In this blog post I'll be talking about how I see the future of standalone, desktop applications and the web.

I don't have an extraordinary knowledge about these trends, but from my observations... I noticed that more 'n more web applications are being developed by companies like Google. At the same time, to enable this ascending trend, the web browser developers are implementing more web standards and web technologies. In the near future, let's say 5 years, the web will start to overwhelm the desktop world. Users will use more the web, than the desktop applications. Already, one may play on-line music (Pandora, Last.FM), watch videos (Youtube, Dailymotion), edit videos (Adobe Photobucket - to be released), draw images, use on-line office applications and many more things. Frankly, I enjoy this phenomena, because I don't have to bother anymore so much with my OS. In the past 5 years, the Internet has grown onto me very much. When I first "met" with the WWW, I was just chatting on IRC and on Yahoo! IM. Today, I watch on-line videos on a daily basis, I listen on-line radios of all kinds. Oh, and I am blogging - hehe, I joined the Blog wagon.

Lately, Microsoft is joining the party. The first glimpse of them actually trying to keep up with the Nets, was seen when they announced the already. possibly lame, Windows Live services and by increasing IE's version: pIE 7. Looking onto the bright side of their "heavy work", I must say that they managed to initialize a process of rehabilitation of their so-called browser, which for years has been stalling the web evolution. And, I dare to say, it slows it even today. Imagine Yahoo using in their applications the power of SVG and other technologies already available in any of the superior browsers :). If Microsoft will strive, and it is possible, they will come-up with an IE 8 which will enable the web applications of the "future". But, I honestly believe that Microsoft will be suffocated by the Internet...

With this "Internet boom", another increase has been observed by my very active neuronal networks. The increase of garbage, the purest quality of its kind. That's due to the fact that more and more users have the possibility to publish their own "works", including me. I am now talking about the community sites, such as, but not limited to: FlickEr, Youtube, Deviantart, Blogspot, Last.FM and many other sites for studying the activity of the masses. If you navigate on any of the aforementioned sites, in a matter of minutes you can find, even by mistake, something that it is conflicting with your religion, education or whatever. The problem is that these sites are lacking moderators and, by being driven by an automated system for generating the pages, inadequate content is being displayed and promoted, instead of just being hidden somewhere on the site :). This is the case for: images/photos, videos and... comments. For avoiding any annoying contents being displayed, my recommendations are: on any site, there should be a button for "Display Comments", by default being turned off, thus one will not read by mistake negative comments. Another option, would be an anti-spam filtering for photos and videos. Automatically hiding contents which are using inadequate words. One last step would be... more moderators, more activity from their part. Any form of hate speech, sexual harassment or form of racism should be banned. Oh, yeah.. my "solutions" aren't panacea.

Also, with this Internet usage increase, the need of "censorship" is reaching high levels also :). Did it ever happen to you, when you were trying to watch a video of Alizée or ... Pavarotti to get a message like: "This video is currently not available in your region. Please try again later, we insist. We apologize for any inconveniences." ?. If you have used Yahoo Launchcast, Joost or anything similar, you must have encountered this. In my humble opinion, everything you see and you can click on it, you should be able to just have it :)... and not to be bothered where you are on Earth - you know, like a kid: you see, you want, it is a fact. The idea of the Internet is to be able to access any content from anywhere, by not being limited to your area. These kind of "error messages" are against the liberty offered by having Internet access. I also suspect that in the near future, many of the community sites, will turn into payed sites. The already addicted users will suddenly have to pay for their favorite services, because they "can't live" without them.

Even banners, ads and publicity on the web evolved pretty much, but I don't know anything about it... I block all the advertising servers within my favorite browser.

Enough with my blabbering, guys. See you next time.