The birth of the Google DLA
Valleywag is reporting on a new Google Home page design which includes Mail on the main menu bar and adds Calendar to their ’suite’ of webapps within easy reach on a drop menu menu. These additions, along with integration of a customizable Google ’start page’ (otherwise known as a NetVibes/Pageflakes killer) will officially launch the beginning of Google’s intregrateed web based OS interface.
I’ve been waiting for this integrated platform for over five years now - and it comes at a time when DLAs, start pages, widgets and web services APIs are moving up to a another level. A level of wide spread acceptance, validation and monetization has moved this stuff from my esoteric dreamland into a “this could actually happen” state of grace.
It’s no longer necessary to explain why Widgets are important or why a drag and drop widget interface that allows end users to customize their environment - is really the next Generation MyYahoo.
Maybe Tariq Krim will take me seriously when I suggest that having a data structure which represents all the settings of NetVibes would be a great thing to followup his cutting edge ‘Universal Widgets APIs’.
And watching Yahoo and Microsoft play this game, with AOL and MySpace close behind will keep us all on our toes as we usher in this new era of DLAs.
Lets make sure that the OpenID attribute exchange can handle ANY kind of data and meta-data - so we can all be passing back and forth our MyYahoo accounts to our MyGoogle page and MyLive gadgets environment.