One thing that is missing these days is useful web applications. People are trying and they will be even better over the next year. One thing that is overlooked in web apps, is the need for a fast browsing machine. Trying to use something like Yahoo Mail, Google Maps, and other simple web apps on an older machine is brutal. Modern browsers are pigs and adding Flash, heavy Javascript and other AJAX stuff will really bog a machine down. However, as people replace their machines, these apps are worth a look again and will become the future of applications. The web is becoming document centric.
There is a class of personal documents that the web is good for and some that are bad. Oddly enough, people are inverted in how it handles the file types. Spreadsheets, simple documents, data files (Quicken, etc) are small and are quick and easy on the web. However, these are often people’s most private files and most fear putting them up there. Photos, music, and movies are big and slow yet people have been throwing them onto the web with wild abandon. As people become more comfortable with the big files, they will then move to start to use the web as backup and primary storage for these docs.
Realistically, an Office suite and a browser are the only programs anyone needs anymore on a computer. Maybe Quicken if you don’t like to do your own online banking. Your photos are up in Flickr, Kodak, Snapfish, etc. That’s because the photos you want to share need to be on the web. Your home machine ends up being the backup system for all of your photos, but the important ones are out on the web. Most people have done that with their email for a long time, HotMail, Y! Mail, AOL and GMail have proven that.
Photos pushed that edge in 2001 since they required real bandwidth to upload them, mail never required that, as it was mostly text. As megapixel count as increased, so has photo size and the ability to fill that digital pipe from your home. We, at MediaMaster, are doing the same for your music. Upload it all and access it from anywhere. Your home machine ends up being a backup system for your iPod. You can get to your music from anywhere including your smartphone. There is the initial pain of uploading but that can be done in the background, just like uploading images. Once everything is there, you just listen. We feel that it is different than photos and the next step towards 3.0 web apps.
With photos, you put them up purely to share with others. Your backup is at home. With your music, we have turned the web into active storage. You can interact with your music like you do from iTunes. In my case, I have a Mac Mini hooked up to the stereo and TV at my house. My music collection is in the cloud and the playback system is a 500$ computer. If I want, I can go to a friends house and get to that same music. Or my office. Or my in-laws. No iPod to worry about charging or connecting to a foreign stereo. The fact that ubiquitous access (most places I go) exists in your personal world makes it possible.
People use music and for photos differently. Typically, you edit your photos on the powerful home machine. Cropping, red-eye removal, resizing, and color correcting require a beefy computer and good bandwidth. Remote storage is too slow for that. However, once published, tagging and rearranging slideshows is easily done on the web. With music, your rip your CDs at home which requires hardware and speed. Once it is on your computer, very few people actually edit music. Most people make playlists and might correct the metadata tags. These require no bandwidth and can be easily done on the web. Adding new music to my account is easy with the sync client and then I don’t have to worry about making sure it’s on my laptop. Or desktop. Or wife’s computer.
It just makes life easier. I don’t have to worry as much about home backups. Cloud computing takes care of that for you. Very rarely does a service company fail completely. People are better at building highly reliable systems and the systems themselves are much better than they were just 5 years ago. Connectivity issues are the main problems today, not hardware failure at some remote site. And if it does go down, it’s usually a few hours to have things up and running again. As for remote access, not having a big hole in your home firewall makes life easy. You also get better bandwidth from a central location than from a crappy home connection. And, did I mention, you don’t have to manage your own home server?
Will people even notice the transition from Web 2 to Web 3? Probably not. Already people are blending what happens on their home computer with the web access. Google Earth is not possible without the web. Just try to run it with no connection. Pretty boring. People use to buy mapping applications like that. Games might be the last frontier. They are fully online for the interesting interactivity part, but require really fast local processing to make them pretty. As the home bandwidth increases, you might not need 5 DVD-ROMs full of graphics to run it. Just go to the site and start streaming. Second Life is not very compelling compared to a modern game, but it is getting there. Certainly prettier than the virtual worlds of 10 years ago.
Pick and choose for yourself what you want on the web. Try MediaMaster for a bit and see how handy it is. Try other websites that have no installation requirements, see if they make things more convenient or not. there is usually something for everyone. Our guess is that active applications are the future. Not dumb storage – why just have your messy hard drive on the web when you can use the files directly from the web.
Welcome to the future.
