our blog

… no no, not facebook! Who cares about facebook when there’s so much stuff outside of it! Google, Yahoo, Flickr, your personal blog (if you have any of course) - you name it!

So despite everyone around being more and more bound to facebook, and touting it as the “next web platform, the one and only website we need” - sorry guys, I’m not buying it. However big, facebook is just that - a website. Sure you can meet lot of friends there, make great connections and build facebook apps - but thats still a closed platform - facebook’s platform. You can’t do everything you want there, you can do just what they allow  you to.  It was always like this - and it will remain this way. Not just on facebook, but everywhere - on every single web site out there (counting google too of course).

So what could be the true next web OS platform? Well, not a website of course. A browser. Or more precisely - a browser’s standard (though, one thing I’m sure is that there will never be just one standardized browser).

In his recent post about standardization  of Ajax UI in the future, Joel (the one from the software ) proposed a very interesting idea of some piece of the code, so called “NewSDK” getting catched in the browser:

“But then, while you’re sitting on your googlechair in the googleplex sipping googleccinos and feeling smuggy smug smug smug, new versions of the browsers come out that support cached, compiled JavaScript. And suddenly NewSDK is really fast.”

All the above is very interesting of course, but hey, sky is the limit - why write only “Ajax NewSDK”? Why not complete webapp SDK. When your browser is no longer a browser but provides a complete SDK - it’s effectively becoming more than a browser - a programming platform on its own.

Imagine web widgets installed not on your facebook account, but on your browser (no, not just google-bars etc. I mean REAL applications installed on the browser) - connecting together not just your facebook friends but ALL your friends from all social networks. Imagine being able to select which SDK, which web standard you want to upload to your “browser-OS” and run natively (single sign-on anyone? Office 2.0 to stay?) - and which one you just don’t want to use anymore.

Imagine browser being your desktop, your place of work, your PC… whoow, say that again? Yup. The problem with Joel’s theory is that “caching SDK on my browser” means installing software on my computer. So if it really is going to happen, if we really are going to see browsers becoming new web platforms - then it means “Personal Computer getting personal again”.

But hey, thats not that bad. After all, we all loves our PCs. And despite all the “net is the new thing” stuff, everyone single person I know have their own PC at home. So I believe it will take a while before we really starts becoming so “free” to use “our documents anywhere we like”. PC is here to stay - its not longer the only elements of our home network, but still an important part. But the way we are using it - will change. Behold facebook and microsoft, for the power of Internet is not in PC vs. Web fight, but in connecting both world together and melting the border between then - the border which for most of us is our web browser.

The day when my next OS appears to be giant web browser with just some top-layers apps constantly caching streams of data from various websites out there is the final destiny for sure. But what’s the first step from where we are here to where we are suppose to be then? Build more browser/web apps. And FireFox/IE, please let those apps integrate better with user’s browsers. We are sooo tired of “helpful” browser plugins like google of yahoo-bar. We want full grown apps now. Its the next natural step. Let the browser be your platform.

In one of my previous posts I wrote about office 2.0 and how it will have to face problem of privacy and owner’s control over sensitive business informations. Today I want to add last short bit to what I said then.

First of all it seems like the idea of “office 2.0 - PC no more” is getting more and more popular as top “big boys” as I call them, are all announcing their own version of effectively the same thing - online version of an office suite.

• Google announcing the launch of Presently, their Web-based Powerpoint clone. Interestingly enough, one would have expected presentation software to be the most obvious application to move to the Web first instead of the last.
• Yahoo! announcing the purchase of Zimbra, a developer of a Web-based office productivity and collaboration suite.
• Microsoft announcing the it would integrate Web-based storage and collaboration into it’s desktop office productivity suite.
• IBM announcing that it would ship it’s own branded version of an Open Source clone of Microsoft’s desktop productivity suite.

And thats all good news of course!

But the problem still exists, if I’m a business user, and I want to use those office suites then I need to feel I still have control over the data I’m editing. In other words I don’t want to use Google storage of Microsoft storage - I want to use “my harddrive” - my own storage.

But what is “my harddrive” in the age of Internet? I guess its not longer the real harddrive on my computer (although it could be of course - if I’d be really paranoid). Instead I bet that the “new harddrive” of the future will be grid-based storage systems like Amazon S3, Google File System or Parascale

What we need to see in macro scale is those systems to get adapted for the needs of end-users, normal folks like you and me. Not just developers and web 2.0 startups. I want to have my own “space” (storage) in Internet, one that I know I control in 100% - but one that is there online, and which I can access from anywhere I like. And that storage is already our there in form of storage grid systems - all I need now, is somebody to make it available for “private users” like me.

Then step 2, would be providing some kind of API, a connection between those online office suits and online “private” storage systems. This way, using my “online text editor” I could choice WHERE I want to save my file - and I wouldn’t be forced to use Google File System - I could use anything I like incl. my good old “off-line” harddrive.

Of course such “storage solution for the masses” could be an excellent solution also for other online apps - as I believe the more stuff people will do online, and more and more they will need they own “private” storage out there - one that is not limited to any “corporate” system, but which is fundamentally their own.

Sounds like a business idea? Sure it is. I bet that one day “MyHardDrive.com” or however it will be called, will be one of only couple of online storage standards, and it will make a really good money. A REALLY good money.