Robb Beal's Radio Weblog

Try this test. Go to a venture firm, angel, or big company with a Mac OS X product/concept/prototype. Do they consider the fact that it's a Mac application a net plus? (No.) Do they say "It makes a lot of sense to test this concept in the Mac market because Mac users love to experiment with new app ideas and if it's successful in Mac land, it's going to be successful on other platforms?" (No.)

Independent Mac Developers: Next year, let's take the money we would have each paid to go to Apple's WWDC to have them preach to us, tell us how great they are, watch our markets disappear with each new release of free iThis and iThat apps, etc and put the money into a venture fund exclusively for Mac developers. Apple could even take the money they'd save--no need to pay expensive product managers to "spin" things--and invest it in the fund!

Apple plays the congratulations game! Cool! http://www.apple.com/ I'd love to see them congratulate a new partner, customer, etc. every few days. apple.com/win_win.html :-) It would be among the most visited pages on apple.com! http://wmf.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$7369?mode=day

Dave Winer: Imho, Eisner and his ilk were the pirates. Yes!

Radio UserLand makes a cameo on the new Watson 1.5 site too.

We shipped Watson 1.5 today! It's a really solid release. (Churn baby, churn!) We had to balance new tools against fixing bugs in existing tools. In addition to marketing and site design, I did the UI refinement work for this release. (There's a lot more UI work to be done!) Icons are from a great designer named Michael Matas. Dan Wood, founder and developer, is a world class programmer and a great person to work with.

I'm dipping my toes in the Instant Outlining waters: http://radio.weblogs.com/0001123/instantOutliner/robbBeal.opml

I much prefer to be creative than be engaged in endless debates that are stacked against me. http://wmf.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$4402?mode=day Same here!

More on desktop web apps: Bray: conventional web apps can't be made fast http://wmf.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$3170?mode=topic

Simon St Laurent cuts Macromedia a new anal orifice over Flash MX. Hey Simon, why not have multiple Webs? The one that the W3C is leading that's owned by Microsoft isn't doing very much new for us. Why not have some excitement outside the confines of the cartel? [Scripting News] I'm with Dave on this one. If Macromedia comes up with a more compelling story for developers, then they deserve to be successful. This isn't a zero sum game. The world isn't going to wait for the W3 and its members to provide the tools to deliver productive, desktop like user experiences.

Here's how I defined Desktop Web App last year, almost to the day!

A desktop web application is any application that:
a) executes primarily on the desktop (not the server)
b) has a desktop OS user experience (eg, takes full advantage of the OS)
c) relies more on local storage than network storage
d) uses Internet and web standards for network plumbing

http://wmf.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$3091 The last paragraph of that post is the most important part!

And, where's the "Transitioning from browser-based apps to desktop web apps" (or desktop internet apps) document that describes the analogs that exist, the browser-based concepts that have no analog in desktop web apps, and the terminology differences between these two domains. http://wmf.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$6276?mode=day Still very relevant!

Jim Roepcke's jumps into the desktop web app naming conundrum. http://jim.roepcke.com/2002/03/10#item4501 I've been talking publically about desktop web apps since July of 2000 perhaps earlier: http://wmf.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$1271 It's funny how out in front of the market we were!