Web apps and cloud based computing is here to stay, more and more applications are moving off the desktop and into the browser, and it will continue.
A problem with this evolution is of course that applications will become more difficult to reach than just having a simple icon sitting there on your desktop. Also web apps seldom leverage the whole computing power available in a desktop computer. A US based company named SweetLabs believes that they have the solution to all these problems, Pokki.
Pokki is basically an app store for Windows 7, with various applications and games available. The number of apps and games available is basic but still should cover most user needs. It is possible to install a Twitter client named Tweeki, Facebook and Gmail. There is also a neat music application, Grooveshark. Various games are also included, most of them pretty advanced.
The Pokki apps looks and behaves good in Windows 7, they load fast and often look better than some desktop counterparts. Developers can download an SDK, in which it is possible to develop part of the apps in CSS3 and HTML 5, which in itself is pretty amazing.
Pokki itself sits in the taskbar (it is possible to remove it) and is pretty unobtrusive, especially compared to similar solutions I have tried. A downside with Pokki is the lack of support for other Windows versions and operating systems, when this is written it only supports Windows 7.
The whole idea of an app store alternative for Windows 7 is good, but the question is how long it will live. Microsoft will without a doubt release an app store when Windows 8 is rolled out later during 2012, which may render Pokki useless.
Also Pokki serves no real purpose on other operating systems, Mac OS already have its own app store and Linux have had it for years. However they are not tied specifically to web apps and often have specifically developed apps for Gmail, Twitter etc. The real selling point with Pokki is being light-weight and providing a platform which is easy for developers to grasp and use. It will be crucial for SweetLabs to engage developers in order for Pokki to survive after the Windows 8 app store is launched.
In the meantime Pokki is a nice addition to Windows 7, and does make it easier to quickly access different web-based apps.
[starrater tpl=10]
Everything is moving into the cloud and so is the operating system. Previously Microsoft released the Windows Azure Platform, also a number of smaller players such as Good OS (gOS), EyeOS and Glide have hit the market. Google is however surprisingly late to the game with the hyped release of Chromium better known as Google Chrome OS. Why the name confusion? Chromium is the open-source project connected to Google Chrome and Chrome OS.
We downloaded the open-source version of Google Chrome OS, built it and ran it on a netbook using a USB-drive. It was also tested in a virtualized environment (VMWare). The version of Chromium we tested was 4.0.253.0, it is not a finished product so this review is more of a hint of things to come than a complete overview of a finished product.
Building the Google Chrome OS source-code is not easy for everyone; there are a couple of images of the system floating around on the net usually made for USB-drives or a virtualized environment. For example you can download Google Chrome OS image files from: or.
Chrome OS is actually built on the Linux kernel but with its own windowing system. Maybe that's one of the reasons why Google managed to get this product released and working avoiding the hurdle of device drivers that other operating system developers have to worry about.
Starting Chrome OS is very fast, it only took about 10 seconds to bring up the login screen. When launching it on a netbook problems started directly when trying to login, since the Wi-Fi networks password hadn't been initialized it could not login using my Google account. Instead I had to connect it to a cable network, and then it worked fine. The login sequence is probably something Google will have to work on, if I had been on the road trying to connect to a secured Wi-Fi network it wouldn't have worked.
When logging in to Chrome OS you are greeted with a Google Chrome web-browser window launching Google or your Gmail account. There is also a tab in the upper left corner containing shortcuts to different Google and Internet-services, such as Google Docs, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Facebook etc. Very few of the applications in Google Chrome OS is native, most of them are run in a browser window. The calculator is the only app that runs from within Chromium and pop-ups in the lower right corner of the screen. Most cloud applications worked like a charm and they were fast to use. We used Google Wave, Zoho among others without any real issues.
The user interface is very plain and light-weight compared to Windows 7, MAC OSx or Linux. If you compare it to other cloud OS interfaces it still is plain, both gOS and Glide look much better. To enhance the UI there are a number of available themes for Google Chrome and also the Google Chrome OS. In the upper right part of the screen there is a battery indicator, a switch for turning on and off Wi-Fi and Ethernet and an icon for controlling the rest of the OS. The menu-options are a mixture of the ones available in the Chrome browser and operating system specific options available in Chromium.
If you compare Chrome OS to other operating systems on the market it is minimalistic and not very flexible. Google’s intent is that Chrome OS is for netbooks, but there are plenty of situations using a netbook without any Internet access, for example on the plane. Chrome OS also does not give you access to the inner workings of the computer, there are not that many settings that you can change by default. Comparing Chrome OS So what Chrome OS got going for it is that it is minimalistic but it is also what works against it. Linux is so far a much better free alternative for netbooks than Google Chrome OS is. Google have partnered up with netbook manufacturer and we will probably see Google Chrome OS netbooks during 2010.
Another interesting user case for Chrome OS could be in a corporate environment, clients would not need any programs installed and the need for extensive administration would be gone. The problem is that Chrome OS cannot be used in a local network (EyeOS have this capability); it has to connect to Google. There will probably be extensions to get this capability though.
Of course the operating systems of the future will be more connected to the cloud than they currently are, however I think it will be highly dependent on the software and services available in the cloud. Most of the services available work quite well on netbooks (hence the targeting by Google), such as Google Docs and Zoho. But heavier applications and games still remain on the desktop, for example there are many photo-editing apps in the cloud but none with the advanced features seen in Photoshop. Graphics applications such as Inkscape and Google SketchUp also still remain on the desktop, and probably will for some time. However for average novice users requiring a word processor and the occasional web-surfing Google Chrome OS might be it, especially in a year or two when it has been more developed.
eyeOS was first released in 2005; it is open source and has a pretty vibrant community behind it. The latest version when this is written is 1.8 named Lars. While Glide (previously reviewed) runs on Flash eyeOS use PHP and stores information in XML on the server. Using PHP means that it is easy to customize eyeOS, if you are a business and want to develop additional features it is easier in eyeOS compared to Glide. There is also an eyeOS toolkit for developers with functions and libraries available.
Thanks to the toolkit and the community behind eyeOS there is a number applications out-there. Of course the number of apps is nowhere near as many as for Windows or Linux, but it still looks very promising. However all of the applications are on eyeos-apps.org, it would be nice with a package installer integrated into eyeOS.
The interface in eyeOS is very easy to grasp, it is more oriented towards Linux than Windows so Linux users will feel even more at home. The terminology is also standard OS language, there are no newexpressions unique for eyeOS, folders are called folders etc.
The desktop in eyeOS is very much like any other OS. At the top of the screen there are a number of tabs; Favorites, Office, Network, Accessories, Games, System and Places. In the lower right corner of the screen there is a traditional start menu with applications, system preferences and a command line option.
In the system preferences it is possible to change the look of the desktop, there are about five themes to choose from. The desktop background can also be changed. It is also possible to change password and language (a surprisingly number of languages are available) from the system preferences dialog.
eyeOS comes with an integrated office suite, including a word-processor, a spreadsheet program and a presentation program. The OS also have an e-mail client, calendar and a contact manager. Surprisingly eyeOS also comes with a web-browser, considering that you access the OS in a web-browser it is a bit strange. There are however advantages if you for example decide to lock your computers web-browser to the eyeOS site only in a business or public environment.
I have often missed to be able to access FTP on the go to be able to edit websites. Eye OS takes care of that with the built in FTP-client. It is pretty basic but does FTP uploading and downloading pretty good. Both surfing and FTP is of course slower in eyeOS than on a regular desktop.
eyeOS is primarily intended to be hosted on a server; however there is a public demo server where anyone can setup an account for personal use.
Installing eyeOS on a server is pretty straight-forward for experienced users, the server needs PHP 5 and preferably Apache web-server. This enables any business or organization to setup their own free cloud operating system. The eyeOS team mentions schools and public libraries as example users of the system, but a medium sized business can almost certainly use the OS in certain settings.
All cloud operating systems seem to have issues with connecting with other popular cloud apps, eyeOS has the same problem. However chances are that as more apps become available from the community, hopefully we will see integration with Gmail, Amazon S3 and other popular cloud services. Until then users will be locked in, but compared to Glide users of eyeOS seem to have a brighter and more open future ahead.
Google recently announced the release of Google Chrome OS, which will be an operating system in the cloud. Glide is a fully functioning cloud OS from a company named Transmedia, it is already on the market, and it is even free. We decided to try it; can it replace everything you do on your client desktop? Read on to find out.
Cloud operating systems is more than hype, they make sense. Netbooks which is a best-seller are not that powerful, so a desktop solution in the cloud would enable you to sync your Netbook with your desktop. It would of course give you access to your desktop from anywhere, and it would always be backed up.
Glide OS is designed to be used in a web-browser, which is achieved by using Flash. I am not a great fan of flash as it back in the day often was used to make overdesigned websites with little content or function. But Glide uses Flash beautifully; it even runs in older web-browser such as Internet Explorer 6. All it requires is Flash version 9.0.124.
Glide OS is basically a desktop environment which you can access from anywhere. It can be used from any web-browser, but also have client software for Windows, MAC OS, Linux and Solaris. Even more interestingly there are mobile versions of the client for the Iphone but also for Android, Palm OS, Symbian and Windows Mobile phones. It means that you will have access to Glide from any device.
At first glance Glide it resembles Windows or any other operating system a lot, except that it is in your browser. A Windows user would instantly feel right at home in Glide, and so would a Linux or MAC user.
The Glide OS Desktop has a number of different features by default, such as Email (yes you get your own e-mail @glidefree.com), Calendar, word processing and so on. At the top of the screen there are three tabs, Desktop, Glide HD and Portal. Clicking Glide HD will bring the user a file view with music, videos, documents, pictures but also RSS-feeds and a Calendar. The portal part of Glide is basically a flash based directory of websites mixed with stock quotes and chat features.
For some remote reason folders in Glide OS are called containers. Clicking a container will list all files located in there, clicking the small “Go” text in the icon will give you the bubble navigation. This basically gives you other options directly, for example if you want to upload files to the container. This is actually a bit unique, but partly resembles right clicking in Windows.
Glide OS comes with a surprisingly wide array of features and products. Most of them are consumer oriented, such as a media player or online photo editing software. The media player makes it possible to access your music collection from anywhere. Well not your entire collection since there is a 10 GB storage cap, but the favorite parts could easily be uploaded.
The Cube is another media sharing tool where users upload their videos, music or whatever and you can browse it in a Cube-type interface. It looks very neat but there isn’t a whole lot of stuff in there, and to be quite frank there are better online applications out there for media sharing.
A neat feature, which I have been missing in every Windows version, is a sticky note feature. It is easily accessible in Glide OS from the menu in the footer, complete with color coding, take that Windows 7.
Glide has a number of features built in for collaboration. For example it is possible to share documents, setup online meetings and much more. The only down-side with the collaboration features is that all users engaging in meetings will have to have a Glide account; if you have client meetings it might be a little bit much to ask them to get Glide. It would have been neater if it was possible to use an existing account, with for example Google or Open ID.
Glide can connect with your PC using a desktop client, it is a lot easier than just using the web-interface, especially when uploading files to Glide as you just have to drag and drop the files to your Glide.
The Business side of Glide looks depressing; there are simply not that many features in there. Sure some of the consumer oriented stuff such as word processing and e-mail goes for businesses as well. But all the media and music features are pretty much useless for a business. However one business application is Glide Crunch, a spreadsheet program. It is a weird application since it is not supported in the web-version of Glide, but it can be use from the client side on a local machine. Glide OS features documentation, it is both a manual and a quick intro to the desktop, both in PDF.
Glide is ahead compared to the giants like Google and Microsoft when it comes to cloud operating systems. I think Glide is not far from what it should look like, but something happened along the way that makes it very confusing. It is absolutely packed with features, yet I can’t seem to figure out what I should use it for. One answer would be everything, just like Windows. But the point with desktop operating systems is that I can add applications as I want, in Glide I either just create links to other external webpages or use Glides built in apps.
For example I know that there are better cloud word processing alternatives out there, such as Zoho Writer. Yet I cannot use it in Glide, so what is Glide really good for? I love the effort that the Glide team has put in; it is really ground-breaking. But in order for Glide to be great it has to have some kind of main focus, right now it is all over the place doing nothing exceptionally good.
For consumers there is probably more value in Glide than for businesses. It still has a long way from replacing the desktop operating system, but it still serves as a model for what a cloud operating system could look like.
Sign-up
Selecting wallpaper
Sticky Notes
Bubble Navigation
Desktop view
HD view
Portal
The Cube
Photo Editing
Login
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.
A problem with this evolution is of course that applications will become more difficult to reach than just having a simple icon sitting there on your desktop. Also web apps seldom leverage the whole computing power available in a desktop computer. A US based company named SweetLabs believes that they have the solution to all these problems, Pokki.
Pokki is basically an app store for Windows 7, with various applications and games available. The number of apps and games available is basic but still should cover most user needs. It is possible to install a Twitter client named Tweeki, Facebook and Gmail. There is also a neat music application, Grooveshark. Various games are also included, most of them pretty advanced.
The Pokki apps looks and behaves good in Windows 7, they load fast and often look better than some desktop counterparts. Developers can download an SDK, in which it is possible to develop part of the apps in CSS3 and HTML 5, which in itself is pretty amazing.
Pokki itself sits in the taskbar (it is possible to remove it) and is pretty unobtrusive, especially compared to similar solutions I have tried. A downside with Pokki is the lack of support for other Windows versions and operating systems, when this is written it only supports Windows 7.
The whole idea of an app store alternative for Windows 7 is good, but the question is how long it will live. Microsoft will without a doubt release an app store when Windows 8 is rolled out later during 2012, which may render Pokki useless.
Also Pokki serves no real purpose on other operating systems, Mac OS already have its own app store and Linux have had it for years. However they are not tied specifically to web apps and often have specifically developed apps for Gmail, Twitter etc. The real selling point with Pokki is being light-weight and providing a platform which is easy for developers to grasp and use. It will be crucial for SweetLabs to engage developers in order for Pokki to survive after the Windows 8 app store is launched.
In the meantime Pokki is a nice addition to Windows 7, and does make it easier to quickly access different web-based apps.
[starrater tpl=10]
We downloaded the open-source version of Google Chrome OS, built it and ran it on a netbook using a USB-drive. It was also tested in a virtualized environment (VMWare). The version of Chromium we tested was 4.0.253.0, it is not a finished product so this review is more of a hint of things to come than a complete overview of a finished product.
Building the Google Chrome OS source-code is not easy for everyone; there are a couple of images of the system floating around on the net usually made for USB-drives or a virtualized environment. For example you can download Google Chrome OS image files from: or.
Chrome OS is actually built on the Linux kernel but with its own windowing system. Maybe that's one of the reasons why Google managed to get this product released and working avoiding the hurdle of device drivers that other operating system developers have to worry about.
Starting Chrome OS is very fast, it only took about 10 seconds to bring up the login screen. When launching it on a netbook problems started directly when trying to login, since the Wi-Fi networks password hadn't been initialized it could not login using my Google account. Instead I had to connect it to a cable network, and then it worked fine. The login sequence is probably something Google will have to work on, if I had been on the road trying to connect to a secured Wi-Fi network it wouldn't have worked.
When logging in to Chrome OS you are greeted with a Google Chrome web-browser window launching Google or your Gmail account. There is also a tab in the upper left corner containing shortcuts to different Google and Internet-services, such as 
Thanks to the toolkit and the community behind eyeOS there is a number applications out-there. Of course the number of apps is nowhere near as many as for Windows or Linux, but it still looks very promising. However all of the applications are on eyeos-apps.org, it would be nice with a package installer integrated into eyeOS.
The interface in eyeOS is very easy to grasp, it is more oriented towards Linux than Windows so Linux users will feel even more at home. The terminology is also standard OS language, there are no newexpressions unique for eyeOS, folders are called folders etc.
The desktop in eyeOS is very much like any other OS. At the top of the screen there are a number of tabs; Favorites, Office, Network, Accessories, Games, System and Places. In the lower right corner of the screen there is a traditional start menu with applications, system preferences and a command line option.
In the system preferences it is possible to change the look of the desktop, there are about five themes to choose from. The desktop background can also be changed. It is also possible to change password and language (a surprisingly number of languages are available) from the system preferences dialog.
eyeOS comes with an integrated office suite, including a word-processor, a spreadsheet program and a presentation program. The OS also have an e-mail client, calendar and a contact manager. Surprisingly eyeOS also comes with a web-browser, considering that you access the OS in a web-browser it is a bit strange. There are however advantages if you for example decide to lock your computers web-browser to the eyeOS site only in a business or public environment.
I have often missed to be able to access FTP on the go to be able to edit websites. Eye OS takes care of that with the built in FTP-client. It is pretty basic but does FTP uploading and downloading pretty good. Both surfing and FTP is of course slower in eyeOS than on a regular desktop.
eyeOS is primarily intended to be hosted on a server; however there is a public demo server where anyone can setup an account for personal use.
Installing eyeOS on a server is pretty straight-forward for experienced users, the server needs PHP 5 and preferably Apache web-server. This enables any business or organization to setup their own free cloud operating system. The eyeOS team mentions schools and public libraries as example users of the system, but a medium sized business can almost certainly use the OS in certain settings.
All cloud operating systems seem to have issues with connecting with other popular cloud apps, eyeOS has the same problem. However chances are that as more apps become available from the community, hopefully we will see integration with Gmail, Amazon S3 and other popular cloud services. Until then users will be locked in, but compared to Glide users of eyeOS seem to have a brighter and more open future ahead.
Cloud operating systems is more than hype, they make sense. Netbooks which is a best-seller are not that powerful, so a desktop solution in the cloud would enable you to sync your Netbook with your desktop. It would of course give you access to your desktop from anywhere, and it would always be backed up.
Glide OS is designed to be used in a web-browser, which is achieved by using Flash. I am not a great fan of flash as it back in the day often was used to make overdesigned websites with little content or function. But Glide uses Flash beautifully; it even runs in older web-browser such as Internet Explorer 6. All it requires is Flash version 9.0.124.
Glide OS is basically a desktop environment which you can access from anywhere. It can be used from any web-browser, but also have client software for Windows, MAC OS, Linux and Solaris. Even more interestingly there are mobile versions of the client for the Iphone but also for Android, Palm OS, Symbian and Windows Mobile phones. It means that you will have access to Glide from any device.
At first glance Glide it resembles Windows or any other operating system a lot, except that it is in your browser. A Windows user would instantly feel right at home in Glide, and so would a Linux or MAC user.
The Glide OS Desktop has a number of different features by default, such as Email (yes you get your own e-mail @glidefree.com), Calendar, word processing and so on. At the top of the screen there are three tabs, Desktop, Glide HD and Portal. Clicking Glide HD will bring the user a file view with music, videos, documents, pictures but also RSS-feeds and a Calendar. The portal part of Glide is basically a flash based directory of websites mixed with stock quotes and chat features.
For some remote reason folders in Glide OS are called containers. Clicking a container will list all files located in there, clicking the small “Go” text in the icon will give you the bubble navigation. This basically gives you other options directly, for example if you want to upload files to the container. This is actually a bit unique, but partly resembles right clicking in Windows.
Glide OS comes with a surprisingly wide array of features and products. Most of them are consumer oriented, such as a media player or online photo editing software. The media player makes it possible to access your music collection from anywhere. Well not your entire collection since there is a 10 GB storage cap, but the favorite parts could easily be uploaded.
The Cube is another media sharing tool where users upload their videos, music or whatever and you can browse it in a Cube-type interface. It looks very neat but there isn’t a whole lot of stuff in there, and to be quite frank there are better online applications out there for media sharing.
A neat feature, which I have been missing in every Windows version, is a sticky note feature. It is easily accessible in Glide OS from the menu in the footer, complete with color coding, take that Windows 7.
Glide has a number of features built in for collaboration. For example it is possible to share documents, setup online meetings and much more. The only down-side with the collaboration features is that all users engaging in meetings will have to have a Glide account; if you have client meetings it might be a little bit much to ask them to get Glide. It would have been neater if it was possible to use an existing account, with for example Google or Open ID.
Glide can connect with your PC using a desktop client, it is a lot easier than just using the web-interface, especially when uploading files to Glide as you just have to drag and drop the files to your Glide.
The Business side of Glide looks depressing; there are simply not that many features in there. Sure some of the consumer oriented stuff such as word processing and e-mail goes for businesses as well. But all the media and music features are pretty much useless for a business. However one business application is Glide Crunch, a spreadsheet program. It is a weird application since it is not supported in the web-version of Glide, but it can be use from the client side on a local machine. Glide OS features documentation, it is both a manual and a quick intro to the desktop, both in PDF.
Glide is ahead compared to the giants like Google and Microsoft when it comes to cloud operating systems. I think Glide is not far from what it should look like, but something happened along the way that makes it very confusing. It is absolutely packed with features, yet I can’t seem to figure out what I should use it for. One answer would be everything, just like Windows. But the point with desktop operating systems is that I can add applications as I want, in Glide I either just create links to other external webpages or use Glides built in apps.
For example I know that there are better cloud word processing alternatives out there, such as Zoho Writer. Yet I cannot use it in Glide, so what is Glide really good for? I love the effort that the Glide team has put in; it is really ground-breaking. But in order for Glide to be great it has to have some kind of main focus, right now it is all over the place doing nothing exceptionally good.
For consumers there is probably more value in Glide than for businesses. It still has a long way from replacing the desktop operating system, but it still serves as a model for what a cloud operating system could look like.
