• Google Gmail – I can access my mail from home, work, Wi-Fi hotspot, my iPhone.
• Google Calendar – Anything that relates to time/date/place/to-dos, it goes in my Google Calendar.  I can access this from practically anywhere.
• Google Reader – This is my online RSS Newsreader. With Google Gears offline support, I can catchup with all the latest news feeds even when I am on a plane.
• Del.icio.us Bookmarks – I find that I have not bookmarked a page in IE or Firefox in ages! Instead, all my bookmarks are on this handy service.
• MP3tunes – All my iTunes music safely stored and synced online with MP3tunes.com.  I can stream my music from the Internet.  This service doesn’t store and sync my iTunes videos and movies, so I use other means to backup and sync these files.
• .Mac – I use the iDisk service to keep any storage of files and folders that I need to access from anywhere.  The one other feature that I do like is the Photo sharing capabilities.
• SlingBox – Ok, its not really an online service, but its how I watch TV now.  Place-shifting means I can watch TV shows streamed online from any single Slingbox location.  Place one SlingBox hardware in your parent’s home in Canada and you can catch international TV right on your computer.  Quality is not the greatest, as it depends a lot on the upload speeds of the SlingBox locations you are getting the streams from.
• Google Docs – This service can almost replace your traditional Microsoft Office apps. Unfortunately, it is not as speedy as having a desktop app.  Speed and offline portability are the biggest factors in me not completely switching over to using online-based office apps.
• Google Alerts – This is how I read the latest news. I give search terms that I find most interesting, and everyday they will send me the top links to news stories and blog entries that match my keywords.
• Kayak – I give it my top flight destinations and the maximum price I am willing to pay, and I get a daily report of any matching deals.
• Twitter – This service is basically a mashup of fan site / blog / and alerting service. You can alert all your followers via SMS text, IM, and email with “what you are doing now”. I am still a little weary of letting everyone know what I am doing now, but I can see how it can be used to alert a large number of people at once, with whatever information you wish to share. This is most useful for people with a mobile lifestyle, who may not get a chance to post their thoughts to a blog.

IBM said the marketplace will offer pre-integrated products and services from IBM and independent software developers. Customers will be able to use the software they buy on premises or in the cloud.

IBM is working with Google to build a worldwide network of connected servers, an architecture sometimes referred to as a computing cloud, from which it plans to deliver software and services.

The online store will be organized geographically and also by industry. Customers will be able to purchase software or services in just four clicks, IBM said. The company plans to pilot the marketplace throughout 2008

Read more about this from various sources online:

• IBM To Launch Web-Based Application Market – InformationWeek
• Google, IBM Join Forces To Dominate Cloud Computing – InformationWeek
• IBM to Build Apps Marketplace for SMBs – PCWorld
• IBM launching a platform for SMB opportunity – IT Business

• Store and serve application resources locally
• Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
• Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

At TechCrunch, they give a pretty good review of Google Gears. Now, this idea is not new in the desktop world. Lotus Notes pioneered the idea of “replication” for both online and offline use. This is Lotus Notes forte and cause of endless frustration at the same time. We’ll soon see how well Google will be able to work out the kinks. So far, the only web app that is Gears enabled is Google Reader. Other notable projects that propose to do similar thing are: Dojo Offline Toolkit and the Apache Derby embedded database.

Pros:

• Integration with Gmail and automatic recognition of incoming email titles as possible events to add into gCal.
• The Quick Add feature is a quick, smart, and intelligent way to add events into gCal.
• Import iCal, vCal, Outlook calendar file formats into gCal.
• Ability to share your calendar in either RSS or webcal format.

Cons:

• You can share your calendars via the web, but there is no easy way to download a file that is ready to import into Outlook or some other calendar application that doesn’t support subsciption to remote calendars. There is a workaround if you use Mozilla Sunbird, which involves subscribing to the remote Google calendar, then selecting all the events in that calendar, and finally choosing Export Selected Events from the File menu. That is too much work for me. Why not just have the file readily downloadable in the same screen as the Calendar Details?
• Extremely slow when accessing public webcal / iCal feeds.
• No to-do lists (Come on now… how hard would that have been to add?)
• No support for Safari browser on the Mac, and the IE 7.0 beta.

Wish List:

• See the Cons section.
• We need a public API, so other web apps or offline applications can take advantage of adding/syncing events to/from gCal.
• I want some sort of ability to add customized RSS feeds into gCal.  This could be useful for integrating del.icio.us bookmarks, or TaDaLists, weather feeds, TV show listing feeds, etc.

The keyword here is interoperability. One of my many frustrations with Lotus Notes is the lack of being able to sync calendar and contacts between all the different email/scheduling software clients out there. Adding more fuel to the fire is the discord between Lotus Notes and the portable devices such as Blackberry devices, PDAs, smart phones, and the iPod. Yes, iPod has a built-in calendar! Granted, Lotus Notes is primarily a corporate application, but the reason I am picking on it is because I work with it at work, and that’s the only place I can use it. I have to jump through hoops in order to export events into a standard format compatible with my home calendar application “Mozilla Sunbird” and iCal on my Mac. If I make changes, I want to be able to import them back into Lotus Notes, a task which is also quite an ordeal. I am not just picking on Lotus Notes. All of them need to make import/export/sync operations much more easier and seamless among devices and web applications.

I do commend Microsoft and Apple for at least making import and export of standard formats possible.  The big thing now is for them to make the online experience and desktop experience seamless with each other. As a user, I don’t want to continually import and export events just to keep everything in sync.  Events, to-dos, contacts, and emails are just data types. They should all be able to exist independently of the application (whether it be on the web or residing on a desktop).

Update: There is a promising third party web/desktop software company called Plaxo that promises to make that holy grail I speak about possible.  Unfortunately, they currently do not support Lotus Notes.

Links: http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/13/technology/google.reut/

Google’s monumental announcement lays the groundwork for a shift in how instant messaging and voice will work in the future. It’s the first time a major net company has agreed to use open standards and connect their network to others. Future releases of Gizmo Project will allow voice calls and instant messages to and from Google Talk. This is made possible because Google is using Jabber, (an instant messaging standard which Gizmo Project is also employing) and also providing a SIP interchange (SIP is standard often used for voice calls – and where SIPphone derived its name).