App-less Web Apps
This is really cool. 37Signals has a couple neat posts which really struck me this morning. The first one I missed a while ago, App-less web apps and this morning's ponderings about URLs vs. usernames and passwords. The reason is that I've been "working" (i.e. thinking a lot about and doing nothing to actually accomplish) on a similar app. I wrote about it here where I was complaining about having to develop the same ol' username/password infrastructure. The idea of an app-less web app appeals to me greatly, not from a laziness standpoint, but because we *all* have enough usernames and passwords. We really don't need another.
Despite being a little annoyed at the 37Signals guys for hyping Ruby on Rails too much and giving them crap about mobility, I actually like their blog and their work quite a bit. Especially since they have a tendency to concentrate on simplicity, and aren't afraid to think outside the norms to get there. Simplicity is hard work. It's easy to just slap a complex CRUD-like user interface on top of any database. It's hard to think about how users would actually want to work and make your app respond that way instead.
I have a feeling that Writeboard is very similar to what I was planning. Hmm... Since I haven't written a single line of code, hopefully it's exactly what I was thinking, and I can just use that and save myself the effort.
;-)
-Russ