravation later by researching your options. This holds true with most things in life also, for those keeping score at home.
4. Finally, investigate options that you can host yourself. Whether it’s on your main box, or an old PC that’s collecting dust somewhere, most people can easily setup a basic file server, and configure their firewalls to let themselves access these resources remotely.
Add in a free remote IP service (http://www.no-ip.com/services/managed_dns/free_dynamic_dns.html), and you can bypass these services altogether, and host it yourself. The only situation this doesn’t apply to is, of course, the off-site file backups. If your servers in your house, it’s obviously not off-site. Everything else is do-able though, from web-based email, to drag and drop file storage, to IRC hosting. After all, all these companies are doing is running services on a PC, and giving you access. You can do this yourself and eliminate the middle man. http://www.hotscripts.com/ is a good place to start, if you want to see what’s out there. You’ll be surprised what you can get for free these days. - duality, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I agree with you, because I happen to think that the need for an internet connection is no better than the need to use a specific computer. With the proliferation of laptop computers, this is becoming slightly less relevant. However, for the truly lightweight environment, you can't beat a custom-made suite of programs running directly from a flash drive. Until flash drives are big enough to hold large VMWare images, for example, it's probably the only way to carry your entire computing world in your pocket. (I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the future of computing resides on a flash drive.)
- Bob042, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3It's on there, #12 under calendaring.
- joseph11h, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2But they all take place within a web browser...I'm not sure if I like that too much. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't want my web browser to do everything for me! I would prefer actual programs that integrate with the desktop as is usual.
- scabbers, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2People resist Vista because it has things they don't like... good luck getting us to give up personal computers and use a glorified terminal. Why this idea doesn't ever seem to die, I don't understand.
- aliguana, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1when the link between the server and my machine is as fast as the link from my machine to my hard-drive, then I'll consider them. When the servers can give as much processor time to my app as my local machine can, then I'll consider it. When... ah, forget it..
I'm a fan of Gmail, Gcal and Google docs, handy for switching between home/work environments. Anything else... well, we'll see - farkdog, on 05/20/2008, -1/+2What he is talking about is called "revenue streams".
Internet service providers would LOVE for you to forget about your hard drive and rely on 3rd party providers, via the internet, to provide storage and application "services".
In other words, having a computer that functions when unplugged from the web makes you independent. When you turn your PC into a "thin client" with no hard drive, you become dependent on 3rd parties to use your computer. This means you are at their whim for continuity of service, cost of service, privacy, and a whole host of other issues.
No thanks for me. - redboydotcx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I got a cheap web hosting account. $400 for 2 years, 1TB storage, managed backups, 7TB/mo transfer. I hook it to my Virtual Private Sever and my desktop with SSHFS and Encfs. If you're on a Mac, you can use MacFusion with SSHFS and EncFS plugins, and its even (sorta) user-friendly.
- mego22, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1These are great apps, but I am still waiting on a good replacement for Visio. I have tried the ones listed, and they just don't get the job done.
- andrewtheart, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Unfortunately, you still need some memory device to store the web browser - whether it be a hard disk or flash memory. So the poster is fundamentally incorrect.
- Xenogis, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I have a hard drive because I have a life. That means I have pictures, music, and home video on my hard drive. Not just office programs and documents.
- bshock, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Idiotic. We want hard drives so that we can have some sort of control over information that's valuable to us. Leaving it all on the Web is leaving it all to Big Brother.
- gojeda, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The PC is still necessary because an Internet connection will never be as fast at a task that is running locally on your computer.
That being said, yes, some of these webware apps are nice, especially if you are, say, a traveler who does not travel with a laptop....but please do not mislead people thining they can toss their PC.
I will not bury this as some of these apps are quite good - dognose, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I don't know why they didn't include http://lunapic.com/ in their image editing list. Probably the best image effects online.
- kra1813, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0More rubbish for the dumb and naive.
- dcpweb, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I like the idea of being able to use application via web interface. only issue is security, what would be nice is the ability to use these applications on smaller devices such mobile or PDA.
p shah - www.dcpweb.co.uk - duality, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Flash drives are definitely the way to go, but if ID's and passwords are what's keeping you from considering certain online services, then consider this: http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/keepass_portable (It can also help you with your account information on 100 "regular" websites. *snicker*)
- haiduz, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Research salesforce.com
(for those too lazy, its a web app CRM solution thats all the rage nowadays) - sorensilk, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Here are my top 3 reasons I can't rely on webware:
Photoshop
Flash
Premiere
Oh, and video games. I have yet to be able to sit down at a computer at a internet cafe and play F.E.A.R. or CSS... - Snaffler, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1By not working on my documents online I at least make George Bush have to try a little harder to reconstruct everything I do. If I use online apps, the NSA et al just has to fire up their NARUS STA-6400 and scoop up all the data and they don't even have to break a sweat.
- Chopp3rDave, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1Shifty2 got BURNED!
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1They didn't miss it
ctrl +f "Remember The Milk" - mego22, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0Its number 12 on the list.
- abandonedhero, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1It's in there, #12.
- masterdbugger, on 10/10/2007, -5/+0"true, but regardless, you need some kind of storage other than a hard drive, flash memory, etc.
im sure there is a linux distro' live CD that you can install exclusively in RAM w/ NO other storage medium. sure, you'd need at least 1~2 GB of RAM..."
I've run a linux live CD exclusively into RAM on a machine with ony 256 MB ram. It ran slow, but it worked. Besides, most PCs nowadays HAVE 1~2 GB RAM anyways.
"Oh yes, and people can pay by the month, by the week, by the day, hour, minute, and the big goal..............pay for every second of their computer time, at the same time as doing exactly what they're told to do, with what computer stuff! Sound like a familiar algorithm? :("
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