OpenWeb 12/18/2009 (a.m.)

• A Humbled Microsoft Opens Windows to Rivals - TIME

  excerpt: "Once upon a time, Microsoft bestrode the software world like a ruthless cartoon villain, gobbling up rivals and defying pleas for restraint from regulators. But the once-impregnable giant has now been humbled: following an acrimonious 10-year anti-trust battle with European regulators, Microsoft on Wednesday finally agreed to open its Windows operating system to rival web browsers in Europe." Great opening line!  But they get the story wrong.  Woefully wrong!  Just the opposite is happening.  Microsoft has moved from the browser Web application to the Web itself.  It's the platform stupid!!! No one understands platform better than Microsoft.  Control the platform's base formats, protocols, interfaces and internal messaging system, and you control all applications, services and devices using that platform.   The problem for Microsoft has been that the Web is a platform used by all, but owned by none.  It's based on open standards that no one owns or controls.  So as the Web evolves into a universal platform for converged communications, content and collaborative computing, Microsoft was facing the one fate every monopolist fears - having to compete on a level playing field! While it took them well over ten years to come up with a counter strategy and effective implementation, Microsoft has finally achieved the impossible.   They have carved out a huge section of the Open Web for their proprietary and exclusive use.  

  Tags: ge, Open-Web, Open-Web-Ecosystem, BPOS, browsers, microsoft-monopoly

  • - By Gary Edwards

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

OpenWeb 12/04/2009 (a.m.)

• As Google Backs Away From A Plug-in, Microsoft Rushes Towards One - washingtonpost.com

  I posted two lengthy comments here.  Can't see the forest for all the trees is the idiom that comes to mind. excerpt: With Silverlight, Microsoft continues to make it clear that they intend to use this web application framework, which they developed, to power much of what they are doing on the web going forward. Again, the problem here is that not only does Microsoft control this, but it requires a plug-in to use. Sure, they've made the plug-in available to most browsers, including the ones by rivals Google and Apple, but it's still a plug-in. It's something that's going to stop everyone from seeing the same web no matter which browser they use. This has of course long been an issue with Microsoft. Despite a clear shift within the rest of the industry toward web standards, Microsoft long played difficult with its Internet Explorer browser. They could afford to, and maybe you could even argue that it was in their interest to, because they were so dominant. It was only when a standards-based browser, Mozilla's Firefox, started biting off significant chunks of IE's market share that Microsoft shifted their position to play more nicely with standards.

  Tags: ge, silverlight, wpf, Open-Web-Productivity

  • - By Gary Edwards

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

OpenWeb 12/03/2009 (a.m.)

• Google waving goodbye to Gears, hello to HTML5 [Updated] | Technology | Los Angeles Times

  Tags: Google Gears, HTML 5, Chrome

  • As Google prepares to release its first beta version of Chrome for the Mac (a developer preview has been available for months), the company is letting the sun set on its Gears project.

    "We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites," wrote a Google spokesman in an e-mail.

    That's great, but HTML5 isn't ready yet, and commercially available browsers don't support it.

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

Future of the Web 12/03/2009 (a.m.)

• Google waving goodbye to Gears, hello to HTML5 [Updated] | Technology | Los Angeles Times

  Tags: Google Gears, HTML 5, Chrome

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

OpenWeb 10/18/2009 (a.m.)

• Gray Matter : Open XML and the SharePoint Conference

  excerpt: The trend in Office development is the migration of solutions away from in-application scripted processing toward more data-centric development. Of course this is a primary purpose of Open XML, and it is great to see the amount of activity in this area. We've seen customers scripting Word in a server environment to batch process / print documents or for other automation tasks. In reality Word isn't built to do that on a large scale, it is better to work directly against the document rather than via the application whenever possible. The Open XML SDK unlocks a "whole nuther" environment for document processing, and gets you out of the business of scripting client apps on servers to do the work of a true server application (not to mention the licensing problems created by installing Office on a server). comment:  Gray makes a very important point here.  The dominance of the desktop based MSOffice Productivity Environment was largely based the embedded logic driving "in-process" documents that was application and platform (Win32 API) specific.  Tear open any of these workgroup-workflow oriented compound documents and you find application specific scripts, macros, OLE, data bindings, security settings and other application specific settings.  These internal components are certain to break whenever these highly interactive and "live" compound documents are converted to another format, or application use.  This is how MSOffice documents and the business processes they represent become "bound" to the MSOffice Productivity Environment. What Gray is pointing to here is that Microsoft is moving the legacy Productivity Environment to an MSWeb based center where OpenXML, Silverlight, CAML, XAML and a number of other .NET-WPF technologies become the workgroup drivers.  The key applications for the MS WebStack are Exchange/SharePoint/SQL Server.  To make this move, documents had to be separated from the legacy desktop Productivity Environment settings. Note that OpenXML is the only document format supported by MS Web Apps (Live)!  The MSWeb does not support HTML5 documents.

  Tags: Open-Web, MSOffice, ge

  • - By Gary Edwards

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

Future of the Web 10/11/2009 (a.m.)

• Knowledge Genes® - Welcome Page

  Tags: web2.0, collaboration, Knowledge, tools, future

  • Better knowledge, process and control
    coded WHAT, HOW and WHY
  • Better information in terms of WHAT you need to achieve, HOW and WHY

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

OpenWeb 10/10/2009 (a.m.)

• Google Cloudboard - Moving the Point of Assembly

  Google tests a service called Cloudboard, an online clipboard that should make it easy to copy data between Gmail, Google Docs and other Google services. The service is not publicly available yet, but there are many references to it. lengthy comment from ~ge~

  Tags: ge, Open-Web, MS-WebStack, Google, unified-productivity

  • - By Gary Edwards

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

OpenWeb 09/23/2009 (a.m.)

• Zoho's Next Big Thing | ge TalkBack on ZDNet

  Moving the Point of Assembly Kudos to Zoho. Their efforts remind me of the early days of the Microsoft Productivity Environment where core MSOffice editors expanded their reach through DDE, OLE, rich copy/paste, data binding, merged content and data, VBA scripting and the infamous recorder, and a developer API that meshed platform and productivity apps so deeply into end user information that the binding of business processes to the MOPE is proving near impossible to break. Even for years after the fact. A business ecosystem for client/server was born back in the early 90's, with Microsoft continuing on to own entirely the client side of the equation.

  Tags: ge, zoho, zdnet, mope, poa

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

OpenWeb 09/07/2009 (a.m.)

• AppleInsider | Inside Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Exchange Support

  Apple desktop and iPhone support of Microsoft Exchange is not support for Microsoft, as some think.  It's actually a strategy to erode Microsoft's desktop monopoly.  It's also part of a longer term plan to thwart Microsoft's hopes of leveraging their desktop monopoly into a Web Server monopoly. Excerpt: Apple is reducing its dependance upon Microsoft's client software, weakening Microsoft's ability to hold back and dumb down its Mac offerings at Apple's expense. More importantly, Apple is providing its users with additional options that benefit both Mac users and the open source community. In the software business, Microsoft has long known the importance of owning the client end. It worked hard to displace Netscape's web browser in the late 90s, not because there was any money to be made in giving away browser clients, but because it knew that whoever controlled the client could set up proprietary demands for a specific web server. That's what Netscape had worked to do as it gave away its web browser in hopes that it could make money selling Netscape web servers; Microsoft first took control of the client with Internet Explorer and then began tying its IE client to its own IIS on the server side with features that gave companies reasons to buy all of their server software from Microsoft. As Apple takes over the client end of Exchange, it similarly gains market leverage. First and foremost, the move allows Apple to improve the Exchange experience of Mac users so that business users have no reason not to buy Macs. Secondly, it gives Apple a client audience to market its own server solutions, including MobileMe to individual users and Snow Leopard Server to organizations. In concert with providing Exchange Server support, Apple is also delivering integrated support for its own Exchange alternatives in both MobileMe and with Snow Leopard Server's improved Dovecot email services, Address Book Server, iCal Server, the new Mobile Access secure gateway, and its included Push Notification Server.

  Tags: exchange, apple, iphone, monopoly

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

Future of the Web 08/30/2009 (a.m.)

• Using an NAS for Centrally Managing Your Media

  There are several reasons to utilize an NAS: obviously to back up your data, but one new trend is sharing media. For Netbook users, this is essential, since hard drive space is at a minimum.

  Tags: storage, devices, data, nas, device

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

OpenWeb 08/10/2009 (p.m.)

• HuffingtonPost CTO to speak on Enterprise MySQL

  HuffingtonPost CTO to speak on Enterprise MySQL: Heavy-Traffic Management on Aug. 11 at the NYC MySQL Group http://www.meetup.com/mysqlnyc/calendar/10930810/

  Tags: CTO, MySQL, IT Management

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

OpenWeb 07/26/2009 (p.m.)

• IT Management Conference & Expo in NYC Oct.14-16

  http://www.manageit.me ---The greatest minds in IT in 50+ presentations : top industry-leaders: Creator of MySQL Michael "Monty" Widenius, Internet Celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk, Co-Creator of PHP & Zend CTO Zeev Suraski, Richard Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations & Pioneer of Agile eXtreme Programmi...

  Tags: IT, Management, Leadership, CIO, CTO, CEO, MySQL, PHP, Zend, PMP

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

Future of the Web 07/14/2009 (p.m.)

• Remix Culture & Fair Use: Best Practices for Online Video

  An interesting video I came across about the main issues concerning fair use, copyright, and video mashups. Highlights from my transcription below: We’re seeing this blossoming of amateur cultures, video remixes and creativity, and a lot of these works are circulating on the Internet. Copyright law is all about balance........

  Tags: remix, fair use, copyright, mashup, culture, online video, creative commons, bestpractices, edu_trends, edublogger

  • An interesting video I came across about the main issues concerning fair use, copyright, and video mashups. Highlights from my transcription below: We’re seeing this blossoming of amateur cultures, video remixes and creativity, and a lot of these works are circulating on the Internet. Copyright law is all about balance........ - By Diego Morelli
  • An interesting video I came across about the main issues concerning fair use, copyright, and video mashups. Highlights from my transcription below: We’re seeing this blossoming of amateur cultures, video remixes and creativity, and a lot of these works are circulating on the Internet. Copyright law is all about balance........ - By Diego Morelli

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

OpenWeb 07/13/2009 (a.m.)

• Google's Real Chrome OS Problem: Who's Going To Buy It? | SiliconValley Insider

  .... "While i don't see Google or anyone else replacing the MSOffice productivity environment anytime soon, i do see Google challenging Microsoft wherever the Web comes into play. As for the future, that battle for desktop productivity will take place, just not with ChromeOS, Linux, or, the MacOS. What has to happen before the assault on the Microsoft's productivity empire can begin is that the business systems bound to the MSOffice productivity environment must transition to the Open Web, via SaaS or some other replacement. Or, the productivity environment itself must be re-purposed to the Open Web. The tricky part will be that re-purposing play. ChromeOS is a blockbuster announcement. Not a declaration of war, but a shot across the bow that shouts; Google will defend the Open Web, and profitable business they have there. ..... ~ge~

  Tags: ge, chromeOS, google, google-wave

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

Future of the Web 07/11/2009 (p.m.)

• Google's Real Chrome OS Problem: Who's Going To Buy It? (GOOG)

  While i don't see Google or anyone else replacing the MSOffice productivity environment, i do see Google challenging Microsoft wherever the Web comes into play. And as far as i can see into the future, that pretty much means everywhere. The tricky part will be that re-purposing play. ChromeOS is a blockbuster announcement. Not a declaration of war, but a shot across the bow that shouts; Google will defend the Open Web, and profitable business they have there. ~ge~

  Tags: ge, chromeOS, google, google-wave

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

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?

• 
  
  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.

OpenWeb 05/29/2009 (a.m.)

• Google shows Native Client built into HTML 5 | Webware - CNET

  "........ Google Native Client, still highly experimental, lets browsers run program modules natively on an x86 processor for higher performance than with Web programming technologies such as JavaScript or Flash that involve more software layers to process and execute the code. But to use it, there's a significant barrier: people must install a browser plug-in. However, Google wants to make the technology more broadly accessible in browsers through new technology coming to HTML, the standard used to build Web pages, and at the Google I/O developer conference Thursday demonstrated its work to make that happen...." Looks to me that Google is attacking the problem of integrating a Chrome browser with x86 desktop metal. Maybe it's the only way to get webkit/Chromium Web Apps on a par with native x86-Windows desktop apps? There is that infamous quote describing the Google v Microsoft challengeto consider: "Google has to replace the MSOffice productivity environment on the desktop "Client" before Microsoft replaces Google apps and services on the "Server". (Same holds true for IBM Lotus Notes - WebSphere on the Server and OpenOffice/Symphony on the desktop client). The quote actually comes from some high level Microsoft document experts, said to have been uttered while under the glaze of legendary Czech Pilsners during a recent ISO meet up in Prague. Looks like there is far more to this quote than meets the eye. I wonder though. Google is looking good. So good that perhaps they are confident enough to take things public - as the events at Google I/O seem to indicate? ~ge~

  tags: html5, html+, webkit, webkit_chromium, x86-Chrome

• Classes of Fidelity for Document Applications - Rick Jellife

  Rick Jellife weighs in on the OpenOffice ODF- MSOffice OpenXML interop embroglio. His take is to focus on Classes of Fidelity, providing us with a comparative table of fidelity categories. I wonder though if this über document processing approach is anywhere near consistent with the common sense meaning of interoperability to average end-users? IMHO, end-users interpret "interoperability" to mean that compliant applications can exchange documents without loss of information. "..... In my blog last year Is ODF the new RTF or the new .DOC? Can it be both? Do we need either? I raised the question of whether ODF would replace RTF or DOC. I think this issue has come back with a bang with the release of Office 2007 SP2, and I'd like to give another pointer to it for readers who missed it first time around.... "...... OASIS ODF TC has some kind of conformance and testing wing at work, but it is not at all clear that they will deliver anything in this kind of area. Without targetting these classes, ODF's breezy conformance requirements means that ODF conforment software can deliver vastly different kinds of fidelity, yet still accord to the letter of the law (and, indeed, to the spirit of the ODF spec, which allows so many holes) which will cause frustration all-around....." Ouch!

  tags: odf, ooxml, openxml, interop

• DataViz "Documents To Go" rocks Google Android with unique Office functions | ZDNet Review

  With Documents To Go for the Google Android platform you get read, write, create and sync support for Word and Excel 2007 (OpenXML formatted) documents, support for receiving and sending attachments through Gmail and other applications (including the free RoadSync Exchange beta client, open password protected files, and view Word documents with track changes so you can see what others have done to your document. ZDNet reviewer Mathew Miller also recommends that people check out the details of the DataViz Intact Technology to see how documents will be handled to maintain file formatting and structure throughout the process of editing. There are two YouTube Video demonstations of "Documents to Go" running on an Android. ........ No collaborative editing with MSOffice desktops, but this is outstanding stuff.

  tags: openxml, dataviz, android

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

Future of the Web 05/29/2009

• Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O - O'Reilly Radar

  Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O

  Tags: html5, google, browser

  • Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O - By Alex MIkhalev

• Accela Selects Newton for Applicant Management

  Accela, the leading provider of government software solutions, has implemented recruiting software from Newton to help manage their on-going efforts to hire the best and brightest.

  Tags: applicant, management, newton, accela, recruiting, software

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

OpenWeb 05/28/2009 (p.m.)

• Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O - O'Reilly Radar

  "Never underestimate the web," says Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra in his keynote at Google I/O this morning..... Tim O'Reilly provides us with his play-by-play account of the Google I/O event. Amazing stuff. The Web has arrived and it is no longer the "network of networks". It's rather quickly becoming the mother of all platforms. Great coverage.

  tags: webkit, web-3.0, webkit-chromium, google, html5, css4

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

Future of the Web 05/28/2009

• Essential online business software for startups

  You’ve decided to start your own business- escape the grind and finally pursue your dreams. Today's entrepreneur can utilize a variety of enterprise software applications that will help them get on their feet without giving away an arm and leg of their nest-egg. I've created a list of some of my favorites- feel free to contribute with any others that you know of.

  Tags: business, software, tools, dropbox, enterprise, newton, on, demand, odesk, quickbooks, recruiting, small, startup, twitter, web, 2.0, zazzle

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

Future of the Web 05/27/2009

• Google

  Tags: no_tag

  • 
    • I liked the fossil google header in middle may 2009 - By Ernest Rando

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

OpenWeb 05/25/2009 (a.m.)

• In Office SP2, Microsoft manages to reduce interoperability | HoneyMonster Spells It Out

  What mr. Weir and mr. Allison also don?t tell you is that controlling a standard is very much a competitive instrument. Imagine Microsoft extending Word or Excel with new capabilities (like tex-like layout rules, new graphics filters or new advanced mathematical functions). If the documents had to be saved in a format controlled by someone else, they could stall the standardization of these features until the product they support catches up. Or postpone the functions indefinitely effectively nixing the advantages. That is why Microsoft had to have a standard they could influence. That is why mr. Weir and mr. Allison are pushing ODF. While these standards now are the responsibilities of standards organizations (Oasis and Ecma for ODF and OOXML resp.), they are still very much driven by corporations with their own agendas. This is as true for ODF as it is for OOXML. That?s why we need both standards. We cannot afford corporate politics playing delaying games with our standards. And whatever happened to the argument that a standard was important to retain document fidelity for the future? Wasn't the whole idea behind writing down the specification that the way documents render and behave would be defined by an open specification rather than an implementation (which is subject to change)? Or was that argument only valid when it could be used effectively against Word and Excel? Double standards make me sick. Please face up to it. State that you expect Microsoft to adhere to ODF 1.2 once ratified. Until then quit trying to spin this as a defiency in MS Office. It is a failure in ODF. Owe up to it and get back to work! Please!

  tags: odf, ooxml, openformula, interoperability

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

OpenWeb 05/23/2009 (a.m.)

• Mozilla drags IE into the future with Canvas element plugin - Ars Technica

  Mozilla plans to drag IE into the next generation of open web technologies without Microsoft's help. One of the first steps towards achieving this goal is a new experimental plugin that adapts Mozilla's implementation of the HTML5 Canvas element so that it can be used in Internet Explorer. The Canvas element allows web developers to programmatically render interactive bitmap images in HTML content. It was invented by Apple to bring richer graphical capabilities to the company's WebKit renderer. The Canvas functionality eventually became part of the HTML5 standard and has been implemented in both Gecko and Presto. Canvas is used extensively in several popular web applications, including Google Maps, but it hasn't gained widespread acceptance because it isn't available in Internet Explorer. Taking advantage of ActiveX  In order to make Google Maps work in IE, Google had to develop ExCanvas—a complex library that implements many of the Canvas element's features with VML, Microsoft's proprietary alternative to SVG. Unfortunately, scripted manipulation of VML is too slow to be used for highly interactive web applications. Mozilla's solution is to bake its own native Canvas implementation into an ActiveX plugin that can be integrated directly into Internet Explorer.

  tags: activex, canvas, searchmonkey, mozilla, ie

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

OpenWeb 05/21/2009 (p.m.)

• The Phantom Proposals

  tags: no_tag

  • OK, once again things are looking very nasty at the ODF TC wonderland. This may surpass the infamous "List Enhancement" donnybrook that ended up with OASIS closing down the OpenDocument Foundation OSS sponsorship loophole. - post by garyedwards

• In Office SP2, Microsoft manages to reduce interoperability | TalkBack on ZDNet

  ODF is important. So What Went Wrong? Response to Jeremy Allison: Having participated in a number of government pilot studies, I must say that you are right; government officials do care about ODF. They really want it to work. But they also had expectations that ODF simply wasn't designed for. What they expected ODF to be was an open technology based on highly-structured XML markup that was application, platform, and vendor-independent, backward compatible, universally interoperable, and importantly, Web ready. That is not ODF nor is it OOXML. In fact, the closest thing we have for meeting these expectations is an ajax-webkit style HTML+ (HTML5, CSS4, SVG/Canvas, JS jQuery, etc.). ODF is highly structured, but it is not application-independent. .....

  tags: odf, ooxml, iso, compatibility

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

Future of the Web 05/21/2009

• Top 5 Business Tools to Help Make Life Sane

  Here is a quick list of 5 useful business tools to help outmaneuver your competition and avoid a headache in the process.

  Tags: business, tools, efficiency, Accounting, Collaboration, Hiring, software, Sales, Communication

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

OpenWeb 05/20/2009 (p.m.)

• Microsoft-led Forum Yields Tools for OOXML Interoperability - Business Center - PC World

  Is there nothing that can cool the flames of this document war? Interesting coverage of the recent OOXML Interoperability event in London (Monday). Real stuff not talk. Since Florian, Jason and i are working on an OpenWeb ready HTML+ layer riding over OOXML there are some things mentioned that look very interesting. ..."An Opera browser plug-in for Open XML Document Viewer v1.0 was released at the meeting; the tool provides direct translation for Open XML documents (.DOCX) to HTML, enabling access to Open XML documents from any platform with a Web browser, including mobile devices. The document-viewing software already includes a plug-in for Firefox, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8...." ..."Microsoft and the other participants in Monday's forum also made available a beta of Apache POI 3.5, a Java API (application programming interface) to access information in the Open XML Format....."

  tags: ooxml, plutext, wiki-word, html+

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

OpenWeb 05/20/2009 (a.m.)

• Google and RDFa: what and why - bobdc.blog

  Surprise—to make more money! After the initial burst of discussion about Google putting their toe into the standardized metadata water, I started wondering about the corner of the pool they had chosen. They're not ready to start parsing any old RDFa; they'll be looking for RDFa that uses the vocabulary they somewhat hastily defined for the purpose. Why does the vocabulary define the properties that it defines? It will be interesting to see how the big hustling SEO world adapts to this. In the words of Drupal project lead Dries Buytaert, Structured data is the new search engine optimization. When he writes "Every webmaster wanting to improve click-through rates, reduce bounce rates, and improve conversation rates, can no longer ignore RDFa or Microformats", it reminds me that when the SEO world eventually gravitates more in the RDFa direction or the microformats direction, these very quantitative, results-driven people will have some real data to explain why. I'll have to start searching their voluminous discussions out there to see what people are saying.

  tags: RDFa, metadata, bobdc, google

• IntalioCloud takes on Salesforce.com » VentureBeat

  IntalioCloud takes on Salesforce.com with public-private cloud design. Note that business applications developed for use in Salesforce’s platform have to use the company’s proprietary programming language, while IntalioCloud is open to many languages such as JavaScript and Ruby. Third, Intalio says it provides 25 gigabytes of data storage per account, much more than Salesforce. $42 Mill in VC The nexxus here is that both salseforce.com and Intalio need to provide integration into the MSOffice productivity environment to compete with Microsoft Azure.

  tags: venture-capital, plutext, wiki-word, jason, salesforce.com, intalio

• Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion (Update1) - Bloomberg.com

  The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s. this article features a complete break down of where the money went!!!! New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.

  tags: financial-crisis, financial-oligarchs, obama-socialism

• Will The Dollar Standard Collapse?

  The Dollar Crisis Quick Synopsis:     * Abandoning the gold standard in 1971 has resulted in large global trade imbalances and a massive buildup of foreign currency reserves     * These trade imbalances and buildup of foreign reserves have resulted in frequent booms and busts since 1971     * The Japanese bust of 1989, the Asian economic crisis of 1997, and the current US credit market collapse have resulted from the post-1971 paper money monetary system     * Abandoning the gold standard has gradually resulted in a very overvalued US dollar, and that the dollar is headed for disaster     *  “The dollar standard is inherently flawed and increasingly unstable. Its collapse will be the most important economic event of the 21st century.”

  tags: financial-crisis, obama-socialism, inflation, dollar-destruction

  • Before I begin, I’ll make a prediction, since I’m an investor and my job is to predict. I increasingly believe that the dollar will collapse, and its ramifications could be as violent as when the credit markets cracked in July 2007. Currency collapses are nothing new, just as the bursting of a credit market bubble was nothing new. A dollar collapse could very well lead to carnage in domestic asset markets, whether it be the stock market, bond market, etc. Also, US imports and the overvalued dollar are fueling many of the export-oriented economies abroad, so a dollar collapse could wreak havoc on foreign asset markets as well. And once it happens, we’re going to view the collapse of the dollar as an obvious event that we should have long seen coming. Just as we now view the subprime wreckage and bursting of the real estate bubble as an event we should have easily predicted.
    
    The problem is timing. Does the dollar collapse in 2009, or 2015? And is it a slow depreciation, or a sudden 50% fall? Those are tougher questions. Richard Duncan predicted the dollar’s demise in 2002. His error of timing discredited an otherwise brilliant book.
  • In a sentence, “The Dollar Crisis” is about how the world changed in 1971. That was when Richard Nixon dropped the gold standard (or its close cousin, the Bretton Woods international monetary system). Here’s the youtube video: Youtube Bretton Woods. The end of the gold standard ushered in a new era of large trade imbalances and the buildup of foreign currency reserves, and these trade imbalances and large foreign currency reserves have had significant impacts on the global economy that many people don’t realize. Huge trade imbalances and large foreign reserves didn’t really exist during the gold standard. During the gold standard, a country’s money supply was determined by the amount of gold it had. Banks’ reserves were either gold or indirectly tied to gold, and so the amount of money they could lend, and that the nation could print, was backed by the nation’s gold reserves. To see the implications of that sort of monetary system on trade imbalances, let’s take a hypothetical United States and China, where the US is buying lots of goods from China. The US gets goods; China gets dollars. China takes its excess dollars, gives them to the US, and gets gold in exchange. The US gold reserves would decline, causing credit contraction in the US. This would lead to recession; prices would adjust downwards; and falling prices would enhance the trade competitiveness of the US. The US would stop exporting so many goods from China as China’s costs of production begin rising relative to the United States’. The US would stop being a net importer; gold would flow back in; and equilibrium on the balance of payments would be re-established.
    
    Under the gold standard, trade imbalances were unsustainable and self-correcting.
    
  • Today, in the system of fiat money, that’s no longer the case.

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

Future of the Web 05/20/2009

• What would you do with 100 times the bandwidth?

  what would you do with 20, or 100, times the bandwidth you currently have? This may become a possibility very soon, so I thought it would be interesting to compile a list of future applications that could exist with a much bigger pipe. Feel free to chirp in with your own ideas!

  Tags: IT, used, router, interop, high, bandwidth, cisco, definition, augmented, reality, future, futurist

• Rob Weir is caught in a deceit

  Tags: rob weir, normative

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

OpenWeb 05/18/2009 (a.m.)

• Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Introducing Rich Snippets

  Google "Rich Snippets" is a new presentation of HTML snippets that applies Google's algorithms to highlight structured data embedded in web pages. Rich Snippets give end-users convenient summary information about their search results at a glance. Google is currently supporting a very limited subset of data about reviews and people. When searching for a product or service, users can easily see reviews and ratings, and when searching for a person, they'll get help distinguishing between people with the same name. It's a simple change to the display of search results, yet our experiments have shown that users find the new data valuable. For this to work though, both Web-masters and Web-workers have to annotate thier pages with structured data in a standard format. Google snippets supports microformats and RDFa. Existing Web data can be wrapped with some additional tags to accomplish this. Notice that Google avoids mention of RDF and the W3C's vision of a "Semantic Web" where Web objects are fully described in machine readable semantics. Over at the WHATWG group, where work on HTML5 continues, Google's Ian Hickson has been fighting RDFa and the Semantic Web in what looks to be an effort to protect the infamous Google algorithms. RDFa provides a means for Web-workers, knowledge-workers, line-of-business managers and document generating end-users to enrich their HTML+ with machine semantics. The idea being that the document experts creating Web content can best describe to search engine and content management machines the objects-of-information used. The google algorithms provide a proprietary semantics of this same content. The best solution to the tsunami of conten the Web has wrought would be to combine end-user semantic expertise with Google algorithms. Let's hope Google stays the RDFa course and comes around to recognize the full potential of organizing the world's information with the input of content providers. One thing the world desperately needs are powerful desktop editors capable of

  tags: rdfa, rich-snippets, google, html5, odf, ooxml, w3c

• Could Adobe be open-sourcing Flash? - Computerworld Blogs

  tags: no_tag

  • Just a note about the diigolet cutoff problem: i wrote my lengthy missive by clicking on the comment link in the "Future of the Web" eMail notification: Could Adobe be open-sourcing Flash? - Computerworld Blogs - Add comment Tags: Adobe flash open source | shared by Paul Merrell 2009-05-17 03:46:22 Kind of a shortcut to get around the diigolet limitations. - post by garyedwards
  • Hey Paul, watch out for diigolet. It does cut your comments off!!!! If you post the comment first, and then go to Diigo later, you can complete the full edit. I have notified Wade and Maggie about this killer problem. - post by garyedwards
  • Paul, you forgot WebKit! This is now a three horse race; Adobe "Flash-Flex-Air", Microsoft XAML-Silverlight, and the Apple-Google-Nokia-Palm-RiMM "Webkit". Novell's "Moonlight" is to Siliverlight what "WiNE" is to the Win32 API. Adobe has a long history of gradual open sourcing, with PDF a good example. What they seem to do is to milk a proprietary technology for all it's worth, developing best they can a "platform" of tools, services, developers and end user dependencies. As competitors and emerging technologies grind away at the proprietary platform, Adobe hastens the transition to "open source / open technology" basis. This allows them to milk the platform even longer. Trust is an important part in the establishment of any platform. Submitting parts of a proprietary technology to an open standards consortia helps offset developer and end user fears of lock-in. Adobe seems to have mastered this aspect of the quiet trap. They somehow manage to get these technologies into an open standards - open tech footing / future direction, before the accusations start. I think it's also true that Adobe is careful and in many ways respectful in how they "milk" a platform. Especially compared to the ruthless way Microsoft squeezes users, developers and trading partners. (Once the platform is established though, dependencies and the cost of moving become far more important factors than "trust"). One other point is that WebKit has won this race for next generation "Rich Internet Application" (RiA). Silverlight and Flash are browser plug-ins capable of running as standalone run-times or, application based add-ons. WebKit didn't win by challenging Flash and Silverlight in the RiA sense of a highly graphical and fluid interface. The way the WebKit community won was by re-writing the basic browser components to accommodate three things: ..... the browser as a "rich internet application" OS ...... target the Web document model with the webkit API for a highly graphical, multi-dimensionally interactive, backwards compatible but classically structured document advance. This is HTML+ (HTML5, CSS4, SVG/Canvas, JS, jQuery). ..... Own the edge of the Web (devices), and let that emerging marketshare whipsaw the document model for the greater Web. Oh yeah. WebKit is an open technology that was open source from the gitgo. The way they deal with vendor dominated standards consortia is to submit their enhancements as proposals, but keep advancing the open technology regardless of the competitive vendor wars and alliances guaranteed to slow/kill things behind the thin veil of "standards" work. Because of the dominance of webkit at the edge, the vendor consortia are unable to stop WebKit enhancements. They are forced to consider the proposals. This has numerous effects. For instance, after eight years of left-for-dead neglect, the W3C was forced to resurrect work on HTML, CSS, CSS layout, and SVG. It's the only way the W3C could stay relevant. Adobe will be similarly forced to accelerate the openness of Flash. Given a choice between a truly open technology like WebKit, and a somewhat/eventually open Flash, developers will choose WebKit. And oh yeah; there is that little thing about WebKit owning the edge of the Web. The killer that seals the deal for WebKit however is that the greater Web's document model is changing. As Google, Facebook, Yahoo and many other web site service providers move to get their pages iPhone ready, the greater Web ends up adopting the WebKit document model at it's core. Microsoft has lost the battle for the Web's document model. The OOXML-XAML-Silvelight chain of WPF technologies will dominate the "business Web" primarily because we were unable to break the desktop monopolist grip on business documents and processes. The incredible success that WebKit is having both at the edge and across the greater Web insures however that the future of the Web will be "open". At least in part. ~ge~ - post by garyedwards

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

Future of the Web 05/18/2009

• Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Introducing Rich Snippets

  Google "Rich Snippets" is a new presentation of HTML snippets that applies Google's algorithms to highlight structured data embedded in web pages. Rich Snippets give end-users convenient summary information about their search results at a glance. Google is currently supporting a very limited subset of data about reviews and people. When searching for a product or service, users can easily see reviews and ratings, and when searching for a person, they'll get help distinguishing between people with the same name. It's a simple change to the display of search results, yet our experiments have shown that users find the new data valuable. For this to work though, both Web-masters and Web-workers have to annotate thier pages with structured data in a standard format. Google snippets supports microformats and RDFa. Existing Web data can be wrapped with some additional tags to accomplish this. Notice that Google avoids mention of RDF and the W3C's vision of a "Semantic Web" where Web objects are fully described in machine readable semantics. Over at the WHATWG group, where work on HTML5 continues, Google's Ian Hickson has been fighting RDFa and the Semantic Web in what looks to be an effort to protect the infamous Google algorithms. RDFa provides a means for Web-workers, knowledge-workers, line-of-business managers and document generating end-users to enrich their HTML+ with machine semantics. The idea being that the document experts creating Web content can best describe to search engine and content management machines the objects-of-information used. The google algorithms provide a proprietary semantics of this same content. The best solution to the tsunami of conten the Web has wrought would be to combine end-user semantic expertise with Google algorithms. Let's hope Google stays the RDFa course and comes around to recognize the full potential of organizing the world's information with the input of content providers. One thing the world desperately needs are powerful desktop editors capable of natively speaking RDFa-HTML+. Leading office suites fail miserably in this respect. MSOSffice implements OOXML, and OpenOffice ODF. When it comes to HTML though, these clowns are stuck in 1998.

  Tags: rdfa, rich-snippets, google, html5, odf, ooxml, w3c

• Could Adobe be open-sourcing Flash? - Computerworld Blogs

  Tags: Adobe, flash, open source

  • ow, however, with Strobe, its just announced Flash framework, Adobe looks like it may be getting more open-source friendly as well.

    Strobe, which will show up in the 3rd quarter of 2009, is an open framework for creating SWF (ShockWave Flash) server-side players. With Strobe, content creators and Web developers will be able to easily create sites that host their own video.

  • To make sure that the Flash family beats out the likes of Microsoft's Silverlight and its Linux little-brother Novell's Moonlight, Adobe is also considering open-sourcing its flagship Flash player.

    As part of the Open Screen Project, Adobe has already opened up much of Flash.

  • To make sure that the Flash family beats out the likes of Microsoft's Silverlight and its Linux little-brother Novell's Moonlight, Adobe is also considering open-sourcing its flagship Flash player.

    As pa

• Intel Could Face Civil Charges in Europe - PC World

  Tags: Intel, antitrust, DG, Competition, satellite litigation

  • But Intel could face even more payouts if Intel competitors, such as AMD, take civil cases on the back of the Commission's regulatory action, according to Alan Davis, an expert in competition law at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM.

    "This will open the floodgates for competitors to sue," said Davis. "There was a complainant in this case, AMD [Advanced Micro Devices], and without question they and other competitors will pursue a case for damages."

    "The fine goes to the European Commission's coffers, not to the competitors who suffered damage to their businesses because of Intel's anti-competitive practices," he said. "What is likely to happen is that action will be started and a massive settlement will be made."

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

Future of the Web 05/16/2009

• 10 Eye-wateringly Huge Office Layoffs From The Credit Crunch

  The rate of job losses in the credit crunch has been monumental and at times unprecedented: on a single day in January of this year, 70,000 people lost their jobs!

  Tags: credit, crunch, employment, recession

• How Small Business can compete in Big Recruiting

  The question is: how can small and medium sized business (SMEs) stay competitive with larger firms, who posses far more resources to hire the best talent out there? It is in the talent acquisition arena that SMEs need to utilize every advantage that they can get their hands on to lasso the brightest minds available.

  Tags: applicant, management, small, business, SME, recruiting, hiring, competitive, edge, software, web, 2.0

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

OpenWeb 05/15/2009 (a.m.)

• The Problem With Debt | Clusterstock on HomeOwner Equity Loss

  "15.4 million homeowners now owe more on their houses than their houses are worth, up from 13.6 million four months ago. The number will probably top 20 million when all is said and done. To mark this sad stat, we've updated our post from last fall on the power of leverage." Excellent math in this article. Very simple and straightforward explanation. Do the math and weep.

  tags: financial-crisis, homeowner-equity

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