A site called Simple Spark is collecting a catalog of new applications - active applications including mashups and interactive presentations - that know generally as Web 2.0.
The world of software is changing - and rapidly. Computing with applications that live on servers rather than a single hard drive - computing in the "cloud" as it were - is increasingly possible and desirable.
Funny - supposedly Bill Gates had an epiphany years ago that so radically re-directed Microsoft's style and goals - and yet they are producing the same stuff today that they produced 10 years ago and before. Over-built, over-blown applications that take too much space and time for the general run-of the mill need. And for all the highly vaunted changes in the Office applications released with Vista - there is virtually nothing new in any of the applications. The locations of the buttons have changed - some for the better, many for the much-worse. But that seems to be all the innovation the poor gang in Bellevue could stand for one decade.
And not only are they not available in any body's cloud - they have instituted a range of online handcuffs to make sure that you are using only your application only on your machine - only, only, only! Looks like Bill's definition of an epiphany is security - not for your machine or your data - but for Microsoft's licensing interests. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has seen benefit to letting the imagination roar - and the new products and capabilities offer some ideas possible only in an online computing world.
Watch for more with goose to the brainstorm that Apple's iPhone will cause - We may find a way to drag Microsoft out of the 80's yet!
