Business Archives - Page 15 of 72

DocSyncer Dead. Too Bad.

Posted on June 16, 2008 ·

Cliff Shaw is a serial SaaS entrepreneur who keeps on coming up with really useful services that just don’t make it as a business.

ProtectMyPhotos was my favorite photo backup and synchronization service. Unlike Flickr, Photobucket, Zooomr and just about all the photo site focusing on sharing your photos, this one did not require manual uploads. In fact the best feature was that after initial setup, you could completely forgot about it. Just like Mozy, the general-purpose online backup service, ProtectMyPhotos worked away in the background, non-intrusively, throttling back at times of heavier computer use. With added bells & whistles (online view & edit, sync between online and several offline versions..etc) it was a perfect service – for free, that is. Apparently it failed to attract enough paying customers, so eventually it shut down.

It did not completely die though: Cliff Shaw’s next startup, DocSyncer clearly showed signs of it’s “parent”: the UI was quite similar to ProtectMyPhotos, and they leveraged a lot from the core synchronization engine of the previous product. It looked like a perfectly executed turnaround: the existing technology found new purpose. DocSyncer filled a void left by the web-office providers: it synchronized desktop documents with Google Apps. I was quite certain they would have a short life-span, but this time with a happy ending, Google taking them out. Since the acquisition did not materialize, I can only assume either they could not come to terms or Google is already working on their own solution.

DocSyncer is about to shut down. Quote from the website:

We’ve figured out in a very short amount of time that DocSyncer is a cool tool – but not a business.

I really hate to see it go. No transition to web-based applications is complete unless we can bring our old baggage, i.e. transfer existing desktop documents to the online service. I see evidence of interest day by day, in the 100K or so hits my two “import your history to gmail” guides received. DocSyncer did better then import, it offered true synchronization, but I’d be quite satisfied just to see one-way batch import tools to Google Docs and Zoho, the two leading service providers.

The DocSyncer site says:

Until we meet again, good luck and thank you for the support!

“Meet again”: Cliff does not talk about his next gig yet, but his LinkedIn profile lists him as CEO of Picstreem. His profile also reveals four startup gigs in the past, two of which getting sold. He is a comeback guy, I am looking forward to seeing Picstreem.

In the meantime let’s hope that Google and Zoho will soon offer mass migration, perhaps synchronization.

Update (6/17/08): Wow, it’s amazing how many blogs picked up the story, all without a single bit of accreditation. Thanks, gals and guys!

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, SaaS, Startups · Tagged: docsyncer, Google, google apps, google docs, picstreem, protectmyphotos, SaaS, web office, zoho

Windows Live FolderShare No Longer Strictly P2P?

Posted on June 16, 2008 ·

Foldershare is a life-saver: a peer-to-peer file synchronization product that does its magic in discreetly in the background, with the user barely noticing it even exists. While it needs to log in to the MS servers, it does NOT sync / upload actual data, all synchronization is strictly P2P. In fact one of the setup options is to define whether you allow remote P2P sync to occur through the Net, or strictly on your LAN, behind the firewall.

I’ve been using it for years now, as part of my data sync and backup strategy: I let FolderShare synchronize data between two laptops and a desktop, then I use the desktop as the “master” which will back up data online to Mozy, the other life-saver.

Of course using two products for somewhat similar purposes is redundant, and I have previously speculated that Microsoft should tie Foldershare and Skydrive (Live Mesh, Live Drive – pick your favorite buzzword) offering both PC sync and Web backup. I wonder if it’s about to happen.

I noticed this weekend that my computers could sync without them being online at the same time – which is (used to be? ) a primary requirement for FolderShare to work. Now I could repeatedly test turning off all but one computer, update files on the one with FolderShare running, then shut down FolderShare, start another machine, and voila! – my changes got synchronized. How was that possible when it had nowhere to get the information from, other than the Microsoft servers? (unless the closed program left behind a process running, other than Foldershare.exe)

If this means FolderShare is no longer strictly a P2P product, I actually welcome that change – except for the fact that it happened unannounced. Leaving users in the belief they are only sync-ing data between their own computers when in fact it’ stored on Microsoft’s servers would be a serious violation of their privacy.

Interesting coincidence (is it?): FolderShare will have a planned outage of 48-72 hours this week. 72 hours (3 days!) is a lot of time, it should be enough for major changes. In fact more than enough – such outage would be unacceptable from any service provider – except apparently from Microsoft. (Yes, I know, we get what we pay for, and this is a free service – it’s still a ridiculous outage.)

Update: Further testing reveals that the actual data files are not transferred between offline computers, only the *.p2p placeholder files. Sigh of relief: your data files are not stored on Microsoft’s servers. BUT …. BUT: the index is indeed stored centrally. This did not appear to be the case with the original FolderShare by ByteTaxi, prior to the MS acquisition. I don’t know when it changed, and I don’t recall being warned about it. The former FolderShare user agreement page disappeared and I haven’t found any updated information on FolderShare’s site.

Update (6/24):

Ouch! C’mon guys, this is so simple, even I could fix it.

Filed Under: Customer Service, Personal Productivity, SaaS · Tagged: cloud computing, foldershare, live mesh, microsoft, On-Demand, SaaS, windows live

Microsoft Legal Wants Me to Take Down THEIR OWN CONTENT

Posted on June 11, 2008 ·

I received a surprising voicemail from Microsoft Legal – they demand that I take down the content at www.theultimatebug.com since it points to a promotion that’s no longer running. Click below to hear the voicemail, courtesy of GrandCentral:

There’s only one problem (actually more): this is not my content, it was set up and is controlled by Microsoft, or an entity that created the promo for Microsoft. The promotion it refers to, The Ultimate Steal was actually quite generous, giving MS Office away to students for $60. My post on the subject was partly promotional, partly poking fun at MightySoft since they could not even get the promo site up working properly:

The countdown reached zero, and started again. And again… several times, even after the advertised opening of the promotion, users were not able to get in, they were just staring at the recycled counter. A commenter @ CrunchGear called it The Ultimate Publicity Scam. I thought it was just a bug, so I created www.theultimatebug.com and pointed to to the MS promo site.

Now they want me to take it down. I can’t, since it’s not my site. The Ultimate Bug domain points to 209.162.191.152, which appears to belong to Peek Consulting LLC, in Louisville, KY. Perhaps MS or Digital River worked with them to create the promotion … I have no clue. Ultimatesteal.com is owned by Microsoft, and while they rerouted the main page to an end-of-life notice, the original content, the one Microsoft Legal wants me to take down is still available here: http://www.theultimatesteal.com/store/msshus/ContentTheme/pbPage.microsoft_office_ultimate

Dear Microsoft, feel free to take your content down any time. And perhaps next time use a smarter agency.

Of course this makes me wonder: what if I really had duplicated the content on my site? Could MS legally force me to remove it, even though it clearly identifies the end-date as May 16 2208? I know some attorneys who read this blog, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to jump in with your comments. Thanks in advance.

Update (6/13) : Someone at Microsoft is reading this blog, after all. 209.162.191.152 which theultimatebug.com was pointing to now shows ‘under construction’. The “bug” lost its meaning after MS fixed the error anyway, and now the promotion itself is over… I need to figure out what to do with this cool domain. In the meantime I am redirecting it to the original post that started it all.

Filed Under: Marketing / PR, Personal Productivity · Tagged: copyright, grandcentral, Humor, legal, microsoft, Microsoft Office, ms office, take-down, theultimatebug, theultimatesteal, Ultimate Steal

Airline Special Calendar

Posted on June 6, 2008 ·

When I lived on the East Coast and flew US Airways (back than just USAir) a lot, we just called it Useless Air. Today I received an email from Useless Air trying to get me buy back the miles I lost:

Our records indicated that 19,560 miles were forfeited on 12-01-2007 because your last activity date 05-19-2006 was more than 24 months ago.

May 2006 to December 2007 is more than 24 months on Useless Air’s calendar. Thank God I am not aging according to their schedule.

Filed Under: Customer Service, Misc · Tagged: air miles, customer disservice, frequent flyer, us airways, usair, useless air

Microsoft’s Aborted Baby: the First Web-Office (Almost)

Posted on June 5, 2008 ·

The transition of power from Founder to Successor is never smooth. If there’s one company that planned it carefully and has been on the path of smooth execution, that’s Microsoft. Life-long friendship, 8-year-long transition – yet things got bumpy at times, especially in the early days. The Wall Street Journal runs a story with rare insight into some of the difficult times:

Things became so bitter that, on one occasion, Mr. Gates stormed out of a meeting in a huff after a shouting match in which Mr. Ballmer jumped to the defense of several colleagues…

The conflict between the two men paralyzed business-strategy decisions that the company still wrestles with today.

The two men clashed as Mr. Ballmer tried to assert himself in his new job. As the firm’s iconic leader, Mr. Gates still held sway that wasn’t tied to a title: In meetings Mr. Gates would interject with sarcasm, undermining Mr. Ballmer in front of other executives, Mr. Gates and other Microsoft executives say.

Two worked out their differences in 2001, when Founder Bill Gates realized he himself needed to change: having formally relinquished the CEO title to Steve Ballmer, he had to let him lead without constantly being challenged, overshadowed.

But let’s turn back to our angle here, how Microsoft could have been a very early SaaS pioneer:

In one case, two vice presidents clashed over the future of NetDocs, a promising effort to offer software programs such as word processing over the Internet. The issue: Because NetDocs risked cannibalizing sales of Microsoft’s cash-cow Office programs, some executives wanted NetDocs killed.

Messrs. Gates and Ballmer were unable to settle on a plan. First, NetDocs ballooned to a 400-person staff, then it got folded into the Office group in early 2001, where it died.

Fascinating. Eight years later web-based products still threaten to cannibalize Microsoft’s cash-cow, but they can no longer be ignored – largely because of Google and Zoho which now offer viable alternatives to users formerly “stuck” with Microsoft’s products. A costly debate, indeed.

Filed Under: Business, Personal Productivity, SaaS · Tagged: bill gates, Google, microsoft, netdocs, SaaS, steve ballmer, web office, zoho

One Day Left for Early Bird Rate to Launch: Silicon Valley 2008

Posted on May 25, 2008 ·

I’ve pretty much said everything there is to say about Launch: Silicon Valley 2008, a joint event of SVASE and Garage Technology Ventures.

The presenting startup applications are in, being evaluated, and thirty of them will debut on June 10th @ the Microsoft Mountain View Campus.

There is another important deadline now: Monday is the last day you can register at the Early Bird rate, which represents a $50 discount.

See you there in June!

Filed Under: Bay Area, Social Networking, Startups · Tagged: Art of the Start, business events, DealMakerMedia, Demo, entrepreneurship, Garage.com, guy kawasaki, IBDNetwork, launch silicon valley, microsoft, product showcase, SDForum, silicon valley, Social Networking, startup pitch, Startups, SVASE, Under the Radar, UtR, vc, vc Funding, venture Capital

We Don’t Know What We’re Doing But We’ve Got the Money to Fix It

Posted on May 22, 2008 ·

In case you’re wondering, I’m talking about Twitter. Their blog-post addressing system failures is outright shocking.

We’ve gone through our various databases, caches, web servers, daemons, and despite some increased traffic activity across the board, all systems are running nominally. The truth is we’re not sure what’s happening.

Translation: sorry everyone, we have a popular service and have no clue why it’s constantly crashing. It’s bad. really-really bad. But hey, at least they are honest. And the $15 million they’ve just picked up should be enough to hire someone who actually knows how to get out of this mess. (Update: they just did)

Update: On second thought, I am less optimistic forgiving. Twitter already raised $5M before this round, that should have allowed them to bring in expertise they clearly lack. If only their priorities were on fixing the service instead of chasing more money.

I keep on re-reading the blog post:

I have this graph up on my screen all the time.

So what? Here’s the chart I often check, provided by Zoho’s Site24x7 service:

I have no idea where the spikes (performance degradation) come from. I’m just as clueless as the twitter team. The difference: I’m not providing a service people became dependent on.

Filed Under: SaaS, Startups · Tagged: downtime, failure, site24x7, statups, Twitter, vc Funding, zoho

On the HP – EDS Deal

Posted on May 13, 2008 ·

Update: I did not think the photos would need explanation. Presumably everyone recognizes HP CEO Mark Hurd, but no, the guy on the right does not work for EDS. For younger readers: there was (is) a Very Blue, Very Big Corporation, that once made the transition from hardware to a services company, and the guy on the right is the turnaround CEO.

OK, that was the fun part, for real analysis read these other articles:

Filed Under: Business · Tagged: EDS, HP, IBM, Lou Gerstner, Mark Hurd

Why Cambrian House Failed – it’s All in the Pizzaz

Posted on May 12, 2008 ·

Cambrian House, the poster-boys of Crowdsourcing are essentially dead – assets being sold in a garage sale for a fraction of what investors put in. TechCrunch and Mark Evans speculate the House collapsed due to poor execution.

Of course.. in fact they were doomed to fail, and it was obvious ever since the 1000 pizzas episode. This is what I wrote back then:

They are not afraid of unusual publicity stunts, although frankly Feeding Google was more about noise than being smart: followed by cameras, completely unannounced, they descended on the Google campus with 1000 pizzas at 3pm.
Did you get that? Google, as in Google the company famous for it’s free gourmet food, at 3pm, as in just after lunch, before dinner – no wonder they were soon escorted off campus.
Cambrian guys, I have a free idea for you: next time set up camp with your 1000 pizzaz at Stanford, you’ll be heroes and won’t leave without 100’s of new ideas…and I don’t even want 75 points, just invite me for the pizza-fest.

OK, I admit I am being sarcastic. And I liked the concept, too bad it did not work.

Filed Under: Collaboration, Marketing / PR, Startups · Tagged: business model, cambrian house, canadian startups, crowdsourcing, digg, Google, Outsourcing, royalty points, Startups

The Startup Naming Game

Posted on April 21, 2008 ·

Ben Kepes drew my attention to Viisibility, which appears to be a very interesting web based supply chain management / data clearing-house / hub type of a business.

At first reading I completely misread the name, thinking it was Visibility. Wow, what a great choice, I thought – a simple, common word that perfectly describes what the business is all about. But wait! try to Google it: it’s a bit difficult to find the relevant entries from the 47,100,000 hits Goggle found… That brings up question number one:

Do common words that describe your business perfectly but are hard to Google make good brands?

Robert Scoble has a simple rule: only pick names that do not come up on the major search engines at all.

But as it turns out I was wrong, just missing that extra “i”: the name is actually Viisibility. That brings up a whole new issue, which is my question number two:

Can intentionally misspelled common words that in pronunciation describe the product, but are only available as domains and are only unique on search because of the “typo” actually become Brands?

Last time I asked the question, the majority vote was yes (albeit with few participants). I used Vyew as an example, which I still think is a good name. But Viisibility’s case is a bit more complex, as shown by these two homepages:

Viisibility: managing supply chains.
Visiblity: ERP for Complex Manufacturing.

Oops. Not only there’s another company with a similar name, they are also in the same space, “differentiated” only by a typo. I’m afraid it’s not much of a differentiation, I can’t help but think Viisibility is a poor choice for a brand.

But forget the extreme case above, I’d like to return to the generic question, and run the poll again, especially as I’ve gained a few marketers as readers since last time. If you read this in a feed reader, there’s a chance the poll does not work, so please click through the blog title to vote:

Update (4/22): The Importance of a Good Name @TechCrunch.

Filed Under: Marketing / PR · Tagged: branding, brands, company name, domain, marketing, naming, product name, trademark, viisibility, visibility, vyew, zoho polls