Is Web 2.0 the future of the desktop application?
Sunday, April 30th, 2006With more and more Web sites offering services and user experiences that match destop applications, one has to wonder if the future of desktop applications is questionable. The term Web 2.0 has been around for a while, from Wikipedia:
Web 2.0 generally refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages.
O’Reilly, who takes a lot of credit for the existence of Web 2.0, has a detailed article on the concept.
The idea is that blogs, wikis, rss feeds etc. and particularly the use of Ajax has made the Web a better place as far as user experience goes. Google, of course, made it famous with Google Maps and Gmail. Anyway, some people believe that you can run all the desktop applications that you typically use, on the Web. One blogger, IT Redux, refers to it as Office 2.0:
The idea is pretty simple: use a generic web browser and a set of online services to provide all the functionality needed by a computer user, removing the need for any application to be installed on the computer itself. I call it Office 2.0.
He actually has a great list of Ajax sites including pxn8.com an online photo editor.
