I am definitely seeing some movement towards what you are envisioning. More and more applications and collaboration sites are springing up on the web. These are sites like Flickr, Foldera, Writely. For those of us who have been in the industry for a long time, it is somewhat like going back to the days when all the applications ran on a corporate mainframe and you used a terminal to connect. Think about it, the mainframe is now the internet and your terminal is a browser.
The catch to all of this is going to be the revenue model. I really don't know how much longer it is going to be 'free'. Things that concern me are the proposals for charging companies for delivery of email or internet providers charging for the amount of data downloaded. TV was free for a long time and then cable came along. Is that what is next? Some type of provider where you pay for content or access that is advertisement free?
On the other hand, I've been terrible at predicting what products will take off. I was a naysayer for Windows and I didn't see why anyone would want a blog.
Well you have several markets to consider so it's a yes and no.
Dell isn't as popular by a long shot in some countries (Australia, for example) as it is in the US and Europe. They're struggling to sell PCs here as it is so if they end up giving them away it'll be through desperation, not for profit margin.
A lot of online communication is already free - particularly in the wireless internet sector. However, people are rebelling against the 'ad culture' and are actively seeking paid services that do not allow advertising. Other features of advertising, such as adware and spyware, are vehemently opposed by a lot of people, making the advertising game a lot harder to play these days. Instead, I see businesses using online communication as a tool to purloin business not as a product in of itself.
Again, Gmail is another version of other webmail programmes in cyberspace. Gmail perhaps got more airtime owing to its powerful status, ie via Google. Personally, I don't like the way Gmail is set out and opt for Yahoo instead. But there are loads of other similar web based email programmes out there.
I see the PC being less and less viable on a commercial level with people opting instead for personal electronic devices incorporating all their online needs in one instrument. However, with its learning capacity in schools, I see the development of the PC stretch sideways; that is, hopefully it will include multimedia to encapsulate a true internet based education, not just the stopgap tasks in some classrooms currently.
1000 miles from Reality? Reality is what we make it.
Posts: 97 | Location: Brisvegas | Registered: 29 October 2005
Wasn't Peter's 'idle moment' idea Larry Ellison's vision of the corporate future? That instead of companies' buying multiple copies of applications, there would be a application service provider that they'd connect to. Hmmm. Thin client vs. thick client?
Anyway, I remember hearing about this probably 15 years ago. I do see the non-corporate web based apps such as Flickr, blogger, etc. taking off, but think it will be a long while before corporations are willing to give up the control and security of in-house IT.
Posts: 14290 | Location: The Beautiful San Francisco Bay Area | Registered: 06 August 2001
Yes I think you are million of miles from reality.
Case in point I into digital photography , were I am going to find the 5,000 GB of hard disk space on line to save my photos of taken over the years and my future years? I not talking about the final photo, it is the original unedited photo I can concern about. On the internet, maybe if I willing to pay for the storage and it will not be cheap because they will have to backup daily. Were I am going to save my Excel worksheets on the internet. So the government can access my financial records which are on my Excel worksheets and compare them to my tax statements? That is not for me. I have been using PC for almost ten years and I have tons of information saved, do I want it on the internet? It seems to me the internet is about the latest hip technology and does not care about supporting out data technology.
Then who really owns my information and content. If it on the internet it is in the public domain and no internet provider a promise you confidentiality. Your information will always be out there saved to a tape or hard drive. Something you can wrote, took a photo of and/or email someone can come back to haunt you if the government what to see it. I remove reading about how high schools kids with blogger site applying for college, the college looked at their website and some of them did not get in.
That hard drive on your computer gives you the ability to decide where you want to save you personal information. Without it you have no choice but to save it to the internet and at the mercy of those who run it. Also I do like to have all my eggs in one basket, in life things happen. What happens if someone loses you information or steals it can you get it back?
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