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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."
Which is precisely what Robertson wants - Microsoft ended up paying Lindows $20 million because they were about to lose their clearly generic "Windows" trademark.
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.
Until you can boot off it it's not an OS, it's a piece of marketing nonsense.
Accessing my mp3s and documents over the web has been a dream up to now.
That's funny, I have no trouble at all accessing your documents...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
and we all now can see why this isnt' going to work for the near future.. it is too easy to lose what is out there - atleast with the computer infront of me if it dies ihave options about getting my data back/
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.