I’m going to try this out NOW! I think 30boxes has a wonderful calendar and i used it for a long time before moving to Kiko. Sure beats google calendar. Although I must say, i really don’t see the point since you can get almost all the functions they offer on your real desktop by using third party apps, particularly if you’re using KDE on linux with Karamba.

Woww…. this is one impressive online app.!! I just logged in with my 30Boxes account and this thing looks practically identical to my OS X desktop! The Meebo icon is like the iChat one, the Google Search one is the Spotlight icon, the Calendar icon is the iCal icon. This is perfect if you like using OS X and are stuck on another OS like Win-dohs or Lie-nux.

I have yet to try integrating Flickr and stuff, but this is just plain beautiful! Great to see people putting effort into good online desktops/start-pages. My other favourites are Protopage, Netvibes and PageFlakes.

Digg this story.

No, that similarity of design to the Mac desktop won’t incur the wrath of Apple’s legal department. No, not at all.

“30 Boxes in an incredibly user-friendly calendar”

I hear this all the time on blogs everywhere… I must be missing something. I’ve always thought 30boxes has the ugliest hardest-to-use interface of almost any web calendar i’ve looked at.

When ever I see any good press about 30 boxes, i can’t help but laugh. gcal, spongecell, hipcal, kiko, the new 37 signals calendar that’s coming - anything is better than the 30 boxes UI. what am I missing?

“It’s definitely a shot at the Ajax home page crowd”

Do you really thing so? honestly? netvibes and pageflakes are both so much more polished and feature complete that this comparison is ridiculous. granted, “webtop” is a cute name, but what else does it have going for it?

why the hype? is it just a very vocal minority that uses it?

I gave it a try because I thought it would really act like a desktop. However, it’s hardly a desktop at all, just looks like one. Integrating Flickr and Gmail? Uh, no… only puts links to them (although I like that it grabs the favicon). Nothing happening on the deskspace, which is rather a waste of space.

Not trying to knock it, I just can’t see what everyone is excited about it.

I would call merely a quick start/view of your day. Not much use considering the power Netvibes, Goowy, and Protopage have to offer. With the exception of Goowy, you can integrate 30boxes (or whatever you choice Cal is. I prefer Airset) into many ajax home pages and have a more functional start page.

Adam,

Interface design is obvoiusly a personal choice. As the pioneer of the One Box entry and a full page simple design — “ugliest hardest-to-use interface” seems a bit negative, no?

We set out to be minimalist and have had a broad appeal. As far as the webtop — we aren’t really trying to do what netvibes and pageflakes are doing. In fact, we will most likely incorporate them into our webtop.

30 Boxes is a social network whose focus is to allow people to organize and share. The webtop was designed as an easy place to get started with web apps and a way to see what your buddies are up to (both within and outside of 30boxes).

Narendra,

While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I think that you guys could try something more original than copying off of Goowy’s interface (and while their’s is also inspired by Mac OS X, at least they were the first to bring that to the web). Even the name “webtop” and “organize, track [their site says 'communicate'], share” is taken straight from their site… in any case, I’m not trying to discourage you from extending 30boxes, which is a great service, I just think you guys are creative enough to differentiate yourselves from the rest. Good luck

Hart,

In all honesty, I hadn’t really looked at Goowy until just now. They certainly have a very slick flash app that is very impressive! For clarification, the first mac-like thing that I personally recall seeing on the web was from a link that Steve Rubel put up. As far as terminology, we decided to use the word “webtop” as a result of an article in B2.0 that put us in that category…

@ Narendra - Fair enough. That’s the idea I got when looking at it, that it is more for “social tracking” than an ajax start page. It’s just that everybody decided to put you in the same field as Netvibes and Goowy, but are not able to show how you would compete.

But it would be nice to know what you intend to add to it, and how you will integrate, as you put it, Netvibes, Protopage and their likes into it.

“In this case, though, things may turn out differently.”

No, it won’t. Apparently the vast majority of people involved in this reprise of the dotcom era are in their early to mid twenties and simply don’t remember what things were like in 1997-99. Those of us who were there at the time recognize the pattern:

- excitable and irresponsible VC investment managers indulge in wishful thinking about how things like a “webtop” will be the next iTunes or whatever

- The vast majority of applications are almost completely superfluous, emphasizing “cool” over substance. Nobody needed furniture.com and nobody needs a webtop when they already have a perfectly good desktop.

- Dozens of these companies spring up like mushrooms; sales are slim to nothing and the burn rate consumes the VC money in 18 months.

- 98% of them fail. A lot of people lose a lot of money. 2% succeed big time. A few people make a very large amount of money.

And so the cycle repeats itself. The fact is there aren’t all that many software breakthroughs ahead of us for another 10-15 years. By then we may start to see something like minimal speech comprehension, as well as integration with robotics. Then we’ll see some truly revolutionary changes. Until then, the gerneral public will barely understand what a “webtop” is let alone get excited about it in the way eBay excited people.

I am a little bothered with the use of “MAC inspiration” when all it ends up with is the same old web look. Yeah it’s ajax. But it has the same user experience complexities and overall it’s a traditional collection of traditionally designed web applications.

Maybe I missed the news - what are they?

If you feel like tagging along my real life experience - please do!

http://www.degardener.com/2006.....xperiment/

Some good points Steve. I’m not very optimistic about the whole web2.0 thing either. Sure, we’re going to get a few unexpectedly long-lasting companies, but the vast majority of all these cool little sites are going to disappear within two years. After perusing the site, I’m not impressed; essentially, it’s just another web desktop replacement… Ironically, I have icons disabled on my desktop, and the only thing there are Konfab–I mean Yahoo! Widgets. All these websites seem to be trying to become the next desktop, but they’re missing the point. You don’t really need a desktop, let alone a webtop.

The “inspiration” doesn’t quite work, in my opinion. And what’s with all the “layers” we are getting with webtops, feed readers and such?

Narendra, you say you are likely to incorporate Netvibes and PageFlakes in your webtop - I just can’t see the point. So your webtop would be a “layer” on top of Netvibes, which is already a “layer” on top of, say, blog feeds I subscribe.

Not to toot my own horn, but try out the 30boxes firefox extension. It is available at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2433/

The newest version even incorporates the webtop.

I am continuously releasing new versions, so read the 30boxes forums or visit my site … (in fact the one on mozilla is dated, waiting for approval on the newest one)

Hi guys,

There’s a nice website, probably the best I’ve tried…

There’s a demo on the right side of the website… take a look, your websites Netvi… flick… isn’t as good as that one !

sorry, the website is http://www.goowy.com