Following on from my recent post about Photoshop moving online, I read this great post on Joel Spolsky’s site. Joel asserts that the new API is HTML and that the Windows API is in trouble. His premise is this;
- People buy an operating system because of the applications they can run on it
- People buy Windows because you can run a great variety of apps on it
- People don’t buy Mac’s or Sun’s not because they are inferior operating systems but because of the limited apps available
I definitely agree with that. I have resisted buying a Mac for a long time because I know what Windows apps work for me. I am now seriously considering buying a Mac with an Intel chip and BootCamp. Best of both worlds hey?
When this new and exciting arena of rich web apps matures, what will Microsoft’s competitive advantage be? It won’t be that their OS has the most applications written for it.
When Mac users and Linux users and Sun users are able to access the same software online as Windows users, people will pay more attention to the features, stability and security of the OS than they will to the variety of software that was written for that platform.
Further, it seems logical that developers will embrace the cross platform HTML API in order to increase their reach and OS compatibility.
Whether the application is built in Ajax or Flash or some other technology is irrelevant, although I do agree with Jeff Atwood that JavaScript will become more popular on the grounds that that is where the lions share of the development community is working.
The new uTorrent web interface is a great example of the power of Ajax to avail the core features of a desktop app online. It’s lacking a bit of polish and all of the features of the desktop version but it lets you get the job done!
Massive news today that Adobe are planning to release an online version of Photoshop within 6 months.
This is an enormous leap and highlights the potential that Ajax and Flash driven rich interfaces have to change the way we use computers.
One of the more interesting points is that Adobe plan to make this online Photoshop free for consumers. They expect to make revenue from advertising on the site, acknowledging that if it works for Google, then it can work for us. I have been a fan of picnik but I fear that when presented with a choice of online photo editor, the peeps will vote for the Photoshop brand.
Great to see Adobe coming out on the front foot with this one, instead of trying to protect their shrink wrapped products. I think it will prove successful. Microsoft – are you watching?
OpenID will succeed.
Where Microsoft failed, the open source, non profit OpenID will work. It will work because people are sick and tired of trying to manage multiple log-ins across all of the sites that they visit, there is no company at the centre for people to get nervous about handing their information over to and in these highly competitive times, where the user is king, websites are falling over themselves to make the user experience better than their competitors.
In every verticle we will see one player jump on board in order to offer a better experience and we will then see every competitor jump on board, not to be outdone.
I give it 18 months. By the end of 2008 I believe we will see 80% of the most popular websites supporting OpenID.
Peter Cashmore over at Mashable is convinced that Google are doing evil by embedding GOOG Video in the SERP’s.
I beg to differ. I think this is a classic example of the ‘tall poppy syndrome‘ and a case where Peter is only kicking up a fuss because it is Google.
Let’s break it down a little bit:
- Google doesn’t appear to be skewing the organic results to inflate Google Video or YouTube content.
- Google isn’t serving other people’s content directly on the SERP.
- Google are merely providing a service that enhances the user experience by delivering its content on the SERP, thus removing the need to go to a new page or open a new tab.
Evil? No. This is merely a company trying alternate ways of serving its own content. Nothing evil in that.
Smart? Yes. By enhancing the user experience, Google are more likely to keep their users happy.
Bad for competitors? Can’t see how. As long as Google continues to fairly index all content then its competitors have as good a chance at a high SERP ranking as a Google owned property.
Good for consumers? Yes.
Nice one Google!
MyHome – PBL’s new giant killer website launched today and as far as I can see, it certainly won’t be a giant killer any time soon! I won’t be making it my home for real estate searches.
UI is less than inspiring, functionality is less than functional, many less properties than their competitors.
Not much different or right about it IMHO. I’m convinced that this is destined for failure in its current state. Early days, but I was hoping for something a bit more innovative and definitely something with a much better user experience, that would help people to make the decision to switch.
I am amazed that a company with the resources of PBL can get this so wrong. Surely PBL could have leveraged some of the talent at NineMSN who recently relaunched their site with great improvements to both functionality and user experience.
The site performs so badly and I had so many problems navigating and trying to get my head around the IA and navigation structure that I wonder how a ‘normal’ internet user would ever understand the conceptual model.
I think the teams over at Domain and REA can sleep easy tonight!
Read/WriteWeb has an interesting article theorising that Web 3.0 will be the product of the following formula:
Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS).
4C = Content, Commerce, Community, Context | P = Personalization | VS = Vertical Search
I tend to agree. Commerce and content have been the drivers of the internet for many years. Community is very 2.0, as is personalisation. Add context and vertical search and I think you’ll start to see a whole new generation of sites emerging.
It is a logical evolution. As the generalist 2.0 sites become so large, there will be a market need for more specialised and contextual information management and deliver.
Web 2.0 has just completed its Bachelor of Medicine. Let’s see what type of specialists the graduates go on to become.
While we’re on Yahoo!, I thought that the current storm over Yahoo Suggestions was quite humerous. Here I am posting about Yahoo! patents one minute and then posting about Yahoo copying Digg the next.
Frankly, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. The screenshots below show the similarities between Yahoo Suggestions and Digg, with voting for stories to the left of the short blurb. All looks very similar.
Yahoo:
Digg:
No doubt, Digg created a great system and UI for user generated and rated content. It is a given then, that others will “copy” it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with “reapply with pride”. Yahoo! even went so far as to credit Digg on it’s blog so I can’t see what all of the fuss is about.
I’m with Yahoo! on this one, can’t see what all of the fuss is about.
The Eolas patent was bad news for the internet. It meant that millions of websites became less usable overnight. Depending on which side you are on, you would argue for or against Microsoft pushing the “security patch” that resulted in embedded objects requiring 2 clicks to be activated where they previously required 1. I believe they should have just coughed up the $40 million or so in order to ensure that users of IE had no degradation of their browsing experience.
So, reading today on CrunchGear about how Yahoo! have lodged a patent claim for a bunch of concepts concerned with the “creation of dynamic pages” I fear that the big news of 2007 may be Yahoo! enforcing their patents at the expense of innovation and user experience. I hope I am wrong!
