Now That 2008 Is Almost Over, How Far Have We Moved Online from Desktop?

Whenever we talk about web 2.0 the most popular mantra for us is about people moving more and more of our activities from desktop applications to online ones - until we eventually need nothing but a browser installed on out computer to perform all our tasks, both business and personal ones. But since we’ve been talking about this for so long already and since I can’t help but join in the overall trend of trying to summarize everything now that the year 2008 is approaching its end, I wanted to talk about this particular issue and see how far we have moved online from desktop.

But have we actually moved? Sure, we have seen tons of advanced services launched while the existing ones are growing more and more full-functional and often resembling the desktop applications more than anything else. But does that mean that we have really moved online?

Sure, we now know that we can upload a document to an online service (Google Docs or Zoho, for example), share it with colleagues or friends and collaborate on this document. But that still does not mean that all the documents we have are now safely located in our Google Docs folders - I seriously suspect many (if not all) of those people reading this still have folders on your hard drives containing your documents - all of them or at least the most important ones.

Similarly, while everyone knows we can now use services like Meebo for multi-protocol chats using AIM and Yahoo Messenger and all the other protocols you happen to use, many are still likely to have special applications installed on our desktops - my personal favorite is Miranda but there are tons of others and I’m quite sure everyone has at least some client installed on the computer.

And I can easily name other similar examples (and I’m sure you do as well) as we still maintain the desktop applications we are accustomed to using constantly installed - at the same time knowing of the online alternatives and sometimes using them as needed in addition to those we have installed. But unfortunately my suspicion that it rarely happens vice versa with online applications being the most used ones and desktop ones adding to their use.

Ideally the online tools are supposed to let us avoid use of at least some of the desktop applications we have installed right now and move accomplishment of certain tasks online. But has it actually happened to you? To me it did not happen at all as the only software I had uninstalled was something I used to convert .PDF documents to .DOC - now I am more than happy with Zamzar, a great online service that allows me to convert all my documents. The only disadvantage that I see here is that I have to wait a few minutes to have the link to my converted file emailed my way - but I have never considered this to be too serious of a disadvantage.

I also know that some people have refrained from using email clients in favor of using their favorite Gmail accounts online. And while some of the Gmail fans insist that the application is better than many desktop email clients, there are also situations when they have to realize they don’t have ay backup of all their emails they could use if something happened to their email accounts - like if they can’t access their accounts for some reason.

So right now it looks to me like we have not really moved online from desktop - we have only added online tools to those desktop ones we already use - and often the online apps duplicate the functionality of desktop ones but we want to use them when traveling or on the go. What’s more, I have recently realized that online applications even further add to the clutter on my computer desktop as some of them like it very much to either add shortcuts to open the applications or some desktop applications to improve our experience with their online versions.

I, for example, now have desktop clients installed for Twitter and FriendFeed (Twhirl for me), I have Flickr Uploadr (as it is obviously much easier to upload multiple photos simultaneously using this client). I also use Last.fm scrobbler to listen to my favorite music, desktop tools for files sharing services YouSendIt and Dropbox,

And of course there is an issue of using various toolbars that integrate online tools right into the desktop tools we already use. for example, I have toolbars for LinedIn and Plaxo installed in my Outlook email so that I could easily connect to the people I exchange emails with in these two services. And of course any Firefox user has multiple additional toolbars, extensions, or bookmarkets to use to benefit from all those services that realize that pushing something to our desktop applications is a better way to turn us into loyal users - better than any PR or promotion can be.

True, I may not be the best example here as I only use one computer only - both at home, in the office and when traveling as well. I believe that back when I worked in a large corporation (3 years ago it was) and had two computers - my personal one at home and my office one - along with a bad habit of constantly trying to do some extra work from home which resulted in the need to synchronize files and folders between the two of them, I would have been more than happy to use tools like Google Docs instead of dragging everything around on a flash card. But as of now I am quite happy with my own laptop that I drag everywhere around with me knowing that everything is perfectly safe and I won’t forget anything important at home as absolutely everything is with me anyway.

But the conclusion is still a valid one, I think: instead of letting me stop using some desktop tools these online ones add further toolbars, buttons, and shortcuts to keep me using these tools instead of looking for further alternatives online - at the same time actually making my life easier as some of these tools I can’t really imagine living without any more. And while everyone is talking about cloud operating systems that will allow us to access all the applications we need from anywhere using nothing but a browser and needing nothing but internet access, I have a feeling that my own operating system is already turning into a place hosting all the tools I need to access - both online and offline. So I have a feeling that we still have a very long way to go before we are actually able to reach the web 2.0 ideals with everything done online without any reliance on desktop tools. Right now the situations looks like online tools rely on desktop presence way too much.

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