Some time ago, Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems, said “The network is the computer”. It looks like his vision may finally be coming true. With the prevalence of broadband and wireless Internet connections, and the development of new programming tools like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), we’re seeing web applications that rival their more prosaic counterparts in speed and functionality. In this column, I’m going to take a look at some web-based applications. To use them all you need is a reasonably current web browser and an Internet connection. Most are free, although you may have to register to use them.

Things move fast in the web world, and I’ve updated this article to cover changes that have occurred since I wrote it last June.

Let’s start with the applications you’ll find in any standard office suite - word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations.

I wrote the first draft of this article on Writely, which was recently bought by Google. It’s now part of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, which offers basic word-processing functions like setting fonts and text sizes, changing paragraph indents and line spacing, applying bulletted and numbered lists, and simple table formatting.  It’s not Microsoft Word or Open Office.org Writer, but it’s more than enough to draft and article or write a letter or short report. Like many web-based tools, you can share your documents with others and edit collaboratively.

The spreadsheet component of Google Docs & Spreadsheets manages to fit the most commonly used spreadsheet functions into a reasonably responsive web interface. It’s not going to entice Excel power-users, but it’s more powerful than the first spreadsheets like VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 that established the market. It also has colloboration features.

Thumbstacks creates presentations. It’s not as full-featured as PowerPoint, (no animations, slide transitions, sounds, or drawing tools) but most people overuse those anyway. You can create your presentation in Firefox or Internet Explorer and share it online.

Google’s email application, GMail, offers 2 GB of storage. I use it to archive all of the messages from the techwr-l maling list. The archive is a useful reference, and GMail’s speed, filtering, and search capabilities make it far easier to use than the official archive on the techwr-l site. When Google Calendar came out, I started using it immediately, as it’s a good way for my wife and I to share our calendars, and I can check my personal calendar from work. The interface is a perfect example of the best modern web programming techniques; it’s slick, fast, and has Google’s trademark simplicity and ease of use. It also integrates wtih GMail.

Google Page Creator is web-based page designer with a few standard themes and layouts. PC World has a brief writeup on it . This could be handy for quick one-offs, though anyone who has Dreamweaver or Front Page will find it pretty limiting. Google Maps turned a lot of heads when it came out, as it was a web-based mapping application that was faster and easier to use than disk-based atlases.

I’ve been using Bloglines as my primary feed reader for a while now. It works well for me because I can’t install a feed reader at work, and I don’t have to worry about keeping my bloglist in sync between home and work. If you subscribe to a lot of sites, you can sort your list into folders. You can also use Bloglines to subscribe to mailing lists - it’s how I read techwr-l . Of all the web applications mentioned in this article, Bloglines is the one that I use the most.

Meebo is a web-based instant messaging (IM) client that will let you log into AIM or ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, GTalk, or MSN Messenger. This might be handy if your IT department won’t let you use or install IM software.

Some readers of this article may be familiar with Quadralay’s FinalDraft, an online reviewing tool. I had thought that FinalDraft was the only tool of its kind, but it seems I was mistaken. QuickTopic Doc Review lets you read documents and post comments on them over the Internet. They have a Pro version that has extra features and lets you password protect your reviews to control access.

Even utility software is going to the Web. Cl1p.net is an Internet clipboard that lets you copy and paste information between computers. You can also use it for text or file uploads, with a 2 MB limit. Krunch lets you compress files online. It supports ZIP, RAR, and GZIP formats. Neevia Technology’s Document Converter Express is an online service to convert your files to PDF. There’s a 1 MB file size limit. Zamzar is another online service that offers free file conversions to and from various formats. You can use it to convert Word documents to PDF or OpenDocument Format, GIFs to JPGs, MP3 to WMV, to name a few. They also support various video file conversions.

I’ve just touched the surface of what’s available online now. There’s sure to be more web-based applications in the future, as companies and developers get more familiar with the possibilities of new development tools like AJAX.