<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Scobleizer]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[http://scobleizer.blog]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[Robert Scoble]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://scobleizer.blog/author/scobleizer/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[The Offline Wars about to heat&nbsp;up?]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=769">Ryan Stewart (who works at Adobe) wonders</a> if Microsoft is bringing an offline version of Silverlight out this week at Mix.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m hearing that Google is about to ship something major offline too.</p>
<p>So, for the next month we might hear &#8220;go offline&#8221; from all three camps (Adobe already shot their big guns in this war at last week&#8217;s &#8220;Engage&#8221; event).</p>
<p>Microsoft should have the best offline technology, because it&#8217;s king of applications on your desktop, but I think that answers the wrong question.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m trying to get everything I do online because I want freedom from my computer.</p>
<p>What do I mean about that?</p>
<p>Well, what if my computer gets stolen? I don&#8217;t want any data on it.</p>
<p>What happens if Linux comes out with a Macintosh killer? Or if I decide to get a Windows computer again (I&#8217;m currently using a Dell Tablet PC because they sent me one to try out) I want to just load one thing: Firefox and go to work. Right now I&#8217;m switching between my Dell and my Mac without any problems at all because almost everything I do now is in the browser.</p>
<p>The thing about Microsoft is that they&#8217;ll do some killer offline technology but it won&#8217;t work on the Symbian cell phone or iPhones that I&#8217;m currently using. It won&#8217;t work on Android, which is the Google cell phone OS that&#8217;s soon to make an impact on the market. It won&#8217;t work on Linux (which is getting a LOT better on the desktop, so I might try that again this year). And it won&#8217;t work well on Firefox or Opera or other new, non-IE browsers. (Channel 9 doesn&#8217;t work well with Silverlight on my new Dell when I use Firefox 3.0beta3, while Flash and AIR work just fine).</p>
<p>So, I guess the question is: can Microsoft keep the world as it is (IE, one that mostly runs on Windows and Office) or will the world follow bleeding-edge users like me into a more online world?</p>
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