Several of my posts with embedded videos look quite ugly today. Apologies, I hope they will be back to normal when all the gremlins are zapped.
Atlassian Taking On the World
Posted on August 15, 2006 ·
(Update: apologies for the dead video links, Youtube is apparently down, here’s their message: ”
We’re currently putting out some new features, sweeping out the cobwebs and zapping a few gremlins.“)
I’ve recently had a chance to meet Mike and Jonathan in Atlassian’s San Francisco offices, and frankly was blown away by their enthusiasm, the company’s growth, but most importantly by a demo of Confluence, the market-leading enterprise wiki.
Market-leading? Never heard of them, you may say …. Certainly they enjoy a lot less brand recognition than let’s say JotSpot or Socialtext, both of which enjoyed abundant PR from the moment they launched, largely thanks to Joe and Ross‘s star-power. (Hey Joe, you were my early inspiration to get started with blogging, time for YOU to post again!). Lacking the “instant brand”, Atlassian spent their money on product development instead of PR, and it has obviously paid off. Watch this video for background:
Less PR or not, they are not exactly unknown to customers, as Confluence’s corporate market share is more than the others put together. From what I understand Confluence’s sweet spot is larger organizations, where administration, sophisticated permissioning schemes (groups, pages, activities…etc.) scalability, performance are increasingly important. (Yes, permissioning kinda goes against the social, “we’re-all-contributors” nature of wikis, but it’s a fundamental corporate requirement). The largest implementations currently run up to 30k users, but Atlassian is working on a clustered release that will be scalable to hundreds of thousands of users. Pricing also reflects the focus on large corporations: while at the entry-level Confluence is typically more expensive, at the high end (large user-base) it costs less then either Socialtext or Jot.
Despite it’s impressive feature-set and favorable price Confluence is not an available choice for some customers; namely those who are determined to use SaaS solutions. Confluence is strictly on-premise, download and install-behind-the-firewall software. Being a big believer in SaaS of course I would like to see them offer a hosted version, but today’s market reality is that only 10% of all software sold is SaaS. Atlassian’s own customer experience is that a lot of larger organizations do want their wiki behind the firewall, and competitors must have been receiving similar feedback, as both Socialtext and JotSpot are adding an installable product to their offering. However, Confluence may be missing out on the bottom-up, grassroots adoption by business users that both Jot and Socialtext are enjoying – at least until it becomes available on-demand.
And while the Founders did not have the star-power of their competitors 4 years ago, they are getting closer, having just received the 2006 Ernst & Young Eastern Region Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.. Watch the video of the Awards Ceremony here:
Congrat’s, Mike and Scott!
Exciting Office 2.0 Events
Posted on August 14, 2006 ·
IBDNetwork will organize another Under the Radar event, this time with an Office 2.0 theme on August 15th in Palo Alto. The event will showcase 4 companies:
Mike Arrington of TechCrunch will be moderating, and the presentations will be judged by a Panel of experts:
- Etay Gafni, Director, Technology Innovation Center – SAP
- Ismael Ghalimi, IT|Redux & CEO – Intalio
- Peter Rip, Managing Director – Leapfrog Ventures
- Sam Schillace, Software Engineer – Google/Writely
There’s more information on the Zvents site 
and you can register here. You can also participate in advance even if you can’t attend, by visiting the event wiki and posting questions, stories on this page.
Tomorrow’s gathering will be the prelude to the larger scale Office 2.0 Conference to be held in San Francisco, October 12-13, 2006, organized by IT Redux. I will post further details as they become known.
Windows Live Writer – Yawn…
Posted on August 14, 2006 ·
This is number 1001 in the list of Windows Live Writer posts….so I won’t do a detailed review, you get that in the other 1000. Just a few thoughts:
Windows Live is all about the Web, isn’t it? So when I first saw the headline yesterday, I though Microsoft released an online editor, a’la Zoho Writer or Google’s Writely. That would have been news. But yet another offline blogging client? Unless it’s significantly better than the existing solutions … a big yawn. A few specific comments:
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“Windows Live changes the way you write your blog” says one of the reviews. Oh, really? Bloggers already have Ecto, Blogjet, Qumana, Zoundry, w.Bloggar … etc. Adding a me-too product does not change anything.
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It looks nice though. Setup was easy. Almost. It failed to download the standard template associated with my blog, so right away there goes the “WYSIWYG in your blog’s style” – about the only differentiator this thingie would have.
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It doesn’t do tags. I repeat: no Technorati (or other) tagging. Oh, perhaps that’s what they mean by “changing the way you blog”? Sorry, having tried Blogjet, Qumana, Zoundry ..etc I grew picky, and no longer accept half-solutions. Bloggers do tags. An editor without tagging is not a Blog Editor. It’s that simple.
Finally, why a separate product again? Has it occurred to anyone that blogging is NOT a separate activity from anything else: it’s all about writing content, that ends up published in a particular form. A large part of blogging is reading, notetakeing… see where I am heading? Microsoft already has a pretty good (albeit expensive) overall notetaker, OneNote. Why not just blog-enable OneNote and release it free? That would have been a pretty good move.
Of course that still leaves us with a few other Microsoft editors: Word and Wordpad. Here’s where this should be heading: 90% of Word users don’t need the sophisticated features, so let them have a decent, relatively simple editor/notetaker (Writer/Wordpad/OneNote combined) for free, while anyone else who needs fancy editing can buy Word.
Watch my word: the market is heading that direction, whether Microsoft recognizes it or not. And if they don’t, the folks behind Zoho Writer and Writely certainly do.
Other critical reviews in the sea of praise: Paul Kedrosky, Rick Segal(ex-MSFT), Jeff Nolan.
Update (8/14): The Tag4Writer and Flickr4Writer plug-ins by Tim make Writer a lot more useable 
Phil Wainewright at ZDNet also missed tagging; more importantly his conclusion is the same as mine: Writer may evolve into being the overall notetaker/editor. The second part of that conclusion is that the world as a whole does not need Word; it becomes the specialty editor for 10-15% of users at a premium price.
Update (8/16): With the Tag4Writer pluging Writer is now a decent solution and I am testing it. Rick Segal points out Writer leaves turd in your blog… and in your feed. This Technorati search currently finds 1654 instances of “turd”.
Iranian President’s Own Blog Turns Against Him
Posted on August 13, 2006 ·
Update: President (?) caught red-handed, see below.
The last person I’d expect to start a blog is Iran’s ultra-radical President, Mahmood Ahmadinejad. But he did. (click on the small US/UK flag to get to th English version).
The man who threatened to give the US an apocalyptic final answer to the nuclear issue on Aug 22 posted this poll.
As with most polls, after voting you can see the current vote-count – unfortunately in this case separated from the original questions. The vote count still speaks for itself: 80% responded NO to the loaded question.
I wonder how long it will stay up…
(Disclaimer: I have no way to verify if this is indeed the Iranian President’s blog or just a spoof).
Update (8/13): Jim just pointed out in a comment that YES votes are increasing steadily. I guess the entire Revolutionary Guard is ordered to vote … but wait a minute! The absolute numbers are more interesting than the percentages. Look at the snapshot taken at 1:55PM PST:
Not only YES votes are the majority, but the total number of votes is 3473, vs 4501 some 90 minutes ago. The absolute number of NO votes dropped from 3595 to 1607! Votes are disappearing!!!!
Alright, we know where this ends: by tomorrow there will be a handful of token NO votes left and a nicely controlled absolute majority will demonstrated to the whole world that the US and Israel are the evils trying to start WWIII… just as he wanted. What a joke.
Related posts:
- Hot Air, Captain’s Quarters, Jihad Watch, Vital Perspective, RightWinged.com, Sweetness & Light, PunditGuy and Clarity & Resolve
Respect Must be Earned Even in the Blogosphere
Posted on August 12, 2006 ·
(Update: this post is starting to have its own life; read the comments below the post.)
My Mozy is a Lifesaver post received a strange comment:
“I’m not arguing the author’s points. He’s nailed it, as far as he goes. However, the Online Backup Advisor has a different take on Mozy. It’s funny and very informative.”
I don’t particularly like anonymous comments and I believe in the common courtesy if signing one’s comment (even with a pseudo-name), but it’s really not the comment itself that’s strange, but the post it points to: a long, elaborate, and yes, sometimes humorous attack-post on Mozy.
(Update (8/26): The “OBA” proved my point about his blog being a one-time attack platform right: the blog no longer exists. However, he can’t completely disappear, which I’m sure being such an expert he himself realizes, too.
Here’s a copy of his post I saved from Google Cache to a public Zoho Writer document)
The author refers the him/herself as The Online Backup Advisor, or The OBA, in a style that’s meant to establish authority. (more about this later). Now, I don’t consider myself an authority (and am in no way affiliated with Mozy), so won’t attempt the address the detailed issues raised in the article, but the author makes a few generalizations, or simply skips fact-checking, which I certainly would not expect coming from an “expert”:
The referral model: “Mozy gives bloggers goodies in exchange for littering the Web with (fake) glowing reviews. If you click on the Mozy links in these blogs, the blogger gets things like extra storage space and even cash. “
Wow. There is clearly no cash incentive, and as for “fake reviews”, well if the only incentive is extra storage, that’s quite worthless to a blogger who does not actually like the service… so perhaps those reviews are not that fake after all. Disclaimer: I used my referral code in the previous post, and so did Chris Yeh, who led me to signing up for Mozy. We both disclosed it in our post, and, by the way, those who signed up using our referral also received extra storage. Sounds like a deal to me.
The business model: “OK, here’s something you are simply not going to believe, but I swear the OBA would not lie to you few of Mozy’s free backup accounts probably convert to their “Mozy Plus” account, which stores 30GB for $4.95/month.For one thing, $4.95/month for 30GB is far too cheap…”
Perhaps it is too cheap, I really can’t judge that. Perhaps “The OBA“, being such an expert has also heard that there are two major factors on the cost side of the equation: storage and bandwith. Mozy minimizes bandwith consumption by doing incremental backups (even below file-level) and limiting the number of free restores to 4 per month – something “The OBA” vehemently opposes. Why, is beyond me though: Mozy is clearly a “disaster-avoidance” service, and frankly, if you lose your data more than 4 times a month, you may be better off staying offline. For ad-hoc online storage, file-sharing.. etc there are many other services.
Ad-supported business: “Do you like SPAM? Would 30-40 per day be OK with you? Mozy will SPAM you with ads from not just themselves, but also from, “third parties via email.” “
Perhaps “The OBA” has heard about ad-supported businesses before. He seems to be repeatedly conflicting himself: first he makes the case that Mozy does not have a valid business model, than he has a problem with ads; he thinks the price is too low, but condemns bandwith-saving restrictions. I guess our “expert” wants it all free, unlimited, yet with a sustainable business model. And, for the record, I’ve been getting exactly one (1) newsletter per week from Mozy.
Competition: “Why yet ANOTHER inexperienced startup remote backup program?”
Gee, from such a renowned expert I would have expected to hear some recommendation on what I should be using instead of Mozy… but all I find is vicious mud-throwing at Mozy. You know, I am not married to Mozy, if something significantly better comes along, I might as well move. But until than, a less-then perfect but good-enough service is all I need.
There is a lot more in the article, and I certainly hope that someone from Mozy or a more technically-savvy user will pick up the glove and respond in detail. What really bothers me here isn’t so much the actual content, but the blatant attempt to create authority out of nothing, pretending to be an entity/analyst/expert. The funny thing is, the author may really be an industry expert (or not), but how should I know? As long as he stays anonymous (you know, there is that section called “About me” in most blogs), comments anonymously, and his/her one-and-only attack-post is in a brand new blog with no other post – well, I’m sorry, you are NOBODY for me. Credibility, respect needs to be earned, even on the Blogosphere. 
Oh, here’s one more gem. Our “expert” finishes by saying:
“That’s it for now. Corrections, comments and hate mail welcome.”
Yeah, right. Commenting is turned off, and there is no email link. Talk back if you can. 
Update (9/21): Although only remotely related, the story of the anonymous but recently “outed” Dead 2.0 is definitely worth reading.
Tags: advisors, blog authority, crediility, ethics, mozy, Zoho Writer
Does Ether’s Service Work?
Posted on August 11, 2006 ·
Today was supposed to be The Day: my first pre-arranged Ether call would ring at 9:30am. Exactly one hour before the set time I received a reminder email: so far so good, everything works like clockwork.
9:30 – nothing. 9:40 – nothing. It’s almost 10am, the call has not come through, I cannot call the other party (it’s set up this way by design), and strangest of all, there is no trace of the appintment anywhere on Ether: my appointment list, tracnsaction list, history is all empty, is if this had never happened.
I’m curious… has anyone had positive experience with Ether? Does this thing work?
The Economist Intelligence Unit – Thought Leadership
Posted on August 10, 2006 ·
Dennis just alerted me to this:
I’m in great company on The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Thought Leadership list: fellow Irregular Jeff Nolan, Tom Raftery, Mark Evans, Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz... frankly, I don’t know what I am doing on this list … I’m humbled. Anyway, Dennis, you’ve made my day! 
Mozy is a Lifesaver
Posted on August 9, 2006 ·
(Updated)
Losing my data is one of my worst nightmare – I’m sure I’m not alone. Backing up used to require a lot of discipline (too much for me), so for years I ended up risking it all – not anymore. Mozy is an online backup service you set up once and can forget about… that is until disaster hits, i.e. you lose data. Well, with Mozy installed it’s no longer a disaster, you can conveniently pick the date you want to restore from, and voila’ – your precious data files are back!
Mozy is still beta, but a very stable, mature one. Since my previous post it has improved significantly. The key improvement is tracking byte-level changes, which results in a huge bandwith usage reduction. Let me explain: if you use Outlook, and just received an email, added a contact..etc, most programs out there, even my favorite FolderShare will copy the entire file, which in my case is about 180MB. With most high-speed Internet providers still limiting upstream, that in itself could be a significant burden. Mozy tracks byte-level changes, so it will only need a very small upload. It also handles files locked by a program (another shortcoming of FolderShare).
You can configure your backups to occur at a fix time (during the night), or dynamically after a period of low system resource usage. This is what I do, and the result is several backups a day, all in the background, which I don’t even notice.
If you don’t have a “lifesaver” yet, here’s the signup link for 2G free space, and by following it you’ve just increased both your space and mine. Yes, they have a referral program: after your first backup any new user you refer will add 256MB to both accounts.
Update (8/9): In a funny coincidence just hours after posting this Mozy came out with a new release, which is said to be twice as fast as the old one ….
Update (9/7): “Why Smart People Do Dumb Things” (Like Not Backup Their Hard Disk) – Guy Kawasaki.
Update (9/17): TechCrunch reviews Carbonite, and refers to Mozy as well.
Niall Leaves, Windows Live Dies
Posted on August 8, 2006 ·
So Niall Kennedy leaves Microsoft – everyone knows it, it’s all over TechMeme. But did he have to bring Windows Live down? 
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