Here is the sixth edition of our Weekly Office 2.0 Roundup. Today, we will review 16 online desktop applications, from Clic!Dev to YourMinis. We will identify some unique features that might help your own selection processâ€"if you're not already set, and you will get a chance to cast your vote for the best online desktop application.
With the help of many contributors, we completed the Desktop section of the Office 2.0 Database. From the 16 players we identified, all seem to be actively developed. They offer a wide range of features and components, which we will refer to as widgets in this article. Some are focused on simple widgets, such as clocks and games, while others provide more advanced applications, such as email clients and file managers.
Functionality
From a functionality standpoint, an online desktop is a place where you can arrange multiple widgets within a single screen in order to aggregate information and controls from multiple online services. In this respect, online desktops tend to differ significantly from their offline counterparts, for the later usually focus on files, folders, and shortcuts to applications. On one hand, the most advanced online desktops provide large collections of widgets, usually contributed by third-party developers. On the other hand, simpler offerings provide a limited choice of widgets that cannot be extended. Similarly, the best applications we reviewed provide a fair amount of flexibility regarding the placement of widgets on the screen, and the customization of the desktop's look and feel. Because an online desktop will usually end up being the default home page on your web browser, the ability to customize its content and appearance should be an important element in your selection process. Sharing and publishing is supported by only half of the applications we reviewed, while syndication is only offered by three of them. Similarly, badges and custom domains or subdomains are the exception, rather than the norm.
Ease of Migration
Because online desktop serves a totally different purpose compared to their offline alternatives, migration is very much a non event. Nevertheless, users looking for a way to access all their online services from a single place will be disappointed. Even though some of the best offerings will give you access to the most popular email and feed readers, support for more exotic applications is lacking at this point. At best, you can use your online desktop as a replacement for a bookmark manager, and use it to create links to your favorite online services.
Price
At the exception of HomePortals and YouOS, all the applications we reviewed are entirely free, and are supported by advertising. This business model might work, for online desktops tend to be fairly sticky. Nevertheless, I would expect the market to consolidate around the top three players in the spaceâ€"Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!â€"and it will be interesting to see who gets to acquire NetVibes and Pageflakes down the road.
Alternatives
The most basic alternative to an online desktop is simply to use browser tabs, which allows you to open multiple applications all at once. Now that tabs are supported by Internet Explorer, this alternative is available to almost everybody. Another approach is to use what some call a web operating system, suchy as goowy or Zoho Virtual Office. Yet another is to use an online CRM application. As suggested in this previous article, a good CRM application such as Salesforce.com is a very powerful platform that can be used to integrate multiple online services in a data-oriented and workflow-driven way. Finally, if you're looking for a simple way to aggregate multiple types of content, such as emails and feeds, a simple configuration of your email reader might do the trickâ€"many Gmail users read their feeds directly from Gmail, instead of using a feed reader like Google Reader.
Top 10 Players
Several online desktop applications do make use of HTTPS, therefore the Alexa ranking is not as reliable as we would like it to be. Nevertheless, and according to this ranking, we can extrapolate a Top 10 list of players in the space, corroborated by the fact that the first five members show a Google PageRank of 8 or more, on a scale of 0 to 10.
- 1. My Yahoo! [Alexa Rank: 1 | Google PageRank: 9]
- 2. Google Homepage [Alexa Rank: 3 | Google PageRank: 10]
- 3. Windows Live [Alexa Rank: 7 | Google PageRank: 8]
- 4. NetVibes [Alexa Rank: 697 | Google PageRank: 8]
- 5. Pageflakes [Alexa Rank: 6,646 | Google PageRank: 8]
- 6. Protopage [Alexa Rank: 13,888 | Google PageRank: 3]
- 7. Clic!Dev [Alexa Rank: 26,919 | Google PageRank: 5]
- 8. YourMinis [Alexa Rank: 30,726 | Google PageRank: 7]
- 9. eyeOS [Alexa Rank: 56,263 | Google PageRank: 6]
- 10. YouOS [Alexa Rank: 64,517 | Google PageRank: 7]
Editor's note: Alexa only ranks primary domains, not subdomains. Therefore, traffic generated by My Yahoo! is lost among the traffic generated by all applications provided by Yahoo! The same is true for Google Homepage. As a result, there is no easy way of evaluating how successful these applications really are. Nevertheless, there is enough anecdotal evidence available to tell us that a significant number of Yahoo! Mail users also use My Yahoo!, making it one of the most popular online desktop applications currently available.
Quick Reviews
There are only 16 applications in our database, so all of them got a review.
Clic!Dev: Clic!Dev provides a very basic online desktop, with simple components called pagelets. Among them, a clock, a calculator, a solitaire game, a chat client, and a feed reader. The application seems to be maintained by a single developer, making it a fairly risky option on the long term.
Desktoptwo: Desktoptwo is one of the cleanest and most feature-rich applications we came across in our review. The user interface is reminiscent of Mac OS X, and the set of applications offered out of the box really impressive: file manager, email client, address book, website editor, blog, instant messenger, MP3 player, document reader, and message board. A Spanish version is also avaiable at computadora.de.
eskobo: eskobo is another basic online desktop, focused on feed aggregation. Beside feeds, the set of available widgets is limited to web notes and weather forecast, making it a rather unappealing option.
eyeOS: Similar in spirit to Desktoptwo, eyeOS also sports a very clean design, but what really sets it apart from the rest of the applications we reviewed is the fact that it's available both as an online service and as a piece of open-source software. It provides a extensive set of applications, widgets, and themes, and is available in English, Bangla, Bulgarian, Catalan, Dutch, German, Finnish, French, Persian, Slovenian, and Spanish.
Favoor: Favoor is yet another basic offering, this one focused on links, and notes. The design is clean, and one could use this little application as a way to launch multiple online services from any computer. Beside that, not much to rave about.
Google Homepage: Google Homepage has a very extensive collection of widgets, and sports a clean and efficient design that users of Gmail and Google Reader should like.
HomePortals: HomePortals is one of the more advanced solutions we reviewed, and one of the few that supports multiple pages, making it more akin to a personal portal than a regular online desktop. The set of applications supported out of the box is fairly extensive, including feed readers, to-do lists, bookmarks list, and blogs, as well as access to popular web services, such as Flickr, Google Maps, and del.icio.us.
My Yahoo!: My Yahoo! is one of the leaders in the space, but is also better described as a personal portal. The set of widgets is more limited than the one offered by Google Homepage, even though this might change once Yahoo! Widgets gets integrated with it. In the meantime, My Yahoo! provides very good integration with other services owned by Yahoo!, such as del.icio.us and Flickr.
NetVibes: NetVibes is the leading independent player in the field, with a thriving ecosystem that gave birth to over 640 applications, and a growing community of close to 10 million users. NetVibes is also a very popular feed reader, ranked at the third position for IT|Redux according to FeedBurner, just after Google Reader and Bloglines.
Nowsy: Nowsy is another basic offering, focused on feed aggregation like eskobo. Similarly to Google Homepage, it supports multiple pages, even though I cannot really figure out why anyone would want such a feature with an online desktop.
ORCA Desktop: ORCA Desktop is similar to Desktoptwo and eyeOS, in the sense that it is trying to replicate most of the functionality offered by an offline desktop. One of its most interesting features is support for Google Homepage and Microsoft Live widgets, with support for Apple, NetVibes, Pagelfakes, and Yahoo! widgets being also considered.
Pageflakes: Pageflakes is another strong independent player in the space. It does not have as many applications nor as many users as NetVibes, but sports a slightly more polished user interface, and provides a very complete developer pack.
Protopage: Protopage is similar to NetVibes or Pageflakes in terms of functionality, and focuses on simple widgets, rather than complex desktop applications. Its user interface is on the fun side, and sports tabs, which are much more effective at managing multiple pages than simple links.
Windows Live: Windows Live is Microsoft's original entry into the Office 2.0 space, and is surprisingly good. It runs on both Windows and Mac OS X, with any web browser I could get my hands on. The set of widgets is very complete, and the design fairly clean. If the next version of Office Live is designed upon the same principles, it should make for a formidable player in the space.
YouOS: YouOS falls into the category of full online desktop replacement, alongside Desktoptwo and eyeOS. Its user interface is reminiscent of earlier versions of Windows, and everything is implemented using JavaScript. The application is still under heavy development at present time, so it's a little bit early to tell how it will measure up against the competition, but it's definitely one to keep an eye on.
YourMinis: YourMinis is the sister application to goowy, a complete webtop that we filed under the web operating system category. While goowy provides productivity applications such as email client, contact manager, and calendar, YourMinis focuses on simpler widgets, making it a competitor to NetVibes or Pageflakes, with a strong focus on user-generated content.
Personal Favorite
Having a fairly Google-centric setup, my personal favorite is Google Homepage. Nevertheless, I must admit that I rarely use it, for my default pages tend to be my email client (Gmail) and my CRM application (Salesforce.com).
What's Missing
First and foremost, a standard API that would allow any widget to be embedded on any desktop. Such an effort (WebOSapi.org) has been announced by 12 players in the space back in October 2006, but not much information has been released about it so far. Also, having the ability to embed Google widgets from the Salesforce.com home page would be pretty cool. I am sure that I could build an Scontrol to do that, but having this feature readily available as an Appexchange application would be nice.
Best Online Desktop Application
Now that we know what's out there, it's time for a vote:
Note: if you cannot see the voting form, please follow this link.
Final results will be announced next week on Your Office 2.0 Setup and as an update to this post. In the meantime, please help me build next week's roundup on Document Managers. You can use this form courtesy of Wufoo for suggesting new applications, or providing additional information about existing ones. I would also welcome ideas for domain-specific criteria that could be used for evaluating the players on our list.
See you next week!
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