Last desktop app standing?
Om Malik has an interesting post up about how IM is the “last desktop app standing.” As he says, “the desktop IM clients, popularized by America Online’s AIM are still amongst the most used pieces of software, and have not only survived the Web 2.0 revolution but are thriving.” Om’s post got me thinking about how dependent I’ve become on web-based apps. For a lot of my work, I’ve replaced Word with Google Docs, ACDSee with flickr, Outlook with Gmail and Google Calendar, and so on. And as time goes by, I keep dropping more desktop apps. One of my last holdouts was FeedDemon, since I just couldn’t get used to the UI of any web-based feed-readers (and that includes Google Reader). But now that FD parent Newsgator is making some progress in the 2.0 direction, I may just drop FD as well (though NG still has a ways to go to match FD’s usability). And despite Om’s very good points about desktop IM clients, I recently switched from Gaim to Meebo, which I keep running within my Netvibes home page (and I started using Netvibes instead of the Google Desktop sidebar as my widget platform of choice). Of course, I don’t live completely in the cloud. I still use iTunes to download podcasts and Paint Shop Pro for image editing — though I also stream music straight from the web withthe browser-based version of Rhapsody and do minor image edits with PXN8. And I still have to use Outlook and Word at work — though I increasingly use Google Docs to share documents with colleagues, and sync my Outlook mail with Gmail and calendar with GCal. Ironically, about the only desktop app I currently find indispensable is the one I’m using at this very moment: Windows Live Writer. Sure, I could work directly in Wordpress or Typepad. Or post straight from GDocs. But I find those methods clumsy and inconsistent compared with Live Writer, especially when it comes to working on multiple blogs on a range of platforms. Of course, I’d be more than happy to switch to a web-based app that does everything WLW does — and I suspect someone’s working on it right now. Give me that and Photoshop online, and I may just be able to function completely within Firefox, with little interaction with any other desktop apps.
