Thursday, February 12, 2009

Symantec GoEverywhere is pretty cool

OK, so those who know me know I sign up for everything online. If it's Google-related, I'm usually trying to be the first in line like a greedy kid in an ice cream shop.

I recently was approved for a beta account with Symantec GoEverywhere. It's another one of those "webtop" applications where your entire desktop lives in the cloud. GoEverywhere includes integration with the major webmail vendors via shortcuts, and a bunch of Zoho shortcuts as well. Security appears to be well thought-out - there are "safe" and "open" areas available for file storage. A shortcut to Meebo is included for full IM functionality.



I thought I'd give my first impressions.

Things I like:
  • It's fast, as fast I could've ever expected
  • It's secure; at least, it gives the impression of security in Symantec style. I like the use of secret questions and confidence images
  • Tagging is a major part of it so searching files should be powerful
  • It's very clean and intuitive

Things I don't:
  • It's kinda boring looking
  • I'm not a Zoho fan (yet?) so the Zoho integration doesn't mean much to me
  • I don't really know how necessary the webtop concept is
  • I could (and I kind of do) use the services they have shortcuts to, so it's not quite as valuable to me

I created an application shortcut in Google Chrome, so that it opens in a chrome-less window, it's great. It feels like a proper thin-client - it would be great for use on a cheap netbook laptop like an Eee.

So it all seems a bit pointless, but very cool. It makes me want to check out PsychDesktop/LucidDesktop, which is a Webtop PHP/Ajax application that you can install on your own webserver.

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