The Unofficial Web Applications List
Over the years the interface from which we as humans harness the power of the microprocessor has evolved pretty steadily. From punch card to graphical user interface the progression has gone pretty smoothly, all things considered. Over the years we’ve started to not only access these chips locally, but also network the little suckers together. The progression of the network user interface has had many of the same steps along the way. Just as the command prompt once ruled the desktop, so too did the Telnet once rule the BBS. With the advent of Tim Berners-Lee’s little idea and the explosion of the World Wide Web, the network now has a GUI of it’s own. It’s becoming increasingly irrelevant how much power you have sitting on the desktop, as long as you have the horses to fire up Firefox you can cede the power requirements to the server. This has spawned the age of the web application and with it comes and new paradigm in desktop computing. (On a side note, why was there no mention of the Internet in Bill Gate’s 1995 book The Road Ahead? How, as a geek, could he have been that far out of the loop?) To that end, somebody named Danny has setup The Unofficial Web Applications List. Much like the Start button on Windows, it makes a vain attempt to tell you what you can run. Things that get stumbled across wind up here. But hey, you have to start somewhere.
