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Online Replacements for Desktop Apps?
Jon_Aquino asks: "I'd like to share this Google Groups thread of free online replacements for desktop apps. Some of the gems are: an online UML diagrammer, an online Paintbrush app, online Post-It notes, an incredibly realistic text-to-speech converter, and an online spreadsheet. What are other cool online desktop-app replacements?"
I saw an online Minesweeper replacement somewhere. Only worked with Mozilla, though.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
This isn't specific to online apps, but rather one that was posted (computer TTS). Something I found interesting were different voice synths for different languages or accents.
How to make the MS "Merlin" agent more annoying? Give him a French accent!
Right is wrong when left is right.
i dont know about you guys but i dont think i would use those apps... if you dont have access to excel/mspaint, i would always rather have a flashdrive with them or variations on there rather then relying on third party web page being online to get something halfway useful done...
Sheesh.
The more you know, the less you understand.
you just spent 5 minutes making the online text to speech tool say dumb stuff like 'all your base are belong to us'.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I want an online replacement for my web browser. Even Firefox takes too much memory on my PC.
Have you read my blog lately?
One of the reasons Microsoft fought so hard in the browser wars was because it was felt that the *real* platform could well become the browser, which you could then access applications via, not the underlying OS.
Looks like they won...
Does a browser count as a desktop app?
If it does, then Simpy is definitely a superior online replacement for bookmarks (really more than bookmarks, but let's keep it at that). Here is a demo and some screen shots.
Simpy
What is the Internet coming to? It's like saying "Hotmail" is "Internet Mail" and "The WWW" is "The Internet".
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
you demonstrated the greatest flaw of online apps: ;-/
They depend on a running server. These just died.
The Google Calculator
Those online apps are very useful. Really who is going to use paint to make a picture. Or that online spreadsheat program when you can just install the program on your hardrive and use it their where it's faster and more fully featured. Pluss if you are a secure network then you couldn't use them anyways. I just don't really see the point.
BaseCamp is probably the best project manager I've seen, and it's online. I don't get it, why can't desktop apps be this cute and easy to use? Just go look at the screenshots!
:-) (This is one benefit of regular desktop software)
Of course, I don't have a paid up BaseCamp membership since I think it's overpriced, but there you go
That text-to-speech proggy could come in handy for making up your own custom wacky answering machine messages. You never know, Slashdotters -- callers might actually believe you've got a live-in girlfriend!
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
I thought the much-hyped application server revolution never happened, because people just don't want to share personal or proprietary information or need the guaranteed availablility of a locally-installed app. The only real popular web apps I can think of are the search engines of various types (web, real estate, personal ads, etc.) and, perhaps, those on-line tax services (you give them your information at a store front, too). Otherwise, the WWW is still mostly just a place to share information, mail-order stuff, and post flamebait to forums like this one.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
There are online sex partner simulators all over the innurnet. They're not too realistic though, as the feedback device feels very much like a squeezing hand...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Wait, wait, wait.
Did I read this right?
FREE software?
Like, you mean, it's free for two weeks then I have to buy it? Or you mean that it's not free, but you found a place to pirate it?
Or...no. It... it's not possible. Are you seriously coming here, to Slashdot, and telling us that there are software packages that we don't have to pay for, and can still legally use?
Holy crap, man.
...he's talking about Google Groups. I've seen Usenet before. It's full of binaries, not this stuff.
Breakfast served all day!
In the mid late 90's when everyone was going to use the netscape web browser and Sun's java to run all their applications from applets on thin-client sun terminals. Oh, and all your news would come from "Push" technology like Pointcast.
I've never been one to rely too heavily on online apps.
Something about trusting my data (confidential or not) to some unknown, faceless entity, for lack of a better term, has always kept me away from such services.
Not that I'm a paranoid guy or anything ("even paranoid people have enemies!"), but who knows who's really seeing what your data, and who knows what they might do with that knowledge. Whether it's initially (mis)used or not, the danger is there. And if it's archived anywhere along the way, the potential for misuse is even greater, as now anyone down the road can come along and find/sell/misuse it.
"See this killer app that everyone's talking about? That was my idea! But no sooner had I began sketching out my flow on gmodeler then 'Boom!' it was patented and being marketed everywhere. That shoulda been me...." (Not that GModel would ever do this, but it's a good example of my point).
Not to mention the confidentiality issue... I work for a financial services company, and a few years ago, we were looking at ways to quickly re-purpose a bunch of PDF documents to HTML, and one proposed solution was a web service that offered online conversion of such documents for free. Clearly though the privacy issues, not to mention potential for misuse of the data made us choose a different avenue!
Plus there's always the fear of relying on the online apps. If I become dependant upon it, either for my work, or for the convenience it offers, what am I to do if suddenly the site goes under, becomes a pay site, or simply changes URLs due to a provider going down.
Not that there aren't any valuable services out there, there are! It's just that I feel safer relying on local software, and homegrown solutions. Am I alone with this perception?
A comprehensive directory of web applications can be found here (link mentioned in the usenet thread).
I hear that the website over at http://slashdot.org is a great online replacement for actual work.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Wow. I just tested the Spanish version. It's incredibly natural. I'm speechless (no pun intented)
The English output still sounds like a robot. The Spanish one is almost humanlike.
For those who don't know, Spanish has a nearly perfect spelling system: by the spelling you know how to pronounce the word exactly. Of course, regional dialects change the pronunciation, but it's always consistent.
The other way around is not true, though. Two words with the same pronunciation may have different spellings, specially because of the V-B, S-C-Z, CC-X, C-K.
The SSH client is widely available from various sources, particularly universities. Just Google for "mindterm ssh" to find a location near you.
One caveat: I've only used this using Internet Explorer (since that is always on a public Windows machine), but the SSH client is also supposed to work with Netscape.
some use an emulator plugin, but alot just use shockwave/flash.
Tm
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