Today, was a bit of an eye opener (you will get this joke later on in the post) in the web based OS arena. Let’s just say it became clear that everything has really been done before and new ‘things’ just don’t come that easy.

It came apparent to me today that an online based OS had already been done (a couple of times infact) and to a pretty good standard as well, in terms of technological development anyway. There is even a Wikipedia article describing the term WebOS, though there isn’t many terms not on Wikipedia. Pete a colleague on iDAT introduced me to one, which I have forgotten the name of, when I ran my idea past him earlier today. The one Pete showed me was good, but not great. I quickly Googled it to see what else I could uncover and I found it eyeOS an open-source online operating system, if you want to have a play then there is a demo link on their website. It is pretty sick, to be honest, there is allot of technology in use including; video playback, file uploads, office applications, instant messaging, photo management, email and contacts, to name a few. Also other things you don’t notice in an OS that are actually difficult to build like; window management, dragging and dropping files, file management and application management, basically allot of behind the scenes development. It is clear that allot of work has been put into creating this awesome RIA (Rich Internet Application), which is what it is when you boil down to it. It even has a third party application directory.

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The biggest task of my final year was handed to me today and it went pretty much like this.

“Come up with a field of interest in culture and technology to write your dissertation on and come up with something you can make worth 40 credits linked directly to your dissertation, in a week”

Nice, no rush, no pressure, no none at all. Next, I did what I always do when faced with a challenge got silly drunk and put off thinking about it in anyway till the next day. There is some reason behind this before you stop reading! Firstly let’s get one thing straight, drinking wasn’t required, however it’s the week after freashers week and as I’m going to be bogged down with work for the rest of this term (at least) I needed to get more fun out of the way. Secondly, I can never completely remove something from my mind and as I have found by experience, something great just seems to come to me after a couple of days pondering the problem, most of the time in the shower oddly enough. I don’t know why or how it happens it just does. continue reading…