For those of you who missed the Viacom vs. Google suit

1. How did you come with $1 Billion? Is it the highest number you could think of? A random exponent of 10? And why such a neat number? why not $3.141 Billion? or $2.71 Billion? or simply $GOOGOL?

2. Do you realize what kind of damage this may cause to the MTV brand among young people who actually love music?

3. Are you going to sue gazillion of video sharing sites? Go back to film? Stop technology?

4. How many start-ups have just lost their funding because of this lawsuit?

5. How many artists can be funded by the fees of your legal team alone?

6. What is the magic number for settlement out of court?

7. Is Mark Cuban happy? [Apparently yes!]

I’d like to quote Om Malik on this:

I have argued in response to that comment that Viacom Inc. could have done something about this a long time ago, but didn’t and basically are using this lawsuit to paper over their own incompetence.

Here is proof: Viacom’s MTV vs YouTube traffic and visitor comparisons. See for yourself, who really missed the boat here! (Data Source: Compete.com) So why sue now? My guess is that they have been reading Google’s SEC filings and trying to figure out how to get some of those billions sitting in the bank! 

Do us a favor guys, stop listening to your lawyers, solve it some other way for all of our sake.

      

The devils greatest trick was convincing man that he didn’t exist, Baudelaire

Our informal corporate motto is “Don’t be evil.” Google Code of Conduct

It’s been a week since I tried moving my company to Google Apps.

(1) My domain has yet to be verified.

(2) My Partner still has no access to his old calendar.

(3) My support call has yet to receive a human or a relevant response.

I did get an automated response though, a totally useless one that copied text from the website, text I was intelligent enough to read in the first place.

Hello Google Support!! Anybody Home??

      

“Laugh and the world laughs with you. Take out the garbage, and you walk alone”
- The Wizard

What a feeling it is to bump into a new blog that really really stands out. Anil Dash (one of the smartest bloggers at own merit) points out Ask the Wizard with the following recommendation:

Ask the Wizard, written by Feedburner CEO Dick Costolo is, flat out, the best new blog of 2007. The thing I love about great writing is it makes the pervasive truths seem self-evident and even obvious. Plus it’s actually funny, not another tech exec wearing a goofy tie and claiming to be full of ha-ha.

I tried and I so totally agree. Furthermore, if you’re in the start-up scene you MUST add this blog to the top of your RSS reader. Attacking Dominant Market Shares, Strategic Advantage Part I, Quantum Hidden Barriers to Entry, Company Culture and the Non Profit Hard Parts provide real insight.

      

I was really excited when Google announced the rebirth of Apps. My expectations were high due to two main reasons. First of all, it takes a mega brand to do mass market education. I love Zoho, Clarizen and 37Signals, but they are not big enough to drive non-high tech SMEs to the web in masses. Perhaps more importantly, Google have so far managed to apply a “creative chef touch” to online office. GMail, Google Talk, Google Spreadsheets, Google Docs have all displayed freshness that kept the good essence of MS office but went beyond just mimicking; They managed to capture the value of the web over desktop - simplicity, easy collaboration and pure web elements such as free, advertising and blogging.

Then something happened. I really needed a solution for my company. A Solution for simple task and project management and for document sharing. Something not too expensive. Naturally I went online and started with Google Apps. I sadly found out that not only is Google Apps just a new marketing wrap for old stuff, it also has major flaws.

First of all, you need to manipulate your domain DNS to get started. Repeat, manipulate your DNS - CNAME, MX record and other Latin names. Why? Why do I need to touch the CNAME in order to start doing online task management on my domain? Can’t you verify my identity in some other way? It took me an hour just to figure out what to do (and I used to work at this!). Oh, one more little details, it takes about 48 hours for DNS changes to populate the Internet, which means I am still waiting for a verification in order to get started. Hard work and a 48 hour wait! What a contradiction to the whole concept! Do you seriously expect businesses to migrate this way?

During the process something “funny” happened. My partner’s Google calendar (which was registered to his work address, the one I was trying to activate) was deactivated. deactivated! He didn’t understand why he lost access to his calendar all of a sudden. I had to unregister his user at my still not working Google Apps suite. Luckily his calendar ”returned” after about an hour.

I put a stop to it right there. This was clearly half baked. All I needed was effective task management for 15 people in the first place. I checked out Zoho Projects, which seemed like a great web application but an overkill for simple task management. I finally landed on 37Singal’s Basecamp and got started. What a relief! Simple, easy to get started, works. it took me 15 minutes to get started. My colleagues got the hang of it in less than 10 more. 

I’m going to stay off Google office for a while. Let me know when it’s usable.

      

The marketing genius who picked out “Vista” must have been looking at this definition: a far-reaching mental view: vistas of the future.

It is, after all, a pretty good name.

Right after though, was the following definition: a view or prospect, esp. one seen through a long, narrow avenue or passage, as between rows of trees or houses.

A week ago, high from caffeine and the arrival of a newly purchased PowerBook Pro, I decided to use Boot Camp to install Windows on my Mac (gasp). Now, now, prior to a slew of negative comments, I am not a complete Mac-head. I love my ThinkPad and its bulbous battery allowing for hours of fun-filled Excel exploration while flying to gay Paris.

Having learned from previous mistakes, I started with a gentle installation of Windows XP SP2. Smooth, done in 45 mn, works like a charm (I won’t go through the install procedures, they’re explained elsewhere and it’s not the topic).  5 gigs of space taken out of 20, I was close to fitting my 17gig of email (yes, the IT guys love me). Feeling gutsy, I erased XP and installed Vista.

Hot dog, this UI looks better than my beloved OS X??? Yes, yes, I can see the touches of genius here: the slick start-up and login screen, the dark toolbar with a very elegant background. Wait, are these good looking icons I see? Well, well… someone’s been learning.

Checking the hard drive size, this bad boy clocked at a hefty 17 gigs! It’s good to know that America is not the only thing that’s obese nowadays.

After getting a few blue screens of death and missing drivers (Boot Camp does not support Vista yet), I was impressed enough with what I’d seen – and a sucker for running the latest and greatest – I upgraded the Thinkpad… The IT guys had not heard from me in a couple of days and I figured they were getting bored without my antics.

Installation went without a hitch. Desktop looked good. I started noticing the blatant OS X parts.

Signed up as an administrator. Kept it clean with nothing but MS Office 2007 (oooooh, larger icons), Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, ActivePDF and Quicktime. That’s it. Pretty restraint.

Then it started.

Outlook Web Access wouldn’t work anymore (wait, it’s “normal” to see an “X” icon in the compose window with IE 7… Ok, so there is a patch. Alleluiah. I’ll download and run it.

Neuuuuh, not so fast my fearless friend. You could be a phenomenal foe and need to run this as an administrator (I guess that’s what it means because the error message was actually: “THE REQUESTED OPERATION REQUIRES ELEVATION.”)

My karma must be shit for Windows to tell me I need to elevate myself.

Not a problem, I’ll change the user setting. Nope, already an admin… Mmm, let me check online. Oh, I see, it’s quite simple really: one only has to right click on the application and select “run as administrator” to watch the install, er… fail.  
Alternatively, you can easily access the Command Line Interface and install as admin from there. Right then, like whistling in the shower. Expect for the slight disadvantage of HAVING TO RUN A COMMAND LINE INTERFACE TO LAUNCH AN .EXE!

Remember the joke on Windows 95 = Macintosh 1984, yeah, I thought that was funny too. Well, here we are with Vista (don’t be shy, read the definition above once more and let it soak in) and we’re back to CLI. I can’t tell you the joy of running an application through that puppy. Yeah, who needs a mouse? Finally, it told me that my 30 free gigs weren’t enough storage to install the hotfix.

I called my shrink.

I talked. He mainly listened.

It felt good.

He told me to update my version of Windows before doing anything I might regret. Then he hung up because he was on a VoIP line and downloading a file that was sucking his bandwidth.

I updated (there were 8 updates within 10 days of the release) knowing full well this wouldn’t change the problem but needed some fresh air. The screen went black and asked if it was ok if Windows Updater was unresponsive. I didn’t find the F U button combination, so I clicked on “yes”. It crashed.

After that, I added Firefox to my list of apps, just so I could run Outlook Web Access. Ironic

Ctrl+Alt+Tab doesn’t do much either. I haven’t been able to stop a crashed app yet. It‘s cool though; I actually like rebooting: it’s my favorite part of the OS.

I could go on. The “blackening” of the entire screen each time some communication with the outside world happens asking if “I allow”.

“Windows need your permission to use this program.” 
“Windows need your permission to continue.”

Why do I prevent pop-up windows on my browser if I get even more in my OS?

You can thank the User Account Control (UAC) for this, which basically transforms any administrator into a de facto user. Whhhhhaaat? Ok, thankfully, it’s fairly easy to turn off, once you know about it.

And that is my other gripe with the OS. I haven’t opened a manual in years but there are so many choices and funky details going on, I’m not comfortable with the basic functionality.

Yep, the Wow starts here. It’s taking me twice as long do tweak things in the control panel (good luck finding your way there) and I don’t understand half of the “features” – which is a bummer because I’ve always pride myself in being so computer avant-guardist and quite nifty for a non techy. Guess Microsoft finally wanted to show guys like me who was the smartest. Well done, boys, well done.

I like the icons and the 3-D thingy when doing an alt-tab. Interestingly, that’s the type of details that enhances the experience. It’s a shame that a fruit-named company has been laughed at for focusing exactly on enhancing the user experience for the past 20 odd years.

Bottom line? Love the icons, boys.

And the theme.

Kicks ass.

Really.

      

Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life by Dixit and Nalebuff is a great book. It translates philosophical ideas behind game theory to practical case studies and tools in away that everyone can relate to. I revisited the book today after seeing Chud Hurley’s announcement regarding YouTube’s intention to start sharing revenues with content contributors. The move was naturally covered by Pete Cashmore, Om Malik and Scott Karp, among others. Everybody seems to be concerned with the projected impact on YouTube’s smaller rivals - MetaCafe and Revver - who have established revenue sharing and financial reward programs with their leading contributors already.  

If MetaCafe and Revver were simply trying to differentiate themselves from YouTube then they chose a strategy that can simply never work. The market leader can (and should) play copycat to good things that can be easily copied. As a matter of fact, this is the best strategy a leader can take, one that hedges the impact differentiators and that helps maintain the lead. Microsoft has perfected this strategy to the form of classic art.

However, this is true when the only thing that matters is beating your competitors and in YouTube’s case that’s not the most important game that’s being played. First of all there is a business model to prove and a revenue stream to generate. This, by far, is more important then keeping MetaCafe and Revver on the leash. YouTube enjoys a leader’s privilege - they can observe, learn, improve, implement. They can afford to get “inspired by others” and not work so hard to surprise.

Is this a deathblow to MetaCafe and Revver? Possibly, but I don’t think so. YouTube’s rivals should not compete with YouTube using financial models anyway. It stands no chance. What they can compete with is the brand’s depth in terms of appeal to a certain segment of users. This is done using content and user landscape, not using revenue share programs. MetaCafe can definitely position itself as premium brand compared to YouTube. This will not beat YouTube out of pole position but it may secure MetaCafe’s own position and make them a strong leader of a hefty niche.

How is all that related to game theory and to Thinking Strategically? The following excerpt is worth your time:

“After the first four races in the 1983 American’s Cup final, Dennis Conner’s Liberty led 3−1 in a best-of-seven series. On the morning of the fifth race, “cases of champagne” have been delivered to Liberty’s dock. And on their spectator yacht, the wives of the crew were wearing red-white-and-blue tops
and shorts, in anticipation of having their picture taken after their husbands had prolonged the United States’ winning streak to 132 years. It was not to be.

At the start, Liberty got off to a 37-second lead when Australia II jumped the gun and had to recross the starting line. The Australian skipper,
John Bertrand, tried to catch up by sailing way over to the left of the course in the hopes of catching a wind shift. Dennis Conner chose to keep Liberty on the right-hand side of the course. Bertrand’s gamble paid off. The wind shifted five degrees in Australia II’s favor and she won the race by one minute and forty-seven seconds. Conner was criticized for his strategic failure to follow Australia II’s path. Two races later, Australia II won the series.

Yacht racing offers the chance to observe an interesting reversal of a “follow the leader” strategy. The leading yacht usually copies the strategy of the trailing boat. When the follower tacks, so does the leader. The leader imitates the follower even when the follower is clearly pursuing a poor strategy. Why? Because in yacht racing (unlike ballroom dancing) close doesn’t count: only winning matters. If you have the lead, the surest way to stay ahead is to play monkey see, monkey do.

Stock-market analysts and economic forecasters are not immune to this copycat strategy. The leading forecasters have an incentive to follow the pack and produce predictions similar to everyone else’s. This way people are unlikely to change their perception of these forecasters’ abilities. On the other hand, newcomers take the risky strategies: they tend to predict boom or doom. Usually, they are wrong and are never heard of again, but now and again they are proven correct and move to the ranks of the (rich and) famous. Industrial and technological competitions offer further evidence. In the personal-computer market, IBM is less known for its innovation than for its ability to bring standardized technology to the mass market. More new ideas have come from Apple, Sun, and other start-up companies. Risky innovations have been their best and perhaps only chance of gaining market share. This is true not just of high-technology goods. Proctor and Gamble, the IBM of nappies, followed Kimberly Clark’s innovation of resealable nappy tape, and recaptured its commanding market position. There are two ways to move second. You can imitate as soon as the other has revealed his approach (as in yacht racing) or wait longer until the success or failure of the approach is known (as in computers). The longer wait is more advantageous in business because, unlike sport, the competition is usually not winner-take-all. As a  result, market leaders will not follow the upstarts unless they also believe in the merits of their course.

Need I say more?

      

Israel based Clarizen announced having raised $7M from Benchmark Capital and Carmel Ventures yesterday. This announcement is significant in more than one way.

Clarizen provides web 2.0, software as a service, hosted project management tools. This is a brave attempt to dive head first into a very crowded pool. Microsoft on one side, Google as a potential competitor on the other and wide variety of very good Internet start-ups in the middle. Zoho and 37Signals, for example, have been providing comprehensive productivity suites, including project management, for some time now. Moreover, Zoho and 37Signals have already built good products, customers, corporate identities, press and blogsphere relations - or in short - a brand. I covered Zoho a couple of times and have been following their progress closely, they seem to be only accelerating. How can Clarizen effectively penetrate this market in a way that will eventually generate market leadership?

They can. While this market is seemingly crowded it has not nearly shaped yet. Most of the current users are very early, blog reading, techie adapters. Enterprise customer acquisition is still based on random opportunity chasing and on Grass roots marketing. Enterprise customers do not use web 2.0 productivity tools yet. There are no real distribution chains and other elements which make up a mature enterprise software marketplace. Zoho and 37Signals have been successful, but they haven’t really tickled Microsoft or real Enterprise customers yet. Then there are verticals - health-care, financial, legal, travel, banking, etc. - all requiring special customization and regulatory attention. This market has not only not matured, it has not really begun.

So what can make Clarizen different?

First of all Clarizen is not a bootstrapped web 2.0 company. The founders come with extensive and deep enterprise background. It already employes 34 employees and top notch developers. With this type of investment and backing they can aim at bigger targets. I don’t see Zoho developing a health-care suite and I don’t see 37Signals dropping everything in order to train a 5,000 employee construction company.

Clarizen is Israeli and that can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. I really hope they won’t use the money to open a North American branch and compete for the American Dream in 2007. While VCs may have a tendency to push in that direction, it will be a big mistake for a number of strategic reasons. The US is where competition is dominant, where the enterprise software market is extremely developed and where Israeli companies need to learn too much before they are able to compete. The simple truth is that American IT managers appreciate receiving service from Americans. This means local marketing, sales, support and training organization. Creating all those and going through the mandatory learning cycle will take a lot of time and money. Too much time and money. And it won’t create a real competitive position for Clarizen.

My advise to Clarizen? Climb the mountain slowly is your best shot at leading. The Enterprise SaaS market is not going anywhere too fast. If anything, you’re early. Grow the customer base, test different opportunities in different countries, make the service really reliable, grow your expertise, implement a real internal enterprise culture and only then focus on geography and a specific customer segment. Don’t jump overboard but build something real.

Kudos to Benchmark and Carmel for investing in Israeli Enterprise SaaS. Not the typical common sense investment. Israel is not reputable for dominating with enterprise software or services. Something about the innovative but messy Israeli mindset that collided with enterprise philosophy. But the Israeli scene has matured greatly and it is visible inside Israeli companies as well as with their products. There is no reason why Clarizen should not outperform it’s rivals anywhere in the world. Good luck!

      

Any Web 2.0 rookie knows this problem, especially ones that build social networks. How much content sharing can we hide under the term “User Generated Content”? What happens if commercial content gets shared on your social network? Are you breaking the law? Can you get caught? what happens if you do? How do you sleep at night? And how the hell do you get your investors comfortable?

A classy case of analysis-paralysis. Where does commercial stop and user generated begin? What is the real value of user generated content and how, if at all, can commercial digital content be protected?

The sad truth is that nobody knows. In the meantime it’s all up to self rationalization and the size of your juevos. But let’s try to tackle this too for a minute.

The pure form of user generated content is what it is - new content generated by the users that share it. New songs, video clips, pictures, poems, blog entries, stories, you name it, as long as it’s new and as long as the owner voluntarily shared it. This is perhaps the pure form, but the one that represents a small portion of what the industry refers to as UGC. Very few sites stick to UGC only. eSnips is perhaps a good example of such a service, check out DJ and Remixing on eSnips and get a world full of user generated content. 

Then there is user manipulated content which is the widest grey area. User manipulated content is really commercial content generated by others, but after some editing which masks it as user generated. YouTube hosts tons of user-edited-commercial-content. Check out LeBron James on YouTube and MetaCafe and see what I mean. Even the headline for this post is a manipulation on original text by Douglas Adams.

Following that we have “Bloopers”. Content that comes from all different sources and that will never be commercialized, either due to “long-tail-hood” or simply due to inability to track. Such content is spread all over the Internet and will probably forever be classified as user generated.

Finally we have abused commercial content. Content that was DRM stripped and then distributed for free. The poor fate of Napster and Kazaa make it slightly more difficult to launch such services, but millions of SoulSeek and eMule users know it ain’t THAT difficult. With all the hype about iTunes, most teenagers still do not pay for their Britney Spears or Prison Break.  

Social networks face a big problem when it comes to content sharing. The first one is that no matter what they do, content sharing services can easily be abused. It is really, really, easy to strip commercial content of DRM (assuming it was technically protected in the first place). The second, and perhaps more significant problem, is that most users look for commercial content before they pay attention to the pure user generated one.

And how do we treat the grey area of user manipulated content - THE driver behind YouTube? Is that considered stolen? Do the original content “owners” have a problem with such manipulation? and how the hell can it be monitored? Fortunately for us armies of lawyers are about to clarify that for us… NOT!

Are you confused by now? Try reading the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA, download a copy here). It will confuse you even more.

So what should you do? The rule of thumb is probably to mix it up well, do your best and respond to the environment. MySpace and MyStrands offer a good mix. You can find a lot of commercial content hidden there, granted, but you can also find a lot of Indie, real, user generated music. YouTube is taking off stolen content by request and is in the process of signing media deals. MetaCafe is using algorithm and people in an attempt to keep the network clean. Effective? Somewhat. Keeps them same? Most probably.

So where is it all going? The legal system cannot keep track with technology. Any lawyer will tell you that. The “Internet Police” cannot keep up with enforcement, so in the short term it’s probably about blockbusters and titans. In the longer term, however, the simple truth is that digital media cannot be protected. Bad news? Not necessarily. In my humble opinion it will only redistribute wealth and benefit the artist.

      

There is an interesting theory going around. According to that theory, a company will basically make roadmap decisions based on what the employees need at work. The inverse side of the theory is that a company will not develop what the employees do not miss at work. Paul Graham and Nick Carr try to predict the future of Google, Microsoft and the companies that surround and are impacted. On a Techcrunch interview, Paul Graham analyzed how to go get in the Google mindset as an innovator:

I wouldn’t advise competing with Google in things they’re good at. So what is Google good at? As a first approximation, making things their own developers use at work. So they’ll do a better job on an online calendar than a video sharing site, for example, because their employees are probably not supposed to be sitting watching videos at work.

Nick Carr then addresses Microsoft’s suspiciously-laid-back approach to web apps:

It’s been widely assumed, among the tech-forward Web 2.0 crowd, that it will be the end users who will drive the adoption of purely web-based office apps - and that corporate IT departments will be the obstructionists. I think it will actually play out in the opposite way….

…Whatever the flaws of Microsoft Office, most end users are comfortable with it - and they have little motivation to overturn the apple cart. What is absolutely unacceptable to them is to take a step backward in functionality - which is exactly what would be required to make the leap to web PPAs today. Web apps not only disappear when you lose an internet connection, they are also less responsive for many common tasks, don’t handle existing Office files very well, have deficiencies in printing (never underestimate the importance of hard copy in business), and have fewer features (Microsoft Office of course has way too many, but - here’s the rub - different people value different ones).

In fairness, Nick Carr probably referred to corporate workers in general, but the theory still applies. In short, we should all pay much better attention to how we configure our corporate firewall and what kind of desktop we create for our employees!

      

The release of Google Apps triggered an interesting discussion that is going on in the blogosphere these days. The topic of debate is whether online office tools can effectively compete with MS Office. Honestly? I was bothered with the discussion being focused on that axis from it’s beginning. I just don’t think such a narrow perspective really tells the story.

I was happy to read Chris Anderson’s recent entry at The Long Tail. Chris argues that it’s not about “desktop apps vs. web apps”, but about embedding office functionality in web services. Or in his words:

What might those things be? I think we have a hint in the spread of embedded video, courtesy of YouTube. The ability to easily embed into any blog page a full-featured videoplayer dedicated to a single video is a large part of YouTube’s success. It doesn’t require you to go elsewhere or download anything–it just works.
Now imagine the same model working for data. Rather than me posting static jpeg charts and links to Excel spreadsheet files, what if I could post data the way I post videos: as an embedded mini-app that simply displays the data in a useful way, allowing readers to manipulate or copy it at will? This would be a little like what Ray Ozzie (Microsoft’s Gates V2.0) calls “Live Clipboard”, which is a proposed way to copy and paste code, structured data and even functionality from website to website, just as we currently do with plain text.

That’s what I want. Not an online spreadsheet that simply replicates what Excel already does perfectly well on my laptop, but small spreadsheet elements that I can paste into a blog post in the form of a specific data set or graph.

Embedding web apps? Wow! This can take collaboration to a whole new territory. This is also where the web offers a built in and sustainable advantage. Zoho, the best creator of online office apps in my opinion, are already educating their users on how to embed Zoho Show Presentations. Or in their words:

A cool feature added in recent Zoho Show update is the ability to embed presentations anywhere on the web. This can be powerful and there is nothing like it (based on my limited knowledge) on the web today that makes this functionality possible - unless you create and save your presentation as flash object.

Anil Dash presents a very educated point of view which is quoted by Chris Anderson as well as by ZDNet:

Google Apps for Your Domain is not a competitor to Microsoft Office. There’s simply no other way to put it. There will undoubtedly be lots of breathless press or Web 2.0 hype about how this is Google’s shot across the bow of the Office juggernaut, and this just plain isn’t true. Feel free to poke someone in the eye if they say this version represents a competitor to Office.

Read his post.

Speaking of ZDNet, here is a summary of interesting opinions by leading analysts, such as Anil Dash, Kent Newsome, Nick Carr and Scott Karp - all on this very subject. A recommended read for the scene follower.

The bottom line? Yes, Google and MSFT are rivals, but their primary battle ground is not MS Office vs. Google Apps. Embedding web objects is where the internet offers a huge platform that desktops can’t. MSFT will not just watch, of course, and will demonstrate that through Office Live! As far as embedding objects in internet pages goes, however, it’s MSFT that is expected to play catch. If you ask Anil, MSFT doesn’t really care for MS Office users beyond their 500 enterprise customers. If you ask me, I find it hard to believe they really don’t.

      

New school year approaches and the Collaboration 2.0 players take it to the next level.

Google has announced Google Apps -THE collaborative suite of Gmail, Talk, Calendar and Page Creator with Writely and Spreadsheets underway (read reviews by Techcrunch and ZDnet).

In the meantime, Zoho has launched it’s latest addition to their excellent online office suite. This time is Zoho Projects - online project management which racks up next to Zoho Writer, Spreadsheets and Presentation tools.

And let us not forget 37Signals, the coolest dudes in town, and their unique SME offering for collaboration.

These folks take hungry and angry stabs at Microsoft and they seem to be stepping up their gamel. It is early to tell how much Microsoft will bleed exactly, but let us all consider one significant factor here. Office apps, online, do not only eliminate cost but offer an optional revenue option with advertising. If you’re OK with adsense, targeted at your content and business, in exchange for zero cost - how can this be a bad proposition?

      

Today’s note in Techcunch about Writely finally being open triggered mixed feelings. I was happy, of course, to finally be happy to test drive the new Google candy.  I was also disappointed by not having heard from Writely directly after submitting my name twice in the past.  Anyway, I got over it, and went directly to checking it out.

Writely put together a word processor with great web-soul. They are the winner of their space in that department, meaning that they didn’t just mimic MS Word. Support for Publishing, Collaboration and Blogging is integrated into the user experience (although with somewhat unclear redundancy) - key features that differentiate web based word processing from desktop based. Tagging is also well integrated. Built in support for PDF and OpenOffice made me feel like I could finally do without Microsoft. So did the excellent experience using FireFox. The Layout is neat but I would personally go for a difference choice of colors. What really impressed me was the clean support for right to left languages. Better then Gmail!

On the flip side, it did seem the applications could use some more maturity. Zoho Writer, for example, is more impressive when it comes to complicated and heavy documents. Writely limits uploads to 500k (why?) and that, too, doesn’t seem to work that well. I also crashed a couple of times when trying to use it and we know absolute availability is a key hurdle when it comes to porting desktop experiences to the web.

Still, this market is becoming interesting. Unlike spreadsheets, I don’t think this is an easy Google cleanup. Zoho, which mimics MS Word, certainly creates a worth y alternative. For those of you interesting in full benchmarking of all players, CNET offers a thorough list. Interesting times.

      

I raised some eyebrows when I stated online presentation creation and sharing will never leave the desktop. Here’s the thing though, I never said that. What I did say (and still do) is that POWERPOINT is a desktop application which belongs on the desktop, and there’s a huge difference.

I have used Zoho, Thumbstacks and now Empressr (which is very impressive, by the way), and there is a common problem to all. They all have too much Microsoft Powerpoint in their blood and too little top down web vision. Out of all three, it seems like the Empressr folks have gotton closest with nice use of flash and with a unique presentation building sequence. Zoho and Thumbstacks are clearly Microsoft Powerpoint captive as they concentrate on web-mimicking the experience PPT offers. All score low in extended vision, though, which is why I want to present all three with a challenge.

My point is simple. Powerpoint is more then just an application. It has not only pioneered modern presentation technology but also presentation style and flow, business surrounding practices and graphical paradigms. This model does not fit the web though. It is too heavy as it requires a lot of computer resources. It is not geared towards sharing - PPT file sizes are too large and sharing comments is not really a usable option. It does not take advantage of portable web technologies - Flash, Podcasting, Ajax. It ignores web concepts such as social networks, photo sharing and video casting. On top of it all, it is based on a concept Microsoft came up with somewhere in the 90s and that has simply aged.

Web based presentations require a totally different mindset. From scratch. Creation should be very easy and dynamic. Presentation sequence needs to be more interactive and less sequential (dynamic, flash based menus?). Modern web technologies such as Video and Voice Podcasting need to be included. Sharing should not be limited to sending an email pointing to a web repository. It needs to include collaborative commenting and change tracking, perhaps even version management. “View offline” should replace “Import and Export”. The whole concept should be different because the whole ecosystem and mindset is different. 

So here is a challenge folks. You have a great opportunity. You managed to put together money, teams, resources and philosophies behind the need for online presentations. Can we all graduate the Microsoft school already? I will continue using Powepoint when I need to high graphics and sequential presentations. But this is not where my need for presentations ends - can I trust you to not miss the boat?

      

So it’s been a month by now since the beginning of our experiment and it’s time to share some interim conclusions. The adrenalin rush is now pretty much over and it’s time to deal with the real issues, so here is the current situation summary.

1. I still use Gmail as my online email. I am not going back to Outlook Express, even though it does complicate my life here and there. The advantages of staying online outweigh the disadvantages, at least to my taste.

2. I use Google Spreadsheets, but I started using Excel again. I use Google Spreadsheets for my expense reports, simple tables and check lists, but when it comes to heavy duty formatting, I need something rich and robust.

3. I stopped using Word completely! I use Zoho Writer for writing documents (while waiting for my Writely account to finally be enabled)

4. I tried using online Powerpoint from Zoho, Thumbstack and now Empresser (review by Techcrunch). In one word - No!. Powerpoint is a desktop application and as long as presentation style remains what it is, that’s what I am using.

5. I tried Microsoft Office 2007. It sucks! I mean it doesn’t suck in the traditional Microsoft way, but it seems like you need to be a Photoshop expert in order to use it. Word is a total overkill, Excel is pretty much the same, Powerpoint has gotten much better. All are significantly more complicated.

6. I was fortunate to have my attention pointed to somewhat niche apps like gOFFICE. Their online publishing tools combined with their PDF ripper offer something I haven’t seen in desktop apps. A clear long tail opportunity.

At the bottom line so far, Web 2.0 is getting there but still has a long way to go before I can port my professional life to the web. The quantum leap, if you ask me, is waiting for the paradigm shift that hasn’t occured yet in terms of usage patterns, not technology. There is no point in porting desktop apps to the web without transforming the usage habit to a fitting one. Powerpoint, for example, is not a web app. A flash, light wait, interactive presentation service can be a great success on the other hand.

      

Todd Bruninks asked me to pay attention to gOFFICE, an online office suite which offers Word Processing, Desktop Publishing, Spreadsheets and Presentations (coming soon). Sure, I thought, wondering a bit about the growing inflation of web based office suites. But gOFFICE offers something different, and I like their approach.

As a mission statement, gOFFICE is focused on offering people the ability to create high quality output. They offer dozens of letters, fonts, styles, desktop publishing practices, stationary, etc. Since most people get ugly when they try to get creative (including me), gOFFICE offer a lot of samples and advice you can start with, harness your creativity and route it in a stylish direction.

Their choice of output is a primary reason for why their offering stands out. Documents are saved as PDFs. I tried it and it worked like a charm. You can also choose to transform the document to HTML format, but the original file will still be saved as PDF. This makes gOFFICE the perfect choice for writing formal letters, invitations, business cards, brochures, etc. - A space not well covered by the other online word processors, at least not the ones I am aware of.

When it comes to corporate culture, the folks at gOFFICE are real people that speak real English. They don’t over wrap their goods with marketing bla bla and they don’t overcomplicate things technically. On the other hand, they do provide “dos” and “do nots” in a language an everyday user can understand. For example, to the question “What can I do with gOFFICE?” they respond with:

Got it at first attempt and also learned something new! Thank you!

It’s not that gOFFICE is free of problems. Their user experience is not flawless. They document editting flow is not always straight forward and it takes you time to learn what you can and cannot do with the product. The website is also not perfectly knotted. I got lost a few times trying to navigate to a specific page I was at before. But that’s relatively minor. The major problem I see is with the fact gOFFICE may have stepped into the “Must copy MS Office” trap. Their Spreadsheet application is not impressive to say the least. As a matter of fact, it’s not useful. I don’t really understand why they chose to offer it as it only dilutes their unique value. Their online presentation application is not available yet. I definitely hope it won’t just be another slow and limited version of Powerpoint.

Come to think of it, if the folks at gOFFICE are able to apply their word processing philosophy onto online presentations, they may actually come up with something unique and cool. I will definitely come back and check it out and I encourage you to do that as well.

gOFFICE are San Francisco based. According to the website, they are a bootstrapped, 15 employee operation. Their service is currently free and in the future they look to generate revenue from advertizing.

      

Oren Friedman pointed me at Vancouver based DabbleDB, an Enterprise 2.0 service provider that takes a big step in the right direction. DabbleDB officially looks to “combine the best of group spreadsheets, custom databases and intranet web applications, and provide a new way to manage and share your information on the web.” (7 minute demo provided)

DabbleDB’s groupware is ideal for project management. The typical customer would be an outward facing, web educated, small business. It delivers an alternative and competitive offering to the one offered by 37 Signals. As a matter of fact, both companies seem to be sharing a lot of DNA as pioneers of the new marketing generation. They are both fast acting, customer supportive, user centric, opinionated. But if 37 Signals are the cool party boys everybody wants to hang out with, then DabbleDB are your ideal study buddies. They don’t use simplicity as the dominant theme but instead offer more features and require a better prepared mindset. Both companies offerings are extremely intuitive compared to any in-house traditional alternative.

They offering itself consists of project management, contacts, calendar sharing and data collaboration. Everything is web based, but unlike many other web 2.0 enterprise aspiring services, DabbleDB actually provides Backup, SSL encryption and more advanced features - such that fit an IT educated business environment. Another interesting angle is the pricing one. DabbleDB does not offer a free option. Instead it offers 4 pricing packages, ranging from $10 per month Personal edition) to $150 per month (corporate edition, up to 60 users).

I watched the demo and test drove the free trial. I was definitely impressed. DabbleDB has a very friendly and easy to grasp service offering. it doesn’t use hip names or cool taglines, but it does what it says and well. The fusion between the new web 2.0 elements and the traditional IT practices seems to be one of the better ones I’ve seen.

I am left with 2 open questions:

1. It is really possible to gain enough customers without offering a free option?

2. Are “better IT educated” businesses ready to embrace hosted, web based services for project management and data collaboration?

I guess we’ll need to wait and see although my hunch is that the answer is “yes”. I see good things coming DabbleDB’s way which are also echoed in the press they are getting lately.

For more information visit the companies’ blogs - 37Signals and DabbleDB

[written using Zohowriter]

      

Albert Lai, Bubbleshare’s CEO alerted me to review this new service and I gladly obliged. This review is impartial despite the “spoiler headline” (Albert…where do I send the invoice? ).

So why am I in bubblove?
1. Let’s start with the basics – bubblshare does what all the other photo album sharing do, but with fun and simplicity.

2. The bubble effects are really a cool way to personalize a slide show! I am not sure this is REALLY sustainable and not just novelty, but nonetheless the execution of the interface is flawless.

3. Setting up an account is simple and fast.

4. Sharing is easy – create album –> enter email –> share. Already got some rave responses on a cool slide show that took me but a few seconds to put together.

5. The bulk uploading process is smooth and you can opt for a handy email notification that lets you know uploading is finished. No impatient glazing at a slow moving progress bar. Cool!

6. Overall and again - smooth and clear interfaces – very slick. Changing photo order in thumbnail view….wow…very nice.

Love less:
1. The idea of uploading photos from my camera phone is a great bonus. Generating a unique code for the account seemed brilliant. I sent an MMS after reading the instructions, followed the instructions and it seems like my mms email is still MIA. When you send something there should be a ‘receving’ space on the other end. I searched under my account and myalbums…nothing. Maybe I missed something on the instructions, but I do know it’s first of all got to work.

2. Home page is too cluttered – looks like another mashable community / photo sharing / social application – bubble share’s corporate identity does not transpire well enough. No need to mention EVERY SINGLE feature, plugin, download etc. in the home page.

Overall, Bubleshare could easily have ended up being “yet another” photo album website, but they pass the “yawn test very well”. It is immaculate, spectacular and tangy and I left me impressed and, to be honest, also a bit surprised.

Once again, I really enjoy encountering companies that don’t necessarily invent a whole new concept but rather take an existing one, twist it, simplify and execute on it “web life” style.

Bottom line – Bubbleshare has now become my official photo album site.

      

In recent months Aner and I have reviewed several companies operating in the web 2.0 space. From mobile applications like Shozu to web services such as Zoho, We have been candid, not to say blunt. From rave reviews to cynical wrath, we told it like we saw it.

I have been surprised by the overwhelming positive (and consistent) feedback to our reviews. We are not the only bloggers in town, we are not the only customers on the block and yet they all take the time to write us back. Moreover, each time a senior manager within the organization does it personally. This definitely superseded my conservative expectations. Have we all not been victimized by the “thanks for your feedback, we are working on it” laconic response from the invisible PR guy? It got me thinking about one of the more important evolutions Web 2.0 is responsible for - the one of customer service and personal attention.

Direct, personal, fast, courteous, professional feedback as a customer service 101 practice? By top level executives? This is a new phenomenon that big multinationals still haven’t managed to grasp. And when they do make an attempt they usually kill it with the red tape. They hire a VP who builds departments that hire training consultants who help set up additional departments with 10-15 service reps, who in the end become the face to the external world. Sometimes organizations just outsource it all together. They justify it by defining customer service as “a competitive angle, too important, off core specialty that needs to be taken care by professionals”, but in reality their main goal is to get it out of their immediate attention and reduce overall cost. Customer service is the source of so many white lies, just like HR is (“our people are our real asset” is my favorite, but that’s for a different post).

So who is more sophisticated? A company that outsources customer service or one where the CEO, CTO etc. take a few hours of their time on a weekly basis and answer a few hundred emails, write feedback to posts etc.? Who knows their customers better?, who knows their product better?, who knows what the real issues are? The answer is obvious. Business intelligence and customer feedback come from the trenches and when you loose sight of them and turn into a paper or people pusher, then you loose your edge.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying a CEO responsible for 1,500 or 10,000 people would make best use of his/her time by answering 200 emails a week but how about 30? How about reviewing 100?. How about reading them personally and not having them summarized? There is no excuse, no matter how big the company is, to lose the direct sight of the customers, partners and in our case, blogsphere colleagues.

I believe the drift of customer service away from the core of the executives’ daily routine might be the related to the trivial, yet very ‘human’, misconception that customer service is “uncool”. That a CEO, CTO, CMO don’t need to deal with it because its beneath them, not fitting of their managerial status, three piece suite or six and sometimes seven figure pay check. “Why should I do something a $10/hour rep in the Phillipines or India can do??”. That is pure BS.

Web 2.0 brings a positive wind of change. I don’t care about bubble talk, but the new kids on the block know how to treat their customers and neighbors. I hope we all refrain from ‘growing out of it’. In fact, that may be the very key to success and growth. This is the key , knocking the ‘old fools’ off their lazy boy chairs while mumbling “How come they have such incredible retention rates….I’ll wait for the Monday report from the head of customer service to over to go over some data….”
Special thanks for the following executives who know their customers and gave me inspiration to write this post. Luckily, they are not alone, there are many others…:

Sridhar Vembu – Zoho’s CEO
John Crow – Director of Maketing, ThinkFree
Gibu Thomas – Sharpcast’s Founder and CEO
Andy Tiller – Shozu’s CTO

and Signal vs. Noise from 37Signals

      

[Proper Disclusure - this post was written using Zoho Writter]

Last week I wrote about online Spreadsheets. If you recall, the best and final round was between Google and Zoho and Google came up as the winner. When it comes to word processing though, Zoho Writer is my personal favorite , hands down. If I could use only one word to describe why it would be maturity. Zoho writer is simply a mature online word processor. Many vendors face a creativity block when it comes to migrating traditional desktop applications to the web. I noticed it with many spreadsheet applications that were simply mimicking excel. Zoho seems to have passed that hurdle long ago and this is all over the app - from the big feature through the “little things” that make the difference.

Let’s start with the overall feeling. Zoho Writer loads up quickly and makes you feel like you are using desktop software. You get oriented immediately with familiar looking toolbars on top and with an action dashboard on the left. The toolbars offer the exact blend of options required for editing a document in an online environment. From basic (alignment, bullets and numbering, spelling) to more advanced (insert functions, special characters , tables). The left hand dashboard offers easy navigation through shared documents, personalized templates and online storage. We talk a lot about the “offline problem” when web services are concerned. Zoho is well aware of the problem and offers back up options in a number of ways, from emailing to local saving of the file in a wide array of formats - Word, PDF, Text and HTML. They all work well and I really appreciated the PDF option.

Zoho has spiced Zoho Writer with the right dosage of web ingredients. You can easily post a document directly to a blog (Blogger, Live journal, TypePad and WordPress). Neat! You can create your own web templates very easily - just use “Save as template”, no need to go through the “xxx.dot” horror! You can also tag your document the “web 2.0″ way. Gil and I did experience a few hiccups until we figured how to use the sharing properly. The locking mechanism is not intuitive enough, Gil didn’t get the sharing invite to his Google account and we had to spend good 15 minutes before we figured it out. Note to Zoho - work on it!

Then come the little things that make the real difference. The overall user experience which is fantastic. Simple but not style free. The Spell checker that works so nicely. The autosaving you don’t need to remember. The emoticons, history, very functional bottom toolbar, right bland of AJAX….I’m sold!

Yes, Zoho Writer is my Word processor from now. I only wonder how the guys at Zoho plan to keep up with Google once their word processing is out (and it will be out). Zoho offers a full suite of online office apps which I haven’t checked yet - Planner, CRM, Chat, Calendar, Notes. Perhaps the answer is there. I am a little mind boggled by it all being provided for free, but I certainly hope the folks at Zoho have a plan. I’d really like them to stick around.

      

Coincidence strikes in mysterious ways. Less then 10 days after kicking off our reality web life experiment I had a serious fumble to recover. Yesterday evening (6:15PM to be precise) my laptop died. No warning signs, no heads up, no reaction time. It just went from totally vivrant to totally dead in less then a split second. “No reaction at all” dead, in case you wondered. Ironic as can be, this really caught me off guard. I was stressed with time, had 2 important documents to review-edit-send off, a presentation to finish and practice, some urgent emails to read and write and a post to finish. This is what I call a real life web based curve ball. I took over my wife’s computer and got friendly with it for the first time.

So here goes:
• Emails were not a problem of course. Gmail and Outlook Web Access (my corporate email) worked flawlessly and I didn’t feel like I’m compromising anything. Well, Outlook is better then Outlook Web Access but Gmail is better then both.
• I used Zoho Writer to go over and revise a 60 page word document with embedded graphics, tables and diagrams. Worked like a charm. I then used Zoho Spreadsheets to edit one data table and produce the result as a graph. Worked well with hardly, however few hiccups. I’m still a fan of Google Spreadsheets, but Zoho is definitely right there as well.
• Then came the PowerPoint presentation….I tried using ThinkFree as it was the only online PowerPoint application I could find. Wasn’t fun. First of all, PPT files are heavy and require too much upload time. On top of that there is no comparison when it comes to ease of use, functional richness and performance. Sorry to say, but presentation editing is much better on the desktop unless I find a totally different alternative (even though I am not a big fan of PowerPoint presentations to begin with. I have always been a fan of well summarized documents instead)
• Luckily for me, all my important materials were accessible on the web somehow. From my corporate web mail account, through Gmail and my web based drive (expect a dedicated review on that subject in the near future). It did prompt me to consider a better structured approach to web based back up, which I certainly intend to deal with.

I got rid of the post I started and wrote this new one instead. Mission accomplished. Laptop was fixed this morning. All systems are go.

      

As part of our web life reality series, we have opened a dedicated “Degardener” del.icio.us account (“degardener” of course is our del.icio.us username). The account is focused around web 2.0 companies. While launching this experiment we realized there is no comprehensive, updatable list of the web 2.0 sphere. This is where we will keep track, tag and provide quick comments on all the companies we test during our experiment. In time we hope this will become an invaluable web 2.0 knowledge base

Without further a due…add us to your del.icio.us network or just send us links of companies worth checking out.

      

So the first week of our web life reality experiment is over and the withdrawal symptoms are definitely not gone yet. You very quickly realize the fundamental differences between reviewing an application and using it, or perhaps more precisely actually depending on it. Never the less, and despite the shivers and shakes, so far web life has proven doable.

Gil and I are going through a rigorous selection and first time usage process with word processing, calendar management, spreadsheet manipulating, presentation sharing, you name it. The outcome so far ranges from real “Eurekas” to violent laptop shutdowns. Is the web ready to serve as a real desktop alternative? Well, after the first week we cannot predict yet. Some interim conclusions are making headway though.

Let’s start with spreadsheets. We’re all experiencing a lot of buzz lately, propelled mostly by Google and their recent launch of Google Spreadsheets. While the public discussion is not free of Googlebation, other solutions such as Zoho and iRows receive rave reviews and are considered by many to be much better. ThinkFree offers an online collaborative office suite, spreadsheets included…so many options, so little time, how can one choose???

Apparently the good old pony still has a trick or two left. After registering to all services I made an attempt to upload a heavy duty excel sheet to all. By heavy duty I mean one of those interactive business model spread sheets, where formulas, graphs and formats are embedded so deeply into one another, like a profound case of reheated spaghetti. Inseparable, indivisible. After all, with all due respect to simplicity and the rest of the web 2.0 rah rah, performance is still a key requirement when it comes to real life dependency. iRows got the boot right there. From separation of the different tabs to totally different sheets, through loss of formulas and errors in formatting – the spread sheet I got was not the spread sheet I uploaded. ThinkFree, Zoho and Google took the (really challenging) spread sheet like professionals and made it to the next round.

ThinkFree was eliminated next. ThinkFree is a Java based application, and while having tons of advantages it is not really what we came here to test – a pure web based service. We were left with Google and Zoho and here selection was not that trivial. Zoho sheet is a great application and a part of a bigger online office vision that so far puts together an impressive show. Zoho offers a much more comprehensive office experience then Google does - richer formatting, more user defined options, etc. However, when it came to editing a heavy spreadsheet Zoho was simply too slow. Google offers a much lighter and faster interface. And yeah, it is Google, integrated with my Gmail and with my search. Passing on it would be like passing on Robert De Niro for Taxi Driver.

So here it is. Google Spreadsheets rocks! A reliable, easy to use and comprehend application. It did take some time to switch from Excel to Google, but it felt like driving in a different country for the first time (and not England or Japan), no more. The sharing feature worked like a charm and Gil and I actually edited a few not so trivial sheets in real time for a real work need. The sharing is very intuitive and a chat box powers a real time conversation while editing. Nice! From a simplicity point of view, Google managed to collect the very basic useful features and lay them out on top of the web interface. Everything you need is at the top. If you can’t find it for the first time, try again, chances are it’s there.

The one caveat I could really notice was with the formatting. It seems like Google has not put the finishing touches there. No matter how hard I tried, I could not play with borders, colors, merging of cells and using different panes. Either Google doesn’t support it or I simply can’t tell where it is. Same difference. This is where the Beta concept sucks big time. You can’t finish off a spreadsheet this way. If this is not fixed and quickly, then regretfully I will need to retrack to good old Excel. I do trust Google to finish the job though. Sharing is enough of a use case to launch a service but the real need for online sharing is not really mission critical enough to trigger a desktop-to-web switch. For a first release, though, Google Spreadsheets has more then enough to make the qualifying cut. Their application is definitely usable. Let’s see how I speak in a few months time though, stay tuned!

Next week – Word Processing.

      

this is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now so here goes. I am putting the enterprise 2.0 question to the real life test. My own test, on my own premises. Reviews or occasional testing is not nearly enough to get what it really means to take your professional life online. It’s living the life that is necessary to tell whether web apps are really a better alternative then the local incumbents.

For the next 3 months, I will be using web applications only to do the following:

1. Email
2. Word processing
3. Spreadsheets
4. Calendar
5. Presentations
6. Blogging
7. Business and Social Networking

Anything derivative is included in the experiment as well (for example thesaurus or graphs). Unfortunately web based IM and VOIP are not good enough yet to be seriously considered. I will make an attempt to migrate there as well, but I can’t promise.

As an internet savvy prosumer, if I can’t survive on online applications alone, then web 2.0 is not ready for the enterprise. If I can, and more importantly if I never look back, then it’s time to consider some serious follow ons.

The rules of the experiment are pretty simple:

1. Timeframe - 3 months.
2. Trial and error - Up to 3 different web applications per use case before eventually sticking with one.
3. Using web applications only, but local storage is permitted.
3. Posting a tracking update every week in Degardener.

Feel free to point at interesting applications beyond the straight forward we all know. Good luck to me. Experiment is on…..now!