Stop! Web Time!

[andrewducker]

EDIT: The Web is _anything in a browser_. If it's not in a browser then it's not the web. If you use a chat client that's browser-based, then that counts. If you use one that's a program, then it doesn't.

[Poll #1657175]

The reason I'm curious is Google's pushing of the Chrome laptops - which are designed to be web only. I know that a lot of my time is spent on the web nowadays, but I'm curious as to what percentage most people spend on it.

(Non-web usages of the computer are either playing non-web games (Dragon Age and Super Meat Boy this week) and watching videos - although that's mostly on Julie's PC, as it's in the bedroom.)

The second question is because there was a big battle over MS Office versus OpenOffice, and I realised that I don't really use Office at home since I stopped sending letters. I still have it (the joy of a brother who works for Microsoft), but I can't see me using it.

Comments

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

That's a distinction that could be getting harder to make with HTML5/webapps.

For our next generation of Nokia phones, 3rd party app development will either be Qt/QtQuick (cross-platform apps that will run on Symbian and on Meego Linux with minimal changes) or WebApps that will run in the browser, even if they are loaded from your local storage rather than over a data connection.

So "Web i.e. no using an app" is not really true even now. If I'm running Bejewelled Blitz on my PC, it's probably in a Facebook page, but if I'm running it on my iPhone then often I'm running it with no data connection, but sometimes I am ...

[andrewducker]

Apps that run inside the web are fine. I'm mostly wondering about how many people I know could survive with a Chrome laptop.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming you mean "inside the browser" :-)

As the *sole* machine, it would probably need more "web apps" and a reasonable amount of on device storage ... but as something like an iPad with a physical keyboard then I'd certainly have a use for something like this.

It's basically the old idea of a web appliance or thin client, where most of the storage etc. would be up on the cloud, files held in dropbox or similar, and perhaps even using cloud processor cycles etc. for things like image editing etc. with the webapp mostly doing presentation layer and only having a lower res work copy to mark up the changes required and then the instructions sent to the cloud to make the actual changes to the full res version.

Like the iPhone and iPad, a lot of stuff will assume network connectivity and a reasonable bandwidth ...

for example, iPhone (I believe) does SatNav by having the maps and the processing to calculate routes up on the Google servers and not held in the phone (while a TomTom would have the maps and the direction processing in the device) ... I would expect/guess that the more complex apps for the Chrome laptop would do the same, big data and big processing up in the cloud, presentation and input through the Chrome browser.

web appliance/internet appliance

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

e.g. http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/audrey/index.html
http://computer.yourdictionary.com/internet-appliance

There was a time when the idea of a network appliance, or doing your email, surfing and gaming through your cable TV set-top box seemed a neat idea ... and it's still not going away, though some of it is moving to the XBox and PS3 crowd instead.

The Chrome netbook would be fine for most school use, for roaming data collection use, for web TV and other streaming media (including VoIP, Skype etc.), social media, scheduling, email, most word processing, spreadsheet usage etc.

The fastest and latest of games might not manage, but then they don't tend to run on most laptops now (too processor and graphics engine hungry). And just about anything else could be done with a client-server approach ... and this would tie in beautifully with bringing back a variant on Wave where you could do collaborative photo editing or other processor and graphics intensive tasks on cloud cpus and memory and just control and view it from the chrome laptop. And receive adverts while you're doing it! Or pay for processor time and storage based on how much you actually use rather than paying for a machine that spends most of the day switched off, or just downloading email sand torrents.

[andrewducker]

Sorry, yes, inside the browser.

And yeah, I think Google are banking on a lot of people working entirely online. I think they're ahead of themselves by a year or five.