Mozilla's research group that published experimental projects like Ubiquity, Prism, Raindrop, Weave and Bespin.
HN links it during discussions of Raindrop, Google Wave and the Firefox awesome bar, with commenters contrasting Mozilla's approach to messaging with Google's.
The product that I really think blurs the line right now is Mozilla Prism (http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/10/prism/).
Sure, "we" know that a Prism "app" is really just a web app running inside of a stripped-down copy of Firefox, but the average person (who makes the market) doesn't know that. I've set up some non-technical friends with a copy of Firefox, as well as three or four Prism "apps" - Gmail, Google reader, NYT.com, etc. They don't know, nor do they care, that they're using web apps: they interact with them as desktop apps, which is what matters to them (despite the fact that I've explained to them what's going on).
The really interesting thing is that they distinguish between the Gmail they get by typing the URL into Firefox, and the Gmail they get by launching the Prism "app". Despite the interfaces being 100% identical, they still think of the Firefox-based one as the "web version" of it, in the same way that Outlook users see OWL as the "web version" of normal Outlook - doesn't matter that they're the exact same.
As for web vs. desktop, I think - like most things - it's a case where different tools have different strong points. Some apps will naturally work better in a web-based environment, but some will stay desktop-based.
Seeing as I have as little idea about the future as everyone else does, I'll offer two predictions about the two sides coming together:
In the shorter-term, we will see more desktop apps accessing web services behind the scenes. The main…
While I agree that there should be a way to disable the awesome bar, it's worth nothing that it does take some training and getting used to.
The awesome bar uses historical data from previous searches, so if your search for "news" always ends with you clicking on HN, it will put that at the top. Over time, the bar will learn your preferences and become much more useful.
I hated the bar at first, to the extent that I considered going back to FF2. For example, I used to always type "en." to find a wikipedia page, but that no longer worked well. Now I love being able to type in parts of pages, and I no longer use bookmarks since I can just search my entire history. The only thing missing is the ability to sync the history and awesome bar training to other machines, which we're working on ( http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/12/introducing-weave/ ).
Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla :)
It looks like Google puts everything in one place. All the "waves" you subscribe to get equal billing, all dumped in an "inbox" and all users having equal access to your attention.
In contrast, Mozilla has stated their belief that different types of information are more important to you than others. Their Snowl[0] project (a kind of RSS feed reader in the browser) has multiple views for different types of messages. Raindrop has this same concept built-in, you can see in the video posted earlier [1] that, for example, emails from mailing lists are de-emphasized compared to emails from people you are having an active conversation with.
[0] http://labs.mozilla.com/snowl/about/
[1] http://vimeo.com/7197666 (starting around 1:25) with discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=897669
I agree with your point. I had to do some digging to get more concrete information.
When a friend’s link from YouTube or flickr arrives, your messaging client should be able to show the video or photos near or as part of the message, rather than rudely kicking you over to a separate browser tab. Notifications from computers and mailing lists should be organized for you, not clutter your Inbox or require tedious manual filter setup. It should be easy to smoothly integrate new web services into your conversation viewer entirely using open web technologies.
http://labs.mozilla.com/raindrop/2009/10/22/introducing-raindrop/#post-1
They can't mention google wave in every post to their blog.
Try: http://labs.mozilla.com/raindrop/faq/
>How does Raindrop relate to Google Wave?
>Google Wave is attempting to create a new form of messaging. We applaud their effort to innovate in the messaging space, and if it gains traction, we will be looking at ways to integrate the messaging protocols from Wave into the open, extensible user interface of the Raindrop platform. In the meantime, Raindrop is focusing on complementing existing messaging sources.
I think that something like this already exists for firefox :
http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/
Patenting, is, imo, not a good idea. First, suppose that someone breaks your patent ? Are you going to engage a tedious lawsuit. Second, you should always be ahead of your concurrence. Third, you're already copying someone else's idea.