I think the "web" in "web app" is for web browser app, not world wide web app. Whether it should or shouldn't be called differently is by now besides the point. It's certainly not the first concept to be allegedly ill named and it won't be the last. The most important thing is to understand the nuances when creating resources to be consumed or produced over http.
> people working on such projects ought to be aware that the network they're building is competing with the web for content while being far more hostile to hacking and mashups.
On the contrary, case in point APIs: they're often distributed using formats such as JSON or XML, which weren't designed to be particularly web friendly the way HTML is. They're still much more suitable to hacking and mashups, because they go beyond the conceptual limitations of the web to fully embrace the potential of HTTP.
The only thing required for any app, even js intensive ones, to be part of the web is to provide some urls that resolve to web friendly versions of their resources and that really isn't that complicated.
> people working on such projects ought to be aware that the network they're building is competing with the web for content while being far more hostile to hacking and mashups.
On the contrary, case in point APIs: they're often distributed using formats such as JSON or XML, which weren't designed to be particularly web friendly the way HTML is. They're still much more suitable to hacking and mashups, because they go beyond the conceptual limitations of the web to fully embrace the potential of HTTP.
The only thing required for any app, even js intensive ones, to be part of the web is to provide some urls that resolve to web friendly versions of their resources and that really isn't that complicated.