Software Archives - Page 54 of 71

LinkedIn Pulling a Plaxo?

Posted on July 6, 2006 ·

From my junk email folder this morning:

LinkedIn Profile Updates		See all updates

	X. Y. has an updated profile X. Y. has new profile information. View profile.

Update your own profile! It only takes a moment.

This is an automatic update about the careers and projects of your LinkedIn connections. Adjust your update preferences.

Hm, this reminds me of those unstoppable Plaxo notifications, and I don’t like it a single bit. So far I’ve only got the typical mass contact requests from strangers which get the standard “decline” treatment. Less is more. But this is new, and I hope it’s not an early sign of the Plaxoization of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is good as long it’s there when I need it, but don’t bother me otherwise.

Update (7/6): Although I consider this spam, it’s not that bad, you can stop it via the “Adjust your update preferences” link.

While on the subject, read David Berkowitz’s Do’s and Don’ts of LinkedIn.

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Software ·

SVASE: Superstar Event on Internet Advertising Models: What’s Working, What’s Not, What’s Coming?’

Posted on July 5, 2006 ·

(Updated)
“14.6% of All Search Ads Are Wasted” – reports Steve Rubel. According to this study advertisers lost $800M last year to click fraud.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay, here’s a great opportunity to dicusss internet advertising: Tony Perkins of AlwaysOn ( and previously Red Herring) fame will moderate a panel discussion on Internet Advertising Models.

The celebrity panel:

• Jonathan Abrams, Founder & CEO, Socializr, Friendster
• Philip Kaplan, Founder & CEO of Adbrite, F*ckedCompany & more
• Sharon Wienbar, Managing Director, BA Venture Partners
• Gokul Rajaram, Product Management Director, Google AdSense
• Ujjal Kohli, CEO, Rhythm New Media

This lively panel discussion will explore current trends and panelist opinions on topics including:

• What are the best ways to monetize web traffic?
• Should I sell advertising direct? Through an agent?
• What type of users are most attractive to advertisers?
• What are common mistakes sites still make in trying to attract advertisers?
• What are advertising metrics? Cost/click? Cost/impression? Other?
• What new models do you predict will emerge?

The event is organized by SVASE, hosted by Wilson Sonsini, and it’s at 6pm tomorrow, Thursday the 6th, in Palo Alto. Considering the “hot topic” and celebrity panelists, I wouldn’t be surprised if the event sold out today or early tomorrow, so if you’re interested, register at the SVASE site now.

Tags: SVASE, AlwaysOn, Red Herring, Tony Perkins, Socializr, Friendster, Adbrite, FuckedCompany, Google, Adsense, Rhythm, Internet Advertising, web traffic, monetization, advertising metrics, advertising models, sdforum, TiE, Wilson Sonsini

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Software, Technology ·

SAP Duet Video

Posted on July 5, 2006 ·

Having seen it at SAPPHIRE 06, I wrote about the importance of Duet for both SAP and Microsoft: “Duet’s importance by far exceeds what the limited number of currently available scenarios might imply: for SAP it means potentially tripling / quadrapling their user base, even if indirectly, and for Microsoft it’s another way to lock users into their Office suite.”

Jason Wood posted an insightful, analytical article on his blog with screenprints and all the bells and whistles.

Now there is an online video showing several scenarios. Use the pull-down menu to select the different tracks available.

Filed Under: Collaboration, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, Personal Productivity, Software · Tagged: crm, Duet, Exchange, informationworker, knowledgeworker, Mendocino, microsoft, MSOffice, Outlook, sap, SAP Duet, SAPPHIRE06, workflow

Uninstalling Google Desktop may “break your internet”

Posted on July 3, 2006 ·

This one’s from Digg:

“According to Google’s online help files, uninstalling Google Desktop may break your internet. Although Google offers several solutions to the problem, it leaves one wondering if this is a Microsoft-like tactic of breaking the system on uninstallation (as the uninstallation of Internet Explorer will break Microsoft Windows), or an honest mistake…”

I still believe that The Solution to your GDS Problem is CDS.

(C)ouchSurfing’s Pathetic Shutdown

Posted on June 30, 2006 ·

“Three year old CouchSurfing, a beloved service used by some 90,000 members, had multiple database crashes, critical parts of the software and data were irretrievably lost, and the backups weren’t performed properly. They are not rebuilding the service. They literally put themselves out of business.” – reports TechCrunch.

Mike says it’s ridiculous – I’ll go a step further: it’s BS.

Of course the negligent approach about backups in itself is a serious issue, and in that respect I encorage everyone to read Dharmesh Shah’s thoughtful piece on why he considers $2K a month for hosting of his pre-launch startup money well spent.

So why am I calling this BS? Dharmesh says:

“What was the issue? Not lack of user interest or running out of cash or strong competition or any of the usual reasons that startups die. It was because of a series of infrastructure problems.”

Yeah, right. I haven’t been a CouchSurf-er, nor do I know the business, but I am calling it a BS, because the infrastructure problems are just an excuse – they may have been the last drop for the entrepreneur already fed up running the business, but definitely not the cause. Everyone knows that the single most difficult part in building any sort of marketplace / community business that relies on network effect is exactly that – reaching critical mass. Heck, anyone can throw together the databases, programs, infrastructure if the hundreds of thousands of users are somehow guaranteed. But of course they are not. My point is: if you do have the loyal crowd and your buiness is otherwise in good shape, you can start from scratch, and rebuild everything, no matter how bad (total?) your data loss is.

That leaves us with the other single most critical part (yeah, I am cheating, there are two “single” most critical/difficult parts…): monetization. This is where I suspect CouchSurfing may have had trouble, which turned it into OuchSurfing – after all, who throws away an entirely profitable good business after a technical fiasco?

Interestingly enough, although Dharmesh devotes his article to the importance of proper infrastructure, if you read between the lines, there is a second message there: eyeballs are not enough, you need to convert them to revenue.

Technorati : CouchSurfing, Dharmesh, OuchSurfing, backups, critical mass, eyeballs, infrastructure, monetization, network effect, onstartups, startups, techcrunch, web hosting

Filed Under: Business, Customer Service, SaaS, Software, Startups, Technology ·

Google Knighted

Posted on June 29, 2006 ·

Well, almost. Getting the term “Google” included in “The definitive record of the English language” as a verb is the equivalent of getting knighted. Next time you say “I’ll google it“, it’s no longer slang, it’s proper English, meaning: “To use the Google search engine to find information on the Internet.
trans. To search for information about (a person or thing) using the Google search engine.”

(hat tip: John Battelle)

Update (7/6): Now, this is funny. Why is this on TechMeme a week later? How come everyone wakes up now?
The Motley Fool, Techdirt, InsideGoogle, IP Democracy, Business Filter, Digital Inspiration, Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim and Google Operating System

Technorati : Google, Knighthood, MotleyFool, Oxford Dictionary, Proper English, Techmeme

Filed Under: Misc, Software ·

Microsoft Office 2008

Posted on June 29, 2006 ·

If it slips any further, Microsoft might as well call it Office 2008. After all, who wants a 2007 model in the middle of next year or later? 2008 car models start selling mid-year, Microsoft’s very own Money software does the same, so why not Office?

In the meantime, there is a growing camp of us setting ourselves free and enjoying Office 2.0.

Update: Sorry, if you came here looking for news on Office for the Mac. Read what happened here.

Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Office, MS Office, Office 2007, Office 2008, WebOffice, Office 2.0, Zoho

Filed Under: Business, Personal Productivity, Software ·

HieroZlango? Zlanglyphs? :-)

Posted on June 28, 2006 ·

TechCrunch

profiled Zlango,

a cute icon-based SMS ZMS language. Nice, who knows what the outcome will be:

It will not take off, since to really use it, the receiving end needs to have

it on their phone, too.
Because of the above, it will spread virally
Since it’s so cute, it will spread among kids first, and the language

separation will be final: we can give up any hope of understanding the 10-year

olds ever again.

Either way, as Ethan

points out, the idea is not quite new: Zlango = ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs + modern

technology.

Tags: zlango, sms, zms, hiroglyphs, egypt, techcrunch

Filed Under: Humor, Personal Productivity, Software, Startups, Technology ·

Plaxo + Jajah = Nay, Nay!

Posted on June 28, 2006 ·

It’s that dreadful time again: moving all my files to another laptop. As much as I am a WebOffice advocate, I have not yet made a complete transition the way Ismael did: I still have way too much junk on my harddisk.

Every step of this painful process is yet another argument to move to WebOffice. For example, after moving my entire Outlook.pst file, why on earth do have to manually recreate all email accounts, fix the messed up in box rules..etc? What a joke!

But the real pain is Plaxo. No matter what they claim, every move is a potential data disaster. Plaxo will insist on duplicating your Contact, Calendar..etc data – the only variety is whether you get duplicates on your machine or in the online version. The only way to avoid this mess is to disconnect your Outlook data from Plaxo, then manually connect again – which is what I did, downloading the latest version of Plaxo in the process. What a surprise! I have these cute little phone icons in all my contact records. Could it be a direct link to Skype?

Ahh, no such luck, it’s a click-to-connect using Jajah. There’s a lot of buzz about Jajah today, as they announced free calls. It’s really free – sort of .. as long as both parties are Jajah users. Sorry, that does not cut it for me. Inexpensive calls to non-members? Thanks, but nothing beats free. I’ll be quite happy to use the Skype toolbar for my free calls. But I am really unhappy with the way Plaxo populated my Outlook with this Jajaj junk. Plaxo is free (well, they have a premium option, which I tried and found useless, and getting a refund took CEO intervention – but that’s another story), so it’s OK for them to try to push additional services. But there is a line, and in IMHO that line is drawn at going beyond their own product. I own my Outlook file, and Plaxo should at a minimum ask me before pushing a third-party plugin into my Outlook file. But of course I am not entirely surprised, considering Plaxo’s long history of “attitude problems“.

Update (6/28): The Jajah buttons in Plaxo can be turned off via Plaxo > Preferences > Advanced > uncheck Show Click to Call Icons. Of course this should be an option offered at the time of installation, not something I discover after digging around.

Technorati : Free Calls, Jajah, Office 2.0, Outlook, Plaxo, Skype, VOIP, WebOffice

Filed Under: Business, Personal Productivity, Software, Technology ·