Goowy, Desktop & Minis

A cool new technology stack is added to the AOL arsenal as AOL acquires Goowy.

Goowy offers a web based desktop solution which out of the box offers Instant Messaging integration, e-mail and online file storage. After reading about the acquisition I went and created a Goowy account to check it out.

The experience offered by Goowy is nased on screen filling Adobe Flash control, with Flash applications running on this virtual desktop. Extensibility is offered through something called 'Minis', which can be compared to Vista Gadgets or Yahoo Widgets. For creating your own Mini goto: www.yourminis.com. The API is based on Flash ActionScript 3.0.

Just two quick screenshots to give you an idea of what the Goowy desktop looks like:

Obviously there is an industry trend for catering to the needs of the mobile user, who logs in from public places and whishes to be able to log in to a customized desktop which offers access to all the person needs/wants, Goowy, iGoogle and Windows Live all target this group of people. Goowy is the only one of these three which offers a Flash based experience.

The other trend is to bring the web to the desktop. This is where Vista Gadgets, Google Desktop and Yahoo Widgets play a role. I'm not sure if Goowy Minis can be run on the desktop. If there is some install that can be done, then I haven't found it yet. Drop me a comment if I missed something.

All in all Goowy is pretty impressive, but as a developer I always have a wish list:

• Goowy offers a custom online storage, please integrate this with XDrive instead. Less API's to learn and more reuse is good. Plus this will integrate AOL Pictures into Goowy automatically.
• Goowy Mail should offer IMAP integration. When I read mail online I do not want to remove the mail from my POP account, it still needs to be archived in Microsoft Outlook :-)
• Implement support for Silverlight Minis.
• Support OpenID

I don't know if these items are on AOL's TODO list, but I believe they should be! Drop a comment and let me know what you would like to see added to Goowy.

Cheers,

Mark Blomsma