Comments on: The Web OS from a user/mobile standpoint – A gedankenexperiment .. – How would the WebOS look like to a user?

By: Shawn

Shawn — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:42:56 +0000

I wrote about this recently on my own blog, here:
http://bit.ly/5r0kA
To summarize, I believe the whole App Store paradigm will not scale as other platforms grow. Companies will not want to develop, maintain and support native apps for iPhone, RIM, Symbian, Android, etc., for things that should really be delivered through a browser. There’s no reason, for example, that Facebook should run as a native app on your mobile device.
I’m not sure about a WebOS though. I still think there will be a place for native, non-cloud apps. I think devices will have both a native OS and one or more web browsers, just as your laptop does. (netbooks will not kill the laptop).
Browsers will have to get better in a few ways. Perhaps most importantly, web apps will need to be able to talk to your device’s phone, camera, GPS, media player and other native functions.

By: ARJWright

ARJWright — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:00:35 +0000

My only real hiccup with the idea of a weOS is that the idea of an OS might need to be pushed aside. What we are all looking for is simply a way to share information in a machine-readable context that submits to our needs depending on the device and environment. And while that looks in part like an OS, it also looks like standardized and open data formats that enable IP to not be in the information, but how companies allow for that information to be better used by more people (think the Flickr API as a good example).
I think that in this mind of thought, maybe the idea of a webOS is really simply saying API frameworks that work wherever, and companies build their basis not from holding things in a locked garden, but by keeping them open, building the kinds of services that actually makes them more useful.

By: Ajit Jaokar

Ajit Jaokar — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 07:07:24 +0000

This is some great insights AJ. I have also been interested in the idea of mobile web servers and I think that while they have been around for a while(ex nokia) – they will really take off in a peer to peer world. keep me posted about your ideas and I shall blog about them seperately. are you at CTIA(fall)? kind rgds Ajit

By: ARJWright

ARJWright — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:19:40 +0000

This sounds a lot like what I am able to do with my mobile web server, and then extending that by simply opening the use of the REST APIs and XML components to allow for others to see, share, and redisseminate content.
From the side of personal information, this could look like a single calendar that can be opened or shared via a “Share Event” like function. The persons who are being shared the event need to only authenticate versus the contact list of the owner, and then within their calendar they would see the event and all of its associated media. Any updates or changes to that event would be automatically pushed as the user is connected to the calendar on the item level, not necessarly the user or category level.
This ideal is a good one, it needs a lot more users to make it happen though.