Virtual machines, Google brilliance and more
With all of the latest talk about virtual machines no one can miss the impact they are bound to have soon. With dual core and quad core processors virtual machines will just be good common sense from a number of perspectives. One close relative of this that I have been waiting to come out of the wings for a while on is the truly transparent remote desktop. A world where you can go anywhere, log into your desktop and get the same experience as though you were right there. The only thing holding us back is bandwidth - but like everything else that fixes itself over time with minimal effort. The thought of running virtual pcs half way around the world on a remote desktop where the experience is truly seemless will change everything we know about computing. Web sites will be able to do things however they wish - they will merely be interacting with dumb terminals - pushing images back forth.
In other news - Google brilliance. Using KISS(keep it simple stupid) they implement only the bang for the buck features and go lightyears beyond anyone else in short order. I still underestimate them periodically. Google talk - yet another IM client. When I first saw it I shook my head and thought this is surely a sign of Google going downhill. After several months I have begun to realize how wrong I was. Ties to gmail were perfect but obvious. Chat history in gmail was more clever but still hinted at…. well yes I could have though of that. But taking your entire gmail list and showing the invited status of each of your contacts - brilliant. It creates the impression that it is already bigger than it is. I see a list in Google Talk that includes 20 people who are currently invited. I can’t help but think it is just a question of time until all of those people are using Google Talk. Microsoft proved more clever and agile than IBM back in the day. It certainly seems as though Google is proving itself more clever and agile than Microsoft. This will be no quick fix for Microsoft. By the time you are a force of nature - it is too late to reroute the butterfly wings that started you in the first place.
