Your Lifetime Desktop in the Cloud

I want to see everybody in the world access internet and use their own computers in the near future. In developed countries, people have so many kinds of internet enabled gadgets and computers at home, school and work. However, if you travel to developing countries, the whole situation is different. How can I bridge the gap of digital divide for next generation? By letting everybody have their own virtual desktops "in the cloud" so they can access them at any time, anywhere. Affordable web desktop service with the latest social features can improve even more, so I have been working on this dream for over 20 years. The first company I co-founded was "eMachines", where I lowered the PC price below $399 in 1998. Over 4 years with eMachines, we shipped over 4 million PCs to households in US and helped them to own their first PCs. In 2003, I founded "NComputing", where I created a small device with unique software allows you to share the computer with 30 users. By leveraging unused CPU resource and HDD space, an old fashion concept - time sharing dumb terminal - worked very well to serve most school and task force workers in the SMB. I was able to distribute this device for less than $70 per user, a 'thin' computer in over 100 countries and reached 2.5M seats in the world today. This means over 10M people are using this to access internet and do their jobs. This NComputing device also only uses 1 Watt so it saves huge energy cost in many countries. Now my 3rd computer venture, "ZeroPC" is on the way. I am seeing lots of outdated computers everywhere, which are still okay to use. All you need is to run "Browser" and connect with the ZeroPC site. Then, you will see your own virtual desktop and it will be your lifetime computer in the cloud ! Turn your browser into a PC in the cloud with ZeroPC.

[youngsong-blog]

What is ZeroPC ?

Maybe I can say like this way...

"Dropbox organizes your files,  Evernote organizes your idea, Flickr organizes your photos. ZeroPC organizes EVERYTHING ! "

In the past, we were able to organize content (files) through a utility program bundled by a computer operating system such as File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac). We created folders, copied files, and did backup them time to time because it was not difficult and there weren't many files.

Nowadays, we are using many Social and Web storages sites with multiple Web-enabled devices (gadgets) such as laptops, smartphones, tablet/pads and more. Content is stored in many different sites depending on its format or purpose for sharing. We often forget where we put our files, and it is difficult to remember all of the sites, user-IDs and passwords in order to check out and update content everyday.

These cloud-based Web 2.0 sites are becoming more popular in our everyday lives, and we will continue to join even more in the future. How can you organize all of those? Your personal content is valuable and you don't want to lose track of it.

With ZeroPC's content account manager, using an industry standard "OAuth" Single-Sign On, the data residing on most sites can be organized easily by you.

To do this, we need to make ZeroPC simple to use. Let's imagine that your computer exists in the cloud which can communicate with servers of many sites to aggregate all of your content - and best of all, it is easy to use because of how similar it is to your it is to your local desktop. Users can log-in to this virtual cloud computer to access their own Web desktop, and then look up all of the connected sites such as a drive D: E: or USB: in the same way that today's desktop/laptop computers perform these functions. What do you think?

A desktop user interface metaphor is important to bridge the gap between local computers and the cloud. Also, it is essential to be able to access your content via an Internet browser from anywhere, anytime, and any device without any software installation.

The above screenshot is a browser screen not a real Windows desktop screen. ZeroPC supports GoogleDocs, Facebook, Twitter, SugarSync, Box.net, Flickr, Dropbox, and Evernote (from 5/15). 

The example below shows Google documents and a Facebook friend's photos similar to the files in your PC instead of Gmail style.

We would love to hear which additional sites you think we need to add to ZeroPC. Please share your thought with us! ZeroPC is fun, safe and easy to organize all your contents in the cloud and in your local computers. 

[youngsong-blog]

A Desktop for Web Computing - A new website offers another take on moving personal computing online

by Tom Simonite -Technology Review, Published by MIT, April 6, 2011

Personal computing is steadily migrating to the Web, as people use sites like Facebook and Flickr to store photos, videos, and other files they previously would have stored on a PC. A startup called ZeroPC hopes to provide the desktop for the Web computing revolution--a page that looks and acts like a desktop interface, from which users can access all of their content wherever it is stored online .... (read more)

[youngsong-blog]

New user-interface tool for managing your Cloud and local computer's content, ZeroPC.com was officially launched on March 29 during Web Expo 2.0 event in San Francisco.

You can log in your own virtual desktop in the cloud, upload files from real computer, create or modify office documents using Thinkfree Office Java App (FREE!), and also access your other many social site's photos and data easily.

All you need is Java enabled browser (Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari) on your Mac or Windows PC.  Please visit at www.zeropc.com and sign up for your free account.

[youngsong-blog]

About Me

I want to see everybody in the world access internet and use their own computers in the near future. In developed countries, people have so many kinds of internet enabled gadgets and computers at home, school and work. However, if you travel to developing countries, the whole situation is different. 

How can I bridge the gap of digital divide for next generation? By letting everybody have their own virtual desktops "in the cloud" so they can access them at any time, anywhere. Affordable web desktop service with the latest social features can improve even more, so I have been working on this dream for over 20 years.

I came to Silicon Valley in 1997 summer after 7 years of working in PC company in South Korea. In 1998, I co-founded my first venture,"eMachines", where I lowered the PC price below $399. Over 4 years with eMachines, we shipped over 4 million PCs to households in US and helped them to own their first PCs. (eMachines went IPO in 2000 and then acquired by Gateway in 2003)

In 2003, I founded virtual desktop company, "NComputing", where I created  a small device with unique software allows you to share the computer with 30 users. By leveraging unused CPU resource and HDD space, an old fashion concept - time sharing dumb terminal - worked very well to serve most school and task force workers in the SMB. I was able to distribute this device for less than $70 per user, a 'thin' computer in over 100 countries and reached around 3 million seats in the world today. This means over 10M people are using this to access internet and do their jobs. This NComputing device also only uses 1 Watt so it saves huge energy cost in many countries. (NComputing is funded by VCs over $40M and currently #2 Thin Client computing vendor in the worldwide according to IDC 2010)

In 2010, I started new startup called "ZeroDesktop". Its service named "ZeroPC" is now available for everyone in the world. This is pure software service company unlike preview hardware connected business I had founded. Finally eMachines' $399 PC to NComputing's $70 Thin Client, and now to ZeroDesktop's $1 per month ZeroPC Cloud Computing! All you need is to run "Browser" and connect with the ZeroPC cloud server via internet. Then, you will see your own virtual desktop and it will be your lifetime computer in the cloud !

Turn your browser into a Cloud PC!

   Young Song ,  Palo Alto , California