Crastinate

“I have seen the future and it looks promising.” I don’t know if I’m quoting someone with that line or if I just made it up myself. I do, however, believe it.

I just watched the demo of a mobile app that Google created (video embedded below) that allows web apps to work offline just like Google Gears allows certain Google apps to work offline (I’m actually writing this blog post offline on Google Docs).

This seems to be the direction we are going regarding the desktop vs. cloud debate. We can’t expect people to use applications that don’t utilize the usefulness of the internet. We also can’t expect everyone to be connected to the internet all the time. It’s just not realistic for the near future. We are seeing now the standards that will bridge that gap. This might seem like a small step to some. But I think this is going to big. Very big.

I’m pretty open to new ideas and I think I’ve proven from this blog and my Twitter account that I’m okay with putting a lot of myself, and my opinions, online for public distribution. I think I draw the line at my readers, or anyone for that matter, knowing where I am at any given point during the day.

Google announced today a new program/application called Google Latitude where you can set your phone up in such a way that others can see where you are at all times. You can enable privacy options where only your friends can see where you are and the program can, but doesn’t have to, set your location automatically (you can set it manually).

I don’t see anything inherently wrong with this program. The right privacy options are installed so that users won’t get stalked too easily. But my question really is why would anyone want to use this? I honestly can’t think of a good reason to use this at all. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

I was spending some time this afternoon with my six year-old nephew. He wanted to play a computer game so he turned on the laptop and went to Y8.com. I’ve never heard of the site but it had some fun flash games that my nephew seemed to enjoy.

I asked my brother-in-law how my nephew found the site. He had no idea. So I asked my nephew. He said he found it on Google. That’s right. Six year-olds have the mental understanding to turn on a computer, go to Google, search for what they want, and then go to the provided sites. I still have to use LetMeGoogleThatForYou for some people because they ask me questions and can’t do what my nephew can do. I’m fairly convinced that by the time he is ten he will be smarter than me. Okay, stop laughing. Maybe nine.

Google recently announced that they are offering offline access to Gmail via Google Gears. As a big fan of the offline functionality of Google Docs, I am looking forward to using similar functionality with Gmail. This announcement, as usual, has brought out the pundits on how Google is taking one step closer to taking over the Microsoft-dominated desktop. I find most of these articles to be sensationalist journalism.

Here are the reasons why Google is not close to taking over the desktop:

• Regardless of whether you use Google Docs or any other online document creation service, you MUST have a copy of Word, Excel and Powerpoint on your computer to do business.
• Browsers can freeze or just be annoyingly slow. Google uses the browser as their platform to launch these cloud-like services. Bad browser experiences will hinder acceptance of these products.
• Microsoft isn’t too many years away from developing good web/sharing functionality that would be built into MS Office.
• Big businesses seem reluctant to leave the Microsoft standard suite for online services for their core functions.

Everyone likes to talk about Google’s big play for the desktop. I think Google is still fighting for its piece of the internet. They’re not tackling the desktop just yet.

According to a blog post by Jason Kincaid at Techcrunch, the VC firm ratings site, TheFunded, is being sued by a VC firm that received a bad review by an anonymous reviewer. According to Jason

There are a lot of VCs who hate TheFunded for exposing character flaws, and posting term sheets.

Jason also quotes a response from TheFunded’s founder Adeo Ressi

When TheFunded was conceived, we understood that some investors might attempt to take legal action against the views of entrepreneurs. In order to prevent this form of censorship, TheFunded has been carefully designed and takes extensive measures to protect the anonymity all those who share their opinions on the fundraising experience. TheFunded does not store IP addresses, email addresses, or any other personal information associated with a Member account in any database or any file system operated by the company.

This is exactly what every company should be doing. If you must have a member directory, save an email address with permission. I have written about this previously when speaking about Google but this approach applies to all websites. TheFunded has respected its users and allowed them to truly stay anonymous even on the company servers. I commend you Mr. Ressi for your restraint when it comes to collecting your users’ information. We should all reward companies that choose this route to protect their users. I smell a trend. Which companies out there can claim that their users are “Truly Anonymous?”