Playlab.net || Still searching?

In the wake of Bill Gate’s media spin last week, Microsoft announces a “strategic shift”. The new services will be called Windows Live and Office Live, and Mr Gates said they were “a revolution in how we think about software”.

Hmm. Forgive me but haven’t we all been using applications “online and on demand” for a while now? To unashamedly use a meme that’s been bashed about for the last year or so - it’s all about this “Web 2.0” stuff, innit?

Web services like Flickr, Writely, inetWord and even MSExchange all offer feature rich applications as “online and on demand” software. And with broadband use becoming increasingly prolific, the thin-client model is now a feasible direction for certain applications. I can see that embedded advertising within these applications is a way to make money - particularly for the likes of Microsoft. But I guarantee the developer community will quickly find a way to outrun the displaying of these embedded adverts.

Either way - is this the beginning of the end for CD installed software? Maybe one day even our operating systems will be online…