Unlike many of the other personalised start pages available, there’s no need to create an account and it’s all already set up for you, with the most popular gadgets organised by category and sub-category. So there’s virtually no setting-up work required by the user, making it ideal for the mainstream audience and those (like me) who can’t be bothered to do all the work of setting up their own page. More adventurous (and less lazy) users can choose to add their own Google gadgets and RSS feeds, but most people just use the gadgets and tools provided.

Unlike Netvibes, PageFlakes and all the other AJAX powered home pages, Funky Homepage does not use a drag and drop interface. Instead it allows you to select from a drop-down list of the most “popular” gadgets and feeds – “popular” according to the Google gadgets most popular list, that is. As such, it’s not really intended to compete with the flexibility of Netvibes and PageFlakes, but instead is intended to address a gap in the market for those who want something a bit more funky than Google or Yahoo, but without all the setting up required of Netvibes and Pageflakes. So only the most popular gadgets are offered. Although it still maintains a large degree of flexibility for the more adventurous users, allowing them to enter their own feeds and gadgets, should they wish. Whether you like it or hate it, at least it offers an alternative from the plethora of AJAX-powered homepages that are now available.

It’s free to use and you can check it out at http://www.funkyhomepage.com

“A “start page” promises only what it delivers: a beginning for your work and your browsing not a desktop-style replacement.”

If you just want a startpage as a beginning of your browsing, check out http://go.nzal.es.

I agree with your reasoning completely. In particular your point “if there’s any Web OS, it is the web itself”. Name OS is associated with something very core, which has a huge barrier (from a positive sense) for anyone to go beneath that layer. OS does all the heavy lifting abstracting the complex architecture below (like the Hardware or the way internet works). For lack of any other suitable word, I would also go with webtop for the class of software you have mentioned. “jccodez” on this thread has some good points.

Vijay Dekoh

I don’t dispute that you can abstractly call what Xcerion and others are creating an OS. I don’t dispute that you need operating system-like functions living at a layer above the nodes on the web. But I don’t think that investors or users or developers are served by presenting these application development environments or web desktops as “operating systems” given all the history of PC and mainframe operating systems — and given their success in the marketplace.

Seems to me like services that call themselves Web or Internet operating systems both overreach and obscure: they overreach in their ambitions and they obscure what the architecture of the web should look like.

I found that an interesting and honest caveat from one of the better, if not the best, actors in that growing space.

This means that you can cut’n paste a script from dynamicdrive.com, add some database/SQL hooks and run it serverside as a live clientside Ajax application on the fly.

Our tagline really should be “XIN, when the server is the browser”.

More at http://www.xindesk.com/blog

Web applications DO require a Web Operating System – to give them a common sign-in, common file system, common data sharing/clip board, common persistent desktop and common look&feel elements.

While some web desktops are just desktops, G.ho.st (http://G.ho.st) the Global Hosted Opoerating SysTem is going to be a real Web OS – it works with third party Web applications (not with its own applications) and provides a stack including desktop, common widget toolkit, common file system, common data sharing, single sign-in and more. The only layer arguably missing from the equivalent offline operating system is the hardware drivers (and who cares about that). I think you can certainly argue that this constitutes a Web OS but we like to think that it’s fun, useful and cool by any name :-)

Zvi Schreiber CEO, G.ho.st

Zvi

You have written a very interesting article that focuses on an even more interesting subject. The right or wrong of naming different types of software as a Web OS – Internet OS or not? Xcerion agrees that many services are wrongly labeled as an OS.

Xcerion XML Internet OS (XIOS) does not really fit the bill on the problems you so clearly illustrate though. A clear distinction between what is a real Internet OS or not is the capability to continue to operate in an offline mode. Without offline mode, it is more of a dynamic window manager for server backend code (web applications) than an OS. An offline mode requires many parts of a traditional OS to be in place.

Maliks Oms article describes our XIOS very well: “Xcerion makes Internet OS real” http://gigaom.com/2007/03/31/xcerion/

Our XIOS is about 70% of a real OS, we just happened to implement it within a browser, using traditional OS architectures, OO-programming etc and used the browser as the rendering engine. The use of the browser gave us one very valuable point – zero-installation and easier adoption.

Using standard AJAX technologies, other current web sites and services are able to run side by side from within XIOS and XIOS also lends itself to be extended by already developed JavaScript components or make use of already available XML Web Services. It is ideal for mashups and creating user interfaces on top of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). XIOS is clearly not trying to create its own universe. Its applications can also be hosted on any web server as an alternative surfing experience as compared to HTML pages.

XIOS includes a XML virtual machine for running application built on it, even when the user is offline, like any traditional OS. Data changes get synchronized as soon as the user goes online again. This is handles partly by the built in transaction engine (running from within the browser). The XML virtual machine acts like an abstraction layer for developers to really be able to develop applications very rapidly without having to know any AJAX technologies. It clearly opens up the world of desktop applications in a browser to more people than the hardcore developers.

In many aspects XIOS is a real OS and can easily be differentiated among other so called WebTops, widget portals and productivity suits on the Internet, since they all are bound to constant Internet access and server round-trips.

What constitutes XIOS? XML virtual machine for executing applications, data communication layer, UI rendering layer, inter application communication, clipboard, virtual file system, search, document versioning, transaction manager, collaboration support, XML Web Services stack, programming APIs, OS extension APIs, extensive XML support, UI components/widgets for building applications, desktop surface, document explorer, task manager, console, visual integrated development environment (IDE) and much more. In other words, most of what an end-user and developer perceives and uses as their operating environment.

I would argue that trying to redevelop the lowest layers of a traditional OS would not be the best use of resources. Today’s operating systems are more and more becoming a commodity and are in most aspects quite good at handling process scheduling, memory management and device drivers. We want to focus our innovation on the aspects that matters most for the users, ie integrated applications, rapid development of new software and collaborative software that really make use of the Internet and the possibilities with it.

We stand on the shoulders of previous achievements of the computing industry and Xcerion are extremely focused on bringing new innovative value and user experiences to end-users, not new device drivers. That is what we think will really matters for most people. We call it an Internet Operating System, since it really extends Internet into becoming an OS.

Like many people that have seen XIOS previously have said – Seeing is believing. Keep an eye on us when we launch.

Daniel Arthursson, CEO Xcerion http://xcerion.com