A new wave of applications hitting your desktop

Back in the days when I started my first job as a software developer I was still playing with C, Pascal and other not-so-popular programming languages. Java was widespread and Microsoft was desperately trying to come out with a new platform to replace it. And so .NET was born and so my journey began.

I was given the task to complete several projects in ASP.NET. Those were the days of Web 1.0 and AJAX wasn’t the buzz word it is today. As I learned more and more of how .NET works and what problems it solves, I became fascinated by anything Microsoft. Every project thrown at me was done with Microsoft’s tools and technologies… but technologies change and that’s the beauty of it.

Open-source projects were suddenly becoming more and more popular. Web applications were used more often than ever before. Once thought to be the land of wacky system administrators, open-source tools and software were making their way into the mainstream. I became ever more fascinated by the opportunities.

I started working on an open-source project called XOAD (formerly NAJAX). As the name suggests, it was a set of tools to allow you to do fancy things never seen before in web applications. As years went on, people realised the power of sharing, collaborating and pushing the limits of technologies. Somewhere around that time Web 2.0 was born.

We have all come to enjoy the wonders of web applications we use today. I don’t have Microsoft Office installed any more. I do all my editing and spreadsheets in Google Docs. Why keep all my photos on my PC when I can as easily share them on Flickr? And so on, and so on.

You might wonder at this time - what new wave of applications? Where are you going with all this?

We love buzz words. We use them every day. How about ‘cloud’ computing… or let’s just call it ‘The Cloud’. Yes, that’s the new buzz word everyone is looking up on Google. But what is it in reality? The simplest way to define it is to be really general and summarise it in a few words: Simply having your stuff on-line. Photos on Flickr; documents, bookmarks and contacts on Google; your favourite recipes stored on-line. And so on, and so on.

Where are things heading? We now have the tools to move many of our activities to the cloud. But we still run those dreadful desktop applications that take a lot of resources, time to install and support. What if there was a way to move those applications to the cloud as well, wouldn’t that be nice for a change? It seems as Microsoft is finally pulling their act together and have come with a few ideas about the future of desktop applications. Welcome to your Live Mesh.

Mesh is a new service allowing you put up to 5GB of data on-line, free of charge. You even have a Live Desktop where you can download and preview those files. Need those reports you did last night, but have no access to your PC? No worries, get them from your Mesh. But the list of features doesn’t end here. Mesh allows you to run applications as you would do on your desktop. That’s right - the same application you would run on your PC now you run it anywhere you are and that’s without having to wait for Setup to finish the install.

Let’s let our imaginations run for a while: You go out with friends to enjoy a quiet evening at a local restaurant. You snap photos of everyone around the table and those are instantly uploaded to your Mesh and synced with all your friend’s devices so everyone gets their own fair share of laugh. You get home and you open up your Messenger from within your Mesh. You didn’t bother to install it and it’s always with you no matter where you go. You chat for a while with your friends, exchange that very important website everyone’s talking about. On the following day you are at the library and all your stuff is at your fingertip - friends, photos and that very dirty website.

It all sounds really good, doesn’t it? I am somewhat glad to see Microsoft using open standards and pushing the boundaries of what today’s technology can do to deliver a great end-user experience. I hope they won’t screw up as they have done countless times in the past. Live Mesh is certainly a great hub to start your digital life.

I encourage you to give it a try at www.mesh.com and share your thoughts. For those of you more interested in the underlying technology, have a look at Channel9 for a great video of a new-wave application.

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.