OpenWeb 07/02/2009 (a.m.)

• Feng Office: Putting the “Flow” in Workflow

  Conrado gets a very good review! Excerpt: Feng Office packs most of the features you should require for most project management duties. In addition to basics like calendars, contacts and email, it also provides milestone and task management, and a built-in time-tracking function. All of the above are well-implemented, although some users may actually find the similar interface design of all the functions more confusing than helpful, since it’s often not clear which function you’re using at any given time without looking at what tab is highlighted. I like the uniformity, though, since it gives each feature a sense of connectedness to the others and adds to the feeling that Feng Office is a holistic solution. Notes, Links and Documents features also bring much to Feng Office’s overall value proposition, and each is well-executed. You can even create new Word docs and PowerPoint HTML documents and presentations directly from within Feng Office using its own built-in editors, both of which retain UI elements from Microsoft’s own suite. That means less time switching from browser to standalone apps, which adds up to better productivity.

  Tags: feng-office, conrado-vina, web-contact-manager, office20

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Open Web group favorite links are here.

Future of the Web 06/18/2009 (p.m.)

• ‘Rent-a-guests’ send wedding costs spiralling

  A new phenomenon , the rent-a-guest is inflating the average price of a wedding; Billed as a quick and simple way to save red faces, spouses realising they’ve married a social leper can be assured of an unlimited supply of friendly, charming guests to make them look good.

  Tags: bizarre, wedding, marriage, hilarious

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Future of the Web group favorite links are here.

Future of the Web 06/18/2009 (a.m.)

• The Word As We Knew It

  The internet and it’s unique ability to rapidly share information across the planet has created a sort of ‘hot-bed’ for the evolution of language. New phrases, words, acronyms and slangs have been given the ability to virally evolve and disseminate to new populations within a matter of days. Definitions are born, morph, and die based on the evolving collective consciousness of humanity.

  Tags: technology, language, router, evolution, computers

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Future of the Web group favorite links are here.

OpenWeb: Google Apps charges into the enterprise with .... wait a second, is this right? An Outlook integration app?

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  LIVE: Google Apps Event | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD
  
  Digital Daily is carrying John Paczkowski's point-by-point twitter stream of the Google Apps Event. Fascinating stuff. Especially Dave Girouard's comments comparing Google Apps to MSOffice.
  
  One highlight of the event seems to be the announcement of a Google Outlook integration app. Sounds like something similar to what Zimbra did a few years ago prior to the $350 million acquisition by Yahoo! Zimbra perfected an integration into desktop Outlook comparable to the Exchange - Outlook channel. 
  
  
  If Google Apps Sync for Outlook integration is a s good as the event demo, they would still have to crack into MSOffice to compete with the MSOffice-SharePoint-MOSS integration channel. 
  
  
  the post is also filled with some interesting comments from Google Enterprise customers, Genentech, Morgans Hotel Group, and Avago .
  
  
  Google did discuss the future of its productivity suite and some enhancements that may begin to close the gap with Microsoft (MSFT) Office, something the company desperately needs to do if it wants to make deeper inroads in the enterprise area. Google Apps Enterprise chief, Dave Girouard admitted that gApps still has a ways to go.

  “Gmail is really the best email application in the world for consumers or business users, and we can prove that very well,” he said. “Calendar is also very good, and probably almost at the level of Gmail. But the word processing, spreadsheets and other products are much less mature. They’re a couple of years old at the most, and we still have a lot of work to do.”

  
  
  
  
  
  Tags: ge, google-apps, google-enterprise, Cloud-Computing, replace_or_re-purpose

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Open Web group favorite links are here.

OpenWeb 06/08/2009 (a.m.)

• Microsoft Office vs. the other guys - FierceCIO:TechWatch

  A new report by research analyst, Forrester says that 80 percent of enterprise customers are using some version of Microsoft Office. This reflects the stranglehold Microsoft has on the office productivity market, despite increased awareness of alternatives such as Sun's OpenOffice.org suite, and the rise of web-hosted variants such as Google Docs. I had a chance to comment on this brief lament regarding Microsoft's iron grip, desktop monopoly.

  Tags: ge, MSOffice, replace_or_re-purpose, openWeb, webkit

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Open Web group favorite links are here.

OpenWeb 06/04/2009 (a.m.)

• US Justice Dept probing company recruiting-source | Industries | Technology, Media & Telecommunications | Reuters

  More details on the new DoJ investigation, including confirmations from Google and Genentech.

  Tags: Google, Yahoo!, Apple, Genentech, antitrust

  • WASHINGTON, June 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is investigating a possible no talent-poaching pact by big tech businesses, a tech industry source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.
  • Genentech said it was cooperating with the probe.
  • A Google spokesman confirmed that the search engine giant had been contacted and was cooperating but had no further comment.
  • "My sense of it is that there are as many as a dozen companies that have been sent CIDs (civil investigative demands)," the source said, referring to requests for information sent out as part of a formal probe. "There's an open question of who are the other companies."
  • The Justice Department is also looking at Google's deal to digitize millions of books, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which also has antitrust responsibilities, has a probe into Google and Apple Inc's overlapping board members.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Open Web group favorite links are here.

OpenWeb 06/03/2009 (p.m.)

• Antitrust Probe Targets Tech Giants, Sources Say - washingtonpost.com

  Tags: antitrust, Yahoo!, Google, Apple, Genentech

  • The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether some of the nation's largest technology companies violated antitrust laws by negotiating the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees, according to two sources with knowledge of the review.

    The review, which is said to be in its preliminary stages, is focused on the search engine giant Google; its competitor Yahoo; Apple, maker of the popular iPhone; and the biotech firm Genentech, among others, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Open Web group favorite links are here.

OpenWeb 05/30/2009 (a.m.)

• Google Wave Crashes Over Microsoft | Michael Hickens

  ....."With Wave, which Google previewed for developers at its I/O conference yesterday, developers can for the first time create Web-based applications that compete with Microsoft in terms of quality (while utterly trumping it on price). It also creates the conditions for customers to comfortably shuck off the shackles of installed software — including Office and other Microsoft products — in exchange for truly lightweight hardware like netbooks or advanced smartphones, without sacrificing the richness of their computing experience. If it gets the kind of developer love it should, Wave is just the first of a series of a breakers that will loosen Microsoft’s grip on the desktop, and may also render Adobe wholly irrelevant." .... "Wave is a Web-based application that breaks artificial barriers between document types; work documents, email, instant messages, photographs, maps — Wave makes no functional distinction between them, and allows users to literally drag all those elements into a single, shareable meta-document. Wave is written using HTML 5, the first significant change to standards for Web coding since 1998. HTML 5 also forms the basis for Webkit, the language underlying the operating systems of the vast majority of smartphone browsers — Apple’s iPhone, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry, Google’s Android, Palm’s WebOS and Nokia’s Symbian. The one glaring omission? Microsoft Windows Mobile, of course.............. "

  tags: openweb, michael-hickens, google-wave

• Google Climbs to New Heights of Arrogance With Wave

  Some interesting questions about Google Wave; proposed by Om Malik and Jordan Golson, but with some hesitant reservations. As the title of this nervous commentary suggests. The narrowness and shallow context of this article is to be expected from hapless back-benchers incapable of grasping the big picture. But GigaOM? What a surprise. Maybe i should be revising my Silicon Valley information feeds? Google is into it with Microsoft, and for the sake of the future of the OpenWeb, Google better win. How does anyone able to fog a mirror miss this? Incredible. "..... Has Google, with its latest project, Google Wave, actually come up with the Next Big Thing in online communication, or is it yet another Googler vanity exercise? Wave is a combination of email, instant messaging and a real-time wiki — plus open architecture and APIs. Or as creators Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon put it, “what email would be if it were invented today.” Om also points out another comment from Lars: “Email is the most successful protocol on the planet…we can do better.” I think Google Wave is in the center of a number of revolutionary Google initiatives advanced at the recent Google I/O. HTML 5, the Canvas Tag, O3D, and the assault on the x86 Microsoft desktop stronghold are all part of Google's greatest challenge; keeping the Open Web free and competitive with the emerging MS Web. Michael Hickens has an interesting article; Google Wave Crashes Over Microsoft". Michael spoke with me prior to publishing, and i gave him my cosmic viewpoint of how things fit together (or not). You can find a loose summary of our discussion here: Google Wave: Crashing the Microsoft Desktop Monopoly. Clearly i am still writing :)

  tags: google-wave, html5, html+, OpenWeb

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.