I did a post on my other blog (accidentally placing it there instead of here) about the "icky" connection between the new Office online and Facebook--you have to connect with a Facebook account to use the product.
"Icky" is the word to use with Facebook--such creepy, uncomfortable associations now with the ad nauseum talked about violations of privacy trust. The connection to Office online--such a brilliantly executed product...its a little like being in the presence of a beautiful human being and seeing that person pawed by some disreputable character. Icky!
But try to avert your eyes from the strange gentleman off to the side that is 20 something year-old Facebook and engage with the beauty that is an amazing Azure development project in Office online: http://www.docs.com.
Showing posts with label cloud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cloud. Show all posts
Monday, June 14, 2010
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Microsoft Mesh vs Microsoft LiveSync
I've been a longtime fan of Groove, the peer-to-peer file sharing software invented by Ray Ozzie, also the creator of Lotus Notes and now Microsoft's Chief Software Architect.
Microsoft bought Groove and Ray came along with it--or rather, it bought Ray and Groove came along with him. He's been moving Microsoft in the director of cloud computing. It's about time and the next year should see lots of public results of those efforts.
I was also a fan of the little utility FolderShare which allowed peer-to-peer file sync between computers, including Macs and Windows. Microsoft bought that company too and it became Microsoft LiveSync.
The challenge with LiveSync and with the standard, small workgroup implementation of Groove is that peers have to have their computers on at the same in order to sync.
Microsoft has a new product in Beta called Mesh and it provides sync to the cloud and then back down to devices--Macs, Windows and Windows Mobile. Because of the cloud, peers don't need to be on at the same time. There's a light little app that installs on your desktop and provides a helpful little info window, including messaging updates. And Mesh will allow you to fully access your computer remotely from another computer, provided your computer has been left on and connected. Mesh looks like a winner.
I'm not sure where this leaves Groove. The extra security of Groove file sharing may no longer be enough of a value proposition. It will be interesting to see where this lands with Office 2010. Groove will be renamed "Sharepoint Workspace". News is supposed to be forthcoming soon, according to the Sharepoint Workspace Team Blog as of September 2, 2009.
(Two criticisms. First, Microsoft please, if you're in Beta with a product, the #1 news item on a Google or Bing search should not be an article from mid-2008! What is with your PR folks? Second, please, I can't stand the ads you guys run within products like MS Messenger and even within the Mesh Beta. Can't you drop those for the Beta? And I sure hope there's a for-fee option to get rid of those ads in the final Mesh. Messes badly with your nice and pretty interface.)
Microsoft bought Groove and Ray came along with it--or rather, it bought Ray and Groove came along with him. He's been moving Microsoft in the director of cloud computing. It's about time and the next year should see lots of public results of those efforts.
I was also a fan of the little utility FolderShare which allowed peer-to-peer file sync between computers, including Macs and Windows. Microsoft bought that company too and it became Microsoft LiveSync.
The challenge with LiveSync and with the standard, small workgroup implementation of Groove is that peers have to have their computers on at the same in order to sync.
Microsoft has a new product in Beta called Mesh and it provides sync to the cloud and then back down to devices--Macs, Windows and Windows Mobile. Because of the cloud, peers don't need to be on at the same time. There's a light little app that installs on your desktop and provides a helpful little info window, including messaging updates. And Mesh will allow you to fully access your computer remotely from another computer, provided your computer has been left on and connected. Mesh looks like a winner.
I'm not sure where this leaves Groove. The extra security of Groove file sharing may no longer be enough of a value proposition. It will be interesting to see where this lands with Office 2010. Groove will be renamed "Sharepoint Workspace". News is supposed to be forthcoming soon, according to the Sharepoint Workspace Team Blog as of September 2, 2009.
(Two criticisms. First, Microsoft please, if you're in Beta with a product, the #1 news item on a Google or Bing search should not be an article from mid-2008! What is with your PR folks? Second, please, I can't stand the ads you guys run within products like MS Messenger and even within the Mesh Beta. Can't you drop those for the Beta? And I sure hope there's a for-fee option to get rid of those ads in the final Mesh. Messes badly with your nice and pretty interface.)
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Salesforce Mobile Lite: great value for non-profits (free!)
If you are part of a non-profit, you should know that you can get ten seats of the "Professional" level of the Salesforce CRM application for free. Just yesterday they launched "Mobile Lite", a free version of their application for Blackberry and iPhone that gives you mobile access to all your data stored in Salesforce--contacts, organizations, tasks etc. Although you can only edit tasks from your mobile (versus being able to edit everything in the for-fee version) it's a wonderful application on both platforms and a great boon to non-profits. (It's also a great boon to anyone who's paying for Professional level Salesforce and above, because this Mobile Lite application is free for them too.)
Friday, January 30, 2009
GMail nails it. Everyone else is wrong.
I love Microsoft's Vista (hey, it's worked great for me). I like Word. I especially love Excel. OneNote is a little beauty. And even PowerPoint isn't so bad, despite the story that Steve Jobs hated it so much he just had to create Keynote or he was going to refuse to do his Apple keynotes ever again.
But Outlook is simply awful, at least for e-mail.
Searches are excruciating. The thing crashes frequently or hangs up. And there are a limited number of ways that I've found to customize the program--and many of them cost a bunch of money and make the thing even more crash-prone.
As says in a recent Slate piece:
1. GMail uses tagging, not folders. You don't place a piece of e-mail into a folder to categorize it. You tag it. Which effectively means that any e-mail can be in an infinite number of folders. How can you live with that old way of organizing e-mail, the way that Outlook, Yahoo, every other program that I know uses? And in part because of this tagging, searches for mail have the beauty, speed and simplicity of a Google web search.
2. GMail threads your mail, always, all the time. What's great about that? You see all your mail, both the incoming mail and your responses, as part of a beautifully presented, threaded conversation. And that's what e-mail should be. It's not "messages". It's a conversation, asynchronous to be sure, but still a conversation. Once you've embraced that new reality, any other mail program feels like using a typewriter.
3. The final nail: offline. Google has just announced this week its offline feature, in which you can take your GMail offline from the Web and use it anywhere without an Internet connection, within a browser, just as you would if you were using a program like Outlook or Thunderbird.
The only use I have now for Outlook or Thunderbird--and I use Thunderbird for these purposes--is to backup Google's GMail servers. I am one of perhaps 17 people in the world who actually pay Google $50 a year for the privilege of having an ad-free GMail and with that they have a special up-time guarantee. But still, it makes me nervous that there is no GMail backup and so from time-to-time I'll download a copy of my GMail to Thunderbird so it sits on my computer. But with this final nail in the coffin, I'll probably remember to do that less and less.
PS: I do still use Outlook as a conduit out to my BlackBerry for contacts and calendar, but that's because I have a BlackBerry Enterprise Server that makes such over-the-air sync easy. The only thing that Outlook-BES really provides that can't be found elsewhere is contacts sync from Salesforce through Outlook and out to my BlackBerry. If Google/Salesforce filled that hole with a relatively low-cost option, I'd never have to use Outlook again.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=409145d7-70a6-4036-9089-08d498be6cf9)
But Outlook is simply awful, at least for e-mail.
Searches are excruciating. The thing crashes frequently or hangs up. And there are a limited number of ways that I've found to customize the program--and many of them cost a bunch of money and make the thing even more crash-prone.
As says in a recent Slate piece:
If you're still tied to a desktop app—whether Outlook, the Mac's Mail program, or anything else that sees your local hard drive, rather than a Web server, as its brain—then you're doing it wrong. (LINK)You are. You're doing it wrong. And I would also sweep into that coffin other online mail systems too, like Windows Live or Yahoo Mail, and even Thunderbird for all you open source aficionados. Two reasons, and now Google has added a third, the final nail.
1. GMail uses tagging, not folders. You don't place a piece of e-mail into a folder to categorize it. You tag it. Which effectively means that any e-mail can be in an infinite number of folders. How can you live with that old way of organizing e-mail, the way that Outlook, Yahoo, every other program that I know uses? And in part because of this tagging, searches for mail have the beauty, speed and simplicity of a Google web search.
2. GMail threads your mail, always, all the time. What's great about that? You see all your mail, both the incoming mail and your responses, as part of a beautifully presented, threaded conversation. And that's what e-mail should be. It's not "messages". It's a conversation, asynchronous to be sure, but still a conversation. Once you've embraced that new reality, any other mail program feels like using a typewriter.
3. The final nail: offline. Google has just announced this week its offline feature, in which you can take your GMail offline from the Web and use it anywhere without an Internet connection, within a browser, just as you would if you were using a program like Outlook or Thunderbird.
The only use I have now for Outlook or Thunderbird--and I use Thunderbird for these purposes--is to backup Google's GMail servers. I am one of perhaps 17 people in the world who actually pay Google $50 a year for the privilege of having an ad-free GMail and with that they have a special up-time guarantee. But still, it makes me nervous that there is no GMail backup and so from time-to-time I'll download a copy of my GMail to Thunderbird so it sits on my computer. But with this final nail in the coffin, I'll probably remember to do that less and less.
PS: I do still use Outlook as a conduit out to my BlackBerry for contacts and calendar, but that's because I have a BlackBerry Enterprise Server that makes such over-the-air sync easy. The only thing that Outlook-BES really provides that can't be found elsewhere is contacts sync from Salesforce through Outlook and out to my BlackBerry. If Google/Salesforce filled that hole with a relatively low-cost option, I'd never have to use Outlook again.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Tasks, Task Management, GMail, BlackBerry, iPhone
There's a wonderful product that others have certainly discovered but about which I just became aware: Remember the Milk. If you like traditional task management systems (like in Outlook) but want integration instead with GMail and your BlackBerry or iPhone, this is The One. Free version for the Web. Pro version for $25 a year provides the mobile-sync. Take a look: LINK. And if your life is superfractured among multiple platforms, seems to work perfectly back to Outlook (via your BlackBerry) if you're on a BlackBerry Enterprise Server. So, GMail <> Outlook task sync is the result. Why would you do that? I don't know. But it works.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Wonderful/Not
What is so wonderful about GMail is that everything is archived and searchable.
What is so not wonderful about the GMail-Salesforce mashup is that . . . it's not.
The GMail to Salesforce function is pretty useless. It only chronicles outgoing e-mail, if you remember to tell it to do so each and every time you send an e-mail or automatically if you initiate the e-mail from within Salesforce. But why would you initiate the e-mail from within Salesforce? GMail isn't integrated into e-mail so you'll naturally be in GMail for e-mail, not in Salesforce. Sure, if you do this chronicling, co-workers will have access to those outgoing e-mails, but CRMs like GoldMine have enabled the chronicling of both incoming AND outgoing e-mail for a decade.
Salesforce is the old topography. GMail, like the rest of Google, relies on tags not containers. Hence, unlimited searching, sorting, organizing. Hopefully this GMail-Salesforce mashup is just the beginning, but otherwise, at least in terms of e-mail, it's doa in mho.
The documents integration is much better, and I'll comment on that in a later post.
What is so not wonderful about the GMail-Salesforce mashup is that . . . it's not.
The GMail to Salesforce function is pretty useless. It only chronicles outgoing e-mail, if you remember to tell it to do so each and every time you send an e-mail or automatically if you initiate the e-mail from within Salesforce. But why would you initiate the e-mail from within Salesforce? GMail isn't integrated into e-mail so you'll naturally be in GMail for e-mail, not in Salesforce. Sure, if you do this chronicling, co-workers will have access to those outgoing e-mails, but CRMs like GoldMine have enabled the chronicling of both incoming AND outgoing e-mail for a decade.
Salesforce is the old topography. GMail, like the rest of Google, relies on tags not containers. Hence, unlimited searching, sorting, organizing. Hopefully this GMail-Salesforce mashup is just the beginning, but otherwise, at least in terms of e-mail, it's doa in mho.
The documents integration is much better, and I'll comment on that in a later post.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Google Apps + Salesforce: needs more mashing
The mashup of Google Apps + Salesforce needs more mashing. GMail, the front man of this act, is hardly more than a unidirectional link. From within Salesforce you can now e-mail any contact and have that e-mail recorded in their Salesforce contact record. Similarly, you can produce the same effect from within GMail. But you'll only get that first conversation recorded, nothing more. And you'll have no link back to Salesforce because all it's really doing is bcc-ing the e-mail to your Salesforce system, looking up the receipient's e-mail address and recording the text of the e-mail. How disappointing. I'd been dreaming about a much tighter integration, ideally where GMail resided within Salesforce allowing you to record all your back and forth conversations. GoldMine, a CRM that probably predates the web, had such functionality. Why the heck can't Salesforce?
Monday, April 14, 2008
Fake Steve is on his game AGAIN
Brilliant work from Fake Steve, cutting me down to size and showing just how marginalized I am in my excitement about GMail + Salesforce. One of many good points:
"[Benioff, CEO of SalesForce] ironically, has built his business around a bloated, overly expensive, outdated business model, a model that comes straight out of the late Nineties -- he's running his own data center, and he's using Sun servers and Oracle software." -- FSJ LINK
"[Benioff, CEO of SalesForce] ironically, has built his business around a bloated, overly expensive, outdated business model, a model that comes straight out of the late Nineties -- he's running his own data center, and he's using Sun servers and Oracle software." -- FSJ LINK
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Google Docs Offline
How did I miss this? Google Docs are now available offline. That's a big deal!
Overview: What is Google Docs Offline?
Google Docs now allows you to view and edit your documents offline, without an internet connection. To do all of this, Google Docs uses Google Gears, an open source browser extension that adds offline functionality directly to the browser. Google Docs can be accessed offline by typing http://docs.google.com into your browser or by clicking on the desktop shortcut that is downloaded during the installation process.
LINK
Thursday, April 10, 2008
MacBook Air NOT a computer for the cloud
It's interesting to me how much the MacBook Air (MBA) is NOT a computer for the cloud.
Cloud computing is of course the Google strategy of having applications live in the cloud, delivered to the user from Google servers via a browser.
The MBA has a key limitation for cloud computing: no built-in cellular modem and not even a slot to insert an external card. For the road warrior or wealthy cafe denizen who relies on cloud applications (like GMail), access to the Internet all the time is essential. A built-in cellular modem or card slot to insert a modem is essential. The MBA can't deliver. It's impossible to rely on Wifi all the time. There just aren't enough open access connections available, and besides, security is a real concern. Watching a friend do a conference call on Skype as we drove into Boston drives this point home.
Apple's strategy continues to be to build desktop applications, rather than cloud applications. Strangely Microsoft's strategy is more like Google's: "Ozzie signals Microsoft's surrender to the cloud" (LINK). Long-term, can Apple really continue to prevail as the last holdout in the desktop wars? Will Microsoft get it together, scrap Vista, and embrace cloud computing with a new, streamlined operating system that's truly tailored to the cloud?
Or maybe the new 3G iPhone will be the sort of cloud computing accessory the MBA requires, with the MBA using it as its access to the cellular-served Internet.
More thoughts from ZDNet here: LINK
And more to the point that Microsoft may be forced to cede market share for desktop software, and by implication play catch-up to Google: LINK
Cloud computing is of course the Google strategy of having applications live in the cloud, delivered to the user from Google servers via a browser.
The MBA has a key limitation for cloud computing: no built-in cellular modem and not even a slot to insert an external card. For the road warrior or wealthy cafe denizen who relies on cloud applications (like GMail), access to the Internet all the time is essential. A built-in cellular modem or card slot to insert a modem is essential. The MBA can't deliver. It's impossible to rely on Wifi all the time. There just aren't enough open access connections available, and besides, security is a real concern. Watching a friend do a conference call on Skype as we drove into Boston drives this point home.
Apple's strategy continues to be to build desktop applications, rather than cloud applications. Strangely Microsoft's strategy is more like Google's: "Ozzie signals Microsoft's surrender to the cloud" (LINK). Long-term, can Apple really continue to prevail as the last holdout in the desktop wars? Will Microsoft get it together, scrap Vista, and embrace cloud computing with a new, streamlined operating system that's truly tailored to the cloud?
Or maybe the new 3G iPhone will be the sort of cloud computing accessory the MBA requires, with the MBA using it as its access to the cellular-served Internet.
More thoughts from ZDNet here: LINK
And more to the point that Microsoft may be forced to cede market share for desktop software, and by implication play catch-up to Google: LINK
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)