However, new kind of devices came along with new powerfull low-consumption chipsets and WebKit based browsers: the iPhone, the Palm Pre, Android phones... They all can run RIA in quite a pleasant way.
Today Google releases Chrome OS design docs and source codes, materializing a new step forward this direction. And even if most people still don't understand the point of this OS, it achieves the transition to a new software architecture, promoting the web engine as the converging head of every strategical software stacks: graphics, input, networking, data persistency, applications run-time, and so on.
Combined with latest HTML and Google technologies like Gears and Native Client, the browser is bound to be the structural frame of any existing application both in on-line and off-line mode: Gaming, Multi-media and Office Functions.
However Google is not exactly a non-profit organisation. Many people around the world are wondering about the Google model: hyper-centralization of the user data within big corporate owned servers. Is it really sane? Is there a real user benefit? Is it KISS?
On my own, I suppose FTTH won't come up to my home before decades. I could even lose my Internet access in the future. Who knows? But most important is that there's plenty of daily use cases which don't need to deal with "cloud" located services whatever the bandwith. Period.
So what's the best thing to do right now. Return to the old clumsy Linux/Mac/Win platform? No way. The house-cleaning that Google did with Chrome OS is IMHO excellent. Its architecture is so simple and straight-forward I already know I won't be able any more to stand for a full minute just to switch on a web radio, type an instant message or watch today's weather.
Naaaa, the best thing to do now is to calm down Google fantasies by relocate some strategical user applications at home while leveraging on web technologies.
It won't need many watts to make user data came back to home. Hardware technologies are almost ready for this purpose. Two ridiculous watts should be soon more than enough. My own NSLU2 home server drawns only 4 watts even if it was designed 5 years ago.
However the FOSS community isn't prepared for the counter-offensive. We need a web-based application framework which will behave at home like the Google ecosystem does on the cloud, that is in a homogeneous and reactive way. My thoughs float around this central idea: we need for a HTTP middleware within our home LAN to connect all our home-based resources each other and publish them back to a web terminal.
Think about an oversimplified Linux embeding an light HTTP server connected with home or internet services. What Google did for a personnal web terminal has to be done for a personnal web server.
HandBaller is probably not the definitive solution to build such an home HTTP server but it shows what we need for: A HTTP software bus melting an AJAX router and a COMET server to make home computing resources collaborating together for the user needs.
Imagine what kind of Home "Mash-Up" you could build from such a framework, like browsing your media storage then by a single web-click sending a self-made video to your networked TV while syncing your facebook status at once. What if the same thing could be done remotely in a perfectly transparent way through any web terminal connected to your home IP address.
We don't need for Google nor any ISP platforms, software or hardware to do so. We just need for the server counterpart of Chrome OS. Since Nickel-Chrome is such a famous couple, we should even call it Nickel OS.
See you soon.
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