eyal matsliah's Bookmarks tagged trends →  View Popular

Google Gears

Google Gears is an installation which extends the browser to allow web applications to provide offline functionality. Such as Google Reader letting you download some posts to then continue reading them even when you’re offline (I suppose some of the younger ones among us will have to look up that word in the dictionary!). Right now, Google Gears – an open source project which Google may be hoping will gain traction in the overall market as it may be neat Trojan horse to bring more power to web apps (last not least Google’s web apps) – is still missing for such services as Gmail or Google Docs. Maybe in 2008, we’ll be seeing it rolled out to those as well?

A crippled user device like the one you’re talking about might be convenient today, but in five years, for not much more money, you could be holding a super-computer in your hand. You want to give that up because your hard drive crashed?

— Posted by MoJo

I think there will be three sources of apps: (1) the basics that you mention, which will be supplied and served up by Google-Apple; various consumer apps, including games and web 2.0 stuff, that will be served up over the net as they are today (ad-supported or for fee); and specialized, pro apps that will be designed by developers to run on the Google-Apple platform (incorporating app-cacheing techniques to ensure the necessary speed and responsiveness) and that you'll either license for a fee, as you do today, or subscribe to for a monthly fee (with consolidated billing from Google-Apple).

Nick

Posted by: Charles

the centrally controlled system will be able to make use of local computing power and storage capacity to optimize the user experience (without shifting maintenance and other crap onto the user). It's all one system.

Nick

Posted by: Nick Carr at October 17, 2007 04:55 PM

"It will be cheap."

When's the last time Apple shipped anything cheap (in the low price sense of the word)? Its entire line is overpriced and a modest iPod Nano is $149-199. Even if the purchase price is subsidized by advertising or a monthly fee -- and don't forget that iPods and iPhones are subsidized by iTunes and phone bills -- a $99 price point is hard to believe.

"It will be flexible."

How flexible or universal will it be if Apple stays true to form: the software and content only run on Apple devices; Apple limits or prevents third-party application development while selling many apps itself; and there are platform lock-in problems?

What is a Semantic App?

Firstly let's define "Semantic App". A key element is that the apps below all try to determine the meaning of text and other data, and then create connections for users. Another of the founders mentioned below, Nova Spivack of Twine, noted at the Summit that data portability and connectibility are keys to these new semantic apps - i.e. using the Web as platform.