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Gmail IMAP and Microsoft’s Desktop Push

Posted on October 23, 2007 ·

You’ll have to appreciate the irony of this TechMeme screenshot:

Microsoft’s Jeff Raiker defended desktop applications, mocking of Google for “backtrack(ing) on what we’ve been saying and to offer things like Gears in order to be able to be offline and or take advantage of global computing power”, reports Infoworld.

As if to support Raiker’s statement, just minutes earlier the hot item on TechMeme was Google’s Gmail offering IMAP. Yes, it’s there, if you don’t see it in your gmail account, log out and come back again.

Unlike POP access, which is basically a dumb download, IMAP synchronizes your mail folders (not just the Inbox) with your online account, and your read/unread status..etc are maintained both in the desktop client and online. In fact IMAP is an easy way to sync several desktop clients on multiple machines. (Note: Gmail does not have folders, but I assume labels would take their place – assume only, since I no longer use desktop email software)

Where’s the irony here? IMAP is clearly beneficial only if you use a desktop email client* with your gmail account, which is exactly Raiker’s point. And a bit of a personal irony: for over a decade I was a faithful Outlook user, mocking my friends who used web-based email (typically Yahoo) for their personal accounts. How could they live with such a dumb, slow service?

Well, times change: Outlook grew fat and slow, it needs a cornucopia of software fighting for CPU and memory: virus scanner, desktop search (Copernic), backup (Mozy), sync with other desktops (Foldershare), and who knows what else, all of which need updates that tend to fail … what a nightmare! I ditched the desktop and have never been more productive! I’m using Gmail natively, on the Web, and am quite happy with it, so IMAP means nothing to me. (Apparently I’m not alone, as evidenced by the 5-600 readers my client to Gmail migration guide written half a year ago is still getting every day). For all other productivity needs I use the Zoho Suite. Incidentally, little birdies are singing that Zoho Writer will soon have offline edit capabilitiessmile_wink.

Seamless online/offline computing, as it should be.

*Update (10/24). This post was my quick first reaction late last night, when the news first hit (in fact before it became official news). As Marc Orchant correctly points out, IMAP may very well be useful even if you don’t use a desktop email client, as it makes it really easy to use the client software on your mobile devices, and still have a sync’d Gmail on the Web.

Update #2, (10/24): Simplified Guide to Importing All Your Archive Email Into Gmail

Related posts: Download Squad, CyberNet, Mashable!, Infoworld, Zoho Blog, TechCrunch, ParisLemon, Moonwatcher, Ars Technica, Good Morning Silicon Valley,

Filed Under: Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
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243

Posted on October 23, 2007 ·

243: That’s my current Technorati authority, which was 313 just before lunch ( two hours ago). 3 months ago it was in the neighborhood of 600, then it went into a free-fall. I’m clearly not the only one, as indicated by forum threads like this:

The canned Technorati answer is that since authority is calculated based on links in the past 6 months, it’s quite possible that old values just naturally dropped off. Most complaints in those threads come from users who participated in some sort of scheme to artificially inflate their link counts: something sophisticated like the 2000 bloggers trick, or circle-link groups, or just mutually getting on blog-rolls ( I hear Technorati re-evaluated blogrolls).

I haven’t done any of the above. Ever. Which means I don’t have large groups of links which should drop overnight. Oh, and my inbound link list is still completely messed up, often showing my own blog posts as inbound links, under a subdomain of my own URL . Something I requested Technorati to fix months ago. If they don’t respond to forum questions, why would they bother fixing bugs? Symptoms of a dying company.

Why do I even care? Technorati Authority in itself is quite irrelevant – but I still use it as a “spam-filter”, when searching on Technorati. I have the default authority level set to ‘some’ and this eliminates the zillions of auto-generated spam blogs, which typically have 0 or 1-2 inbound links. That’s about the only benefit Technorati search still has, otherwise I would have long switched to Google Blog Search, which is faster, more reliable, and also searches comments.

If others have the same habit, within weeks I might not show up on their radar screen, when my Technorati authority reaches zero.smile_sad (I kinda wonder if it can go negative).

Please, Google, implement link-count filter!

Update: 15 minutes after posting it, it shows 325. Might as well just use a random number generator.

Filed Under: Blogging, SaaS · Tagged: , , , , ,
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Beating Social Media’s 90:9:1 Rule in the Enterprise

Posted on October 23, 2007 ·

The 80/20 rule is out (so last century), 90:9:1 is in: the rule of participation in public communities, social networks, wikis:

  • 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute).
  • 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
  • 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs.

90:9:1 is a pretty good fit for most public wikis, starting with Wikipedia. Ben Gardner observed very different numbers: 50:25:x (he does not specify “x”). The interesting number here is 25, or it’s relationship to 50, meaning:

When the same question was asked about our corporate wiki ~50% of those present had used it but about ~50% of those had edited it.

Active participation in a corporate environment is much higher than in the public domain – this is not really a surprise, since the corporate wiki is used by people of real identities and reputations, and most importantly, shared objectives. This is also why Prof. Andrew McAfee hasn’t seen vandalism – a plague of public wikis – in the corporate world at all.

I suspect that 25% can go a lot higher, depending on the purpose of the wiki. When after the initial “grassroots movement” management fully embraces the wiki not as an optional, after-the-fact knowledge-sharing tool, but the primary facility to conduct work, it becomes the fabric of everyday business, where people create, collaborate, and in the process capture information. When the wiki is the primary work / collaboration platform, participation is no longer optional. Not when the answer to almost any question is “it’s on the wiki.” smile_wink

My earlier posts on this subject:

(hat tip: Stewart Mader)

Filed Under: Collaboration, Social Networking · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,
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Get Out of Jail Faster With EchoSign – Ouch:-(

Posted on October 22, 2007 ·

EchoSign’s Favorite Widget of the Month is by Bailgram.com:

Let’s face it, helping a family member make bail is a traumatic experience. What if instead of going down to some sketchy shop near the courthouse — likely in off hours — you could fill out an application in seconds online? Frankly, it’s harder to think of a much better use of the internet.

Well, Jason, I think I can find a lot better uses of the Internet… smile_wink But wait, he goes on, encouraging me to jump right in:

…click here and with the EchoSign widget, you can fill out and sign your application in seconds!

Hm… thanks… I’d rather stay out of jail in the first place. smile_omg

(P.S. I do like EchoSign, it’s a great service, just not planning to get in jail any time soon)

Update (10/23): Hey, $6M covers a lot of bail smile_regular. OK, that’s my way of saying congratulations, Jason and Team!

Filed Under: Humor, Marketing / PR, SaaS · Tagged: , , , ,
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Enterprise Bloggers, Openness and a Thriving Ecosystem

Posted on October 21, 2007 ·

I started this post a week ago, than canned it, not wanting to be part of the “storm in a teacup“, created by Oracle’s announcement that they would open up their annual OpenWorld conference to bloggers for the first time. The software giant also actively reached out to 30 or so bloggers, including several of my fellow Enterprise Irregulars.

It appears that most EI’s will not attend, partly since Oracle does not pay for expenses, partly because there is no word about access to Executives. More important than the expense issue was the reasoning:

“We’re not picking up travel costs or expenses, sorry. This will keep you impartial. If you see me, I’ll give you a pat on the back, how’s that instead?

Ahhh…the enterprise bloggers must be a bunch of prima donnas, used to getting their full expenses paid at SAP’s annual conference and other events.. SAP “bought them” and they are biased, right? Wrong.

The reality is that unlike the press and analysts, the group bloggers are often lumped into, may of us are independents or are in small businesses, don’t have corporate expense accounts to lean on, and simply can’t afford to travel to conferences on our own. Even on a fully reimbursed trip, taking 3-4 days off business is a significant sacrifice. Of course that’s the bloggers’ side, why should Oracle care? Whose loss is it anyway?

What does SAP get for the not-so-negligible travel budget they spend on enterprise bloggers? The one thing they don’t get is bias, “loyal”, positive reviews.
Fellow irregular and ex-Gartner Vinnie Mirchandani can hardly get more critical, regularly beating up SAP on issues like pricing, maintenance, innovation (or lack of) – yet he is invited back to all SAP events. Fund Manager, former SAP investor and blogger Jason Wood is also a regular at SAP events, which certainly does not prevent him from expressing his doubts / concerns. Dennis Howlett is no exception, and the list could go on.
SAP’s recent announcement of their new hosted SMB solution, Business ByDesign is another good example. While most of the media reprinted SAP’s press release, you won’t find it anywhere in the “enterprisey” blogs: what you will find instead is independent thinking, analysis (right or wrong) and dialogue. The bloggers’ verdict was generally positive, mostly about the feature set/ technology, but several of us expressed doubt regarding execution: SAP’s market segmentation, potential self-cannibalization, ability to create mobilize a new, agile ecosystem capable to profitably execute in the new high volume/low price model, and help SAP reach their market goals.

Not exactly paid-off, loyal PR if you ask me… could it be that SAP knows something about the value of dialogue, in fact outright debate? They go the extra mile to provide bloggers with information, engage them actively. Round-table discussions with Hasso Plattner, Henning Kagermann, Leo Apotheker, Peter Zencke (did it all start with Niel’s chance encounter with SAP’s CEO?) and several other executives are highly appreciated, and believe me, it’s not one way PR-style briefing either. James ‘Redmonk” Governor says it best:

“As I have said before, you can buy my thinking, but you can’t buy my opinion.””

At SAP’s Teched 07 Conference James publicly disagreed with Peter Zencke about market segmentation, and the world did not come to an end; in fact the SAP Board Member happily continued the debate at the bloggers chat afterwards. Two weeks after the “incident” James moderated several sessions at Teched Europe, on SAP’s invitation. Don’t we all know companies where such behavior is the sure way to lose access and get yourself uninvited forever?

Bloggers are critical, opinionated, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but never dull. But there’s a bigger picture here, other than external communication. I believe it’s not coincidental that the company that understands the power of dialogue has the most thriving online community I’ve seen in enterprise software.

Two years ago, when the external “Bloggers Corner” program started the SAP Developer Network (SDN) counted close to 600K members – today it’s 900K. It’s younger sibling, the Business Process Expert (BPX) network counts 200 thousand members. Between the two, discounting overlaps, it’s fair to say 1 million members participate in SAP’s online communities. This includes blogs, forums, wikis, videos..etc. SDN+BPX is a thriving support system: over 5,500 issues are posted daily, and the average response time is 20 minutes.

I think SAP has discovered something unique: they don’t have to give the code away yet they enjoy the benefits of “Open Source-like community“. The highest rated contributors don’t have to look for projects any more, they are in high demand. SAP Ecosystem Becomes a Booming Economy – declares research firm IDC.

The Ecosystem has become an organic part of how SAP conducts business, and there is no turning back. SAP Executives are quite aware that competitors comb through the SDN / BPX entries daily, and they certainly lose some competitive edge – but there is no other way to “run” the ecosystem. The Genie is out of the bottle, and they don’t want to send him back.

The role of the ecosystem will become even more important now that SAP is more aggressively pushing into the mid-market. This is a high-volume, low-margin market, sales, deployment, support all different from what SAP traditionally knows. Successful partnering will make or break it, and apparently SAP understands it.

I’ve come a long way from the original issue of blogger participation at Oracle’s OpenWorld, and not without reason. This issue has sparked a debate, stirred up some emotions, and I don’t want people to think it’s all about greedy (or hungry) bloggers whining about not getting their expenses paid. Nor is it a SAP Good Guy, Oracle Bad Guy issue. Both companies have their own culture and will continue conducting business their own ways.

I believe Oracle’s first approach to bloggers (late or mistaken as it is) is a welcome move, and it’s good to see they are open to learn and improve:

“This is new territory for a lot of us, and personally, I’d like to hear a lot more opinions and suggestions before I support one path or another.”

Some people in Oracle had to fight for this and they should not be given a (verysmile_wink) hard time. I certainly hope the initiative will not get shut down due to the initial negative feedback. I also hope Oracle management will realize how one step leads to another and that openness actually improves business in the long run. I used SAP as the positive example, because that’s the best showcase I know, and they are pioneering in this field – but if you know any other examples for actively embracing community, please share it in comments below.

Oh, and if you happen to be in the San Francisco Bay Area, by all means, check out Lunch 2.0 @ Oracle tomorrow.

Update (10/24): …and not a happy update, for that matter. Just as I praised SAP for “getting” social media, here’s this disturbing post from Steve Mann, VP at SAP’s Global Marketing. Apparently SAP HR wants him to remove the link to his personal blog from his corporate signature. I guess I should correct my statement: SAP gets social media … just not everyone, all the time smile_sad

Filed Under: Blogging, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, Marketing / PR, Social Networking · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Windows Desktop Search: Microsoft DOES Listen, After All

Posted on October 18, 2007 ·

I wrote about the Windows Desktop Search controversy several times: in a nutshell, under the auspices of installing Live Photo Gallery, Microsoft installed their Desktop Search product on XP systems, without asking for user permission or even bothering to notify users.

I’m glad to report proof that in this case Microsoft listened to their customers (or their own lawyers?):

Windows Live Photo Gallery no longer requires WDS (Windows Desktop Search) to be installed on XP! Again, we heard the grumblings loud and clear, and took action! Once you have installed the update via Microsoft Update and have build 1299.1010 install

There’s more, most importantly ability to easily upload to Flickr, which is no small feat, considering Flickr is now a Yahoo property. I’m wish Google followed suit and enabled Picasa to Flickr uploads. (Hello! Anybody there?)

My previous stories on the WDS controversy:

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, SaaS, Technology · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Another Mashup Bites the Dust – or NOT.

Posted on October 17, 2007 ·

I already used this title, a little more then a month ago, and it’s no coincidence: back then I wrote about Gmap Pedometer, a handy little Google Map hack that allowed you to calculate the lenth of your planned hike. When all of a sudden Google Maps encorporated the same feature, that pretty much eliminated the reason for this mashup to even exist (although it still does).

It’s that time again: now that Google Maps went social, allowing user profiles, let’s spend a moment of silence in memory or of the mashup that has been doing the same for a long time: Frappr.

And remember: not all mashups get acquired by Google. Some just get assimilated. Resistance is futile. smile_sad

Related posts: Google Operating System, Screenwerk, Search Engine Land, TechCrunch, mathewingram.com/work, ParisLemon and Mashable!

Update (10/18): In this case I’m glad to be proven wrong: a day later, Frappr is acquired. Also read Read/WriteWeb and Mashable!

Filed Under: Humor, SaaS, Startups · Tagged: , , , , ,
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A Confluence of the Wiki and Document/Folder Worlds

Posted on October 17, 2007 ·

Merriam-Webster:

confluence

1: a coming or flowing together, meeting, or gathering at one point <a happy confluence of weather and scenery>

2 a: the flowing together of two or more streams

b: the place of meeting of two streams

c: the combined stream formed by conjunction

Today we’re seeing the confluence of two worlds: the flow-oriented thinking and collaboration, represented by Confluence, the market-leading enterprise wiki, and the more traditional approach of documents, lists, folders, represented by Microsoft SharePoint. Or perhaps it’s a right-brain / left-brain thing. I’ve talked about it at length, and since Jeremiah, Web Prophet says backlinking is OK, I’ll just do that, instead of repeating myself: Flow vs. Structure: Escaping From the Document & Directory Jungle.

Now, as important forward-looking visioning is, successful business leaders recognize what the market wants today, not where they’d like to lead them tomorrow. Recognizing that Microsoft Office is deeply entrenched in the corporate workplace, Atlassian first added Webdav capabilities to Confluence (drag-and-drop files into the wiki, single click on attachment to edit them in the original MS Office format and save back to the wiki). But customers wanted more, according to Jeffrey Walker, President:

..meeting with customers and analysts, SharePoint came up in every meeting. “We have growing groups who love the wiki, and long standing users of Microsoft and now SharePoint. Help!”, customers asked..

The result of today’s joint Microsoft and Atlassian announcement of the SharePoint Connector for Confluence. The initial features include:

  • Search: Users can search SharePoint and Confluence content together from one place.
  • Content sharing: From within SharePoint, users can embed Confluence page contents allowing users to blend content. This also includes Confluences numerous plugins.
  • Linking: Within Confluence, users can access SharePoint document facilities. By including SharePoint lists and content within Confluence, users, in a single click, can edit Microsoft Office documents.
  • Single Sign-On and Security: With one login, users can access both systems while seeing only what they have permission to view.

In short, access your information, whether you’re the wiki-flow type or the create-save-hide-in-folders type smile_wink

The screenprint above shows a Confluence page (with the charting plugin) embedded within, and editable directly from SharePoint. For more, check out the feature tour.

Jevon MacDonald is pondering about the business realities behind this deal:

The question that weighs most heavily is: is there enough incentive for Microsoft to participate in this partnership in any significant way? The immediate economics aren’t obvious for Microsoft, which leaves us with two options:

– but I’m not giving those options away, you’ll have to read his post. (as an aside, he is the only one examining the business side, but his post is not on TechMeme – let’s see if we can push it theresmile_sarcastic)

Speculation aside, some numbers: SharePoint has 80 million users while Atlassian Confluence has 4,100 customers – I don’t know how many users that translates to, but I’ve just written about SAP’s SDN/BPX communities which has about a million (!) users, and Confluence is a significant part of it. That said, Jeffrey said it right, David kisses Goliath in this deal.

There is no marketing agreement behind it, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Microsoft’s huge reseller channel show interest in Confluence. And frankly, just removing the “we’re a SharePoint-shop” political obstacle in some major enterprise client is worth it alone.

Sour grapes? Competitor Socialtext announced their SharePoint integration a year ago, and CEO Ross Mayfield says SharePoint wiki was last year’s news. Well, I think Socialpoint, the Socialtext/SharePoint integration was last year’s news, this year’s news is Confluence.

Perhaps next year’s news will be which enterprise wiki vendor could translate their deals into real market gains. smile_shades

Update: here’s a video interview with CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes and President Jeffrey Walker on ScobleShow.

HOT! EXCLUSIVE! Here’s the real price Mike had to pay for this deal… just compare his looks above with this video. What’s next? A suit and tie? smile_tongue

Related posts: Read/WriteWeb, Computerworld, Don Dodge, Atlassian News, WebProNews, Between the Lines, Ross Mayfield’s Weblog, Irregular Enterprise, Radiowalker, elliptical , eWEEK.com, Socialwrite, Trends in the Living Networks, Rebelutionary.

Update (10/19): Intriguing thoughts on wiki plug-ins, KM Web-services and Enterprise SOA on – surprise, suprise! – the SAP Community Network

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Filed Under: Collaboration, Enterprise Software · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
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Zonbu, a $99 Green PC that will Cost You $249

Posted on October 17, 2007 ·

Considering how many things did not work out-of-the box on my new Vista PC, HP’s slogan of : “the Computer is Personal Again” is really an insult. And don’t even get me started on Vista, it’s really for IT professionals, not mere mortals.

So of course I got excited reading Fake Steve Jobs (will Daniel Lyons ever be referred to by his own name?) article in Forbes:

“Personal computers were supposed to make our lives easier. Instead, these beasts have turned us all into part-time IT administrators, our lives given over to downloading upgrades, installing patches and updates and drivers and antispyware, decrypting error messages and screaming at stalled applications. Enough!”

He is blown away after a week’s use of Zonbu, a $99 Linux-based “green” PC alternative. From Zonbu’s specs:

Zonbu is a compact, ultra low power mini with all the bells and whistles:

  • Intel-compatible ultra-low power CPU
  • 512 MB RAM + 4GB flash-based local storage
  • Graphics up to 2048 x 1536 (16 million colors, 75 Hz). Hardware graphics and MPEG2 acceleration
  • PC-compatible ports for keyboard and mouse
  • 6 USB ports to plug-and-play all standard USB accessories
  • Broadband ready: 10/100 Mbps Ethernet built-in

It comes with a set of pre-loaded applications, all auto-updated with a subscription service. PC as a Service? Well, not quite. Although it’s heralded as a “cloud computing” device, it’s really a hybrid, with client-side apps for office productivity, personal finance management, multimedia, photo management..etc. And therein lies the rub – once you start using client applications, your needs will grow, you will hit the limits of the low-end hardware:

“I also found some videos that wouldn’t play on the system, and high-def videos (720p or larger) from Apple’s QuickTime HD Gallery don’t play acceptably because the Via processor in the Zonbu just isn’t fast enough.”

Of course with local apps your storage requirements will also grow, but you only have a 4G flash-drive, so you will likely upgrade to one of the premium storage/synchronization plans. The lowest plan gives you 25GB of storage at $12.95 a month, but it comes with a 2-year commitment. Let’s do the math, $99+ 24*$12.95= $409.80. Your $99 machine is now a $400 unit, payable upfront – and you still need a display and keyboard/mouse. You can get your device without the 2-year commitment (a’ la cell-phones), but then the base price is $249, and you will still likely pay for the monthly storage – what can you do with 2G of storage, after all?

Actually, a whole lot, if you really embrace cloud computing. There are good and mostly free online applications to match the capabilities of the pre-loaded Zonbu apps, and being online, they don’t even have to be updated. (They do, but it’s no longer the users’ problem which is the beauty of Software as a Service.)

Zonbu could have been a nice, inexpensive cloud computing machine Cloudbook – the problem is with the price point and the bundling of subscriptions that offers far less than what you already may have independently. A truly $99 web-computing device would be a major hit, but at current costs it does not seem to be feasible. Will the mobile industry’s service-plan subsidized model prevail here? After all, that’s what Zonbu attempts, it just does not have the right value/price mix.

I suspect cloud computing users will primarily want to select the applications they need, and what box gets them there will become secondary. But I don’t expect online app providers like Google or Zoho to bundle Zonbu-like devices with their business-level subscription plans anytime soon. This is where the analogy to the mobile industry ends: there is a huge installed base of older PC’s and as soon as you abandon the old model of desktop-based computing, these old machine became quite capable devices to handle your online computing needs.

Zonbu is a nice device without a business model for now.

Related posts: Nick Carr – RoughType, mathewingram.com/work, InfoWorld

Filed Under: SaaS, Technology · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,
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Jiglu: Smarter (?) Contextual Tagging

Posted on October 15, 2007 ·

Since I’ve just advocated context, context and context fro social networking, I figure I might as well try Jiglu, being launched today, which promises to auto-tag our blogs in context.

Blognation & CenterNetworks both warmly praise the new service, and Venturebeat provides detailed analysis:

Jiglu, by comparison, uses semantic search technology to take tagging a step further, crawling entire websites to tag and categorize according to the relative importance of subjects.

The technology works by first determining important keywords within specific blocks of text, then drawing correlations between keywords in other blocks, assigning scores to keywords or phrases that come up repeatedly to produce a list of important tags. The software works continuously, adjusting its scoring system when new content is introduced…

What I am missing from all these writeups is actual demonstration of Jiglu. Guys, I don’t see your Jiglu widget installed…smile_eyeroll OK, so I’ll be the guinea-pig: it’s installed right here on the sidebar(*), let’s wait and see the results it will soon (?) produce.

Update: further analysis of Jiglu’s business model on TechCrunch.

*Update #2: For now I removed the widget, but only temporarily. It grew a mile long, making it hard to read (too low level of granularity?). CEO Nigel (see comments below) says to check in a few days, so that’s what I’ll do.

Filed Under: SaaS, Startups · Tagged: , , , ,
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