good luck…

Moreover, since you evidently don’t read too closely either, the makers of this “web desktop,” Sapotek, don’t refer to this as a WebOS or a platform. To the contrary, they make a point to say that it’s not a WebOS and that calling it such would be “premature.” And, one last thing Mr. Smart Guy… the front end is in Flash, not Ajax… so if “anyone can create one,” I suggest you go and do it with your four computers and 50 apps. For the rest of us plebes, Desktoptwo is a life saver, not to mention a great service.

So it all comes down to values for the users. What problem is it trying to solve? Right now, I can’t think of any for myself. I have 4 laptops and use about 50 desktop applications. Very few of them can be replaced with any Web-based applications. Even Gmail is a part-time solution.

Think about SMBs. Companies that do not have a network admin, that do not want to license exhange, plus other apps and then have to worry about managing it all themselves.

Solutions such as these provide a low cost, low headache option for common everyday tasks such as email, contacts, calendar, rss, file management and more. Don’t think about this as a desktop over your existing desktop but rather an integrated simple to use toolset that you can access and interact with from any computer.

Does that have value? I believe it does…look at companies that have built successful businesses based on that principle – salesforce.com.

There are other companies such as goowy, zimbra, webmail.us, intranets.com, etc. that are focused on a huge growing SMB market with a very similar value proposition.

One last point, it is much easier to be a critic than to be open minded and to think about the potential value that something may have, even if its not immediately apparent.

Questions for Flash platform gurus:
-how would I import data from my computer, will this be possible? (e-mail would work I suppose)
-is the data channel cleartext, obfucated or encrypted
-does this use RTSP to communicate with the server
-will custom app dev be possible?

The communicated focus is on providing applications through the desktop to the user. But I think a far more interesting angle is looking at the communication and management of digital assets. Right now, if I use a multimedia based ASP and I want to share my content with someone, I need to go find it, download it, and then send it out on my email. This kind of service allows for the distribution of the online multimedia burden for the media service providers. And because it’s server based, sending email from my webos to someone else on the same service requires no bandwidth.

So I’m far more interested in what’s not being said. I have a feeling that Sapotek’s communicated business model is intended for their competitors as much as anyone else. I think there’s more here than meets the eye.

This is a *STEP* in the right direction, not a leap to the top. Where will web-based operating systems be in 10 years, 15 years, and so on, especially when broadband might be as free as air?

Web-based operating systems might fail completely, or they could bring new meaning to consumers who use their computer for nothing more than general computing (think 85% of the population). Think of it from a enterprise standpoing – corps could install the backend on their intranet and ditch the extremely expensive multi-user agreements.

There are plenty of uses, but I don’t think they will be realized until +8 years from now.

Creating a login almost killed my browser there…

Maybe I’ll try it again and come back with a less irritated report…

Regards,
Shri.