My First Mobile Post

So I have a PDA and I want to use it. Learning how to write quickly with it is going to help. With a small screen and all.
That should do it for now...
Oh, that picture? Its the Barcelona Congres Center....

Thinkers and Doers

A thought just struck me as I was just mulling over some of the stuff I heard today on the latest Gillmor Gang and Gillmor Daily. I really like Steve Gillmor's approach to moderating and fuelling discussion, as well as his ideas.
The thing that struck me is that it's interesting how guys like Steve and to a certain extend Tim O'Reilly as well (having watched his Mix 06 discussion with Bill Gates yesterday) have very pronounced ideas about new directions in Technology (Steve with his Gesture Bank and Tim of course with the whole Web X.0 movement). At the same time (being true to their analyst inclinations) they criticize the incumbents. Which of course is fine, but and this brings me to my point, they seem to be stuck more in their ideas rather than developing their vision(s) into tangible product(s). As I said... just a thought...

Web 2.0 as a replacement for Desktop Management?

It is pretty exciting to see all the buzz around Web 2.0 & Ajax, having only just "dipped my toe in the water". I'm really liking what I see and I think given time the concepts will yet again revolutionize the way we view, use and manage computing. Note that I deliberately avoid use of the 'old' IT acronymn. IT is probably still what it is, but it just feels to old a term to still be using it.

The BIG question on my mind is how far can Web 2.0 be taken, such that it obviates the need for Desktop Management such as what currently is being done with products such as SMS in the Windows world (making up at least about 90% of the corporate desktops). In the same vain, it might render desktop virtualization techniques (such as server based computing and VMware player-like technologies) unnecessary as these technologies have arisen as an answer to the difficulty of managing the corporate desktop.

In such a new world the concept of ASP takes on new meaning as well. Will the new Web 2.0 incarnations of the 'old' standard productivity applications be offered only by a few big players (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo)? Will Web 2.0 change the paradigm such that our needs change and we f.i. no longer need full blown Word Processors because the only place we need to publish our data is on the Web. Should data be publish offline (to create a book or report) then I'm sure there will be tools available to compile and format our online data automatically such that it can be printed for offline usage.

One issue that I believe is unanswered by all Web 2.0 technology that I've seen today is that of security. In other words how well is my data protected from both external as well as internal threats. I don't think SSL is an answer here. At best a small part of the answer. If Web 2.0 is going to be a broad as possible solution, viable from the mom & pop shops right thru to the large enterprises, we need to have answers (solutions) that deal with (federated) Identify and Access Management questions to deal with distrectionary as well as mandatory access control across the Web 2.0 world...

technorati tags: Web2.0, Desktop, Management