In our post on “Musing on the Coming Web Desktop,” we mentioned one hybrid scenario where web apps with desktop functionality reside on the firm Intranet, rather than the Internet itself. John Milan’s post yesterday over at Read/Write Web discussed another type of hybrid, a cross between a web app and a desktop application.

That got us thinking: we have done precisely that! MindPort+Review, our online document review and collaboration tool that integrates with our MindPort extranet solution, is indeed that sort of hybrid. With MindPort+Review, the data—in this case, documents and their metadata—reside in a MindPort project, which is an online repository. The MindPort+Review tool is a desktop application that provides enhanced functionality for searching, sorting, filtering, and grouping documents. The desktop app also has tools for creating and maintaining custom coding (metadata) and advanced retrieval tools like pick lists, saved searches, and search folders. Since the data is online, people can collaborate on the documents anywhere they have an Internet connection.

When we created MindPort+Review, we just thought that was the best method to provide collaboration and the functionality of a desktop. Because the solution worked, we didn’t consider that it is pretty far out there on the leading edge of web technology.