Booting and running the Google Chrome OS (which I compiled from the open source Chromium OS source code) on my ancient original Asus eeePC. The 404s are because it takes a while to connect to my wireless internet. Note the awesome graphics bugs, which thankfully don’t happen too often.

The reasoning the FIA has given for this is that F1 engines are already incredible pieces of machinery, revving to 19,000 RPM whilst still being surprisingly reliable. While this might be true, F1 has always been the pinnacle of motoring – demonstrating what could be possible in consumer motoring in the future. Stopping this incredible innovation might have short-term benefits, such as limiting the huge budgets that these teams must operate with, but curbing this pool of innovation will also remove the goal that is being set for consumer brands to aim for.

Instead of putting a freeze on development, perhaps the FIA should instead set environmentally friendly targets for teams, such as reducing emissions. This will truly make F1 a target for general motoring. If F1 teams can work out how to pull this incredible performance out of environmentally friendly engines, then it may open people’s eyes to be more acceptant to these kinds of technology.

The FIA has a real opportunity to make F1 a leader in motoring for the world, but instead they have put a total halt on the amazing innovation possibilities.

Let me begin by saying that overall, I agree with what Steven is saying. The current crop of web applications are cool, and certainly have their place insofar as they are convenient for those working in multiple locations and on different computers, but in the end that convenience looses out to the loss in functionality. What is really useful to me is a new breed of web-connected applications.

While I don’t really like the whole Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 nomenclature, I do agree with the concepts being expressed for Web 3.0, specifically the idea of the web as a database. Though there will always be a place for the traditional website, I think standardized and open data interchange is the key to bringing the internet to the next level of usefulness.

I have been toying with AIR, making small applications to connect to some web services I have made, and I really love these kinds of desktop web-connected applications. That web connection is the key: it is all well and good having Google Docs there so I can edit a document from anywhere, but what I would really love is if that document was seamlessly exposed for editing by any application. I imagine opening a document in Word, saving it directly into the cloud, opening it on a mobile device like my iPhone and messing with the formatting while on a train, then popping it open in an online word processor on a colleague’s computer for comment.

This does, however, bring up the issue of pervasive internet connectivity. In Australia, though mobile data plans are becoming cheaper, and WiFi hotspots are more readily available, there is still no consumer-level way of having always-on internet connectivity. Still, this really does not make cloud services any less useful.

I really do have a dream of having any data I need available where ever I go, and initiatives like AIR promoting web-connected applications are a step in the right direction. I think that even though technology is a big stumbling block on the road to true cloud computing, a lot of it comes down to the lack of willingness of companies to use and promote open formats and data interchange. Hopefully, this will get better with time.

While I understand Google had to do a lot behind the scenes to ensure that actions mapped into Gmail properly, it has been a long wait for long-time Gmail users like me to get IMAP support in Google’s mail product. I’ve been using Microsoft Exchange for email for a while, but with my reshuffling of jobs, I found I no longer need the advanced features that it provides. Instead, with the new addition of IMAP access (a necessity in my books), I decided to save myself the money on Exchange and switch to Google Apps, and as such, back into Gmail.

This decision left me with a conundrum – how to get my bank of email out of the clutches of the MS empire and into the supposedly less evil Gmail. While my mailbox is not the largest around, weighing in at around 2GB, this was still a daunting task. IMAP support certainly made this easier, but finding the right application to do the move proved difficult.

I tried Outlook 2007 itself, Mozilla Thunderbird, Entourage, and Eudora with varying success, from Outlook’s constant timeouts on the IMAP connection, to Thunderbird ending up with messages without subjects or senders due to Exchange mangling headers. The solution came from an unlikely source: Windows Mail.

Windows Mail is the replacement to Outlook Express in Windows Vista, and was able to import email directly from the Exchange server through Outlook, then upload it to Gmail through IMAP. While the process was slow (around 10 hours for all my email), it managed to get the job done perfectly, without any timeouts and with the complete messages intact. I did not expect much from Windows Mail, but it pulled through in the end, and if Thunderbird wasn’t so damn good, I would consider using it as my full-time email client.

I now have Thunderbird with the Lightning calendar plugin syncing to my Google Apps Gmail and Google Calender, complete with all my email and calendar entries from Exchange. I still fire up Outlook and use the wonderful RemoteCalendars to pull down my Google Calendar for syncing with my iPhone and other devices, but other than that I am totally satisfied with the free alternative to Exchange.