The Firefox Kid and Parakey

IEEE Spectrum: The Firefox Kid: "Pointing to the screen of his laptop, Ross shows me what he calls a “family portal” for a fictional clan named the Andersons. Mom has a page with her recipes displayed. Dad has his collection of war documents. The kids have their party photos. Although it looks like a Web site—down to the Firefox-style tabs that run across the top of the page, which each family member uses to display his or her own section—it is, in fact, something much more ambitious: a universal interface. Even though Parakey works inside your Web browser, it runs locally on your home computer, which allows Parakey developers to do things inside your Parakey site that a traditional Web site could not do, such as interact with your camera. So instead of clicking between, say, the Windows desktop and a MySpace home page displayed in a Web browser, you are always operating within your Parakey site.

Take digital photos, for example. Here’s how the Parakey experience works: you plug in your camera, and your photos get stored seamlessly on your computer in such a way that you can view them quickly and easily through your Parakey site. No more digging through folders for the right image files. They’re organized and displayed as attractively as a site like Flickr might display them, as thumbnails with identifying text beneath them. Parakey allows for serious editing functions—from cutting and cropping to eliminating red-eye—all within the context of your Parakey page. But it also brings some more basic (and fun) scrapbooking habits into the digital realm. Ross clicks on an icon representing what he calls the Toy Box. Open the Toy Box and there are all sorts of accessories for dressing up the pictures: word balloons, devil horns, goofy fonts.


Now let’s say you want to share your collection of graduation photos with some select family and friends. The problem today is that there are several layers to getting that done. Many sites require users to register before seeing a photo a"

It took me sometime to understand how parakey would be different from a clean next revision of Google Desktop. I was thinking they were trying to do something like this too. But then they could be caught up in the parts that they have bought. Maybe the sum would be much less than the parts itself. I can see Blake's effort having a better chance for success with the open-source community to back him up. Its easy and more functional to put stuff together when they have been designed to a more common interface specification. Google's inorganic growth does not give it that luxury, but then they always have the potential to "shock and awe".

[thanks /.]