Creating standalone desktop web applictions

This is the age of bowser based web applications. Browser like google Chrome provides a way to create webb application shortcuts to your desk top with out loading the actual browser. The interface will let you open an exclusive browser window only for your favourite application like Gmail or Facebook. No adress bars, no menus just your app. Cool eh!?
Here are some tricks that will allow you to ceate standalone web applications. Sometimes these are called Rich Internet Applications or RIA

1. Firefox

The feature is not built in, however there are add-ons avialable which will let you do the job.Prism is such an application. Prism allows you to run web applications (like Gmail or Facebook, for example) in a single browser window, separate from your main Firefox application. Prism is a standalone application. Now a firefox extension named Refractor is available, which does the function directly from Firefox.
After installing the refractor add-on you can create applications right from ther firefox while you browse.



An article on the Wired magazine:click here

2. Gogle Chrome.

Google Chrome has this feature built in. You can make any webpage a desktop application by clicking on the 'create application' button.


The standalone blogger application looks like this



3. Adobe Air

Adobe AIR is used to make completely independent desktop web applications with out needing any web browser.Though this is not for novice users, it is aa good tools for web developers. Using Adobe AIR standalone desktop web applications can be developed. You need to install a AIR runtime on your operating system.
Click here for Adobe AIR page
You can get lot of applications by googling.
Here are some popular links:

http://www.adobe.com/products/air/showcase/

http://www.sizlopedia.com/2008/03/08/10-most-useful-adobe-air-applications/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/some_adobe_air_apps_worth_a_look.php

4. Google gears

Google gears is a software which enables offline functionality to web application.Once offline, Gears saves all work on local database on your computer, you can still work with out internet connection. The next time when you gets the connection, Gears syncs the changes to the server. This combined with the desktop app featrures, is creating the ways to the RIA (Rich Internet Applicaation}.

10 google services that are less popular

Though Google is ubiquitous in the internet, many of the services provided by Google are not well known to the public. These are very useful free tools you can use for from website promotion to day to day uses.

1. Google Sites
Category: Publishing
This service is a free hosting medium, that you can use to make website. The site is hosted at google's server. Formerly it was Jotspot. The company was aquired by google. Sites can be built with ease using simple and efficient user interface.

2. Google Trends
Category: Statistics
Trends service allows you to find popularity of keywords over time. You can compare two or more keywords to know relative popularity. It provides a list of top 100 keywords on a hourly basis(hottrends). this is very useful for website promotions and marketing.

3. Google Suggest
Category: Search
Google suggest recommends in real time as you type on the searchbar. This note only saves the typing time but also helps discover useful information as you type that otherwise may have missed.

4. Google Adurl
Category: Advertising /publishing
This is a feature that allows you to add a site or page to the google search index. This is useful for web administrators and bloggers.

5. Google Mashup Editor
Category: Publishing
This application is rarely known to the public. The application allows to create useful applications using simple syntaxes. The applications can access,process and display data in a meaningful way. Useful for content providers.

6. Google SMS
Category: Mobile/Search
This is particularly for mobile applications. It allows to querry google using mobile devices.

7. Google Reader
Category: News/Aggregation
This service allows to get news and updates from many sites in one place. This is done using RSS feeds from the websites.

8. Google Talk Gadget
Category: Communication
This is a less known application. It allows users to use google talk without installing anything on your computer. Truly portable.

9. Google Sets
Category: Search
This service allows the user to generate a list from one or more keywords. Sets automatically categories the keywords and generates similar keywords. This service is very useful for web administrators in SEO(search engine optimization).

10. Google Notebook
Category: Utility
Google notebook is a utility that allows to create,edit and save small notes online.
This will be useful while researching the web.

The semantic web - the rise of the omniscient

Semantic(defenition:related to meaning) web is a term given to identify a new pattern of development of the Internet. The semantic web also known as the data web is an initiative to give meaning to the data hidden in the web and give the ability for knowledge discovery. The proposal is to add meta data with the actual data so that the data can be processed by machines. Which will enable to discover hidden association that is hardly visible in the current framework. The semantic web is based on a set of frameworks to structure data, query and process it.
The Semantic web stack consists mainly the data representation frameworks like RDF framework, OWL framework and the SPARQL query language. These are in draft phase at the W3 consortium.
To understand how the semantic web will be, try to recollect the "people you may know" suggestions made by your social networking site like Orkut or Facebook. These web application processes your friends list and your friends' friends lists and guesses whom you may be knowing. You save time to search each friends long friends list and gets useful informations effortlessly. This is how you can imagine about Semantic web. In this case the processing is done by the web application on the data you provided to that application only. In semantic web the processing can be applied to the entire web provided they conform to the standards.
These experts says is one step forward to the direction of an Artificial Intelligent web. Something we have heard only in the Science fiction like the Skynet in Terminator series. Already a lot of web companies are busy creating the next big thing on the Internet after Google. A list of sites are given below to guide your imagination.

1. Twine.com


2. Powerset.com


3. Hakia.com-the semantic searchengine


4. Swoogle-another


5. Twine.com

Another possibility is the natural language querry processing. You may be able to serch using plain english rather than keywords.


6. Trueknowledge

To know more about the technology that may change the future of the web and our life here are some useful links.

1. semantic web wikipedia ariticle


2. semantic web activity on w3.org


3. SIMILE project at MIT

Thus the emergence of the semantic web may be the rise of the omniscient machines.