Symantec is going with the flow about "liberating" users from the physical desktop and pushing them into the cloud.

It's put out a beta of some newfangled GoEverywhere widgetry - complements of what it calls its incubator - that's designed as a secure online workspace where users can access their web applications anytime, anywhere, using almost any browser-based device.

It's targeted at small businesses and individuals and positioned as a "secure, scalable and worry-free" environment that reduces the cost of hardware, software, storage and IT management.

But Symantec, which has dabbled with SaaS, has yet to explain how it's going to monetize the thing.

Users can reach their online web applications from a centralized location and choose from various third-party web-based applications for word processing, slide making, spreadsheet work and web-based e-mail.

Symatec says GoEverywhere removes the need to switch between multiple web sites to access web applications and eases online file management by providing a single aggregated view of multiple third-party online storage accounts.

It's operating system-independent, maintenance-free and cheap, since it involves free software and rich media content.

It uses multi-level password encryption and two-factor authentication and there's single sign-on functionality can log in and immediately access most of their web applications and accounts without additional log-ins or passwords.

See www.goeverywhere.com.