I found some interesting things upon waking up. The first was this little beauty
This is not a joke, here is the hyperlink for where you can buy one http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/8b97/?cpg=38HI have to imagine that most of you find this at least somewhat absurd. This thing weighs almost 3 lbs, and is 8.75 inches wide. I think that renders ALL the tools in it essentially useless. It has grow so large and awkward it is almost unusable. As a programmer I understand this problem (my god is Ross talking about business principles?), you want to make a program that does EVERYTHING because it would be SOOOOOO COOL. However, you put that much functionality into a program and you will be the only one using it, and even you will probably stop after a while (I suspect this happened with the "English system").
I told you about that to tell you about this (well actually I just thought it was funny, and then I related it to what I REALLY wanted to talk about (YAY fun writing fact)). Google, creepy yet wonderful entity that it is, has done one better, again. Google has a lot of fun toys, and I have spent days sorting through them and going "ooooo that one and that one and that one", and this morning, when checking the google blog (which uses Google's atom feed to post summaries on my google personalized homepage) I found what I have been waiting a LONG time for (years I think). Google documents. *angels sing*. This little wonder is something that I think has a TREMENDOUS amount of potential. Basically, it is a simple text editor, with a folder on a server somewhere, that acts just like Word (or pico for those Unix users out there) online, and lets you store the documents you make online.
Ross, that's silly, what does that do that is so wonderful? Well, I am not entirely sure, but it is definitely somewhat useful. For instance, you can collaborate on documents, that means that two (or more) different people can access and edit it. This is without having to send the file to different people, working at your own computers, or even working at the Internet cafe down the street from your hotel while you are visiting friends in Rome. Having the document reside online is useful to a pretty neat degree, you can choose to share it with the public so that they can only read it, or share it with all your friends and choose who can read and who can write. You can make a club journal the officers can write in and the members can read. It is flexible.
In addition, there are a lot of other google products with similar principles. google spreadsheets, Gmail, Google personalize home page, blogger (hey!), Google groups, picasa. All of these things reside ONLINE and have the same flexibility, accessibility, and convenience. The only thing left is hosting things like Photoshop, or Maple online. As a friend pointed out "at that point it is possible to treat every computer with an Internet connection as a terminal". Everything you need is at a location you can access remotely, you can choose permission writes and share with all your friends.
This is interesting, in, oh I don't remember, '98? people were proving the power of the Internet by proving that they could live, at home, without contact to the outside world other than the Internet, for a year (or something like that). Basically, I can LIVE on the Internet, make money, get food, have fun, meet people, buy funny looking lamps, whatever, ALL on the Internet. And I acknowledge that point, my counterpoint however is, "why would you want to?". I think it is interesting that this is, in a way, a reversal of that. It is providing us access to our computers, our funny little data centers, everywhere else. Now we don't have to stay at home, haul our laptops around, or even worry about E-mailing someone documents or spreadsheets. FREEDOM! FREEDOM I SAY!
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AHEM!...
Anyway, I was just wondering what this means for the future, especially if I can (and I hope to) implement all of this neat technology together. I certainly know I will use it in Role playing games, when I design games, when I am working on things (imagine doing your finances with your spouse from wherever either or both of you are). I feel so... CONNECTED. What do you guys think? What will you use it for? Will you use it? Why? Why not?
oh, and also, why is left blue and right red? (I mean clearly there is the right and red both begin with R thing, but it seems pretty universal.)
