Hopefully JS/WebGL will help enable a client-server model for medical image analysis analogous to AWS/Hadoop/etc. JS has been successful not only for its ubiquity, but also because it - warts and all - hits a development sweet spot. Right now the big open source med image projects (MITK, Slicer, etc.) are almost all C++, so the barrier to entry is too high for some people who might be able to contribute substantially within the JS sweet spot.

Here's a really neat step in this direction: http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/~rudolph/webgl/brain_viewer/b...

Really? You feel that reimplementing a word processor on the web is a major leap forward? To me it looks like old wine in new bags. I could link to word processor-like Java Applets in 1998. I realize it's not 100% the same, but trying to re-implement all these things we've had for 10 years in substandard technology just seems like a procession of Echternach.

(btw current web word processors barely approach Wordpad level - the level of functionality we had on the desktop in 1995).

    (btw current web word processors barely approach 
    Wordpad level - the level of functionality we 
    had on the desktop in 1995).

And still I use google docs every day & can't remember the last time I used ms word, so maybe there is something to it ;)