I was browsing BBC News today and I found a couple things that pissed me off.
Their antiquated copyright notice. I thought BBC backstage changed all that, allowing people to manipulate and syndicate BBC content. I mean how does Google get away with “only download the content for your own personal non-commercial use”??
Then I noticed this blog entry about exciting new M$ technologies. From there a link to a very disheartening article about BBC partnering with M$.
What happened about BBC‘s vlc or codec rumours? 
Vista’s goal of getting content out of the browser is a clear threat to the Web browser based desktop that we’ve fought so hard for.
I wish BBC had their content on Google video, the service which now works in Korea.
With video software patents in the mix, this is bad news. Make a complaint.
My gripe is similar to that of Joey Hess’s regarding Mozilla.
I can’t see Opera’s bugs. Yes, I’ve filed a bug asking for an account.
I remember they did a registration code giveaway at the end of last month. I wonder if this would entitle one access to their BTS. Anyway Opera has removed those awful Ads thank god and painfully marketed it as free. I wonder, is that the same as having a registration code?
I am not entirely fond of registration codes besides. I am a big fan of anonymity.
Dependency on a Internet connection
Offline operation can be surprisingly usable (e.g. writing an email), but in most cases if you lose your network connection Web applications become useless. Network connections do tend to go down and if a Point of Sale (POS) Web system is offline then you can lose a ton of money.
Making Web applications distributed is very hard. Having a server on local client sites is asking for a whole world of pain. Making that local server update to a remote server with Debian is fairly easy, but that solves only part of the problem. Syncing databases and data. Nightmare.
Implications are that environments without good stable (and cheap) Internet connections (Islands, entire countries) can be (initially) poor areas to market a Web application solution.
Dependency on a Web browser (UA)
UAs usually require quite a good machine to run on. I forget what the minimum specs are for Firefox. For sane operation, you do need at least 800mhz and 256megs of RAM. There are quite a few PCs out there that don’t meet that specification. UAs also tend to require a mouse and hence more desk space compared to terminals.
There are loads of security problems associated with UAs nowadays. UAs are as complex as the operating systems beneath it. In fact, one could argue UAs are operating systems themselves.
In these cases I would suggest clients to switch their machines to LiveKiosk. Send clients new CDs for each major update.
Lately, it is really heating up with mobile UAs.
After being subscribed on the Minimo dev mailing list, I can safely say that it’s a dead project. As for opensource software, I am not sure how Nokia’s port will be licensed. Hopefully opensource, though I am not sure how opensource will work on the mobile platform. You can’t develop on that platform as easily as a desktop. Some advantages of opensource might be reduced…
If Opera 8 is on a mobile, then Opera have a great mobile platform. They need to aggressively market this product the world over and right now. Japan has the edge with small devices and selling in that market could prove tricky. IMO, give it away. I’ve seen at least one phone (KYOCERA?) in Japan with Opera though. Oh, there’s more. Their big hope is with Scandanavian Nokia who are working on the competition, Apple’s Webkit. Oh dear !
Japan’s NetFront is a product I haven’t used, but I am hearing a lot of. If this is going to be on every PSP, it will be HUGE. I am sure it will be, so targeting applications now for that platform should be worthwhile.
I would love to see a good comparison of at least 3 of these browsers. I would happily do it myself if someone gave me the devices to test. Please improve this silly comparison for mobiles Opera!
This is really an exciting time for Web applications. At last there is light at the tunnel for deployment to the masses.
Update: Webconverger is the best Linux Web kiosk out there.
If I could setup a “bounty” I would set it on:
I can’t even find the bug for this. SALT or the current default way it stores profile really really sucks.
If this authentication infomation etc. was stored in PAM or LDAP then I wouldn’t have to bother with XDM. A remote profile service would be even better.
A mass market “Kiosk Linux” could then have a chance work. An end user distribution where the desktop is just a browser. No Gnome, No KDE, No bullshit. Just a browser. That’s the desktop.
Web applications could be made to assist people in say, burning CDs. Playing music from Firefox would be trickier.