Geek Website of the Week: RollApp!
Do you want to run LibreOffice on your new Google Chromebook? Well, now you can, with ‘RollApp!’ Rollapp is a service that let’s you run ‘heavy’ programs and view them, in an HTML5 enabled browser. IT is actually pretty cool! Instead of virtualizing a whole desktop, it virtualizes the applications themselves!
“What is rollApp?
There are 3 different answers to this question, depending on your point of view
For users
rollApp is a software-on-demand service that instantly delivers existing third-party SW applications to any web-browser equipped device over broadband/3G. Users can find and run online most of the software they need without installing it to their computers or other devices. Think of it as ‘YouTube for applications’ – a place where software authors publish their applications and then anyone can access them using a browser.
For technology professionals
rollApp is an online application virtualization platform. Once a software publisher installs their ‘traditional’ desktop applications to rollApp server, rollApp instantly converts these applications to SaaS/Cloud versions. Then anyone can access rollApp server using regular web-browser and launch the converted applications inside a browser. When executed via a browser, rollApp applications behave the same way as locally installed ones. This works for applications initially developed for any popular platform: Windows, UNIX, MacOS, etc – and regardless of the operating system installed on the client computer/device.
For businesses
rollApp is an application publishing platform that allows end customers to get access to software-on-demand services using freemium model. For software publishers it instantly adds new features to their applications and provides new distribution/revenue channel, for advertisers it brings traditional TV-style advertising model to non-TV devices (desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, smartphones, tablets, etc).”
They show OpenOffice in this demo, but they have LibreOffice available now. Check it out!
They also have a RollApp File Opener, as shown in this video: