It's not Smart Client! It's a Wazza!

I caught up with my good friend Tim Wragg (I’d link to Tim’s blog, but due to an unfortunate naming conflict that spoiled his blog thunder, I can’t) during a break, and had an awesome chat about Smart Clients.

See, Tim is a big fan of Smart Clients, specifically those that involve web services and Office. But for the past 3 months, he and I have been having a few issues with the term Smart Client, and even more problems with the little Venn diagram that shows the intersect between web based applications and desktop based applications. That slice, that insinuates a smart client is the intersect of common elements between web apps and desktop apps don’t play! ‘Cos, correct me if I’m wrong (I delete comments from my blog that don’t agree with my particular rant), but that would mean I have some kind of html/asp.net thingy running on my desktop…hang on, that’s called a web browser!

So Tim and I propose on using a new term (because we just don’t have enough TLA’s in our industry) do describe desktop applications that call web services to do anything (aggregate data, update themselves, find Dr. Neil), it’s called Wazza!

For all those who would like to contribute, please do, as I think there is a place in the world for Wazza’s ;)

Btw, total use of Wikipedia…5!