Mobile Apps 2: Rise of the Webapp

In loving memory of the mobile applications business. Adoring child of Java, Psion, Palm OS and Windows Mobile; doting parent of Symbian, Access Linux Platform, and S60; constant companion of Handango and Motricity. Scared the crap out of Microsoft in 2000. Passed away from strangulation at the hands of the mobile industry in 2008. Awaiting resurrection as a web service in 2009. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you make a donation to the Yahoo takeover defense fund.
--Mobile Opportunity: Mobile applications, RIP

An ex-Palm developer talks about the death of the dedicated mobile app and the rise of the mobile webapp.

another harbinger of Web 3.0.

and when I say Web 3.0, I mean that it will be to Web 2.0 what Windows 3.0 was to Windows 2.0. which is to say that it will finally be usable for Joe User.

although we might have to wait for "Web 95" for webapps to finally get up to speed. nyuk, nyuk.

I'd previously written about how my Personal Operating System is the Web. this is due to the amazing amount of stuff I actually do using Firefox (by intention). my contacts, calendar, notes, documents, email, everything, are accessible through the web. Outlook, Mac Address Book, iCal, Google Calendar, Google Docs, beloved Gmail--all these synced together with Plaxo. (at first I thought Firefox was my Personal OS, but then I realised that I don't need to use Firefox. any compliant web browser would do.)

so the web's my personal OS, with Firefox as my favourite user interface.

and I ain't that fringe. lots of people are doing this. (as an aside, see Cloudo.) and now with the iPhone and pretenders, it's infecting the mobile world.

do you have an online setup? would you setup a cloud computer?