Kiko is a an online calendar which I've recently discovered. It's completely free, as many of these types of web services are, and very powerful. You can have a publicly accessible calendar as well as private entries for only you or your contacts to see. It has a very slick drag n' drop interface with tabbed navigation.. it can send you reminders of your appointments via email, AIM, or SMS messaging on your cell phone. One great feature is the ability to "quick create" an appointment.. an example: I typed into the text box "pay Cingular bill on10th of every month" and now my calendar has a reminder listed on the 10th of every month. Very cool.
With quality products such as this,
Writely (online word processor),
NumSum (online spreadsheet tool), and others made by startup companies, many desktop software publishers will lose out if they don't adjust their business model. Moving such services online eliminates the "oh I forgot my presentation on my home computer" situations and also adds the possibility of collaboration between peers/coworkers.
Writely being bought out by Google recently only validates that these companies are succeeding. Just about anything can be brought online... check out
YouOS for an example: an online Operating System? Might sound crazy at first but it's a project that I'll keep my eye on.
On a related note, Google plans to release an online hard drive / storage service (GDrive, what else would they call it?), giving everybody infinite storage space.. with the goal of "storing 100% of user data". Sure it will raise privacy concerns, but it's Google... not only will they probably get it right, they'll make themselves richer too.
Some ideas have swirled around my head lately... maybe I should jump on the bandwagon too.