Ebrahim Ezzy outlines how he sees the coming competition between web-based apps (e.g., Writely, Google Spreadsheet) and what he describes as web-expanded desktop apps. As I understand this second category, he is describing the effort of the companies who provide commercial applications to offer web options from within these programs (e.g., blogging from MicroSoft Word). When I thought about the distinction, I realized this second category has been developing for some time and I failed to recognize the contrast he describes. For example, many word processing programs have offered the save as html option for some time. Many other programs (e.g., PowerPoint, Inspiration) provide similar web-oriented option. Ezzy describes features that go far beyond what many of us have already used.
Ezzy concludes that Web-Expanded Apps will end up winning out (security, reliability, scalability, etc.). Read the article – the host of the site Richard McManus disagrees. Perhaps each approach will achieve a critical mass of followers. Browser-apps may be useful in many educational settings because desktop apps are already bloated and expanding the feature set even more may create products not suited the needs of young learners. If this is the path commercial developers intend to pursue, browser apps may
offer the best approach for those seeking both value and simplicity.
Google appears to bundling several of their apps (gmail, calendar, chat) and promoting them to educational institutions. If I understand the promotion, it appears that institutions are allowed to create an interface that would feature the school logo, etc. as a way to “brand” the site for the school. The sites will feature the familiar google ad words.
This promotion will put Google in competition with companies or initiatives of many institutions to create a portal through which alumni, students, future students, etc. will experience an institution online. Perhaps the approach will appeal to some smaller schools. However, I must admit I wish my institution would offer me the same email capacity, secure browser-based email, and spam control quality as Gmail.
I decided to set for myself the task of recommending a bookmarking service. After exploring a bit, I alterd my goal. Promoting a specific application would be presumptious on my part. I do not have enough experience with the options and the decision really comes down to personal preferences. A few comments and several links may be more valuable.
As I struggled with my initial goal, some of the comments made by Nicholas Negroponte (at NECC) came back to me (BTW – his comments are available as a podcast from the Apple Music Store). His comment on the commercial software/hardware scene pretty much claimed that vendors must create more powerful software and hardware to continue to attract business. The goal is to assure income by creating more powerful stuff rather than creating less expensive stuff capable of doing a fixed set of things. An unintended consequence may be that the powerful stuff is less friendly to use and perhaps more cumbersome than most users would require.
The connection? Consider ease of use relative to power/features when commiting to a bookmarking service. Perhaps some of the more sophisticated and full-featured programs may exceed your needs.
Some other bloggers attempting to provide product comparisons:
Scuttle might be useful if you have access to a server and enjoy having control of a bookmarking site. Control might involve defining the general purpose for the bookmarking site and limiting those who are allowed to contribute.
My personal favorite among these options is FURL. This site not only allows storage of the URL, tags, and personal annotations, but also saves a copy of the site on a specific day (which may differ from what the site displays on a different day and clearly different if the actual site goes away).
I am guessing that del.icio.us is the most popular bookmarking site. It is easy to use. Popularity may be an issue because the “social” part of social bookmarking depends on others and theoretically the more “others” with interests that match your own the better. I think popularity may play one other role. I wonder how all of these sites are going to survive. I would think popularity would have something to do with the business model sustaining a site. A popular site would seem more attractive if it uses ads because it would expose more users to the ads. A popular site would also seem more attractive as a service provided by a funding source (e.g., Yahoo, Google, Microsoft) – the business model in this case concerns the potential to attract users to a location associated with other “paying” services.
Diigo is my most recent “experiment.” Diigo uses an interesting approach to annotation (I think I remember the site describing what they offer as social annotation). Imagine a clear layer over the web page you are viewing. This layer may contain your personal highlighting and postit-like notes. Your private and other’s public additions become visible when the site is viewed. The value of this approach to you may depend on how much importance you place on the comments provided by others. Diigo also allows sites it bookmarks to be automatically added to several other bookmarking services (although I could not figure out how to add the annotations to a second service). I want to see if this service is around 6 months from now before I get too excited. I do think some of the features are interesting.
In general, I prefer to see several competitors working to create comparable products. Such competition drives innovation. Having said this and aside from the issue of survival, the nature of social software sometimes means that value increases with participants. Mechanisms for easily exporting personal resources to multiple services would be one way for any individual to create a situation in which it would make sense to pick from a number of services depending on which seemed most appropriate to an immediate need.
I encountered an announcement for the beta Google Spreadsheet program and signed up. I received an invitation to try out the service and so far I have been impressed.
I did try to load a large dataset (64000 or rows of data) without luck. I did not read the instructions and this may exceed the limit allowed. I was able to upload and add to a 200 row dataset. Free and shareable – pretty cool.
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