Ajax powered File Manager demo

The revolution started a few short years ago with Google's Gmail.

It's the web application that put WOW back into WWW.

It is truly the first web application that I would trade in my trusty e-mail client for. The decision to switch was a no brainer. Yahoo Mail didn't have POP. At that time, no free email hosting provider offered more than a measely 5MB of email storage. Outlook Express crashes at the sheer volume of e-mail I get everyday. Finally, searching thru hundreds to thousands of messages wasn't such a chore because it actually works !

Suddenly, more and more people were turning to their browsers to read mail, gradually weaning away from the desktop e-mail clients that they have become so use to.

After the e-mail client, is the file manager not too far away from the same fate ?

Probably not in the near future. As I have mentioned before, browsers need a little catching up before we can actually see that happening. Right now, for instance, if you want seamless dragging and dropping of files from your desktop to a web page, you have to rely on a java applet.

Click the title link above to see a demo I wrote of an ajax powered file manager (username:coa,password:123) that works on top of the robust OpenACS File Storage package.

I wouldn't call it innovative, in fact, it copies a lot of things from Windows Explorer but it has to start somewhere :-)

Yahoo! Announces YSlow, Firebug based performance tool

Just a few weeks ago I posted my lessons learned from trying to get an ajax powered web application to run better and faster.

No doubt many developers are constantly trying to find ways to do just that and it looks like Yahoo! has answered the call with this plug-in.

Globe says subscribers "abusing" their network ....

It's rather upsetting to hear Globe say that their subscribers are "abusing" their network.

Are they in effect saying that people should only subscribe to their internet service to do important stuff like work and not for something trivial as downloading torrents ?

How can it be abusive for subscribers to maximize the usage of a service that they are paying for ?

Don't get me wrong, I believe the reason for the cap is valid, we're talking about the survival of their service and their company after all.

Furthermore, if it will improve the quality of service, why not. As one commenter on Yuga's blog posted :

"The 5 GB cap would be fine with me, if they could deliver the service with decent speeds".

However, to say that the reason for the action is that their subscribers are "abusing" their network is like adding insult to injury, in particular, to the subscribers who are paying for the service but are not really getting the advertised speeds.

If I were Globe, I would just be honest and admit that their network isn't up to that kind of load at the present time. Don't blame your subscribers for maximizing their usage of your service !

PS : I'm not a Globe visibility subscriber :-)