Ralph Johnson wrote:
Celeste is an e-mail reader. Scamper is a web browser. Both need improvement before they are killer apps, though I think some people ues Celeste every day. See http://map.squeak.org
Croquet is in some ways a radical rethinking of what the web could be like. Sophie is very definitely a radical rethinking of what a book could be like. You should take a look at those projects.
Squeak is more likely to attract people by doing something unique like Croquet or Sophie than by trying to compete with the rest of the world with e-mail and web browsing. But, if you can get people to make Celeste or Scamper good enough that a lot of people use them every day, more power to you!
Thanks all for your comments.
I completely agree that competition with today's email and browser apps would be tough considering the competition and the ingrained usage and preferences of users. I was only thinking of the best way to motivate new users to squeak with something they already understand but with much cooler features.
Another way is to create a squeak app that satisfies an unfulfilled user need but make it extremely easy to use (so they don't give up because it's "too radical".) I like this approach better, but that requires more brain power on the frontend of the squeak community.
So, it came down to a decision of what could be successful.
There's nothing wrong, though, in doing both, like Yann's idea of the multipurpose bag that eliminates the usage of a filesystem or Derek's multimedia management system or social networking tools coupled with Scamper and Celeste completion.