
Month-Long Dive Into Web-Based Apps - bootload
http://www.wired.com/software/softwarereviews/news/2007/04/lavidagoogle
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fallintothis
It was an okay write-up, if not overly obvious. I hope he realizes that Google
isn't the only source for desktop alternatives, webapps or otherwise. I (along
with approximately everyone here, so I'll spare them the effort of listing the
obvious candidates) can list several popular ones off the top of my head that
beat Google, in my opinion. And not all of them are YCombinator startups
either. Hooray for diversity!

GMail -- they aren't the only email provider, but certainly a leader. You
can't really go wrong with using it, unless you have major privacy concerns.
But then, why are you using email to begin with?

Google Reader -- There used to be feeds.reddit.com, but now that I check it
seems to have been taken down; what a shame. I thought it was a really good
idea, though it had been freaking slow when I last used it. Using Firefox or
Opera, there are already means to just integrate feed-reading into the
browser. I find that this has suffices. It's no more or less centralized than
opening a webpage to use a reader when you're already in your browser in the
first place.

Google Calendar -- kiko.com seems to still up and running, though of course
they ran into trouble at the hands of Google Calendar. Then there's
<http://www.30boxes.com> among several others.

Google Talk -- meebo.com doesn't suffer from problems he mentioned with Google
Talk, so it actually beats Google in my opinion. There are others, but they
don't seem to be as good as meebo, in my opinion.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets -- this is a tougher one when looking for actual
online solutions, I think, just because the current online suites aren't as
full-featured as the desktop equivalents.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_office_suites#Online_office_suites>
seems to be a good place to start, though. Plus, I hear those zenter.com guys
will be killing PowerPoint. ;) If, however, you're looking for
interoperability then OpenOffice.org works wonders.

Google Page Creator -- not mentioned in the post, but weebly.com seems to
excel in this field anyway, so they're (more than) worth a mention.

Really, I think a lesson to be learned is that just as there are different
apps you could use on the desktop, there are a lot of webapps to choose from.
I would think this would be particularly apparent as ubiquity in desktop
applications seems to be flawed. If it weren't, people would be more inclined
to use pre-bundled software on Windows instead of OpenOffice, AbiWord, The
GIMP, Pidgin (still have to get used to that), Trillian, Firefox, Thunderbird,
Opera, and so on. Moreover, if it weren't flawed then some webapps might not
exist! That, and the thinking that somehow there has to be an ultimatum
between desktop & online applications seems fundamentally silly. Not to say
that what can be implemented in one can't be implemented in the other to some
extent, but you don't need to have all of your applications be solely on one
platform. Freedom of choice and all that fun stuff. Certainly the internet
provides a platform that has several distinct advantages to the desktop, but
that doesn't mean you absolutely must lock yourself into it; though, more
likely than not, as webapps continue to become more advanced the preference
shifts mostly towards them instead of the desktop.

In the meantime, he and I are stating what most people should already know.
And if they don't, that's probably why he did this story (and why I'm
commenting about it) in the first place. I didn't really mean for this to turn
into a list, but proof by counterexample is a quick & easy method in this
case.

Poignant Summary: webapps are immensely useful, and you don't need Google to
prove it.

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Tichy
That article made me try out Google calendar, but I am severely disappointed.
It really is just a calendar - duh... I would have expected an Outlook
replacement with task lists and stuff like that. The functionality seems to be
the bare minimum. I haven't tried to share my calendar, though.

