Computer users worldwide are taking part in the latest stage of the technology revolution as personal computing moves from the desktop to the ‘webtop’ reports JOHN HARRIS.

I am always surprised the revolutionary changes sneak up on me.

Although I first read about the Internet in the late 1980s and started using an global online service called CompuServe in 1993, the massively rapid adoption of the World Wide Web took my breath away.

Today, the Web and email are used by more than a billion people worldwide – and another revolution is sneaking up on us.

Under the innocuous name of Web 2.0, it describes a set of rich online applications and services that are marked by the migration of processing power from the personal computer to the Web.

In other words, we are moving from the desktop to the ‘webtop’.

 What this means is that more of the computing tasks you need are likely to occur through a program running on the Internet rather than the PC you use in your study or family room.

The perfect example of webtop computing is reference software such as dictionary programs that used to come on CD-ROM.

During writing almost daily for more than quarter of a century, I developed a workmanlike knowledge of the English language and only looked up words for definitions or spelling.

I generally used the print dictionary on the shelf behind my desk rather than the dictionary software CD next to it.

The book was quicker and easier to use than inserting the CD, spinning it up and starting the word search application. Even putting the software on my hard drive did not make it more appealing.

That was then.

Today, I look up the definitions of words using online programs like Dictionary.com www.dictionary.com many times a day, often for the nuance of the word rather than just its meaning.

The reason is it’s quick to search because a web browser is always open on my computer, which is connected to the web through an ADSL2+ broadband service. If I can’t find a word on one dictionary, I can always search for it elsewhere in seconds.

The beauty of the online world is it costs me nothing extra to use.

The Web 2.0 revolution is starting to introduce an incredible diversity of web-based programs that offer everything from personalised web pages at MySpace www.myspace.com and online video on YouTube (www.youtube.com) to virtual realities such as Second Life (www.secondlife.com).

If these online novelties don’t rattle your cage, even venerable desktop applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel are under attack.

Over the past year or two, Microsoft and Google have muscled up against each other with their respective plays for a significant place – if not dominance - of the emerging Webtop environment.

Microsoft .Net is an initiative aiming to remove the boundaries between the desktop and the Internet, so Microsoft can still sell you software, but with a greater online component than before.

Meanwhile Google has launched Google Apps http://www.google.com/apps/, a broad range of free online applications that includes Google Docs and Spreadsheets, a pair of primitive but promising online challengers to the dominance of Word and Excel.

The Web 2.0 revolution is just starting and the good news is we, the users, get to choose the winner.

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