Incremental Blogger

I see that Omar Shahine, who’s done some great work in the past with Tablets and OneNote, is sharing his enthusiasm for Mac PCs. Why? Because of the ways Apple simplified running Vista on the Macs via Bootcamp. In fact, Omar is so satisfied that he proclaims: “I think all my future PCees will be Macs.” Yep, the crowd is growing. The PC OEMs–and Microsoft too–need to take notice, if they haven’t already.

Chris Pirillo blogged about the Mac migration the other day too. He’s sees a growing number of “influentials” turning to Macs and was surprised at how many Macs were at his recent Gnomedex event.

I don’t think it’s just because of the state of Vista that’s at play here, although that’s a contributing factor (drivers, sleep/hibernate issues, IE stabillity, and the like). I think Apple has simply done a better job of running Vista than other OEMs. The key is in the drivers, the installation, the small touches that improve upon Windows itself. Apple deserves a star for effort in all of these areas. Microsoft is being “out-Windowed.”

As many people point out, Microsoft has a great challenge ahead of it because of all the partners it works with. It doesn’t control all the hardware. Well, Microsoft and the OEMs can’t keep going on like this. They are going to have to adjust. Here are some ways I think Microsoft and its partners can get back on track and create platforms we want to use for the next 10 years.

1. Bifurcate Windows. Yep, it’s time to split Windows into two versions: One that’s more legacy biased and one that’s focused on the future. Whether Vista fits into this, I’m not so sure. In some ways, I see Vista itself needing to be divided: The Desktop Composition Engine and the graphics moving forward in a new version and at the same time the old GDI world taking a step back. This could mean bringing an updated shell, network manager, and the like to XP for the backwards-compatible version and then moving on to a new version of Windows that’s more graphics intensive and network-minded. This version, for instance, would make the DWM API look like the straight-jacket it is. It would also be responsible for making sense of the whole .NET Framework concept. Either go all the way or take a seat in the luggage compartment, I’d say. This half-and-half world is optimized for too few. I also think a new OS would be a good time to bring C++ development back up to par. It’s a shame how it’s been languishing within the Microsoft language stack–much of it induced by backwards-compatibility concerns. This would be the chance to set things on a better path.

You know, for all the pains Longhorn went through, I think the original intent was right. It was time to make a break from the past. The problem was some of its most important design principles didn’t have the same priorities that most of us had–especially considering the rapid movement to mobility. There’s no doubt the challenge in changing so much on the only OS road that Microsoft had was too difficult. The solution was to not dump Longhorn. It was to split the effort–to leave two roads open. The single road effort was too restrictive.

2. Microsoft, Google, and Intel should join forces to build out an “open” WiMAX network. Rapidly we’re on another networking cusp as wireless broadband becomes available on the hardware and carrier side. However, I have big concerns that the major carriers are going to get it wrong. If history is any gauge: they’ll want to charge and control each connection point. That’s a recipe for market suppression and one that favors fewer devices at the endpoints under centralized, walled management. Old-school. Clearly this does Microsoft and Intel no good–both companies want to sell as many devices (or OSes) as possible. This isn’t going to happen if it’s a pain to maintain too many contracts on too many devices. So why should Google join the wireless broadband trio? First, because they have a philosophy consistent with solving the problems that others set out before them–whether it’s desktop search or ease, simplicity in maintaining tons of email, or minimizing deployment of a service. There’s a problem here and maybe Google will want to join forces to help solve the problem. The other reason is that Google doesn’t want centralized control to devalue its offerings. There’s lots at stake here and to cede control at such a fundamental level–the network is not good strategy.

When I read about how Sprint, for instance, is dedicating billions to WiMAX it makes me hope that the pending problems will be self-correcting, but I’d rather not hold my breath. Yes, a billion here and a billion there adds up, but with Google, Intel, and Microsoft joining financial forces what they could achieve could be phenomenal and set the industry on a strong path for another decade.

At the OS and app level, Microsoft and Google could work together to create standards and infrastructure that mitigates issues with moving apps and data online and offline. Today everyone is going their own way, which is fine. However, at some point–which I hope is sooner than later–we need a concerted effort that brings developers and networks together. The deployment of wireless broadband could be this chance.

No doubt that the industry will have many changes going forward–I just hope that some of them will help out to expand the industry as much or more as it has over the next ten years as it has the last twenty plus. I’m ready.

Update: Engadget asks what can be done to improve Vista. As expected there are quite a few commenters–many of them challenging Windows itself, which doesn’t help all that much and for the most part the commenter suggestions are all over the place.

There is a bit of a pattern that I see here and that I think I’ve been noticing elsewhere:

Doesn’t it seem like desktop owners of Vista are more satisfied than their notebook counterparts? Maybe I’m reading too much into things, but it seems like this is a pattern. It kind of makes sense. My guess is that for the most part Vista was developed on desktops. Likewise, people who have desktop systems can swap parts in and out to get things working as they need. Likewise, in desktop systems there’s more pound-per-pound investment in the hardware, so some Vista features may not be as critical or as noticeable as others–the machine itself is the king.

Am I being too mobility sensitive?

I do wonder if the mob isn’t simply piling on here. Vista is an improvement in several important ways over XP. The question is collectively (in terms of both the hardware and software) is Vista and the Vista experience where the market wants it to be. I’d say it depends. As a developer things are in a bit of a state of flux in terms of Microsoft development, but as a developer that’s OK. I’m looking down the road. In terms of customers, it’s not too bad as long as things are tweaked–but that’s nothing new, give a new computer to anyone and it takes time to get it “just right.” The issue I think is that people want Vista to “just work” the way they do even more. That’s a good thing. It shows how much they depend on Windows as it is.

Google’s BlogSearch is one of my top ways of searching the blogosphere. The service does have its problems though. It lists lots of junk blogs scattered throughout its results.

Try searching for something “spam friendly” yet useful, like “cancer.” Yes, there are links to news items. Yes, there are some blogs. However, there are quite a few spam sites. I’d rather not link to them to show you what I mean, but I’ll post here some of the URLs (portions of them) and you’ll get the idea:

http://www.interestrate.getinfohub.com/interest-let-mortgage-only/….
http://www.edu.mississippidebtconsolidation.net/
http://delmararguello.myweblog.com/2007/07/25/viagra….

Sometimes the spam noise isn’t that bad. It depends on the search. However, it seems like Google could be doing a much better job here.

I don’t mind if Google has a “View Spam” option, but by default I’d like to turn it off–even if it slightly hides too many sites.

I’m sure this is a cat and mouse game with the spammers, but it’s a battle worth fighting. If a blog consistently links to affiliate sites, it gets tagged. If a blog continually has text excerpts to other articles and product links otherwise, call it spam. Use too many “spam-typical-keywords” in your blog titles, and sorry the blog gets marked as spam. And so on.

From what I’ve seen, this will knock out some small reseller blogs which often copy/paste text and then add links to their products to sell, but so be it. They probably should be in another category anyway.

Robert Scoble points to several blog posts that question Google’s latest intentions.

Robert suggests that Google should strive to be more open about how it works, it thinks, it plans.

In relation to Google’s growing size and impact, it’s community, developer, and publisher voice is rather weak. Competitors should take note. As Scoble’s post points out, more and more people have.

At Web 2.0 Expo, Google announced that it has acquired Tonic Systems, a provider of a Java-based presenation authoring and viewing application.

As Google expands its browser-based product line, I ask myself:…again: “What about ink support?”

With Windows Vista ink is more of a first-class citizen than it has ever been, but it still has a ways to go online. As browser-based apps–such as this one from Google–become more and more prevelant, ink outside of the Vista platform is going to become down right crucial. It’s not just about the OS. It’s not just about the hardware platform. It’s about the software. Big time.

Google announced yesterday that they are sponsoring OCROpus an open-source OCR and handwriting recognition research project. More information about the effort can be found here. From the OCROpus website:

“OCRopus is a state-of-the-art document analysis and OCR system, featuring pluggable layout analysis, pluggable character recognition, statistical natural language modeling, and multi-lingual capabilities.

The OCRopus engine is based on two research projects: a high-performance handwriting recognizer developed in the mid-90’s and deployed by the US Census bureau, and novel high-performance layout analysis methods.

OCRopus is development is sponsored by Google and is initially intended for high-throughput, high-volume document conversion efforts. We expect that it will also be an excellent OCR system for many other applications.”

Hmmm. Server side document and handwriting recognition anyone?

[Found via Slashdot]

Lots of news this morning about Google’s new Google Apps Premier Edition offering. I’ll let others break out the features, which seem like minor changes to the currently free Google Apps particulars. Personally, I’d like to see a much broader collection of features, such as folders for GMail and more enhanced Word processing, particularly layout control, printing and so on. I’d also like to see a better online challenger to OneNote, which has become one of my most commonly used Office apps.

Don Dodge does a good job of breaking down many of the missing items in Google Apps. I have to say though that the collaboration features–particularly in the calendar and in the Google Spreadsheet are very nice. Yes, I could set up a server to do something similar, but I the point is I don’t. One less thing to worry about. Same goes with e-mail and an Exchange server. I want to see the server side support become as transparent as possible for the typical low-demand users like myself.

I imagine Google will keep adding features that will even out the playing field. And on Microsoft’s side I hope they step up with an extensible platform. My guess is that this is where Microsoft can lead hands down. By leveraging its development partners, Microsoft has a chance to offer a broader collection of online Office features faster. I’d be very interested in adding editing gestures to an online Word processor, like InkGestures provides for Word now.

We’ll have to see how this all plays out. So far, from what I see neither Google nor Microsoft is going all that fast in this space. I would have expected Google to update their apps faster and I’d have expected to see more from Microsoft in terms of their online strategy, particularly if it’s going to leverage third-party developers as much as I hope it will.

A Brussels court rules that Google has violated copyright laws by publishing links to and excerpts from online Belgian newspapers. (Link to Bloomberg.com) The arguement appears to be one of revenue. The newspapers are concerned that they are losing ad revenue that’s going to Google instead. The concern appears to be that the aggregated view of the news which Google provides is of such a value that it gets “colossal traffic” which the newspapers miss out on.

What the newspapers aren’t mentioning is that is if it were not for Google’s aggregated news views (and similar services) it would be unlikely that I’d ever visit their newspaper in the first place. In fact, I imagine their traffic surges quite high when they are listed at the top of the Google’s news items. Of course, that’s not going to happen for them anymore. Why? Because the papers requested that all links to their papers be removed which Google has done (although there is some dispute whether the Google cache has been scrubbed too). It doesn’t take much of a business sense to realize that the other news sources that don’t force removal of their links are going to have a competitive advantage in collecting online traffic and thereby garner more ad revenue.

Danny Sullivan follows up on the story and has comments from Google itself, including quotes from Yoram Elkaim, legal couself for Google in Europe. Well worth reading.

In an upcoming issue, Fortune magazine places Google at the top of its list of best places to work.

Among the many reasons that people admire about working at Google are all its perks. Free gourmet meals, bonuses’ for purchasing a hybrid car, massages, car washes and oil changes for those who drive to work, laundry services, and on an on. Doesn’t take much to know that Google’s doing pretty well in the stock market and growing rapidly doing all it can to attract top talent.

If Google is going to continue to expand, it needs to grow its partner programs. The company appears to be going in this direction, with recent Google partner events, but there doesn’t seem to be an all-out, organized partner program at this time. I expect there will be one.

When I think about what a Google version of a Partner program might be like, I wonder if we’ll see a traditional partnerscape–or a Google permutation. Will we see Google providing perks to open source partners, for instance? Maybe health care or well-being services to open source developers? Maybe subsidized transportation or high-speed internet access for those who partner with Google? Or will Google go the more traditional, big company route and possibly charge its partners for access.

In an article in the Economist, Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggests a year of increasing competition between Google, Microsoft and others:

“In 2007 we’ll witness the increasing dominance of open internet standards…Today’s desktop software will be overtaken by internet-based services that enable users to choose the document formats, search tools and editing capability that best suit their needs.”

Dare Obasanjo hopes that as Google’s intentions become more clear that the Office Live team will step up to the challenge. I’m guessing they will. It may take some time, but they’ll come around.

Currently it sounds like the Office team is not that concerned. Co-lead Antoine Leblond says of browser-based Office-like efforts: “”The simple argument that ‘this is good enough for 90 percent of what we do’ has fallen on its face over and over and over again…When it comes to mission critical things and key pieces of how people run their businesses, the threshold is higher.”

His argument has made sense over the 15 or so years. Back up the clock though, and it’s easy to recall the same claims made by the mainframe and minicomputer folks about the fledgling PCs. In fact, the naysayers were one reason Mike Riddle took it upon himself in the early 80’s to write AutoCAD. People said it was impossible to write a CAD application on a desktop PC. It wouldn’t have enough features. It would be too slow. It would be incompatible with the standard CAD workstations. To them, their market was safe. Roll forward to the mid-90s and the world looked so much different. 10+ years is all it took.

Reasonably so, the Office team is justifying their future existence on what they see today. Most assuredly the future will bring surprises. Practicalities will change.

Take product licensing, installation, backup, and management for instance. Assuming more and more people use more and more devices–and yet still want access to their information in more places–are they going to install all their software everywhere (assuming they can)? It’s doubtful. Further, drop the relative price of “PCs” by a factor of 3, 4, or 5 over the next 10 years. What does this do to the consumer’s mindset in terms of purchasing software? I think a lot.

Are we at the crossover point yet where online apps outperform rich-client apps? Nope. Is it on the horizon? I think so. In fact, I think it’s closer than it appears to be in our history mirrors.

Take word processing for instance. Dare isn’t too sure if it makes sense as a browser-based effort. I agree, when you look at the current browsers. However, the day has already arrived where many people use their browser not just for browsing, but for editing too. Online email and blogging are two common tasks today. They alone justify additional word processing capabilities to be built into the browser. Spell checking, grammar checking, smart correction, better formatting, and the like should all be built-in. The difference between the word processor and the browser editor will shrink. Yes, this assumes that browser technologies will need to adjust–but I think with the competition that has evolved in the browser space there’s a good chance that they will take place.

It looks like Google is getting one step closer to providing more control over AdSense ads.

It’s a little difficult to tell at this time what the program will be like, but I think it’s going in the right direction and it begins to block potentially competitive moves by Microsoft and others. Currently, ad programs are too simplistic. Too classified ad like. They need to be able to select quality ads to be placed on their sites. Yes, there are some ad management systems that sites can use, but I’d like to see one of the major ad providers, such as Google, step up and fill this huge gap.

Ultimately, webmasters need a system which allows them full control over the ads and even potentially payment options—is a particular spot a flat rate or biddable. Today, many of the top sites are creating or using custom ad management systems rather than exclusively using Google or some other system. There’s an opportunity here that it looks like Google may be on the way to filling.

I’ve been using Google Spreadsheets more and more. Why? Yes, it is limited. No graphs; there are bugs–it does lock up every now and then; and control of what it displays is limited. However, for building up and maintaining lists of things–particularly those that I want to share with others–it works quite well.

Here’s what I’ve noticed.

I use several different computers, upgrade a lot, and frankly run into versioning problems when trying to maintain Excel spreadsheets or other documents over long periods of time. I could set up a server that could hold the documents, which could also let me share them with others, but this would be one more thing to maintain. One more thing to worry about attackers hitting. One more thing to go wrong. It’s the wrong direction. I don’t want to become an IT administrator. I want to just get things done.

I also don’t have to worry about installing Excel on all my machines and worrying about licensing. Have I used this key before? Do I need to uninstall a version of Excel somewhere else to stay in compliance? What a pain when you’re dealing with multiple machines. I know this problem will only get worse with the more machines I have and the longer I use them. Again, I don’t want to be a licensing expert, I just want to get things done.

Google Spreadsheets goes a long way to solve the installation, licensing, backup, and sharing problem.

There are some drawbacks to Google Spreadsheets though. The functionality is limited. There’s no charting for instance, which is something I’d really like to see. You can’t format the display very well either. Dan Bricklin’s wikiCalc does a much better job here. I can envision building forms in wikiCalc–maybe even ink enabled ones.

Although Google Spreadsheets is limited, I have been able to successfully import several of my Excel spreadsheets. So far so good. Admittedly, there was nothing fancy in them. The most complicated one simply had half-a-dozen sheets in it with a couple dozen columns on each sheet and approximately a hundred items per page. I have noticed that the save seems to take awhile, but this hasn’t gotten in the way–yet. It’s merely long enough that I notice it. Like I mentioned earlier, though, I have seen Google Spreadsheets lock up–during save. No data was lost though.

If Google can enhance the functionality of Spreadsheets I think they have a big winner here–particularly with the ultra-large, small business market. If you don’t mind having your data stored remotely, I can see a lot of people migrating to Google Spreadsheets. Lots.

Now there are some drawbacks to the Google approach. You have to be able to get to the Internet to get to your data. This can be a problem. There are times when things go awry and the Internet connection goes down, but the business has to keep going. A limited solution is smart caching on the client side–maybe we’ll see this someday.

Google Spreadsheets is also a little clunkier to use that Excel. I seem to accidentally cause scrolling more than I want when editing cells. And sometimes the editing mode I get into confuses me. Do I press Enter now? Or use the cursor keys? Or tap on another cell? Anyway, now that I think about it, maybe I just need a bigger display with more resolution. Hmmm. That would at least decrease the scrolling issues.

Over the last year, there’s been quite a bit of speculation about whether Google Spreadsheets would challenge Microsoft’s Excel. Most say “no–at least not now. Google Spreadsheets is too limited.” While I agree that in a feature-by-feature comparison, Excel blows away Google Spreadsheets, nonetheless, when looking at “ease of use” in terms of the bigger picture (backups, sharing, etc), I’d almost give the edge to Google right now. Yeah, almost. It’s not quite there–but it’s very close. It’s close enough that I’ll use it for maintaining simple spreadsheets. It’s close enough that I’d recommend it to friends. Still, Google does need to add a bit more functionality, including charting and the like. It won’t be prime time until then. But how hard can this be?

What does this mean for Excel? I’ll still use it. I work with a few people that want me to email them data in Excel spreadsheets. And I still find I can work faster in Excel too. The user-interface is more polished and this makes a noticeable difference in my productivity. Will I worry about having Excel installed on all my systems though? Not any more. Just where I need it.

For an individual, small business, or a club or church or small organization trying to maintain a spreadsheet, Google Spreadsheets may just be the way to go. My prediction? As long as Google can figure out a way to offer Google Spreadsheets at no cost to the user, I can see Spreadsheets growing in popularity over the next few years. The transition will start at the low-end of the market, but as features are added, I imagine it’ll migrate into enterprises too–especially where data is facing outside of the corporate firewall anyway, such as to partner portals and the like.

In short, I’m convinced that online spreadsheets can work. It’s not quite prime time, but the clock is ticking. Fast.

Robert Scoble has ignited quite a discussion over the respective values of Facebook and YouTube, which Google acquired this week for $1.65 Billion. He argues that YouTube is worth more in part because of all that use it. Facebook has a smaller following. Don Dodge takes a different approach as he scribbles out the numbers and comes to the conclusion that Facebook is worth more.

Which argument is correct?

Is Facebook worth as much as YouTube? To me, not even close. Is YouTube overpriced at $1.65 billion? Yeah, I think it’s way too much, but then again in the broader picture Google wins with this acquisition. Financially, Google has the best opportunity of leveraging potential revenues from the video community. In the competitive landscape the acquisition also serves to psych out its competition. People ask, how can they do that? How can they be so crazy? But then if Google is able to keep YouTube going and growing as it has been, then the naysayers will quietly take a seat in the back of the room and let Google’s rise continue. Or worse yet they get psyched into purchasing a lesser valued company for even more money in hopes of competing at the same level. If you’re looking for growth, both are non-winning opportunities. That’s the issue.

Marc Cuban still thinks so. Time will tell, but I don’t think so.

The markets are changing. This isn’t the Napster era of brash copyright battles. Maybe it’s the impact of the Asian markets. Maybe it’s the success of the iTunes distribution channel. Maybe it’s the competitive forces of publishers, video services, and the like moving online unlike before. Or maybe it’s just about time.

Yes, in business it’s often about timing. YouTube may have just picked the right time.

Now as to whether Google should have paid $1.65 billion for YouTube, that’s another issue. In my mind, Google is the best match for YouTube of the GYM three and Google ought to deserve a discount for that. Of course the world doesn’t work that way. On the other side, Google can use YouTube’s video community. It’s been unable to create one up to this point and now instantly Google has one. A big one.

Now Google needs to encourage the YouTube team to improve the video experience, to fix audio synching, and update its lacking search capabilities. Yes, YouTube needs some work. At $1.65 billion it’s still a fixer upper. Isn’t that the way technology always is?

Just arrived at Dallas (for Educause) and I see on CNBC that Google has decided to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion. Bloomberg has more on the breaking story.

This goes along with other reports like that from ArsTechnica:

“YouTube has won. The company today announced a flurry of deals with music labels to offer music videos and other content free of charge, including one with onetime nemesis Universal, which recently claimed that YouTube owed it millions of dollars for copyright infringement. In addition to the Warner deal announced two weeks ago, YouTube has now signed on Sony BMG, Universal, and CBS.”

The rumor is spreading that Google is looking at acquiring YouTube. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both published articles on the rumor yesterday. The supposed price tag? $1.6 billion.

Depending on the stock-to-cash ratio this is probably a good move for Google. First, Google hasn’t done well with its video efforts yet. They haven’t figured out the community aspects of online video sharing. YouTube will help there. Second, YouTube needs a company like Google. As YouTube’s library expands, flaws in its searching become more and more evident. YouTube also needs to work with a larger company that understands how to handle thorny copyright issues. Google has done well here too.

What Google needs to not lose sight of is the bigger goal of merging video with more of its services. For instance, where is video on news.google.com? Shouldn’t there be direct links to live news broadcasts that are covering breaking news? And what about video links in Google’s main search results? If you’re looking for a case study on the use of Tablet PCs in the classroom, why can’t there be links to the videos in the search results page? YouTube can’t help here.