It looks obvious

Flock is not one of those companies I mark as waste of money.  I think that there is a promise, yet to be discovered, in moving the browser into more active role in running applications.  Unlike many (like Om , Paul Kedrosky and Steve Rubel ) I’m much more willing to give credit to the Flock team to shine. I wrote this clarification to make clear that what I’m going to write in this post has nothing to do with Flock.

People who read this blog are probably aware to the fact that I dislike vague explanations and half baked ideas and slogan . While slogans and hypes are valid marketing tools they reflect intellectual laziness. Dealing with software development for awhile I can claim that one of the most important tools that good developers have or require to develop is logical reasoning. People that deal with technology and software development, with its implications on our life, cannot be intellectually lazy.

Therefore when I cannot restrain myself from reacting when I’m reading the following paragraph, in post defending Flock:

"Tell ya what, I don’t want to go bumbling around for extensions, some which work, some don’t. I want the package deal. I want the core browser to keep knocking my socks off. I’ve been spoiled now. I have high expectations. I see Flock as my future OS. Eff buying expensive software that I use 5% of the capabilities of. I want simple UI. I want to be able to really simply and really quickly create, search, tag, connect, find, edit, post, whatever. Gee, I hadn’t thought about this before Flock…so what does that say? "

Let’s see what Tara is actually saying in the above paragraph:

Tara wants a simple application not something heavy that have many features that she doesn’t need she also wants it out of the box without checking and adding extensions. Assuming that Tara doesn’t represent some global needs I can safely assume that different people may have different needs. How can the browser that should be the "future OS" can only provide what the user wants and yet not to be built on extensions?  That I guess only Tara knows.

The debate about desktop applications or web application didn’t start with Web 2.0 and probably isn’t going to end with it. Personally I have no clear answer as of what is better and I’m willing to accept that some applications can or should be web based applications and some should be desktop applications. However I do not think that anybody intend to build a browser as operating system. The OS dealing with the way the computer handle its own hardware and the hardware connected to him (like the hard drive, the printer and such). It’s dealing with the memory and with handling the applications running on it.  Running web applications through the browser doesn’t make it OS.

we can discuss technology, we can discuss the social implications, but we actually need to know what are we talking about…