These days I spend plenty of time online and use web apps here and there. It seems plenty of things are/will be moving to the cloud and that everything will happen in the clouds in the future. So I've asked myself what do I install on my machines these days :
- Soft-phone for work
- Multi-IM client
- Email client
- Web browser
- Image manipulation Program
So let's try to see what's different from when my machine was an Atari Falcon.
- I didn't have a web browser
- I didn't have a mail client
- I had a fido client
- I had a assembler
- I had games
All we need is a standard presence discovery mechanism. Maybe a subset of SIP or XMPP. Then the actual messaging can be done using any program you want over your protocol of choice.
On the Atari I didn't need drivers for the things I used. These days I run an OS that comes with drivers :-)
How about all the drivers for external hardware? I would love to print from my laptop without bothering about all the different printer drivers for all the printers I am faced with in different places. Any solution for that?
True :-) Jabber is the main one whilst the others are for communicating with non geeks.
Of course, the biggest problem is that you are still using Multi-IM :) Jabber toujours!