A post over on WinExtra and my recent dabble with Adobe’s excellent AIR have me thinking about the further evolution of the internet. The WinExtra post gives a good background into what I am about to say, so it is worth reading beforehand.

Let me begin by saying that overall, I agree with what Steven is saying. The current crop of web applications are cool, and certainly have their place insofar as they are convenient for those working in multiple locations and on different computers, but in the end that convenience looses out to the loss in functionality. What is really useful to me is a new breed of web-connected applications.

While I don’t really like the whole Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 nomenclature, I do agree with the concepts being expressed for Web 3.0, specifically the idea of the web as a database. Though there will always be a place for the traditional website, I think standardized and open data interchange is the key to bringing the internet to the next level of usefulness.

I have been toying with AIR, making small applications to connect to some web services I have made, and I really love these kinds of desktop web-connected applications. That web connection is the key: it is all well and good having Google Docs there so I can edit a document from anywhere, but what I would really love is if that document was seamlessly exposed for editing by any application. I imagine opening a document in Word, saving it directly into the cloud, opening it on a mobile device like my iPhone and messing with the formatting while on a train, then popping it open in an online word processor on a colleague’s computer for comment.

This does, however, bring up the issue of pervasive internet connectivity. In Australia, though mobile data plans are becoming cheaper, and WiFi hotspots are more readily available, there is still no consumer-level way of having always-on internet connectivity. Still, this really does not make cloud services any less useful.

I really do have a dream of having any data I need available where ever I go, and initiatives like AIR promoting web-connected applications are a step in the right direction. I think that even though technology is a big stumbling block on the road to true cloud computing, a lot of it comes down to the lack of willingness of companies to use and promote open formats and data interchange. Hopefully, this will get better with time.