No. 14 

February 10, 2000

 

Technology:

myWebOS

I do not recommend that you uninstall you Microsoft Office 2000 just yet, but you should definitely take a look at myWebOS, if only to ponder whether this is indeed the route that office productivity suites (and everything else for that matter) will eventually follow. For now it seems pretty obvious that myWebOS and similar efforts (one, notably, by Microsoft...) are not yet ready for prime time. The performance offered to the user is so abysmal that it evokes the unpleasant memories of running Microsoft Word on a 75 MHz Power Macintosh. Although, admittedly, the novelty factor provides a significant counterbalance.

myWebOS is an ASP (Application Service Provider) concept taken to its logical extreme: it's a Windows computer running inside of a browser window. Well, not the entire computer, but its desktop interface. Well, not even that, but a clever ActiveX application that looks and feels very much like Windows desktop with its Start menu, Taskbar, My Computer, etc. Even so, still a pretty radical thing. The idea is that you don't have to have typical productivity applications installed on your laptop in order to write a letter, put together a presentation, or do number crunching in a spreadsheet while away from your office workstation.  In fact, you don't even have to have that laptop! Because all these applications and the documents you create with their help are available to you from any computer with a 4th generation browser or better.

Yes, a mere browser gives you access to a word processor, a notebook, personal calendar, expense manager, e-mail client, address book and personalized news clips. It will let you store files (whether created with the included applications or not), send and receive instant messages, participate in discussion groups. All this for free, at least as long as myWebOS is in beta; after that, the core applications are likely to remain free, while some specialized ones will incur a small monthly fee.

The whole thing is like a concept car: great as a preview of things to come (maybe), but you would not want to rely on it for your daily commute. myWebOS is sluggish, even on very fast connections; on dial-up it is probably unusable. This is especially true when running the Windows-like interface (which requires MSIE 5.x); one may opt for running individual applications inside a regular browser window, which improves performance somewhat. The list of available applications is small, and those available are not exactly feature rich. Finally, there is no compatibility with the de-facto standard Microsoft Office. It may yet prove to be another instance of a Network Computer (i.e. dumb idea), a Newton (i.e. poor application of a good idea), or a Palm Pilot (i.e. a stunning success). Whatever the case, it sure makes a great conversation piece in the company of other geeks! :-)

myWebOS (click on a thumbnail):
Desktop-like interface with open windows 

For more information please visit myWebOS site or search the ACT database of Groupwork Tools.

Online event:

This online discussion will explore how young people use ICTs in the production, dissemination and use of knowledge in pursuit of sustainable development. A special invitation to participate is extended to youth in developing countries and countries in transition. Fundamental questions that will be addressed include:

  • Do young people today possess the necessary capacity and skills to partake in the global knowledge society and to make informed choices?
  • What options exist for young people to build partnerships with other stakeholders to achieve effective participation in decision making?
  • In the face of massive youth unemployment/underemployment worldwide, what opportunities exist in the global information economy to productively engage young people?
  • What is the potential role of youth as infomediaries, through whom other constituencies can benefit, directly or indirectly, from ICT access?
  • What role does ICT access play in empowering young people to partake in the global knowledge society and to make informed choices?
The results of the e-conference will be presented to the Global Knowledge Partnership during the Second Global Knowledge Conference from 7-10 March 2000.

Conference:

DIAC 00
  • "Shaping the Network Society: the Future of the Public Sphere in Cyberspace"
  • Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing (DIAC) Symposium
  • Held May 20-23, 2000 in Seattle, WA
  • Cyberspace may become the dominant medium through which people create and share information and ideas in the future.  How their conversations about the environment, culture, leisure, and political decisions, are conducted and how they are resolved are likely to have major social implications.  What directions and implications does cyberspace foretell for community, democracy, education and culture?  Addressing those questions may be among the most urgent tasks facing humankind today.
  • The objective of DIAC-00 is to integrate many perspectives, conversations, and people from around the world on the topic of public space in cyberspace:  What is it?  What should it be?  What would we do with it?  What can we do about it?

Online reading:

This is a set of tables showing the compatibility of various groupware tools with the 3 popular operating systems: Windows NT/95/98, MacOS, and Linux. This comparison pertains to clients only; on the server side MacOS is virtually nonexistent. The tools and tool categories listed here come from the Groupwork Solutions Database. Eventually, all 10 categories in the database will be summarized in similar fashion, but as of this newsletter, I managed to process only 3: Conferencing, Virtual Classroom, and Virtual Office.

It is not meant to be a cheap shot in the quasi-religious war about the technological superiority of any OS, but a practical guide for people  interested in the availability of groupware tools for a particular platform. Actually, to my own surprise I discovered that Mac and Linux aficionados, although significantly limited in their choice of tools, are not completely out of the game, and that their situation seems to be improving steadily, albeit slowly.

She said, he said:

"The Network is the Computer." -- Sun Microsystems


© 2000 Vlad Wielbut and the Alliance for Community Technology