An interesting website that I urge everyone to visit:
www.freeme.com
This site, which won a finalist award for best-of-show at PC Expo from ZD Net, is an early glimpse at the way the world will be. When you look at it, please keep in mind that it represents the beginning of something, not in any way the end, so (James') objections to the shortcomings, which are obvious, are beside the point. The point is that here is an application that does a whole lot of what many, and possibly most, computer users need, and all it requires you to have is at most a Javastation. This is not only an application architecture that reduces the importance of Microsoft bloatware on the client side, it also obviously increases the importance of companies like Sun, IBM and EMC on the server side.
Remember: it is a baby step, not an end point. Every increment in bandwidth to the home and desktop will gap this model up to further bury the current PC paradigm in irrelevance.
But well worth a look into the future.
Disclaimer: the unfortunate part about the "tour" on the web page is the semi-pathetic Amway scheme (or "multi-level marketing" if you object to the R-Rated language) that freeme.com is using to try to become "the fastest-growing company in the United States", a distinction they are unlikely to attain anytime soon. Please note that yer ol' pal QS is not pointing anyone to that page for the purpose of selling you something...in fact I'm not even subscribing myself(why should I? I've got Office 2000!! <G>).
But a lot of people will.
Regards,
--QwikSand |
