Parakey: OS Meets the Web

November 27, 2006

IEEE has a really cool article on Blake Ross, a.k.a. The Firefox Kid. Ross is fascinating on a number of levels, not withstanding the fact that he was literally a kid when he started work on the hugely popular Firefox project (which is a browser many of us can’t imagine going without now). But the description of the Parakey project is certainly a standout portion of the article. In a nutshell, Parakey will be some sort of steroid enhanced OS-meets-web desktop using something called JUL, “a mashed-up acronym that stands for “Just another User Interface Language.” The idea is that the two are one, and that lightweight services across the web can be tied into the user experience without requiring multiple tools to accomplish each task. Sort of. But that doesn’t do it justice…

I’m not doing a very good job of describing the aspirations of Parakey. Best to check out the 4 page article for yourself. “As he describes it, from a user’s point of view, Parakey is “a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do.” Translation: it makes it really easy to store your stuff and share it with the world.” If they can pull it off (and I’m not the one to place bets given this article is the first I heard of it), Parakey would move the yardsticks significantly forward. Might even qualify for Web 3.0 status (or at least 2.5).

I think part of the reason this caught my attention is because of all the press Google’s CEO has been getting about his comments regarding the fate of desktop software in an age of internet-based services. The times are a changing, that’s for sure. Google, Microsoft or the Firefox Kid. Time to place your bets.

:: Speaking of Firefox, sadly, Firefox 2 is crashing on me. Several times a day it seems (and I’ve read some similar comments around the blogosphere). I’m a patient guy and I’ve got faith it will be fixed soon, but it is annoying the hell out of me at the moment…

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