What is a Web Desktop?

One reason beside to visit the Social Media Summit was also to get to now more about so called web desktops in general and Satopeks Desktoptwo in specific.

Desktoptwo is a free online desktop or Webtop developed by Sapotek (it's also been called a WebOS although Sapotek makes clear on its website that the term is premature and a bit presumptuous) that mimics the look, feel and functionality of the desktop environment of an operating system.

The software is currently in beta stage yet has acquired more than 160,000 active users since its launch in August 2006. Desktoptwo is fully web-based and requires Flash player to operate. Unlike some other so-called online desktops, which are more akin to aggregators of stand-alone applications, the web applications found on Desktoptwo are built on the same open source scripting language, PHP, and as a result the applications are interoperable and include, for example, drag-and-drop functionality.

Desktoptwo belongs to a category of services that intend to turn the Web into a full-fledged platform by using Web services as a foundation along with display technologies that replicate the experience of desktop applications for users. In a "Cloud OS", or what is essentially a Service-oriented architecture or SOA, the functionality of a server is granularized and asbtracted as Web services that Web developers can use to create composite applications similar to how desktop software developers use several APIs of the OS to create their applications.

Sites like Facebook attempt to create a similar effect by exposing their APIs and allowing developers to create applications upon these.

Some of the features currently found on Desktoptwo are:

File sharing
Webmail
Blog creator
Instant messenger
Address book
Calendar
Live Chat rooms
Notepad
Bookmarks/Favorites
Message boards
RSS Reader
Website Editor
Office productivity applications
Online document collaboration

Advantages with a Web Desktop

- Access to a personalized desktop from any internet enabled device on any platform.
- No need to install applications.
- Application sharing among users located at different remote locations.

In (my) theory this is also a possible new way of consolidate intranets in a multiple intranet environment and using the "old" intranets as sophisticated data bases feeding the internal individual employee web desktop.