Dear Web Applications: Where Are My Files?

What’s wrong with the “friends connection” programs announced by Facebook, MySpace, and Google? Many people have been trying to explain the principle of data portability as if it were a new concept, but it’s actually not. It’s been on our PCs for years.

Think about the applications you use on your computer–the ones that run LOCALLY on your computer. They all produce files. You’ve got your word processor files, your spreadsheet files, your presentation files, your accounting software files. You create some data with the application, then save it to your drive. You can take those files and put them on any other computer and open them with any application that supports the file type.

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