Ever since I first heard about FreeNX about a year ago, I was keen to try it out. Well, a bit of serendipitous browsing (I was reading Bruce Perens stern rebuke to Novell on www.tectonic.za) brought me to www.cosmopod.com which offers exactly such a service.

It didn't take me long to sign up for a free account. The installation didn't go smoothly as I tried one option after the other. Finally, I downloaded the NX client for Windows and configured it and connected to my account.

The splash screen loaded quickly but everything else took a long time, although I created and saved a document and also successfully sent a test email. The free account uses the KDE interface. The paid account probably offers a GNOME option too.

Anyway, the point of this post is not to offer a review about Cosmopod's service, but to remind myself of the promise it holds for a hosted application service. I am excited about a project where I could use this!