Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller has written an article in News Forge called Three reasons why Internet-based applications are a bad idea . His arguments are basically:
- Peering agreement falls apart – recently a peering agreement between two providers broke down and a lot of people were left without Internet access
- Cut one line, cut off DSL – a phone line was cut in Florida recently cutting off Internet access for many people
- Mysterious outages abound – a co-worker of Robin’s lost Internet access for a couple of hours recently
Basically, what Robin is saying is that online applications require Internet access and Internet access is not always reliable, therefore online applications are probably not a good idea.
Rubbish! If your electricity is cut off, you can’t use your PC. Does that mean desktop applications are a bad idea? Of course not. I would argue that online applications are a great idea and if your Internet access is not reliable – that’s a completely seperate issue. If your Internet access is dodgy, change to an ISP which is dependable or have a backup Internet access service available!
“Basically, what Robin is saying is that online applications require Internet access and Internet access is not always reliable, therefore online applications are probably not a good idea.”
Go ask BaseCamps customers opinion on this matter next time it goes down, bringing all of their project data with it 🙂
Roblimo’s first point is a rather silly one, but the latter two do bear merit. But as I’ve said before, and will no doubt say again, Jason Kottke has the perfect plan to cater for both: http://www.kottke.org/05/08/googleos-webos – and its not rocket science.
Aw, come on Hostyle, that’s just a backup issue!
Thanks for the link to the Kottke article – it makes for a fascinating read and, if implemented properly, could indeed augment web apps reliability and usefulness.