Jessamyn West

From Social Software Showcase

  [first page, second page]

We are not our desktops. We are not our IP addresses. We are not our laptops. We are not where we sit. We are not our phones.

We are mobile. We are social. We are what we share. We are where we login. We are how we interact. We are portable.

"A portable application... is a software program that does not require any kind of formal installation onto a computer's permanent storage device to be executed, and can be stored on a removable storage device ... enabling it to be used on multiple computers."

 

 Why Portable?

Let's face it, other people's computers are lousy. Other people use dorky operating systems*, configure them in ridiculous ways and lock you out of all the stuff you want to access. Their choice of colors and styles are terrible. It's a wonder you are still friends with people with computers like this.

Let's also face that we are pretty imperfect ourselves. We mess with people's settings, we overcustomize, we log in to IM at their house and forget to uncheck the box that saves our password. We click the box that says "run when Windows starts." We install Firefox. We make Firefox the default browser. We delete their temp directories. We arrange icons. We tidy. We have a problem.

But really, we wish that your computer were our computer, with our privacy settings, our preferences, our applications and our totally correct way of organizing everything.

 Portable What?

USB drives are cheap. Floppies are cheaper. These software tools are small and don't need hard drives. Let's see what we can find...

* (A  lot of this is PC only because libraries are often PC only, I've included Mac versions where possible)