With the release of Gnome 2.6 it seems that the spatial desktop concept is The In Thing... or rather, the discussion of.

Spatial desktop.. what's with the space thingy.. it seems that findings has it that (yes, i'm quoting from MS.. i don't believe in their business practices, but i sure believe they hire capable people who knows what they're talking about) the human has enormous capacity to remember things in their places.. or rather "the ability to remember where you put something".. I mean.. hey, from the looks of my own desktop..
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.. I'd say YeaH! And let everyone that (had) wanna keep my table tidy know that too!

How about the web then? Search is great, I mean Google's already my best friend.. but the Web is still just a collection of loosely connected, stand-alone sites.. they are not location, spatially, organized.. you remember places by their names, spelling.. check on something via the History list (which I still find wieldy on browsers)... and in most cases, I'll look for my best friend to find that page again.. Ya.. the Gmail mantra, Why organize [into bookmarks and history] when you can search?

But then again, why not organize them spatially.. render a "World'" to represent the web.. SoulKool did a pretty kewl job with their site.. so well that they need no website, just their isometric world. Everything is accessed via there.. But why stop at 1 site? If all sites can be represented as parts of a map.. where walking to a outermost tile would lead you to load the next map, Diablo style, and maps upon maps you traverse.. wouldn't that be pretty neat too? And meeting people who is visiting the same site.. I mean, "physically" there, your Avatar. Strike up a converstion, ask for help on topics, look at ongoing discussions.. forums are dead!

Of cos, not all sites are suitable for such scenarios... can't imagine standing in a room of Slashdotters.. Avatars will have to be 1-pixel wide!

Still, this is something that I would like to see come true.. on hindsight, my genius friend Kian Sheng did send me something on interconnected sites before.. something that more resembles the text-based mud.. with "Exits: north, east" navigation.. between sites.. but that was a discussion more purely on the underlying (web services) protocol to "discover" each over and connect.. not the spatial, interactive connectivity i'm talking about.

I'd sincerely wish to embark on getting a reference implementation out.. a combination of light-weight, flash isometric engine... irc backend with bots... (actually I'd already implemented something very close for my present company.. but i just don't want to stop there!) Not everything is for the money ya?