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Web OS, ajaxWindows Launched
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."
I think my 4 Gb USB memory thingy is easier and faster to use for that, Thanks.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
I think I can smell the servers burning from here...
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
Zero comments and the site is already reporting 404 error, makes you wonder how scalable it is...
Looks like the OS already crashed.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
"He's dead already, Jim."
... I would have liked to have taken a look at it first before commenting on it.
And that's too bad
Guess I'll just start commenting anyway.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
No problem with AjaxWindows. I don't see a lawsuit coming at all! (If Lindows causes a lawsuit, then AjaxWindows (combining the power of TWO trademarked names) should solve the problem!)
The article looks interesting, but the 404 for ajaxwindows.com is disappointing. Once it's up, I wonder what interface I'll have for my blackberry (until I get an IPhone)?
I can HEAR the paperwork being shuffled and the Microsoft layers have a currier deliver the cease and desist.
Cue Universal DMCA Takedown notice in 5... 4... 3... 2...
Browser-based OS...virtual computer...syncing data to various websites...why don't I think I'll be throwing my external harddrives away tonight?
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
Accessing my mp3s and documents over the web has been a dream up to now.
So... um... where's the interrupt dispatcher at? Come to think of it, what about the IO handler or CPU scheduler?
... does this need? I'm hoping each application loads its javascript when accessed, and that one doesn't need to preload the mountain of javascript necessary to run all the applications when you "boot" the OS.
In a band? Use WheresTheGig for free.
My web-based OS has crashed with an error "404 not found" and since the screen is not blue, I don't know how I should approach this! Can you please reboot the internet for me?
:-)
Thanks in advance!
Anyone remember that? DHTML I think...
I think it would be better to describe it as a "web desktop" and not a "web OS". There are plenty of "desktops" available on the web.
Web OS, now THAT is a great oxymoron.
He got slashdotted and now makes it seem like they planed the outage.
"Thank you for visiting ajaxwindows.com
ajaxWindows and the Ajax13 web site are temporarily down for planned
maintenance. We expect to be back up by 2:30pm, PDT on 9/10/07
Thanks for your interest, please visit our site again, soon."
string sig = llGetSig("dimentox"); llSay(0,sig);
Yeah, another "Web OS"! Now with more marketing!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
'cause losing my pc when the DSL goes down isn't really an option.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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. 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 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!
The chutzpah they have. What cell in their brains misfired when they decided to call it ajaxWindows?
I mean, Lindows went down for Chrissake, and these guys believe Microsoft won't go after them for trademark infringement? And rightly so. Many people may be mislead this is actually *Windows* written in ajax. And it's not. It's same poor imitation that has windows.
"Windows" is a registered trademark for an OS. If they claim this is "Web OS" they have, then quite rightly they will be sued and lose.
ajaxWindows and the Ajax13 web site are temporarily down for planned
...
maintenance. We expect to be back up by 2:30pm, PDT on 9/10/07
Come on, that's just lame
Or does it mean that writing a horribly bloated and useless web app like that
just implies the plan to go offline 'for maintenance' as soon as more then
five users try to connect withing one hour ?
For FlexOS. This idea that you can do an ajaxOS is nonsense. The mere fact that you can't feasibly do sorts on large tables using javascript tells us that.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
So far this breakthrough technology can already access 404 errors. With a bit more development we should be able to get pictures and documents too.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
returned '1'
according to the video it's already integrated with most of google's web apps. It's only a matter of time until they buy it out. Hopefully they will put it on some better servers as well
Now, I use firefox like any self respecting geek, but the whole point of this is supposed to run on anyone ELSE's computer. The unfortunate reality is I can't count on firefox being on other people's computers. If I want to borrow a computer (say a computer in a library) to run my stuff over the web, and then am required to download and install either firefox or an activeX thing to use it, you've sort of defeated the purpose, haven't you?
Yeah, wait til I slap a XSS bug on yer ass! Or what about the unpatched vulns?
I'M IN UR OS, STEALIN' UR WEBZ!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
So I get a computer, then I load a OS, then I need a Web Browser, and I need to get a Internet Connection, THEN I can connect to a Web Service that provides me with ANOTHER desktop so that I can store stuff. Wow, compared to a $30 dollar thumb drive, that IS convenient.
To the author:
I'm not sure you realize it, but any OS-like software with "Windows" in its name infringes the trademark of Microsoft. That's something you might want to avoid.
Uhh...
Didn't Microsoft BUY the Lindows trademark, for whatever reason?
Man, that wily Gates! He sure knows how to piss someone off by throwing money at them!
Sure, you can also let people open a browser-based VNC session to whatever server OS. This will at least give them instant responsiveness and rich user interface rather than whatever can be cobbled together in Javascript. The question is, who guarantees security and backups of your data? What happens if the company goes belly up? What if you don't like the latest upgrade of their web app and would rather use the previous version? What if they start to charge for the "webOS" access or increase the existing subscription rates to something you can not afford.
Web applications give you less performance, less functionality, less security and less peace of mind for less installation difficulty, easier roaming on guest machines and sometimes cheaper prices. Weather it's a right trade off is up to you, but generally home users with slowly changing needs are at a disadvantage because of forced upgrades and associated learning curve and loss of access or security of their data at random times.
Its a virtual machine.
Not going to debate its merits as ive not seen it yet, but at least call it what it is.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Seriously, ajaxWindows? You couldn't think of a better name for an AJAX-based OS?
If "shit" = $20 million, I'd like some shit, too.
There is a web browser inside the web browser!
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
I checked out the MP3.com bankruptcy auction a few years back. The stuff they had in there was a mind-blowing waste of money. Tons of the best new equipment, hideously expensive (and ugly) interior decorating including an honest to god bordello for visiting musicians. In one of the oak-paneled developer conference rooms with 360-degree white boards and projectors and other gadgets galore, somebody had written the note: "Robertson + $$ = stupidity"
I hope it comes with a cool web browser ...
hmmmm. Something about this seems a little premature to me. Ajax (nah. everything web 2.0) isnt exactly known for it's security. Javascript has a track-record of being slightly below a paperbag in terms of security and getting it to do things the web developers didnt intend. Now, these people are advocating the same flawed technology should be used to construct a web-os. laughable ! Rest assured the phishers and malware guys are grinning ear-to-ear right now. That first argument aside, an OS as a service. C-mon. Call me silly, but im seeing this as a bad idea PERIOD. $$$ Big business is grinning at the idea of everyone using what basically amounts to a dumb terminal with a net connection, while they sit back and provide all the "services" at a price of course. A little forsight goes a long way...
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.
This sucks worse than most similar sites I've looked at.
The server running slowly showed up some serious cracks in their design. First off, they're calling this AJAX? It _pauses_ while downloading stuff. Some core code is _not_ asynchronous.
There are a number of problems with the user interface. At one point I was prompted with a browser window about trusting the site without any comment that this would happen. When I said I didn't trust it, I ended up with a box on the screen that obscured other windows, even when they were supposedly in front of it in z-order. Assuming the content would have been implemented with Java, I don't see how this is ever going to be different, even if I had decided to trust it (Java applet components cannot have HTML-rendered components in front of them; basic browser limitation).
When I told it to add a new application, it crashed. No components worked.
Many elements of the user interface are blatant ripoffs of other people's designs. The add applications dialog uses an almost identical layout and icon set to Microsoft's similar control panel application in Windows. The icon for their "synchronize" application is a direct rip-off of Palm's HotSync icon.
And finally, when I closed the desktop window, it crashed Firefox. I couldn't switch tabs, and couldn't set the focus to any controls. I had to kill it and restart to post this message.
Windows holds the record for the worst security flaws, javascript is the second.
Now they're combining them!?!? No wonder it went down so fast. This is really funny.
I clicked the "Click here for system requirements" link on their index page and the pop-up showed a 500 internal error page.
Ergo, it does not qualify as one of the members bearing the Windows family name. I, the consumer, should have been able to experience the BSOD feature. However, it ended up with a non-user-friendly plain text error message!
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Never heard of youOS? http://www.youos.com/ It's a java-based web operating system. And it runs better than the Ajax one.
it behaves differently on every client hardware / software combination and installed programs. and some registry stuff. and some settings. and then some more stuff.
client side scripting = gambling
Read radical news here
I could swear that is something the wife told me to do whilst Ajaxing the Bathroom, and Toilet... Surely they could come up with a better name like...Windex or something like that
This is essentially nothing more than an online bookmark service dressed up to look like a desktop. The "applications" do not run in their environment, their desktop provides no additional utility just agonizingly slow clutter. This product is doomed.
Their business model is obviously to find a bigger sucker - looking at Google no doubt.
Let the flames begin!
Sorry, couldn't help it.
when I selected the option to logout, I saw a confirmation dialog: do you want to continue? Yes. Cancel.
So I guessed that 'Yes' meant that I want to 'continue' loging out.
Anyway, for me in FF 1.5 the right click on the 'desktop' showed to menues at the same time: on the bottom there was this 'os' context menu and on the top there was FF context menu and I could only chose items in the FF context menu.
The windows are slow. The widgets did not execute (some error.) The 'console' didn't open (maybe for IE it will, I don't know.) What is the point of all of this?
You can't handle the truth.
IANAL, but here is what I read in their "http://www.ajaxwindows.com/en/privacy.jspprivacy policy":
[snip]
Second, we collect personal and personally identifiable information such as your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, credit card number and information concerning software downloaded, products and content purchased, accessed and/or downloaded through our products and services.
[/snip]
[snip]
Choice/Opt-Out Back to top
We do not disclose an individual customer's personally identifiable information to third parties for third-party direct marketing purposes if we have received and processed a request from that customer not to have his or her personal information shared for this purpose. You may submit this type of opt-out request by sending an email to: information@Ajax13.com with the words "Opt Out" in the subject line, or to the following mailing address: Customer Service, Ajax13, Inc., 5960 Cornerstone Court West, Suite 100, San Diego, CA 92121. In addition, we also allow you to decide whether you want to receive further marketing information from us. If you do not want Ajax13 to send to you announcements or special offers by email, please email us in the same manner as described above with the word "Remove" in the subject line. Please allow up to two weeks for your request to be processed.
[/snip]
Looks like they can sell your info to spammers unless you opt-out. If you wan't to try them out, do not give them your "good" email address.
Try this:
Hit the "start" button at the bottom. Open "Programs > Accessories > Console" (yes, this thing has a fake version of cmd.exe, limited to basic navigation and file copying)
You start in the "root directory". Run "del Applications", "del Documents", "del Pictures", and "del System".
Your root directory is now empty. There are no "files" on your "drive". The "desktop" doesn't crash, nor does it update in any way, nor does the start menu change, but all the shortcuts on the desktop stop working if you double click them; instead you get some sort of "file not found" error.
Seems like they may have actually implemented some sort of pseudo-filesystem. Sort of.
This is a product someone wants to sell?
Why are there javascript errors?
Why does is spawn new browser windows for everything? Even Google products, which have api's that make them quite simple to embed!
This kind of sloppy javascript really pisses me off!
I've been working on an Ajax based javascript Windowed CRM project for the better part of a year, to be released beta in December, and until today I wasn't sure how it would be received by the public or investors! Wow! I can't wait now!
If this product can get funded... apparently you can toss together almost anything and have fun wasting other peoples money.
To keep sane I have to believe that there are "good" products out there that are looking for funding, not just this crap!
Mp3.com was probably one of the best music sites around at the time for unsigned or self promoting artists. In fact to this day I've seen nothing nearly as good or diverse. The music scandal was the online storage they where trying to offer, which I didn't pay much attention to because I was there for the new music. AFAIR they where supposed to be allowing you "storage" for your existing CD's. I don't now how it worked or if there was any verification method but I don't honestly think it's such a bad idea. Now he has a product called MP3tunes that shares the same goal. Online storage/backup/accessibility of your music collection. But now you have to upload the individual tracks (using the Oboe program to sync). It's good and I use it, but it's a lot of time and bandwidth uploading tracks that are often going to be exact duplicates of files already on their system so I can see how his original idea could have seemed appealing (to both the end-user, their ISP and the service).
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.
Quack, quack.
wxWindows to wxWidgets
I think they are asking for a lawsuit, for publicity. It's the thing to do nowadays.
Lots of people bash Michael Robertson for one thing or another, but I completely agree with you -- he and his Linspire team have done a good job of preparing a GNU/Linux distro for the mainstream.
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
My "computer" has been slashdotted!
No thanks.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
I wonder if Google is looking at something like this.
I completely agree with what you are saying, and I would take it one step further. IMHO, Michael Robertson is doing as much as Richard Stallman, Steve Weber, The Pirate Bay and maybe even Che Guevara to redefine the nature of property. Each of these four guys / entities has done something to help us envision or experience "intellectual property" in a radical new way.
Richard Stallman formalized the idea of "Free Software." Steve Weber gave Free Software a new name, calling it an "anti-rival" resource, meaning a resource that increases in supply as it is consumed. The Pirate Bay and Che Guevara both thumbed their nose at western notions of capital accumulation. Michael Roberston has commercialized the delivery of "anti-rival resources.
Of course, lots of people would say that I am nuts to compare these four guys. Che killed people. The Pirate Bay is regarded by many as organized international theft. Richard Stallman has never held a gun in his life, probably, and has a low opinion of combining Free Software with non-Free Software, which is the mainstay of Robertson's business. And Michael Robertson considers himself a gung-ho capitalist. Steve Weber is a political science professor at one of the premier universities in the world, he drives a sexy black Saab, and he is no enemy of free market capitalism. So of course there are huge differences between all of these guys.
But if you look carefully at their lives, I think you will see that each of these people has played a remarkable role in changing the way that we think of property. My point in comparing and contrasting them is to point out that Michael Robertson deserves respect for fundamentally re-imagining the role of "intellectual property", maybe even as much as Richard Stallman, but just in a more commercial way. And yet even Richard advocates selling "Free Software." In 15 years, Michael Robertson will be thought of as one of the stars of the Free Software revolution.
Finally, don't think of Michael Robertson as an intellectual slouch. He completely understands the theories of Steve Weber, Richard Stallman, and Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen. In fact, one of the things that impresses me most about Robertson is his ability to boil very complex ideas down into really simple, straightforward statements and businesses.
It's a file storage, manager and an editor. That's an operating system to most people. Everything else is part of the machine, like the CPU heat sink, that no one cares about.
Realizing this is part of Google's success. They make it easy for people to store and manipulate their stuff and all they ask in return are text ads.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Also, patent trolls do the suing. Michael Robertson usually doesn't file lawsuits. He starts businesses, and then gets sued. It is almost the opposite of patent trolling. Robertson just calls their bluff. He fights their lawsuits. They lose. Then they pay him money. How cool is that!
This is a bit more than GUI. It just launches a bunch of applications. Until it launches zoho in a special window (not just a firefox window) then I'll pay attention.
It's slow as hell, doesn't do anything my local desktop doesn't do already, and the interface is horrible. Other than that it's fine.
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 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.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
So M$ took him to court for using the name "Lindows," which was apparently too close to M$' trademark -- hence "Linspire."
...or did I miss a memo?
Perhaps the publicity from the case was a good thing? "ajaxWindows" is pretty fucking a blatant trademark violation.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. -- Albert Einstein
USB Hacksaw - Hak5
Description:
"And now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Would you idiots please stop mimicking applications on the web, please?
The code to do some things are so spaghetti you wonder why you're doing it in the first place...
amounts of user registrations and traffic.
Please check back with us in an hour."
Nah.
damaged by dogma
What makes this a web-based Operating System rather than a web based Window Manager? Sure, it's an operating environment, but when was an interface the OS?
VNC isn't an OS.
TS isn't an OS.
Xnest isn't an OS.
SSH isn't an OS.
And don't tell me, "Sure, you can easily store 300 Mb of video." I like really drawn out sadistic shit filmed in 1080i. Gritty details, with little compression, of intriguingly deformed people. If I lose a mole or an unsightly patch of back hair, the whole effect is lost. Nothing shorter than two hours, because the drawn-outness is important to me.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Isn't this the same thing as eyeos.org?
Just tried to use the demo, got an invalid username and password, so far it more secure then the actual OS....
When people talk about BeOS, they usually mention the media capabilities inherent in the design of the OS, not the GUI.
reference
What a wonderfully useless jelly bean of a web app.
Hell, people were talking about this pie-in-the-sky shit since the late 90s, remember SimDesk?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I tried to run this on my iPhone. The sign-in page slows down typing to a crawl, so it took a few minutes to even type in my account and password. Running off wifi, I gave it 5 minutes to load, all I got was an uninteractive start bar and a white screen. Tried again, nothing.
God damnit. Why does everyone call these a "web OS"? There is not such thing in existence. There is no hardware in existence that could run on one if there were. An OS (Operating System) is software that manages your system's hardware and presents a programmable interface to other software. IT IS NOT A FUCKING WEB PAGE OF ANY KIND. OK? Now excuse me while I go sucker-punch some innocent passers-by. This type of pure idiocy makes me that angry.
I was just using one of those yesterday...
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/winrg
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I wouldn't like some shit, but I'll take a shit for $20 million.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
it gives a 403 in resin web server page. So, it is most probably in java servlets.
Who needs security either, your username and password are very much plaintext in the URL bar while logged into this!
given the existence of much more mature web os (take the online operating system at http://www.oos.cc/, for example, and everybody knows eyeos for sure) i am not really thinking that ajax13 can make it with a rather raw collection of applications. hmmmmmm.