Over the Web
August 24th, 2009Some days, I feel like that guy from the old DSL commercial, who, when his wife says “I thought you were surfing the Internet”, he responds “I’m done…”
More often than not anymore, I find that my craving for new content outstrips those who create the content. I’m spoiled by the fact that most of the blogs that I like to read are updated at least once a day, and usually multiple times throughout the day. But things tend to slow down on weekends, and all of a sudden I find myself without an external source of stimulation. It’s a bit boring being online in those periods, usually, though occasionally I’ll find something new and dive into it with both feet, and just immerse myself in getting caught up.
It’s like that with web applications, too. I see why so many people want little applications for their smart phones – who wouldn’t want an app that takes you right to what you’re looking for with no fuss and no intermediary steps. It’s what desktop applications have done for years and years now, before the advent of ubiquitous web applications.
Don’t get me wrong, I can see the allure of web apps – they’re almost entirely cross-platform by nature, necessitating little in the way of tweaking to work on Macs and Linux just as well as they do on Windows. And yet…
There must be plenty of others like me out there, who don’t mind lugging our own laptop around, who crave an application that will do exactly what we’re looking for, without the intermediary of a web browser. Why else would there be such an excellent variety of applications for Twitter, and Word Press, and slowly but surely Facebook?
It must drive those folks crazy, though. Facebook is first, last and always an application designed to put advertisements in your face. So a program that lets you just do what you wanted to do, like seeing the updates that people have put on their pages, must make them utterly crazy.
Anyway, that’s my take on things. I think that I’ll be happiest when, like the iPhone ads claim, there really is “an app for that” for everything I find of interest in my life.