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Online Replacements for Desktop Apps?
Posted by
Cliff
on Thu Aug 12, 2004 05:25 PM
from the share-your-favorites dept.
from the share-your-favorites dept.
Jon_Aquino asks: "I'd like to share this Google Groups thread of free online replacements for desktop apps. Some of the gems are: an online UML diagrammer, an online Paintbrush app, online Post-It notes, an incredibly realistic text-to-speech converter, and an online spreadsheet. What are other cool online desktop-app replacements?"
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Minesweeper, etc. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Minesweeper, etc. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Minesweeper, etc. (Score:4, Informative)
That'll be Xulmine, available from games.mozdev.org [mozdev.org].
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Re:Minesweeper, etc. (Score:4, Informative)
http://binertia.com/lightswitch.html [binertia.com]
press such combination that all squares are
yellow at the same time. It has been done.
and this works in IE5+/NS5+/Moz/FireFox/Opera
enjoy
--
/apz, simple puzzle games are the best
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Re:Minesweeper, etc. (Score:5, Informative)
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Castlevania, StreetFighter and more.... (Score:4, Informative)
some use an emulator plugin, but alot just use shockwave/flash.
Tm
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Computer Voice TTS (Score:3, Funny)
How to make the MS "Merlin" agent more annoying? Give him a French accent!
secure...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:secure...? (Score:4, Funny)
KFG
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Its Usenet not google groups. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Its Usenet not google groups. (Score:5, Funny)
Google Groups is an online replacement for your desktop newsreader app, see...
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Re:Its Usenet not google groups. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, no... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Its Usenet not google groups. (Score:4, Funny)
*Enter old hacker*
I remember when we didn't have these fancy-assed weeeeeeeeb browsers. All we had was telnet and FTP, and we LIKED it. And sometimes the server you wanted to use didn't have anonymous-FTP, so you had to crack the box - but that was easy then since everyone's root password was 'root' anyways.
Oy! We were real men then.
*Exit old hacker*
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Re:Its Usenet not google groups. (Score:3, Funny)
Raise your hands if... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Raise your hands if... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Raise your hands if... (Score:5, Funny)
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voicemail (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Raise your hands if... (Score:3, Funny)
Browser (Score:5, Funny)
Lots of people have thought of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like they won...
Simpy.com for bookmarks (Score:5, Interesting)
If it does, then Simpy [simpy.com] is definitely a superior online replacement for bookmarks (really more than bookmarks, but let's keep it at that). Here is a demo [simpy.com] and some screen shots [simpy.com].
Re:Simpy.com for bookmarks (Score:3, Funny)
Nah ... better use this [google.com]
It's Usenet, not Google Groups (Score:5, Interesting)
By posting this to /. (Score:5, Funny)
They depend on a running server. These just died.
The best one... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The best one... (Score:5, Interesting)
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SalesForce.com (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice but what's the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Basecamp project management (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, I don't have a paid up BaseCamp membership since I think it's overpriced, but there you go
If that 'spreadsheet' is a gem (Score:3, Insightful)
My geek b0yfriend's n0t h0me right n0w... (Score:5, Funny)
Application Servers? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the much-hyped application server revolution never happened, because people just don't want to share personal or proprietary information or need the guaranteed availablility of a locally-installed app. The only real popular web apps I can think of are the search engines of various types (web, real estate, personal ads, etc.) and, perhaps, those on-line tax services (you give them your information at a store front, too). Otherwise, the WWW is still mostly just a place to share information, mail-order stuff, and post flamebait to forums like this one.
The most ubiquitous of all (Score:5, Funny)
This...could be...the REVOLUTION. (Score:4, Funny)
Did I read this right?
FREE software?
Like, you mean, it's free for two weeks then I have to buy it? Or you mean that it's not free, but you found a place to pirate it?
Or...no. It... it's not possible. Are you seriously coming here, to Slashdot, and telling us that there are software packages that we don't have to pay for, and can still legally use?
Holy crap, man.
The Horde Projects. (Score:3, Informative)
These guys have great webmail(Imp) ; nice web based file managers (Gollem); a nice CVS viewer.
From their FAQ [horde.org]
reminds me of (Score:4, Interesting)
In the mid late 90's when everyone was going to use the netscape web browser and Sun's java to run all their applications from applets on thin-client sun terminals. Oh, and all your news would come from "Push" technology like Pointcast.
Is it me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Something about trusting my data (confidential or not) to some unknown, faceless entity, for lack of a better term, has always kept me away from such services.
Not that I'm a paranoid guy or anything ("even paranoid people have enemies!"), but who knows who's really seeing what your data, and who knows what they might do with that knowledge. Whether it's initially (mis)used or not, the danger is there. And if it's archived anywhere along the way, the potential for misuse is even greater, as now anyone down the road can come along and find/sell/misuse it.
"See this killer app that everyone's talking about? That was my idea! But no sooner had I began sketching out my flow on gmodeler [gskinner.com] then 'Boom!' it was patented and being marketed everywhere. That shoulda been me...." (Not that GModel would ever do this, but it's a good example of my point).
Not to mention the confidentiality issue... I work for a financial services company, and a few years ago, we were looking at ways to quickly re-purpose a bunch of PDF documents to HTML, and one proposed solution was a web service that offered online conversion of such documents for free. Clearly though the privacy issues, not to mention potential for misuse of the data made us choose a different avenue!
Plus there's always the fear of relying on the online apps. If I become dependant upon it, either for my work, or for the convenience it offers, what am I to do if suddenly the site goes under, becomes a pay site, or simply changes URLs due to a provider going down.
Not that there aren't any valuable services out there, there are! It's just that I feel safer relying on local software, and homegrown solutions. Am I alone with this perception?
Re:Is it me? (Score:3, Interesting)
Additionally, that's one of the reasons I provide an RSS feed. You can easily save a local backup of your notes.
Tony
Webware directory (Score:5, Informative)
Check out XDesktop for Open office (Score:3, Interesting)
CBG
killer app (Score:3, Funny)
slashdot . org (Score:5, Funny)
Online Java-based SSH Client (Score:3, Informative)
The SSH client is widely available from various sources, particularly universities. Just Google for "mindterm ssh" [google.com] to find a location near you.
One caveat: I've only used this using Internet Explorer (since that is always on a public Windows machine), but the SSH client is also supposed to work with Netscape.
Re:Online Java-based SSH Client (Score:3, Informative)
I wish it was, but no... Thanks to the security restrictions of Java, it can be a real PITA.
Basically, if it's on the same server you want to connect to, then you're okay with basic SSH... But in my experience, companies don't keep their SSH server on the same site as their webserver, so that's not much of an option.
Now then, to connect
Great work guys (Score:3, Insightful)
The best way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Puh-leez. I'd like to boot to BIOS so that I can load DOS so that I can run Windows so that I can use IE so that I can set up a VM so that I can sandbox an application so that I can use a buggy Java editor to write a self-worship web page?
As an exercise in emulating those Russian dolls that keep getting smaller and smaller, sure. As a real-world computing solution? I'll know we're in hell if this ever achieves wide-spread adoption. The current deluge of web-based Java apps is already turning my hair grey with bugs, security exploits, extremely nasty functionality, and spontaneous page refreshes which cause my recent changes to be replaced with the 5 minute old information that the server has.
New SourceForge project (Score:3, Interesting)
Plug warning: I'm the project admin
Go check out the Sydney [sourceforge.net] project. There's an example at http://sydney.sourceforge.net/sydney_example.html [sourceforge.net].
Sydney is an all-Javascript/CSS/DOM project intended to create applications that run in your browser but look like desktop apps. It's already in use in a real project, but I'm not sure how much I can say about it, what with it being proprietary and all.... Anyway, Sydney is (to be) released under the LGPL. (The "to be" part is 'cause I'm just finishing up exams, and I haven't figured out the file release tools on SourceForge yet. Everything's in CVS, though.) It provides a fairly rich class hierarchy of widgets, including normal stuff like buttons, labels, and checkboxes, plus some more complex stuff like trees and tables. It runs in both Mozilla and IE, and it's intended to be cross-browser, so now that it's open source, it may start to work in $YOUR_FAVOURITE_NON_TTY_BROWSER. Let me know what you think.
Ian
Re:Text to Speech App (Score:5, Interesting)
The English output still sounds like a robot. The Spanish one is almost humanlike.
For those who don't know, Spanish has a nearly perfect spelling system: by the spelling you know how to pronounce the word exactly. Of course, regional dialects change the pronunciation, but it's always consistent.
The other way around is not true, though. Two words with the same pronunciation may have different spellings, specially because of the V-B, S-C-Z, CC-X, C-K.
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