It is interesting to see what people are doing to try and make the internet more of a tool than simply a massive repository of uninformed opinions, naughty photos, and dubious facts.

This past weekend I bumbled onto something called StartForce at http://www.startforce.com. Basically it is an OS embedded into your browser. You start with a simple login prompt.

Setting up a new user ID is relatively easy, and not any different than pretty much any other user account setup on the web.

After you've set up an account, validated, and then logged in, you are presented with a desktop that is similar in some respects to Windows XP, and yet not. It also has some flavor of KDE and Gnome mixed into things.

The desktop works exactly like you would expect a native OS desktop to function. The Start menu gives you all the familiar options and application categories.

 Is it functional... yes... it is even usable. Speed is relative, but after tinkering with it for a while (over a broadband connection, I have to say that the speed of loading each app is comparable to what you would find loading native apps on most computers. Applications include a text editor, spreadsheet editor, presentation editor, PDF viewer, web browser and so on... all the basic office desktop applications you would need. There is even a media player, a video player and a couple of games.

Each user is given a disk quota and a bandwidth quota.

  So... curious yet? I'd be interested in what other people think of this concept... I have lots of questions.. like what about security of your data? Can you work offline and have your status and data synchronised when a connection is re-established? Is that important?

Anyway, things are getting interesting the wacky world of the internet.