I 100% agree with Read/Write Web’s conclusion: Desktop RSS Readers Are (Nearly) Dead. Since I began to use bloglines, I throw away all of those RSS reader clients and almost never use them any more since after.

Google added offline features to Google Reader through “Google Gears“, I believe more and more online readers with provide similar features soon, and obviously the new Firefox 3 offline support will make this  easier to happen.  That almost take over the desktop RSS reader’s last base, now all your bases are belong to online apps.

That also make me think: “Will Desktop e-mail also dead soon?” When is my last time to use my Outlook?  I almost can’t remember…Since my last installation of my laptop I didn’t install Outlook anymore. For my personal email, I use GMail, for the cooperate email, I use Microsoft Outlook Web Access(though it’s UI is not very nice, it still far better than run a slow, huge program).

The reason why an online email is better than a desktop client is similar to the RSS readers, I think. Esp. for people like me who have more than one computers and many accounts and wish to access my accounts from any where any time, it’s really a headache if some accounts or data just resident on one specific computer or need some specific software to access, the online readers(RSS, Email) wiped always those headache.

So, Will Desktop e-mail also dead soon?

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Papadopoulos said on his blog that future world only need several computers, he listed -Google, eBay, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Yahoo, Salesforce.com, and what he called the Great Computer of China. Ofcoz his “computer” is not the traditional computer we talked about, what he said is “hyperscale, pan-global broadband computing services giants”:

I mean “Computer” as in the “The Network is the …”. These Computers will comprise millions of processing, storage and networking elements, globally distributed into critical-mass clusters (likely somewhere around 5,000 nodes each). My point in labeling them a Computer is that there will be some organization, a corporation or government, that will ultimately control the software run on and, important to my argument below, the capitalization and economics of the global system.

IBM’s Thomas J. Watson said in 1945 that ‘The world needs only five computers’. That’s the early years of Computer industry, computer are huge mainframes. From some meaning Thomas’ computer (mainframes) is quite different with Papadopoulos’ (super networked computing grid), but they still have something in common:

* They are huge guys running by your “big brother”, you can just follow the rule “big brother” made and then you get the benifit from using it, or you are out.

* “Big brother” intend to make the rule for anything in his world, if there is unfortunately something missing, sorry it’s your own fault — they just do not exist.

PC is something like revolutionist, they don’t wish to be controlled by “big brothers”, they just don’t like to follow the rule which big brother made for us, they don’t want just in the world that “big brother” created.

The very early stage PCs looks like joke to “big brothers”, but those toys become more and more powerful, and more and more people feel living with their own computer is much better than big brother’s one. PC’s success made Thomas’s “world only ned 5 computer ” wrong.

Today, google seemed like will do anything in their computer. They even created word, excel, powerpoint replacements for us, and looks like all we need is just a browser stuff connect to google, then every thing is fine, and Salesforce.com did whatever a enterprise need in their super computer, too. I guess what Mr. Papadopoulos expected is just even more powerful computers which will a lot more, they will become the true brains of the future world.

It’s not true, future PC will not be the same as today’s PC, I believe future PC will be something like a “virtual computer”, it could exists physically with you but still have a synchronized “shadow” somewhere online, so it can be accessed from anywhere and any devices, but, they are still *YOUR* PC, so you can install anything you like in your “PC” and do whatever you like, there is no “big brother” manage everything for you.

Such future PC will change today’s web services:  Do I need a gmail account? No, it installed in my “PC”, and there are a bunch of different mail applications I can choose from to install.  Do I need a flickr account? No, all of my photos stored in my own “PC” I can determinate whatever I wish to share and I can install a bunch of gallery software in my “PC” to decorate the album’s look&feel.  Do I need a Youtube? No, My videos are in my own “PC” store, share just like those photos.  In the future, we don’t need so many “service” providers, we just back to fundamental, we buy “software/service” and install in our own “PC”.

Ofcoz, such “PC” will not replace everything, there still public places to announce, aggregate, search informations that located in “PC”s,  but they are not just a few, they are many.

Yesterday’s mainframes become today’s super computer grid network, personal computer will also evolve to something in the future too, so eventually future world still need far more than five computers, even all of them are google scales…

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