Online Replacements for Desktop Apps?

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?"

secure...?

[Worminater]

i dont know about you guys but i dont think i would use those apps... if you dont have access to excel/mspaint, i would always rather have a flashdrive with them or variations on there rather then relying on third party web page being online to get something halfway useful done...

Lots of people have thought of this

[madprof]

One of the reasons Microsoft fought so hard in the browser wars was because it was felt that the *real* platform could well become the browser, which you could then access applications via, not the underlying OS.
Looks like they won...

Nice but what's the point

[Lotu]

Those online apps are very useful. Really who is going to use paint to make a picture. Or that online spreadsheat program when you can just install the program on your hardrive and use it their where it's faster and more fully featured. Pluss if you are a secure network then you couldn't use them anyways. I just don't really see the point.

If that 'spreadsheet' is a gem

[Timesprout]

you are a very easy person to please. Its not really a replacement for anything.

Application Servers?

[upsidedown_duck]

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.

Re:Its Usenet not google groups.

[TCM]

A post on /. noting "Its Usenet not google groups." being marked +5, Informative.

Sheesh to that!

Is it me?

[Mr. Cancelled]

I've never been one to rely too heavily on online apps.

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:Nice but what's the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Can be handy if you need to read a file someone's sent you but haven't got the app necessary. I run a Linux desktop at work (makes my work with Solaris boxes so much more efficient than Windoze) but if someone sends me a Micro$oft project plan, it's easier to run it through the online project viewer [projectviewercentral.com] than it is to boot into the toytown OS.

Re:Check out XDesktop for Open office

[dasmegabyte]

When Microsoft proposed to do this two years ago, people jumped down their throats. When the Open Source community does it, there's a general "hey cool" feeling. Am I the only person who doesn't feel comfortable putting his trust in a bunch of volunteers over a company he has paid money to for a support contract?

As for "why install software you rarely use:" because hard drive space is cheap and nearly limitless. Net connections are expensive and limited. You can still patch everything from a central server (my software even uses Peer to Peer to accomplish this, a-way-hey-hey), but running it off hard drive is faster and much more reliable. But hey, if you want to do more work for the tenuous benefit of slightly less hard drive space, be my guest.

Great work guys

[t_allardyce]

AT&T would like to thank slashdot for load testing their new TTS system. Which i must say held out pretty well during its 15 minute bombardment of "fuck me hard" (audrey) "last time on star trek voyager" (claire) and "essen mein sheizer. oh yah. dass ist gut!" (both of the germans). And thus, we learn the reason why we dont use online replacements for desktop apps: we all have our own computing power, a website cant handle all of us.

The best way...

[maximilln]

...to turn your top-of-the line PC into a 286 era performer.

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.

Online applications

[tobar mersa]

Such applications will truly take off after remote storage becomes ubiquitous and (at least moderately) more secure.

For some applications, such as the Lemmings Clone [193.151.73.87], or the calculator, or a number of others, there's no real reason to save what one had created with the program, as the output is only immediately important. The application is used a few times, and the outputs are used immediately, or within a few hours.

For other online applications, such as online office applications, or the like, the need to save a document (or other work) is manifestly important. Currently, documents can be saved on the computer on which one works, but then one still requires a storage medium to cart around in order to keep the document with the person during travel. Which means that the online office application is a good way to save money, or to be able to create office documents on a computer without office applications (word processors, spreadsheets, etc.), but a person will likely use a word processor which is located on the computer if one is present.

However, with remote storage, online applications could begin to take off as the primary application, replacing their installed counterparts: the same document could be edited in the same word processor on two (or fifteen) different computers, reducing the number of people who need to use and carry laptops. In addition, if and when online office applications appear in great numbers for mobile devices, e.g. the Palm or the Zaurus, an online office application will make even more sense in terms of storage management, as no local application is needed, and the document can be stored off the palmtop somewhere else, and be edited from a desktop at work or home, as well as the palmtop on the road.

Re:Hey, this could be a killer!

[Jon_Aquino]

Actually an "online browser" has some merit ... Sometimes when I'm using a computer without Firefox I wish I could go to firefox.com and have tabbed browsing, find-as-you-type, URL aliases, searching Google from the toolbar, etc. All this implemented in clever JavaScript, perhaps.

There not 'online apps'

[oliverthered]

I've just tried a few of those 'online' apps, they ate loads of memory and one crashed firefox, hardly the things I would expect from an 'online' app.

Instead they are just regular application embeded in a web page, woopie, I can do that with anything Java.

I was expecting the kind of thin client that I would be able to access from a mobile device, or run on a pritated copy of Crippled Windows (TM) that's been imported from Asia.

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