Welcome to the future

What software is installed on your computer?

Four years ago when I started zfweb my morning routine would be

   1. Start up my G3 Macintosh laptop
   2. Dialup (yes it's true)
   3. Start the 5 programs that I used daily
   4. Make coffee while they took their time to load
   5. Check the Sydney Morning Herald website on a web browser
   6. Start work

In a day I could easily use 15 programs that were installed on my computer. The more I had running, the slower my computer ran Too many and it would crash.

These days my daily start-up involves:

   1. Opening my MacBook Pro laptop to wake it from sleep
   2. The internet is of course already running, at over a thousand times of dialup of old
   3. Email, messenger and skype open of their own accord
   4. Check Facebook and SMH on my "personal" web browser, Safari
   5. Open Firefox my "work" browser and start work.

This is because 90% of the programs I use are now are on the internet. These include:

• Saasu - online accounting software (no more MYOB)
• Salesforce - online client database (no more filemaker pro)
• 88 miles - online time-sheet software (no more excell)
• Brainkeeper - online wiki that we use as an intranet (no more doccuments storeed on hard drives)
• Google Analytics - from which I track all the movement through our websites
• And of course Typepad, from which we write our blog posts

So what does it all mean?

• I can be on any computer with an internet connection and be able to access all our business applications.
• I can generate an invoice for a client from their office and not my own
• It means I can be going to a meeting, and look up the address via the web-browser on my mobile phone.
• That (heaven forbid) if zfweb were to burn down tomorrow, we could all camp out in an internet cafe and carry on as normal.
• Our staff can work at home without needing to cart a laptop on the train
• That I could be posting this blog post from my desk, the airport or even the beach

Online software is not stopping there. This website was the inspiration for this blog post - a website that allows you to design and then download your own fonts.

In the future I think traditional software will continue to die, so that soon a computer will be simply a terminal onto the world. Personally I think it's great but by all means beg to differ.