Library clips

At first I thought desktoptwo was going to be a start page, but what it actually is a kind of virtual PC, and offers a gig of storage.

Basically you have a desktop that pretty much looks like your normal PC desktop, and with it you get some in- house web applications (which appear as icons just like a real desktop):
- a blog
- IM
- message board
- hard drive/file manager
- website editor
- settings
- an email client
- address book
- calendar
- RSS Reader
- Bookmark Manager
- mp3 player
- notepad
- search box and search results box
- a shareable office suite by open office (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, acrobat)

The system tray type widget has (search box, info, mp3, IM), and there is even a start menu to access everything.

Wow, is this going to be a virtual operating system, instead of using windows, OS 2.0 perhaps…at the moment they are calling it a “webtop”.

But…

Can you drag in shortcuts eg. weblinks, open office files, etc…?

Can you add desktop widgets (well it would be web widgets really)…it seems Goowy has these (naturally being the parent of yourminis)?

Can you share your desktop?

I’d like to launch it from my real systems tray, as it would be something I’d use a lot.

I’m really seeing this useful at work where I can separate my personal and work stuff, now my personal items can go in my webtop, and leave the real desktop for work stuff.

I wonder if they will go with the Menu bar at the top and taskbar at the bottom (like Windows), since a webtop is on the web you have your browser open, which means you could add a virtual webtop browser, toolbars, and links bar.

Looks like there’s lots of webtops: Goowy, glide, xin2.0, YouOS, orca, eyeOS, dashboardxm, more here…also see Qube, this is browserless search like Google Deskbar (lucky I still have the exe)

I agree that a GoogleOS in imminent.

yourminis is a start page that you can make public, infact you share them in a type of social network.

PageFlakes and ProtoPage also have sharing, but yourminis has really taken it on by building a community. Every public startpage has ratings, comments, recent visitors, a category, and tags (eg. find other startpages with the same tag). Basically a social network type environment for startpages (but you can’t add friends or other start pages).

Infact, you can make lots of minis, whereas in the other two mentioned startpages, you can only have tabs within the one startpage.

You can even use these widgets outside of yourminis, perhaps in your blog.

Public RSS Readers like Blogdigger Groups, SuprGlu, MySyndicaat, Feedpile, KickRSS, Technorati Favourites, Top 10 Sources, FeedRaider, Speedyfeed, Bozpages, Kinja, Feed Collectors, etc…are great to make topic news streams, then you have Topic Content Networks like Squidoo, Hubpages, webjam, Fanpop, Zimbio, Boxxet, etc…that can have topic news streams as well as other modules, now you have Public startpages that can also create topic pages, but in a widget layout (and in yourminis case, almost a social network).

The widget option goes beyond just RSS widget streams, you can have a widget for anything, unlike the Topic Content Networks you are given default modules, but with yourminis the sky is the limit with widgets, you can get widgets for anything.

Zimbio may be similar as all the modules can be displayed as widgets on a startpage (but as mentioned it is limited to each module being a widget, you can’t add external widgets and the system doesn’t have its own widget gallery).

Webjam may be even more similar, this is a community of public startpages (you can even clone them)…not sure if they have an extensive widget gallery. Like youminis you can make lots of webjams.

See more about yourminis at Robin’s master post.

While we are on the subject topic pages, Boxxet (a Topic Content Network) has officially released, I posted on this before but didn’t realise they were automated topic pages, just like a Public RSS Reader can be an automated topic radar.

It seems that Public RSS Readers (RSS Radars), Topic Content Networks, and Startpage Networks are starting to blur the line…newsmastering has come a long way since BlogDigger Groups.

NOTE: Then there are Personal Content Networks like Lijit and Ziki, but as the name says these are not intended for topic based content, more about authored based content.

Callwave - voicemail-to-email forwarding

GrandCentral - one phone number to ring all your phones

Pinger - send a voicemail to multiple people in one go

Built Smarter - add modules to your existing website eg. blogs, shopping carts, ads, formsm links, feeds, files, calendar, IM, polls and more

Texterize - is a free text message board, that you can use to receive SMS text messages from mobile phones. You or your friends can send messages to a widget in your blog when you don’t have access to a computer (don’t think you can directly enter a message into the widget itself, it’s purely SMS).
I wonder if the owner is SMS’d notifying someone has left a message. A feed might also be handy to follow the messages (perhaps even convert the feed to SMS or email to be notified).

GoToMsg - Lets you schedule text messages to be sent to your email or cell phone. This lets you remind yourself of important upcoming events. I guess the many notes, To-Do, Task, Time services probably have this function, but this is a real simple tool…get the widget.
Another similar service is rminder and SMSzilla, FutureMail and TimeCave do it for email, ReminderFeed, FutureRSS do it for RSS, and ToolTask for IE doesn’t it for web surfing.
Or just get some Time Management with SlimTimer.

WaxMail - record an audio file and send the mp3 as an Outlook email attachment. Others are Slawesome, Springdoo and vemail.
MT1 is the other way around.