And the crowd shouted "NO MORE INSTALLS"

The "new" desktop - brought to you from the web (or how we believe you should live your life, based upon our knowledge of technology and programming skills)....

First there were mainframes and terminals, then there were mainframes, servers, terminals and PCs; then there were mainframes, servers, terminals, LANs, WANS, PCs Windows; Then there were lots of other stuff; now there are all those things, but why not go back to mainframes (now mostly called servers) and terminals (basically anything that a user uses to do anything).

Well, I've finally confused myself, but here are some companies looking to get move off those outdated Microsoft Office applications (you know, those one you "install" on your computer - how 90's) and get you virtualized.

• Goowy provides email (2GB), messenger, calendar, address book, News/RSS manager, file sharing & storage (1GB), games, and widgets (which they call mini). Developed mostly in Flash, Goowy also offers hosted version with added functionalities, for businesses.
• DesktopTwo (also available in Spanish) provides email, address book, file storage and sharing (1GB), IM, blog, music player and a website editor in a nicely organized user-interface. It requires Flash, Acrobat Reader, and popup windows to function correctly.
• Glide Effortless is a web-suite that handles media files - documents, photos, audio, and video - and also provides a handy word processor and calendar.
• XIN is still in beta, but is evolving into a full-featured WebOS.
• YouOS has perhaps the most recognition of all the WebOS products - and high ideals too.
• EyeOS (Open-Source) was developed in Spain and currently boasts 53,500 users in the main public server. In addition there are around 400 active servers installed by users.

And don't forget all those tools Google, Yahoo and even Microsoft are developing.