Workspot's Web Playground is back!
Workspot users get a website, http://users.workspot.net/~username, to fool around in. But it's the simplest web publishing imaginable: you just drop stuff into your public_html directory on your online Linux desktop. If you like, you can drop stuff into a webdav directory on your local machine, one that's linked to your public_html directory.
This was part of the original prototype, back before VNC was made GPL, and Workspot was a webtop.
After we quit working for SONY/Etak, every morning Curt Brune and I would meet at the University Coffee Café and try to think of the greatest thing we could do with an online desktop, with the least amount of work. This is actually one my fondest memories from the early days, because using this 'prioritized incremental approach', we made an amazing product in just a matter of days. And it was a refreshing breeze of freedom for for Curt Brune, a very inventive and lucid fellow, who had been trapped in corporate-change- control hell for years.
So, there were lots of cool possibilities, but editing your website from an online desktop had to be one of the coolest! And the coolest of the cool part was the cgi-bin subdirectory. Now, someone can just subscribe to workspot, go online, launch emacs in their browser (sic), and begin writing and using Perl to make generated web pages.
The obvious extension of this, is to offer more server applications and server environments for the users, so they can have a pre-configured server which they don't need to set up.
And an extension of that is to create an economy where people set up these turn-key server environments, and people pay to use them, or pay a subscription or micropayment to use the latest one. This could convert the "HOWTO" world in to the "DOIT" world ... why would you stop at a "how to" when you could make a working environment that a million programmers could use instantly?
One of the best Workspot legacies is that I published all these crazy ideas almost 5 years ago, so no one can possibly make a business plan patent based on it. Whew.
Your Workspot VNC session is now AES encrypted!
Another feature: the cross-platform clipboard! You can cut something from your PC, Mac or Linux desktop, and paste it to your Workspot. Go to another machine, and copy it from your Workspot desktop. Really useful and quick!
Back at the dawn of the PC age, Pat Gelsinger & I used to push the internal use of Unix at Intel. [Somehow, Pat went on to be a serious player, and I went on to ... just play around, with serious intentions.]
In 1984, it was our opinion that the development of the 386 would be impossible without Unix. This was very important to us at the time. But it's been forgotten.
An operating system that supported the philosphy of sensible software tools, of increasing structural coherence, was abolutely critical for serious work. It is fairly accurate to say that Windows is not a serious operating system, and has always been driven by the wrong forces. Because of its evolution without a community-minded context, it is successful now in the marketplace, but will be forgotten in the long run.
I talked with Pat Gelsinger the other day, about Intel, and Unix's replacement, Linux.
Well, Intel loves Linux. He gave me some huge sales figure that Intel believes Linux is responsible for.
But, these are server sales. Internally, they don't see much of a chance for Linux on the desktop. "Operating system competition is definately in Intel's interest", he said. He's perfectly aware of Linux Desktop's technical advances, and traction outside of the consumer market. It's just not enough for Intel to invest in at the moment.
Well, Workspot is a personal web service, but it's also a demonstration of the Linux desktop. So perception of the Linux desktop's viability is important to me.
But reality cannot be argued with: with the exception of the issue of stability (which is crazily underrated by people) Linux still is not the better OS (see below).
But this is just a matter of effort.
So I wrote Intel a little proposal cum manifesto. On how Workspot could help people make a better Linux. It's pretty bold: