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March 26, 2007
Rise of occasional connectivity
Rise of occasional connectivity: For me, one of the continuing embarrassments of the March 2002 definition of "Rich Internet Applications" (summary) had been the lack of progress on "occasional connectivity", or the ability to work whether your machine currently has a network connection or not. Out of the RIA bulletpoints, we've achieved performance, integrated media object model, two-way communications, componentization, web services, and OS independence. But both device-independence and offline support have been harder to realize... in web conversations over the past five years many have doubted whether there's even any need for it. (Pretty funny, when you consider the continuing connectivity problems at tech conferences here in 2007. ;-) But ever since the Apollo launch we've seen a flurry of firms announcing support for offline functionality, as the above Techmeme link shows... people accept the need for occasional connectivity now, in a way I've never seen before. It'll still take awhile to get it right technically, and the social training and server infrastructure to support it, but to see such widespread acceptance now, I think that's pretty significant....
Posted by JohnDowdell at March 26, 2007 08:07 AM
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I really wonder what the numbers are like though. No doubt it's growing. But, except for a few "road warriors" spending their time traveling and a few tech-head like "us", I'll bet there really aren't that many occasionally connected folks. When my computer is offline, it's practically useless. Sure, it'd cool to read all my accummulated feeds... write comments in your blog, and so on... but not only is that stuff REALLY hard to implement it'd take a big leap for me to believe it works. Plus, I may not want to go through with sending a comment once I see an update.
In short, it's a huge leap and one that is going to happen... but I don't think it's going to be easy for the user or developer. Plus, I'm not exactly sure what Apollo offers in this regard except a way to check if there's connectivity or not. That's the least of my concerns when thinking about building such an app.
Posted by: Phillip Kerman at March 26, 2007 05:41 PM