Connecting the dots ...
Ma.gnolia, a social bookmarking service is down, lost all their user data and they don’t know if / when they can recover.
This is as bad as it can get for any Web 2.0 service (and more importantly for users), and the backlash against Cloud services has already started. My first reaction is taking Stowe Boyd’s approach – a quick overview of how safe my own data is.
Update: also read Krish’s post @ ClouDave: Magnolia Effect – Should We Trust The Clouds?
*chirp (won’t that asterisk in the front backfire with some search engines?) is supposedly the best, cutest, Twhirl-killer mother-of-all Twitter Client. Except it’s Dead On Arrival. Read the full story here…
..and in the meantime a little consolation prize:
InfoWorld announced the winners of the 2009 Technology of the Year Awards in Applications, Middleware, and Data Management:
The Awards are presented in a slideshow format, and InfoWorld made it almost unreadable: there is an ad in between every single page, you either 20 second to flip a page, or have to click “skip” every single time, then click one more time to close another page that hides the slide. Frankly, I think they went way overboard with this.
That said, I did the work for you, here are the winners:
Congratulations to the winners!
(Cross-posted from CloudAve)
One down, one running better than ever. Thanks to the irony of TechMeme, the two news are juxtaposed almost side by side:
Stopping development on Google Notebook – as several blogs point out, this does not mean Google Notebook is dead. You can continue to use it as your scratch-pad, just don’t expect any further development. (Update: you won’t be able to use the web-clipping Firefox extension anymore.) Or if you’re cautious, start migrating your notes.
of enhancement on the very same day Google sent theirs to the deadpool. Kent Newsome calls it Zoho’s Lucky Day.I’ve never considered these two Notebooks comparable, despite the common name. Google’s one was your web-based post-it notes, barebones, easy to use. Zoho’s version is a full-featured multimedia application to create, aggregate, share, collaborate on just about any type of content easily, be it text, database, spreadsheet, image, drawings, audio, video – you name it. It offers a lot more, but may be “too much” if all you want is the yellow stickies. The two apps serve entirely different needs. But I don’t want to focus on the products here, did it before: Not All Notebooks Are Created Equal.
Let’s talk about the economics: Google is simply ditching some of the money losers which is clearly the right strategy in a recession when it saw it’s primary revenue source, advertising drop radically. A while ago (before the economy collapsed) Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu provided great insight into why getting into applications does not make much financial sense for Google, whereas it is Zoho’s primary business. Today we’re seeing that logic in action.
Of course Google is not the only one, we’re seeing startups shut down service, or give up the free-for-all principle and start charging for their services. Over at CloudAve we’ve discussed Jott as an example, but there are many others. We may have enjoyed all these free services, but deep down had to predict this bonanza would not last forever. It’s time for rationalizing business – after all, it’s all about making a buck.
Update (1/20/09): Surprise, surprise! (not really). Zoho came out with a tool to import your Google Notebook data into Zoho Notebook.
Update (1/22/09) Two days later here comes Evernote with an import process. Who’s next?
Under the Radar is the Silicon Valley’s most established startup debut platform: a conference series organized by Dealmaker Media, covering business applications, social media, entertainment, mobility..etc.
The 11th Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, CA on April 24, 2009 will focus on Cloud Computing and Business Applications and the organizers have issued a CALL FOR COMPANIES to present.
The general criteria for all UTR events:
Typically 32 finalists are selected, who will present in a rapid-fire format – they are grouped in categories of 4 each, in two parallel tracks and each presenter has about 15 minutes. They get grilled by the judges and audience, and at the end of the conference the winners of each category are announced. Categories for the April event are:
If you’re building a startup, meet the criteria above, will have a real product / service out by April, don’t hesitate: APPLY.
See you in April!
(Cross-posted from CloudAve – to stay on top of Cloud Computing news, analysis and just our opinion, grab the CloudAve Feed here)
Put the last nail in the Vista coffin. Windows 7 is on the fast track.
– good summary of the Windows situation by Signal to Noise. Yes, Win 7 Beta will be available for download starting tomorrow, and it promises to be less of a resource hog than Vista. Microsoft also talks about providing free upgrades to Windows 7 for Vista users – at least those who buy Vista after July 1st.
Good start, but not enough. The upgrade assurance is vital for both Microsoft and more importantly its OEM partners, the computer manufacturers to avoid a slump in computer purchases while waiting for the next OS.
But let’s not forget what Win 7 really is: it’s Vista Final. As it has been widely discussed, Win 7 does not have a new kernel, it’s all about lots of incremental improvements to Vista. In other words, it’s a Vista that works – using the Microsoft lingo perhaps it should 
be called Vista SP3.
Make no mistake, the accelerated move to Windows 7 is a marketing decision, not a technical one. Vista became such a disaster that Microsoft finally realized no amount of marketing can save it: it was better the abandon the shipwreck and start with a clean slate, a “new” Windows product.
But that leaves millions of Vista victims behind, who did not want to by this junk, but had no other choice when they bought their computers. I’ve repeatedly said that Windows 7 should:
OK, I know … fat chances for the letter of apology. But I am serious about the upgrade: customers who paid for Vista deserve a working (SP3-level) OS. Abandoning those millions would be akin to a hit-and-run on a mass scale.
Update: Finally, I don’t feel alone anymore: Jason Perlow @ ZDNet agrees: Windows 7 Should be a Fixta Free For All:
…since Windows 7 is essentially a performance and usability fix for a defective product, I’m of the increasing opinion that a Windows 7 upgrade should be free to anyone who was conned into buying Windows Vista.
(This post originally appeared on CloudAve. – to stay on top of Cloud Computing news, analysis and just our opinion, grab the CloudAve Feed here.)
If you love Windows XP, you’ll hate Windows 7 – says Ed Bott on ZDnet. Windows 7: Mojave My Ass –complains Jason Perlow. Dwight Silverman confirms: Sorry, but Windows 7 isn’t a return to Windows XP, while others don’t refrain from some name-calling.
Sorry guys, you’re all wrong.
You’re debating the merits of an operating system based on it’s UI. Sure, if you migrate from XP to Win7, some of the changes can be confusing – but it’s an initial change, the learning curve is not that steep. I actually side with Ed Bott here, the search box to launch programs is a more user-friendly approach than having to remember the names of all *.exe files a’la XP.
But it does not really matter. Mojave my ass? Mojave was a bogus experiment (in fact a PR blitz dressed up as an experiment) showing happy “users” who liked the Vista UI – but hey had no chance to assess what fails in a short demo, and that’s what doomed Vista, not appearances.
Windows in all flavors, be it XP, Vista or 7 is not an application. It’s a friggin’ operating system whose job is to get us into applications and get out of the way. In today’s flurry of blog posts Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has the right approach, presenting performance tests – yes, performance is key to judging how good an operating system is.
The other key criteria is how invisible it stays. Think about it: any time you have to get down to OS level typically means something does not work right. It’s the stupid unexplainable little things like:
The list could go on, but I think you get my drift: Windows 7 (and any other OS) will be judged on how well computers will run, let users interact with real application without having to touch the OS itself.
Finally, to address the speculation about Windows 7 upgrade paths, let me just reiterate this:
OK, I know we have fat chances for the apology – but I really mean the free upgrade part.
(Cross-posted from CloudAve – to stay on top of Cloud Computing news, analysis and just our opinion, grab the CloudAve Feed here.)
Global warming. The U.S. losing its edge in science and technology. A growing income gap. And what are the best and the brightest working on?
–asked Tim O’Reilly, Father-of-all-things-Web-2.0 at the Web 2.0 Expo in September.
Do you see a problem here? You have to ask yourself, are we working on the right things?
Some of the negative examples he cited were the Facebook application Superpoke and the popular iPhone app "iBeer," which simulates chugging a pint of beer. Has anything changed since O’Reilly’s alert? Let’s see:
The most popular of 50+ (!) fart applications, iFart Mobile generated $10,000 a day at 99c per download until it got written up just before Christmas, then it exploded, bringing in $27,249 on Christmas Day. Dou think it’s jus a crazy name for a useful program? Nope: all it does is to make farting noises.
Tapping into the Apple phone craze, accidental entrepreneurs rake in millions by creating popular applications.
-says the Washington Post in an aptly named article: The iPhone’s Golden Touch. At least Smule, the showcased company does not make fart noises: they have applications like virtual lighter, a virtual firecracker, a voice changer, a virtual wind instrument. They are on track to make $1 million this year, a buck a piece.
If this is not crazy, I don’t know what is… Brian Greenstone, who has been writing (real) games for Apple computers for 21 years agrees:
It’s crazy. It’s like lottery money. In the last four and a half months we’ve made as much money off the retail sales of iPhone apps as we’ve made with retail sales of all of the apps that we’ve made in the past 21 years — combined.
Spending 99c a time does not feel like a big decision – yet it all feels like a gigantic waste. An it will get written up as showcases of entrepreneurship.
I would like to amend the definition of entrepreneurship to include the creation of something useful (yes, I know, I’ve just opened a Pandora’s box, but …). Let’s differentiate opportunity seekers (nothing wrong with that) from Entrepreneurs. I’d like to stand on a soap box and yell: People, wake up! Don’t you have anything better to do?
But my voice isn’t loud enough. I thought Tim O’Reilly’s was … shall we heed his call to do something worthy? Make it a New Year’s Resolution for 2009?
(Cross-posted from CloudAve)
I’ve written about Zoho Creator before – being techno-challenged myself, the key value for me (and I suppose for millions of potential users) is the ability to generate database driven situated applications without the need for any programming. Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu made an interesting statement back in April:
In principle, it would be possible to layer Zoho Creator on top of Google App Engine on top of Amazon EC2.
Well, it’s no longer just in principle: today Zoho announced the ability to use Zoho Creator to generate applications which are then deployed on Google’s AppEngine. Here’s a short video explaining the process:
The video focuses mostly on the process of how to create an app, convert it from Zoho’s own Deluge scripting environment to Python, then installing it on the Google AppEngine. You will get more detailed explanation elsewhere, let me just focus on why I find this an important step.
Zoho essentially expands Google’s reach, making it available to users without programming skills. It’s a perfect marriage: Zoho brings the ability to create programs without coding in a user-friendly graphical environment, while Google brings security for those who might worry keeping their apps and data with a smaller provider: now they can use the Zoho-generated apps in the safety of GoogLand. 
.
The other important aspect is portability, and to quote Zoho’s Raju Vegesna, first they let data be free by releasing CloudSQL, and now they let your applications free.
We’ve already seen Zoho adapt Google Gears first, even before Google Apps; this is now another example of friendly coopetition with Google.
(Disclaimer: Zoho is the exclusive Sponsor of Cloudave, my main blogging gig.)
Related posts:
Google Layoffs – 10,000 Workers Affected reports WebGuild with a bombastic title. I can beat that: all Google workers will be affected, at least emotionally.
As to what the real numbers are, several sources point out that while employee headcount is around 20K, Google has about 10K temporary workers, so whichever way you count, laying off 10K workers would equate to:
Either way it sounds way too dramatic, a step companies in deep structural trouble would resort to. I seriously doubt this is really coming, but let me be clear: I have no factual information, am simply speculating, or actually responding to speculation.
But there’s something else worth noticing here: the source. WebGuild had a bit of a clash with Google this spring, when Google withdrew their support of the WebGuild events it used to host. Their stated reason was WebGuild’s refusal to change the name of their Web 2.0 Conference & Expo, at O’Reilly’s request. Here are the juicy details in a WebGuild post aptly titled Shame On You Tim O’Reilly. Without getting into details of the original conflict, suffice to say that WebGuild has been on somewhat of a vendetta against Google ever since. They’ve been a little bit too trigger-happy with posts reflecting negatively on Google.
Once again, I do not have factual information, but if this indeed turns out to be false information, I wonder if WebGuild went a step too far this time. (Remember the Steve Jobs death story?)
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