layout: post title: Ubiquitous Browser Evolution created: 1099633033 categories:

• Web 2.0
• Web Development

Roughly in chronological order (gasp!), here are three excerpts and links to longer articles that are important to go and read. My version of a link dump.

The PC is no longer the only battleground. The Internet is the new medium and it has the effect of leveling the playing field. While this isn't a new insight, let me say it in two specific ways:

1. The web enables infinite distribution of content without any special effort or infrastructure.
2. The web extends the reach of our apps and services as far as we're willing to let them go.

Both notions come back to ubiquity. If your stuff (and your brand) is everywhere, you win. The money will follow. It always does.

Jeremy Zawodny: Ubiquity in the Internet Age

His other rules boil down to build great stuff, make it open, and give opportunity to other people to build/make money on top of it.

We need to get web publishing back on the fast track, and by rapidly speeding both the evolution and the adoption of modern web standards, we can create an efficiency and innovation boom this medium has never seen. Mike Davidson: Can We Speed Up Browser Evolution?

I can get behind this. Designers drool at some of the special tags added to Safari...but then sob because they can't use it elsewhere. So -- aim for open-ness and standards, but push the envelope as well?

Perhaps more importantly, as I said in a prior post, most of the value today is coming from the community, the reputation, the access to information and goods and services, and the media itself. This ineluctable fact coupled with the driving forces of much faster evolution in response to the natural selection of market needs, much cheaper and easier and more simple user interface, and much better ability to know what can be done better for the customer are all combining. Services will be the dominant model. Think of it as evolution in action. Adom Bosworth: Evolution in Action

The deliver everything as a service that can be a service concept. I had an "aha!" moment around this when looking at development cycles for interpreted languages vs. compiled languages. It may very well be that much of the advantage comes from that difference as well, since desktop apps are generally compiled.

Of course, if you can deliver a desktop app that is auto-updating and based around an interpreted language core, do you get some of the same benefits? In looking at 1001, I see a single-purpose app that hides complexity, but is still tied into a wider web world.