Connecting the dots ...
Perfect timing: I’m reading Richard MacManus’s post on Web Office APIs – Embracing and Extending Microsoft Office on the very same day we find out Microsoft isn’t embracing it’s own products.
I guess Derek is right asking: Time to drop Microsoft Office?. Especially when you can work on Microsoft files without Microsoft products.
Update (12/6): Fred Wilson’s New Year Resolution: I am going to remove Microsoft from my life in 2007.
Startup activity is at an all-time high, venture funding has soared, but something is still missing… the huge exits. The IPO market simply doesn’t exist. What are the alternative exit strategies for all that venture capital?
These are a few of the questions our excellent panel will discuss at the Alternative Exits For Technology Startups event organized by SVASE this Thursday, December 7 in Palo Alto.
The Panel:
Moderator: Stephane Dupont, Executive Vice President, National Venture Capital Association.
For details, speaker bio’s and registration link please see the SVASE site.
See you there!
Tags: svase, ipo, ipo market, exit strategy, venture capital, venture funding, vc funding, sdforum, tiE, business networking, startups, entrepreneurship
Zoho releases product updates more or less weekly, and I don’t normally write them – frankly, I can’t keep track. (I do know, however, that Zoho Sheet that was just a cute but limited editor when I first looked at it is by now way beyond my average spreadsheet needs.)
Today’s announcements, however, fit the theme I laid out in the previous post about Microsoft Office, specifically about getting released from Microsoft-prison. They way to get there is to be able to easily work with Microsoft documents (spreadsheet, presentation) formats without the need for bloated and overpriced MS software.
Directly opening/writing to MS formats was the obvious starting point; in the previous post I mentioned Zoho Quickread, a plug-in that allows opening of any MS Office files directly from the browser (IE, FF) without first importing/converting them.
Today Zoho adds plug-ins for MS Office, which allows users to save their work online to Zoho directly from within Microsoft Word and Excel:
By the same token Zoho documents and spreadsheets can be opened directly in MS Office:
The first version of Zoho’s open APIs are also released today. 3rd party applications can now easily be integrated with the Zoho Suite. A good example is when online storage services (OmniDrive, Box.net …etc.) open the documents directly in Zoho and even save them back to their own storage system using the APIs.
Desktopize ( I kind of liked the previous name, Bubbles, as long as it’ wasn’t referring to Bubble 2.0 
) is a good example for productive partnerships. When Desktopize is installed, it creates Zoho icons on the desktop, allows users to click on them and work in Zoho without the browser as if it was a desktop application, close the window and have it minimized to the systray:
The pic above shows me editing this very article in the desktopized version of Zoho Writer, the Zoho icons in the lower left corner, and the Zoho writer icon in the systray. Desktopize also allows drag-and-drop uploading from your files directly to Zoho Apps.
These are just one day’s worth of Zoho updates; to keep abreast, check out the Zoho Blogs.
Related posts:
CyberNet Technology News, Digital Inspiration, The CIO Weblog
(disclaimer: I’m an advisor to Zoho)
Tags: zoho, zoho suite, zoho writer, zoho sheet, zoho plugins, ms office, ms word, excel, office integration, api, open api, desktopize, bubbles, microsoft
The likely reason news of Microsoft’s Office 2007 “Kill Switch” did not cause a lot more uproar is that it surfaced during Thanksgiving week:
“Buried in a Knowledge Base article that Microsoft published to the Web on November 14 are details of Microsoft’s plans to combat Office 2007 piracy via new Office Genuine Advantage lockdowns.
Office 2007 users who can’t or won’t pass activation muster within a set time period will be moved into “reduced-functionality mode.””
As unpopular as this move will be, it’s perfectly within Microsoft’s rights to dump users who don’t become customers. The question is, is it a smart move? ZDNet attempts to do the math in The economics of Microsoft’s kill switch:
“Would you sacrifice $10 million in sales to prevent $1 billion in software piracy? How about $100 million? How many customers would you annoy?”
I don’t think it’s simply a numbers game. Whatever Microsoft’s “loss” to piracy is, it’s not going to be converted to sales. First of all, the “kill switch” comes with the retail product, large corporate customers volume licence is not affected. So we’re talking about smaller businesses and individuals (I am focusing on the US market). A fraction of these may be “forced” to buy a licence, but the large majority won’t. What we really need to look at is why these users run MS Office in the first place.
“The simple argument that ‘this is good enough for 90 percent of what we do’ has fallen on its face over and over and over again,” – Microsoft would like us to think.
I don’t buy it. I don’t use fancy features in Word, have repeatedly stated that my Excel skills are on the level I learned using Lotus 1-2-3 – yet I have Office on my computer. So does virtually anyone who occasionally needs to receive/send files to Corporate America. Not because they need all the features, but out of fear (losing compatibility) and laziness. But believe me, these users will rather switch to another product than shell out hundreds of dollars for a MS licence.
They might actually find the experience quite rewarding. OpenOffice is a free alternative, but it’s big, clumsy, needs installation and updates just like MS Office – web-based alternatives, “Office 2.0” products are increasingly powerful, fast, easy-to-use, and allow one to access files anywhere. It’s safer in the cloud 
.
Office 2.0 vendors bend over backwards to make it easier to work with Microsoft files. Zoho ( a Client of mine) has a full online Office Suite that easily imports MS files, and of course saves your work in doc, xls and other MS formats, just as well as PDF and several others. The Zoho Quickread plugin allows opening of any MS Office files directly from the browser (IE, FF) without first importing/converting them. Tomorrow Zoho will release plugins for the major MS Office products, making it easy to save files online directly from within the Office applications.
The danger for Microsoft is not the direct financial impact of these users turning away from their product, since the never paid in the first place. It’s losing their grip; the behavioral, cultural change, the very fact that millions of people – students, freelancers, moonlighters, small business workers, unemployed – realize that they no longer need a Microsoft product to work with MS file formats. Microsoft shows these non-customer users the door, and they won’t come back – not even tomorrow when they are IT consultants, corporate managers, executives. That’s Microsoft’s real loss.
Update (11/30): See TechCrunch and the Zoho blog on the new announcements.
I made fun of the sorry state of machine-translation a few times before:
TechCrunch “Narcotic”:-) (or the state of machine translation today) and
Sans Accent; Marc Fleury’s Feet in the Dish and the Walk of the Waiters so when I received a Mybloglog invitation to check out the English version of a blog, the last thing I expected was a machine-translated version of the French original.
The motto of the blog:
“The transformation of our company thanks to information technologies deserves a lighting… and reactions! My DataNews deciphers without turnings the topicality of the information systems, technology, the WEB, and the associated trades.”
The most recent post title:
The point on the function “Dated Management” (Management of the data)
“…Although shy person, this recent evolution is very positive, because it more stresses from now on the contents (the data customers, products, markets, suppliers) rather than on a technical container (the data base)”
Although with great effort I could guess what the blogger is trying to say, as written, this is pure crap. Crisptophe, whoever you are (incidentally, messaging “Hi Zoli ! You can now read my blog in English !!!” to a totally unknown person is not the best way of introduction), I’m sure you are smarter then this, and you write a quality blog. But for now, if you want it multi-lingual, you have to do what Mike Arrington did at TechCrunch: hire translators – or do it yourself. But do yourself a favor, remove the machine-translated version, it does not do you any good. 
Update: This service is no longer available.
I’ve been a happy user of ProtectMyPhotos for over a month now. The best thing about it is that I’m barely aware it’s working: after installing the client one can completely forget about it. Now, this is exactly what I said about Mozy a little while ago, so what is different here?
First of all, let’s define what ProtectMyPhotos is: an online photo data backup/restore service with quite a few bells and whistles added. As usual, TechCrunch has the detailed review, so I will focus on positioning and some comparative analysis here, which is not quite easy, for it resembles/competes with several other services, yet does not fully replace either.
When it comes to online photo storage, we tend to think of Flickr, Zooomr and the like – but those services are primarily focused on sharing, and you have to manually upload photos. This is the part that’s fully automated by ProtectMyPhotos: just like with Mozy, you download a client application, set your preferences on what you want to back up (let it find photos or manually select directories), then leave it alone. From now on all your photos are synchronized with the online version, non-intrusively, as the program runs in idle time and throttles back when you start using your computer. The system keeps multiple versions of your photos online, so you get to pick which version to restore from (“userproof system” in case you mess up your current version) .
Unlike Mozy and other backup/storage services, ProtectMyPhotos allows easy access to your online pictures: your original directory structure is preserved, you can browse and display, even do basic photo manipulation online that is synchronized back to your PC.
When I first looked at the pre-launch service, it clearly focused on photos only; since then they added support for several office document types (doc, xls, pdf …etc.), as well as financial documents like Quicken and MS Money files. This is of course great, but why the restriction? Without the file type limitation this would be a full-featured online backup / storage service. Of course then it should be called ProtectMyFiles, but that domain name is taken.
A mobile edition, publishing to Flickr, opening files locally (not just photos, Word, Excel ..etc also) and automatic synchronization of multiple computers are amongst a host of new features recently announced.
The last one is a (potential) biggie for me: it could replace useful but unreliable FolderShare – if it wasn’t for the file type restriction.
In summary, I’m somewhat puzzled: ProtectMyPhotos definitely does more than just protect my photos, overlaps with several other services but the file-type limitation forces me to run redundant applications: Mozy, FolderShare and ProtectMyPhotos. I certainly wouldn’t mind reducing the clutter in my systray…
Rod posted this cool video introduction to the Enterprise Irregulars, and to an open source drawing tool called Inkscape.
Being the lazy guy I am, I enjoy when others serve up what to write about, I just have to connect the dots. Well, it doesn’t get any better than today, reading these two posts 3 minutes apart.
First there’s Valleywag’s story on how Sequoia’s investment in RockYou (service by NetPickle) turns more into a F***You (pardon my French
):
“Two months before Sequoia Capital, and a couple other investors, funded a Web 2.0 startup called NetPickle, the founders were accused of intellectual property theft by their former employer. They operate a photo slideshow service called RockYou; Iconix said the idea was developed while the founders were employed there; and a U.S. district court judge yesterday ruled against the Sequoia portfolio company.”
Next I’m reading VC Ratings via Paul Kedrosky on What Sequoia Capital Looks for in Startups:
Perhaps it’s time for Sequoia to add the 11th element: Clean IP Ownership. 
Update (11/17): Good chronology at GigaOM.
I have no clue if this is real: Edgeblog describes a way to change the price on certain shopping sites using the CartIt.cgi shopping app before the item is submitted to the server.
He than goes on:
Doing a simple Google search for cartit.cgi+plasma, I found a web site that sells plasma TVs (Which shall remain nameless to prevent being sued). The website thinks it is selling TVs for $7,599, but we can pay whatever we want by intercepting the POST and changing the price. If you think the company would catch this error, think again. Many companies outsource the fulfillment of orders, and never check the prices being charged. Note: I do not endorse e-shoplifting, so I did not complete the above transaction, but I know for a fact that the site will accept the order for $.99. Now, $.99 is extreme enough to *maybe* raise a flag. A simpler approach is to just move the decimal over 1 or 2 places. This way, if the company does notice, they will assume it was a processing error on their side. So maybe this article should be titled: “How to buy a 65″ plasma for $75.99.”
Wow. 
ZDNet finds that every time they open Gmail, a warning is displayed telling the user they are infected with “BAT/BWG.A“.
A false positive sure to be fixed soon. Don’t get the wrong idea though: Microsoft is not biased against its competitor… they had done the same to themselves:
Sure, just remove Windows Explorer 
. After all, A Dead PC is a Safe PC. Or one that only plays the startup sound 
Publisher / Editor of CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars.
I do most of my business blogging there, with occasional asides here. More...
Recent Comments