Jeff Huber, Senior VP of Google, talking about Google "Gadgets" (aka Widgets ) at the
Web 2.0 Summit made a very telling statement about the future of computing:
“The Internet has already won. The Web is the platform–a mosaic of gadgets, APIs and container all over the Web.”His declaration of the web as the dominant platform in computing describes an approach to software design that is kind of a no-brainer for anyone watching the trends in desktop widgets, Facebook applications and the like. However, this kind of thinking also represents a paradigm shift in the established thinking about how we use computers.
Thinking about networks as the basic platform, not as a function of computers, but as their essential identity, represents a change in how companies will approach software design, and how users' will approach their own PCs.
Reading this, I can't help thinking of
Sun Microsystems' original vision of the future of computing; as network based, with applications living on the network rather than individual hard drives, and PCs being little more than dumb terminals with storage capacity for personal files.
The ramifications of such a structure, however, are far reaching, affecting computer cost and, therefore, the so-called "digital divide", collaboration and, therefore, the structure of new business, as well as security, ownership, copyright, and much more.
It's a simple statement that, as I said, seems obvious to anyone with a passing interest in the subject. The downstream effects of this thinking, however, are very significant.
ZDNet
The T-Phone concept from designer Jeong-Kyun Nam, with its nifty design and eminently losable doodads, is an example of a creative, if slightly ill-conceived, solution to an interesting problem.
John Davis spent eight years and £15,000 building a Boeing 747 flight simulator in a room in his house. And now the 47-year-old's hobby has turned into such a full-time occupation that he has jacked in his job as a graphic designer to run a full-time flight simulation business from his home in Coventry, UK.
The mini-episodes of discontinued TV programs, to be shown online, are part of a Pepsi campaign designed to celebrate the brand’s old logos, slogans and jingles.
Garrett Oliver, Brooklyn Brewery Brewmaster, writes an interesting Op-Ed piece in the New York Times. Coming off the recent merger of beer giants SABMiller and Molson Coors, forming MillerCoors, he writes about how, as a "craft-brewer" he isn't worried about his business in the face of this new super-brewery.
