Balancing Web 2.0 With the Desktop

Gibu Thomas of Sharpcast has some dead-on analysis about how applications need to scale to be device appropriate and the importance of transparent file management.

Thomas gives perspective that we shouldn't overplay the importance of Web 2.0 applications. Desktop applications will never die, they will just stay on our PCs, while web-based versions will be used when we need to access our applications from a public PC, or from a media player or mobile phone. Sometimes web mail or Excel-lite is all you need, but when you have a powerful PC and lots of storage at your disposal, you may want more.

Thomas is putting that principal to work with Sharpcast Photos, which organizes and synchronizes your photos so that they are available from any device. The service eliminates the need to upload files or resize photos for mobile devices. The "anywhere anytime" concept of access to information, may not be new, but it has yet to be realized in a way that is easy for users.

Sharpcast now has an invitation-only beta of its photo service, and the company just received $13.5 million in Series B funding from some impressive VCs.

Here's another prescient point from Thomas

These days, because we use so much digital information, there is general consensus that the meta-data we use to navigate the information is almost as important as the underlying information itself; for example, having access to a structured set of playlists in iTunes is far more valuable than having access to an unordered list of mp3 files.

It's not just what data we have, but the context of what it means to us, and when and how we need access.