Web OS, ajaxWindows Launched 211
BigRedFed writes "Michael Robertson, of mp3.com fame, Linspire.com fame (or infamy depending on your view point) and more recently, ajax13.com has released another interesting piece of web software. ajaxWindows they are calling it and it's an almost full fledged web based OS that you can use to transport around your documents and mp3 collection to any device with an internet connection and a full web-browser."
Re:Lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll pull out the checkbook and pay him off again, or ignore it and hope it goes away on its own. The last thing they want is for this to go to court again.
Re:Blue Screen of Death (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And I thought Web 2.0 was a bunch of hype (Score:5, Insightful)
That's funny, I have no trouble at all accessing your documents...
Web Desktop, Not OS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Scalable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, ya think?
Damn, I love this guy. Who else would do something like this? Bear in mind, this is the guy whom Microsoft sued for using the name Lindows, and ends up getting paid $20 million [webpronews.com]. Oh, and the RIAA? While others end up paying the record labels thousands for petty downloading, Michael Robertson founds MP3.com, commercializes file sharing, and gets paid hundreds of millions [webpronews.com] and then goes on to take that money to start Lindows, which, of course, lays the foundation for another pay day. And all of it using open source software.
So when Michael Robertson says that he is ready, I interpret this to mean that he is getting ready for another pay day at Microsoft's expense. LOL, party at Michael's house!
Practical? (Score:4, Insightful)
Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sitting at a Sun Ultra 40 running Windows XP 64-bit edition. 4 CPU cores. 8GB RAM. NVIDIA QuadroFX 3450 graphics. I'm on a gigabit connection to a major internet link (major financial news and data company). Even so, ajaxWindows recreates that, sticky, gummy, nasty feeling of running X-Windows when the machine isn't really powerful enough and dragging solid windows around is still a reckless waste of horsepower.
The early 90s called, they want their SPARCstation 5s back.
FTR... (Score:3, Insightful)
But I do miss the days of surfing Mp3.com for new music and the artists I met and discovered there. It was a pretty good music community. Nothing like MySpace or anything else out there today.
Linspire brings GNU/Linux to the mainstream (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the biggest contributions that Michael Robertson made to the Free Software community (yes, that means all of us, including Eric S. Raymond) is that he envisioned a commercial distro which would be palatable to North Americans. I have traveled to 3 continents and five nations to shoot filmed interviews for a documentary that I am making about how FOSS is changing culture, and I can tell you that there are HUGE differences in the way that people perceive FOSS.
In Brazil and other places in South America, people are more likely to resonate with the libertad of "Free Software." In North America and Europe, people are more likely to talk about how wonderful it is that "open source" is creating so many new opportunities to create wealth.
The differences are differences of culture.
Michael Robertson's message resonates with consumers who are sick and tired of the high cost of Apple, and Microsoft's dirty tricks, high cost, and malware. But many of his best customers don't care about Freedom in cycberspace. At least not yet. And maybe then never will. But they sure do love the convenience of CNR, Linspire's implementation of the Debian pool. But maybe one day they will finally "get" it that low cost and convenience are best obtained where there is freedom in cyberspace and true competition on the desktop. And Michael Robertson will have contributed to these consumers' support for a FOSS market.
I tend to be more of a "Free Software" guy than an "open source" guy. And yet I am very grateful for Michael Robertson's work, because he is helping us build a larger, more populous, and more diverse FOSS community.
Christian Einfeldt,
Producer, The Digital Tipping Point [archive.org]
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with web desktops is that these guys aren't asking the question, "What problem do people have that we can solve using Javascript?" They're asking, "How cool would it be if we could make a desktop on the web?!" It's a solution looking for a problem.
This sort of thing could be REALLY useful, but not by emulating desktops. I'm never in the position where I say, "Hey, I wish I could click on desktop icons remotely." Emulating vi [sourceforge.net] or emacs in Javascript, however, kicks ass, because I *always* want vi keybindings in browser text areas, and making quick changes to web sites with a decent editor in Javascript would mean I could skip the "upload the changes via ftp" step that cheap web hosts make you go through.
I also don't know why the people who write these things can't implement a "window" with a border properly so that the border doesn't lag horribly behind the window content when you drag it. Use a div, and make it draggable. Put the content inside. Then make your empty window div a Javascript prototype so that Javascript applications can subclass it. Don't worry about shiny gradients until I can drag a window without it falling apart.