irc log of an interesting conversation

[Marco Martin]

On 7/10/08, Jared Kells <jkells at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My $0.02 after reading that IRC log.
>
[...]
>
> GMail more specifically is a success because:
> 1. It's accessible from any computer
> 2. It provides an email address not linked to your ISP with a lot of storage
> and good spam filtering.
>  3. It has a good interface.
>
> 1. Is a failure of the current desktop in particular the security model
> 2. Has nothing to do with it being a web app.
> 3. Is a failure of the desktop. How is it that I can search my gmail quicker
> then a few hundred megs of email on my local machine? I can't believe I have
> to wait minutes searching in my local email. GMail is instaneous.

a (very empirical) thing i have noted about web apps, that i think
could be interesting if it's not an impression of mine..
all the times i set up a pc for some friend/relative that is quite
inexperienced, they mostly always prefer using webmails as opposed to
a real mail client (that of course i configured all the needed address
servers etc, so the "difficult part" it's skipped already)
but they seem to find more intuitive to use clumsy and horrid webmail
things as opposed to open let's say thunderbird and press get mail
even with pre-gmail things when there was like 20mb of space and tons
of flash banner ads, so there weren't even the advantages that gmail
has.

now i think a thing like this happened because probably you're right
there was some kind of failure in the desktop approach, desktop apps
are seen as way more complicate than they really are, and sometimes
they trigger the "turn the brain off" switch that scary things often
causes.

probably a web app, even if it's really terrible is not seen as an
app, but as a simple page, so "i can read, so i can manage to do
that", so less percieved difficulty to use a more difficult and clumsy
thing.

so what this thing matters to plasma? i don't really know, but perhaps
there is a little common point.
if plasmoids won't be seen as real apps (even if they somewhat are)
perhaps it could be an advantage, because if we manage to do things
right,  it won't be seen as scary as a normal app, less a "machine
thing" and more related to real word things, that don't have menus and
options and you can do a single thing with every object.

just some random toughts :)

Cheers,
Marco Martin

> Besides the imbred silicon valley crowd the only web 2.0 apps regular people
> use are webmail and social networking. =)
>
> I love this line from the wiki
>
>
> First Commandment of User Interface design: I'm the computer, your platform.
> Thou shall have no other platforms before me. Not even Especially not the
> shiny, web2.0 ones. Kindest Regards
> Jared
>
> 2008/7/10 Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org>:
> >
> > hi all
> >
> > the other day i spent an hour or two talking with a user 1 on 1 about
> plasma.
> > it was very enlightening to me as far as what even an enthusiasted user
> > struggles with seeing (even if they are already happy with kde4) as well
> as
> > providing a really nice opportunity for me to riff openly about my own
> personal
> > vision for plasma
> >
> > so i thought i'd share it with you should you care to
> >
> > http://bddf.ca/~aseigo/plasma_user_discussion.log
> >
> >
> > --
> > Aaron J. Seigo
> > humru othro a kohnu se
> > GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
> >
> > KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Panel-devel mailing list
> > Panel-devel at kde.org
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/panel-devel
> >
> >
>
>
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