Desktop Inside a Browser On a Desktop…???

As TechCrunch says (and I’m paraphrasing slightly here), huh?

AjaxWindows is a very slick implementation that gives users comfortable and understandable access to stuff (apps, documents, services, etc.) on the Web. But isn’t that kind of why we have things called browsers? While I must admire and even pay homage to Ajax developers good enough to reproduce the bulk of the Windows experience in a browser, I’m left wondering why they bothered. Other than the challenge, that is.

In fact, AjaxWindows might actually add confusion to the user experience rather than helping to erase it, as I suspect the product’s inventors hoped. Sometimes, the stuff you want to do opens your own browser, not exactly within the AjaxWindows view, but sort of on top of it. If you try to close the browser — in which AjaxWindows is now running even if you can’t see it — you’re liable to trigger a dialog box asking you to confirm you want to leave the AjaxWindows world even if all you really wanted to do was get back to it.

I suspect one could create a highly usable browser-based experience for a user who wants to organize Web-based application activity and storage locations without resorting to attempting to reproduce everything — including all that’s bad — about the Windows desktop user experience in the process.

All that said, there is one aspect of this whole space (which has a couple of other interesting players in Desktoptwo and eyeOS and the forthcoming Cloudo) that may turn out to be the thing that makes them successful. If Joe Chivas (the upscale version of Joe Sixpack) finds the desktop look and feel more comforting than a bare-bones browser with some usable graphics and links, then one of these apps or a successor might well become crucial to the widespread adoption of the ZPC.

Whassup With Ajax13?

Anyone got a clue what’s happening with Ajax13, the “home” of Ajax-Windows, AjaxWrite and other Ajax-based Office productivity tools?

When I visit AjaxWrite anything I trie generates an error of some sort. I had a login at one point but it no longer works. Trying to sign up for a new one produces the error ” /en/ajaxwrite/registration.jsp was not found on this server.” If I click the big blue Launch Now button without being logged in, I get an editing window alright but none of the functions for saving the document or opening existing ones works. No error, just no response.

The site’s blog shows absolute silence from Oct. 4, 2007, until March 3, when there’s a bizarrely off-topic post about browser-based file synching (admittedly an interesting topic, but what it has to do with AjaxWrite or any of the other Ajax13 tools is opaque). Yet the forums have some recent activity, though no official responses.

Feels like AjaxWrite, at least, is dormant. Anyone got a better read?

After further review, it appears that Ajax13 — which is the brainchild of Linspire founder and Open Source champion Michael Robertson, is focusing its efforts and consolidating its apps behind AjaxWindows, a fairly ingenious replication of the MS Windows desktop experience hooked to Open Source apps and online storage in a way that feels, at first blush at least, pretty seamless and powerful. So maybe AjaxWrite isn’t so much dead as it is assimilated.

Hello , cloud!

Welcome to my newest blog, “Zero-Pound Computing,” or “ZPC” for short. My intent here is to create a repository of news, information, expertise and opinion on the concept variously known as ZPC, Cloud Computing, Web Applications, Software on Demand, and Software Rental, among others. I plan to have a significant amount of information available here within 2-3 weeks, starting this weekend with useful links to what other people are saying about this important topic, and, if I can find one or two good ones, an RSS feed or two on the topic.

For now, at least, I’m not allowing comments on this blog. My experience with them on my other major public blogs has been unpleasant, so even though I am a great believer in participatory and collaborative Web content creation, I’m foregoing that at the outset here. I will revisit that question when I have time and after the site has enough useful information on it that I don’t feel like I must spend all my available time fleshing it out.

I hope you find this space useful and that if you do have comments or suggestions, you’ll email me at zpc at shafermedia dot com.