bitsifter
friday, october 18

[sift this] Another headline for the Internet phenomena -- "Power to the People". It's based on the idea that just about anyone can put together a web page and, with limited fuss, publish to the entire world. This is why you're next door neighbor has a Connectix camera pointed as dog house and won't stop talking about how he can check on his pup from work. "Power to the People" isn't the headline for the debut products from Marimba -- a quartet of Java founders setting out to prove that the language can live up to the hype.

Two products emerged from Marimba in the past two weeks, Castanet and Bongo -- this week, lets talk Castanet. The spin on the product is this: replace your browser with full-fledged java application. The metaphor: Castanet is a transmitter and Castanet is also a receiver -- what do they transmit and receive? Channels, but replace a video signal with a java application.

It's a clever way to market the idea since 99% of America is still trying to figure out what a Web Server actual is, it also will not confuse entertainment corporations since it uses terms they can understand.

Castanet solves many of the fundamental problems of running java applications in a browser. There is still the initial download time for an application, but once that's done, Castanet only updates the changes in the local application. One can only guess how quickly Netscape and Microsoft will scramble to catch-up to "on-the-fly" application updates since it represents the primary reason no one cares about Java applications.

The currently available channels show off some slick Pointcast-ish custom controls and the performance of this applications are actually reasonable, but Marimba is well aware that they need the "killer app" or in this case, the killer channel.

Current buzz about Marimba is that it is an immediate threat to the browser market, but aside from performance considerations, Castanet does not provide enough power to the people. The difference between creating a Castanet Channel and putting up a home page might be a 4 year degree in computer science: it's Java -vs- HTML and web pages have a three year lead.

Next week: Bongo : drag and drop Java?

[rant] From the Concerned Netizen Department: The demise of Pointcast was foretold on c|net several months ago and we brushed it off as mere jealously of the rampant acceptance of the application. Few applications benefitted more from the word of mouth distributation channel than Pointcast, but what are they waiting for?

It's now almost November and the latest news out of Pointcast is Version 1.1 is out along with a new Intranet offering called the I-Server -- a product designed to reduce the bandwidth problems Pointcast was wrecking on corporate networks. But that is just plumbing.

What turns heads on the Internet is visual appeal and the slickest feature out of Pointcast since it's arrival was the Olympic Torch animation which was part of the Summer Games coverage. Whether Pointcast knows it or not, they're product cycle is compared to that of Netscape and Microsoft -- they've had eight months and all they've released is a point revision and a new icon? In the meantime, Yahoo has released My.Yahoo , a low bandwidth alternative, and rumours out of Redmond point to a Pointcast killer of Micrsoft Access proportions.