WINDOWS AZURE & LIFE IN THE CLOUD

"Windows Azure" is a terrible name but you need to be aware of it anyway. Windows Azure is a breathtakingly ambitious platform outlined by Microsoft at last week's Professional Developer Conference, another attempt by Microsoft to position itself to profit from a paradigm shift that will be just as important as the move to the Internet in the 90s.

Yesterday I used word processing as an easy example to imagine what it would be like if you had universal access to your files with the ability to open and edit them from any computer. Of course, it's just as easy to imagine having easy access from anywhere to your Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations, with the programs running in a browser if you don't have a copy installed on the computer nearby.

Okay, now stretch a little bit. Imagine that you could have something like the same experience on your phone - Windows Mobile can sync folders using Live Mesh and it runs little tiny versions of Word and Excel. Photos can be moved around from computer to computer and/or stored online, too, so you might not be surprised by this anecdote from someone who tried using Live Mesh on his phone to sync the folder where the phone stores pictures. There were the pictures on his computer a few minutes later with no muss, no fuss, no action required at all. The camera on the phone looks a lot more usable all of a sudden!

But now let's take a big step. Windows Azure is a platform that will allow you to run programs that are identical to programs installed on your computer but which are actually running from Microsoft's online servers. Microsoft's goal is to have all of its programs run from Microsoft's data centers in such a way that you cannot tell the difference between a program hosted online and a program on your computer. The developer tools will allow all the other software vendors to do the same thing.

Some of you already have experience with that. Businesses running on Small Business Server use Outlook to connect to mailboxes stored in Exchange Server. At the office, people open Outlook to do their work; away from the office, they might use Outlook on their notebook computer, or they might check their mail or calendar on their Windows Mobile phone, or they might use Outlook Web Access to display their Outlook folders in a web browser. Outlook Web Access is already significantly improved in Exchange 2007 so it more closely resembles Outlook, and it only takes a small leap of faith to imagine the experience being identical to using the full program.

The Azure framework is intended to give developers the ability to present their programs to you over your Internet connection so that virtually all the hard work is done by the online servers. Microsoft or Google or Amazon have responsibility for holding the data and backing it up; when a program is updated, the updates are applied at the source instead of requiring you to take steps to install updates on each of your computers.

I'll be writing more about Live Framework, the unified underpinning of the various Windows Live services as they become increasingly integrated, and Microsoft Online Services, which will introduce hosted online Exchange mailboxes to many of my clients. They're early signs of this movement to online services that will change your life, whether you're ready or not. There are many miles and many competitors and the future is not assured for Microsoft, but make no mistake - the company has staked its future on this ambitious transformation.

Here are some more early comments on Windows Azure: Dan Farber on "Microsoft's Manhattan Project"; Robert Scoble says not to underestimate Microsoft's ability to turn a corner; CBS News on the Azure launch; and Joe Wilcox on the significance of the project:

"I simply cannot overstate how enormous an undertaking is Azure. Microsoft plans to support cloud services in every product. Azure is hugely ambitious and will transform Microsoft, whether or not the vision stated on Monday makes it to market. As such, Azure is enormously risky and its success as envisioned is uncertain."

Labels: business, computers, file_sharing, Google, Internet, mail, Microsoft, mobile, Outlook, photos, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 11/04/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

DELL DOCK MIMICS MACS

I set up a new Dell Inspiron 518 desktop computer today - a nice home computer, a lovely case bristling with USB ports and shiny black plastic that will attract dust like nobody's business, fast and well-equipped, shipped with the correct configuration and working out of the box, as usual with Dell.

Dell ships computers with less preinstalled software than most other manufacturers, even from the Home & Home Office division, so setup is easy. There were a handful of third party apps to take off - Google's cluttered "Google Desktop" widget/search program and the rarely used Google Toolbar, one or two others. Dell is starting to load on more of its own homebrewed applications, though, so new Dell computers still have too many helpful startup screens and popup windows and balloons and taskbar icons. I remove most of them right away - in my experience, more people are annoyed than helped by the incessant notices from the "support center" and the well-meaning advertisements for services like Dell's online backup and the rest.

Maybe it's just me but I don't like the "Browser Address Error Redirector," licensed by Dell from Google. If you try to go to a nonexistent web page - a typo in the address, say - this redirects your web browser to keep you from seeing a "page not found" message. Instead, you'll get suggestions for what you might have been looking for, along with lots and lots and lots of advertisements (sample on the right).

I'd rather see a "page not found" message. I uninstall it.

The latest Dell software was introduced a few months ago - a dock that parks itself at the top of the screen to fool you into thinking you bought a Mac by mistake.

Programs are grouped, so a click on the applications icon might provide access to Word, Excel and Powerpoint. (Umm - which one of those icons would that be again?) The dock is intended to scoop up the normal desktop icons so the rest of the desktop is pristine. Here's a writeup with a few more details about the Dell dock. If you have a Dell computer running Vista and a dock would make your life complete, you can reportedly download and install it from this page.

Who uses things like this? Is there such a demand for an enhancement to Vista's desktop and menus that this is a great addition to every home computer shipped by Dell? I don't get it. I'm an old fogey. Don't get me wrong, I'm not insensitive to how personal some of these choices are. You can use the Dell dock and I'll be happy for you. Lots of people love their Macs and feed them special treats at dinner and put them to sleep on a little pillow and apparently nobody feels the same way I do - when I look at a Mac screen, I see a stupid, juvenile design that makes me so happy that I work in a PC world.

Labels: Apple, computers, Google, software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 10/03/2008 01:11:00 AM | permalink

GOOGLE ANDROID

T-Mobile introduced the first cell phone based on Google's Android operating system to much fanfare a few days ago. Although Android has some interesting features and much promise, I don't expect to see anyone holding the T-Mobile G1 in Sonoma County for a while, since T-Mobile is a fringe player with limited coverage up here (and certainly no connection anywhere nearby to its high speed 3G data network).

Android is a work in progress; comparisons to the iPhone are inevitable and at the moment Android comes up a bit short, but it's early to make any decisions. In this first iteration, Android is tied in very closely to Google's online mail, calendar and contact services, which are fully integrated and reportedly work smoothly. It's not as smooth for everyone else, since the integration is thin or nonexistent for other sources of mail and there is essentially no support for other calendar/contact programs.

In particular, businesses should be aware that there is no support for ActiveSync, the software that connects a mobile device to an Exchange Server. A Google Android phone is not currently a good choice for an office using Small Business Server. It's the same situation that an SBS user faces with a Blackberry - a solution for email can be cobbled together from forwarded messages and BCCs and the like, but it is clearly a kludge compared to the true integration provided by a Windows Mobile phone or an iPhone running ActiveSync. (It bears repeating that using an iPhone with ActiveSync causes it to suck battery power so fast it actually makes slurping noises.)

There's one other design decision for the T-Mobile device that has caused a fuss - instead of a standard headphone connector, they chose an oddball, mostly proprietary "ExtUSB" headphone connector that requires a weird dongle for every kind of headphone or earbud except the terrible earbuds that come with the phone. No one knows why but everybody hates it.

Somebody - Google or a third party - will likely make the financial arrangements with Microsoft and write an ActiveSync connector for Android, and the other carriers will be releasing their own Android devices with different hardware designs. We'll talk more about it then.

Labels: Apple, audio, Google, mail, mobile, phone, SBS

posted by bruceb at 9/29/2008 12:05:00 PM | permalink

GOOGLE CHROME & IE8

There are new Internet browsers available in the news - Microsoft made a beta release of Internet Explorer 8 available last week for testing, and Google caused a fuss when it released a beta version of Chrome today, possibly as a hasty response to Microsoft's release.

Google envisions a future where all of our work is done in an Internet browser. You'll work on online files using online applications, powered by rich web-based programming languages. The underlying operating system fades in importance in that world - it might be Windows but it doesn't have to be because it's not doing anything interesting. Imagine this pitch:

Now available at WalMart, the ChromePC 3000, powered by Google! It starts instantly, like any other appliance; it runs your online programs faster than any PC or Mac; it's almost invulnerable to viruses and malware. You can watch movies from Netflix, watch Internet TV, play streaming music, and watch YouTube videos; you can work on your documents stored in Google Docs or Acrobat.com, check your GMail or Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, and you can edit your photos in Picasa or Adobe Photoshop Online. It's yours for $299!

That's pretty tempting! It might not matter that it's manufactured by an unknown Korean company and runs Ubuntu Linux, eh?

Now I just made that up with no regard for reality. But Microsoft is going nuts because it's increasingly easy to imagine some variation on that  - an emerging market that bypasses Windows. There are a lot of people who might be perfectly content to use a simple device that only runs an Internet browser although it's not going to be everyone's world; even if we use more online services and move files online, businesses will still use rich applications installed on Windows for a long time to come.

Google's vision is interesting. At the moment, the reality is something else. Google may have rushed its announcement of Chrome because it was embarrassed that after years of development its "new" features are not special at all - they're very, very similar to the features in Internet Explorer 8. The new features in either one are modest improvements at best - architectural changes to make the browers more crash-resistant, faster Java, better security, and a way to surf online without collecting any history (immediately and obviously dubbed "Porn Mode"). Neato! Not exactly riveting stuff.

Early reports suggest that Chrome is a work in progress, with some bugs, no support for add-ins, and an interface that is so stripped-down that I personally find it a bit odd. IE8 has some nice new ways to customize things and a few things moved around. I'm not sure I have time to test either one.

Let me return to something I said about Firefox when its new version was released. (This is addressed to the business users trying to get work done and the home users who don't want technical glitches. If you're a technically proficient computer user, go about your business with my best wishes.)

All of you have Internet Explorer 7 installed on your Windows computers. It is stable, full-featured, and secure.

Don't install duplicative software unnecessarily! You should not install a new Internet browser because a well-meaning friend tells you that it's cool, or a newspaper article speaks highly of it. You should install software if and only if you can articulate something that the new software will allow you to do that you cannot currently do. And you must be ready to take on the burden of giving the new software the care and attention it will require for security and stability.

Labels: Google, IE, Internet, Microsoft, software

posted by bruceb at 9/03/2008 01:24:00 AM | permalink

GRANDCENTRAL & GOOGLE BLACK HOLE

GrandCentral is a wonderful free service for handling phone calls. When you sign up, you pick a new phone number and do a few minutes of easy setup. Then when someone calls that number, all of your phones ring simultaneously and you can answer any of them.

I've relied on GrandCentral for more than a year. When you call me, my office phone and my cell phone ring. I can answer either one and transfer calls between them with a single push of a button. A web-based utility allows calls to be re-routed on the fly - you can literally make your phone calls ring at your parents' house when you arrive and turn off the forwarding when you leave. Call handling can be chosen based on time of day, or by groups, or by individual decisions for different names in your address book. Here's what I wrote about GrandCentral last year.

It's great - you should try it!

Except you can't sign up for it.

Google acquired GrandCentral in July 2007 and immediately stopped signing up new members. Existing members could invite new users for a few more months but no one has been added since the beginning of this year.

There is dead silence about what to expect. It's been months since there have been any meaningful changes on the web site or blog posts by anyone knowledgeable. Nobody from GrandCentral participates on the support forum. No one knows if a new version will be rolled out with even more wonderful features - or if the plug will be pulled on short notice.

It's not the only time this has happened to a company purchased by Google. This article about the "Google black hole" lists several more companies with promising technology that were acquired by Google only to disappear from sight, with the founders and employees gradually shifted away into other projects.

Google's image is starting to tarnish - its non-search products are always on the verge of greatness but never seem to become great. I hope GrandCentral doesn't die! If my phone number changes, it's a bad sign for some good technology.

Labels: business, Google, phone, web_services

posted by bruceb at 8/28/2008 12:39:00 AM | permalink

OUTLOOK vs. GMAIL

Microsoft Exchange and Outlook dominate the market for corporate email. Small businesses running Exchange Server use Outlook almost exclusively. Until recently, even individuals and businesses without a server would use Outlook with their POP3 mail accounts.

But in the last couple of years, almost everyone has started to chafe at a singular disadvantage of an individual copy of Outlook: it can't be used easily anywhere except by sitting at the computer where it's installed.

We want to read our mail from any computer, anywhere. We want to use more than one computer - a desktop in the office, another one at home, or perhaps a notebook for the road - and we want our email on all of them. We want our mail on a Blackberry or iPhone or Windows Mobile device. All of those things can be done with Outlook but not easily and not without compromises.

It's driving people to set up their mail online with Google Gmail or Microsoft's Windows Live Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. There are some compromises there, too, but the convenience is starting to outweigh everything else. The webmail providers are adding features right and left, so it's possible now to use the online services without regret.

Google Gmail has devoted followers who love its presentation of messages in organized threads and unparalleled search options. Google is constantly tweaking it to offer more storage space, more options for displaying mail on more devices, and more features.

Here's a lengthy comparison of Outlook and Gmail. It's worth reading - your attention will be drawn to things you might not have considered, and you may find yourself nodding unexpectedly at one choice or the other. I think the author undersells Outlook a bit. (One point he doesn't mention, for example: people are very upset when they click "Send by email" in Internet Explorer or Word and nothing useful happens - the webmail services don't integrate with Windows that way.) And in the end, personal taste may outweigh any of these features; some people hate Outlook; personally, I can't use Gmail - I find it unintuitive and clumsy and unattractive.

The next few years will be a blur. Outlook's profile is dropping for home users; Microsoft does not even include Outlook with the Home and Student Edition of Office 2007, presumably because more people are using the online services instead (and perhaps because Vista's Windows Mail is a really nice mail program, better suited for many people who don't need Outlook's complexity).

On the other hand, Microsoft just announced a new program that may change the game completely for small businesses and keep them with Outlook. I'll tell you about that on Wednesday.

Labels: Google, mail, Microsoft, Outlook, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 7/21/2008 01:45:00 AM | permalink

BLACKBERRY MANIA

Blackberry smartphones are mindbogglingly popular. I'm being asked about them more often than iPhones. That shouldn't be a surprise - almost half the smartphones sold in the first quarter of 2008 were Blackberry devices, a significant increase over the previous quarter, while the market share of iPhones took a nose dive in the same period, according to the Associated Press.

I wrote some cautionary notes a few months ago about the Blackberry. Let me try to be more specific.

• If you work in a company that supports the Blackberry, it is a tremendous device. The company runs big servers to make it so.
• Small businesses can get similar software for their server; licenses are cheap or free. Count on a significant cost to set up the Blackberry server software and get things working - and prepare for the risk not only that it might not work smoothly, but also that it might muck up your server in other ways. Remember, the reason your server runs so smoothly is because we change it as little as possible. I've heard stories, that's all I'm saying.
• If you are an individual with a single POP3 email address, the Blackberry is a good phone and a decent email device. You'll have to fuss with a couple of settings in your mail program to leave messages on your mail provider's server so Blackberry can retrieve them; that can occasionally go sideways, resulting in your mail program or Blackberry receiving twelve duplicate copies of messages or something, but on the whole it will be fine.
• You won't be syncing over the air with your computer's calendar or address book. You can sync in a cradle attached to the computer if you install Blackberry's software. Personally, I find the software to be fairly hideous and unintuitive, but it does its job, if you're lucky. Heck, hideous unintuitive software is easy to come by - I've seen worse.
• If you have a Google GMail or Yahoo mail account, the Blackberry integrates beautifully with them. Google, in particular, is cooking up ways to connect to a Blackberry and has released a program to sync the Blackberry calendar with a Google calendar. You know, if you're using a Google calendar. (If you're using a Google calendar, you're young and devouring new technology at a furious pace and the last thing you need is condescending advice from an old fogey. Go and Twitter in peace.)
• If you work in a company run by Microsoft Small Business Server, the Blackberry is very, very wrong for you.
• If you get a device running Windows Mobile 5 or 6, I can set you up in three minutes with your Outlook calendar, contacts, and email syncing over the air, continuously, both directions.
• If you get a Blackberry, I can create a clumsy, half-baked flow of messages to the Blackberry that is divorced from your Outlook folders. Everything about it will be a compromise. You'll blame me. I'll be defensive.

The smartphone is becoming a platform that is as important for many people as their computer. Shop carefully and look ahead - a lot will be happening in the next year to improve the process of making your information available everywhere!

Labels: Google, mail, mobile, phone, SBS

posted by bruceb at 6/12/2008 12:50:00 AM | permalink

ACROBAT ONLINE

Adobe has launched an online suite of software and services, along with announcing the July release of Acrobat 9. It's all interesting but I have a sense of overload already, and we're still very early in the new age of online web services.

Acrobat.com is ready for you to begin using for free - an email address and a password opens up online file storage, convenient file sharing, an online word processor, web conferencing, and a PDF converter. I can only mention a few things in passing, but this article has a nice description of each of the features.

Adobe has designed a very appealing set of controls for its services, with lots of functions presented elegantly. The file sharing feature makes it easy to send an email with a large file attachment by uploading the file to Adobe's servers and sending only a link in the message. There's a generous amount of free space for file storage. The web conferencing stands out for ease of use.

In addition to many small companies offering each of the various parts, Microsoft and Google have already begun to roll out their own online suites. Google Docs and Microsoft Office Live Workspace and other Microsoft Live services each provide more or less the same functions: Google offers its typically quirky and sometimes overly simplistic interface; Microsoft counters with some appealing services that are all too often overlapping, confusing, and complex. Now Adobe enters the field with presumably a big promotional push.

Each of these suites will only reward a person or business who commits to one of them wholeheartedly. Who's ready to do that? There are a hundred services that will help you send an oversize email attachment. Web conferencing is easy to come by. The benefits of Adobe's services might emerge if you take advantage of their integration, which means committing to them and using them daily as a way to change your business flow. I don't feel any appetite among my very small business clients for a change like that and I'm not sure I'd be doing them a favor if I tried to create that momentum - not yet, anyway.

In just a few minutes, I ran into some limitations of the Acrobat.com services - not big problems, just typical startup issues.

• The initial login was problematic - the service didn't recognize my "Adobe ID" and I had to go through the password reset process.
• The online word processor, "Buzzword," uses a separate login name and password for some reason, and stores its documents separately from the other Adobe file storage service.
• The word processor is adequate for the basics but no more than that. Here's more info about Buzzword.
• The online file storage will not accept any media files - no online storage of music or movies. I can understand why Adobe handles difficult copyright issues that way, but it limits the usefulness of the service.
• There is an online PDF converter to create PDFs from Office documents and other formats, but the free converter can only be used five times - hardly worth mentioning. Adobe isn't going to give up its profits from selling Acrobat that easily!

Now with all that said, I encourage you to take a look at Acrobat.com! Set up your password and try things out! The design is lovely and the service has much promise. But don't commit to it half-heartedly or it will become just another forgotten password for a web site where a few forgotten files are stored.

As to Acrobat 9, there are no details yet about whether there will be any important new features for businesses. The presentation on Monday focused on the ability to embed Flash videos in PDF files. How . . . special. There will also be hooks to the online Acrobat.com service to facilitate collaborating on PDF files, which doesn't mean much if we're not otherwise using the Acrobat.com service. Waiting for details on that one.

Labels: Acrobat, business, Google, Microsoft, Office, web_services

posted by bruceb at 6/03/2008 12:21:00 AM | permalink

GOOGLE WEB HOSTING

If you're looking for a quick way to get something online, take a look at what Google is doing.

There's no shortage of ways to get started online with a web site, a blog, a place for collaboration, a shared calendar, a shared photo gallery, or any of a hundred other things. In fact, for many people that's the problem - it's not easy to articulate what their goals are for an online site, and there's no way to make an informed choice and be confident that a service will match their technical skills, meet their needs, and still be in business a year from now.

Traditional web hosting - register a name, sign up with a web hosting company, get a web site designed, and keep it up to date - has many pitfalls. Name registration and simple web hosting cost virtually nothing, but there are many ways to muck it up, and it's hard not to feel helpless and lost while trying to decide what companies to choose. Very few web site designers are willing to work cheaply on a simple web site, for obvious reasons - there's no money doing inexpensive work for a customer who likely won't come back for repeat business.

Lots of companies big and small have jumped in to make it easier to get started, typically by offering the web hosting for free or nearly free and providing templates for cookie-cutter web sites. Don't underestimate that! Many of those services are just great and some of the templates are beautifully designed.

Microsoft, for example, has introduced Microsoft Office Live, intended to provide small businesses with the tools to start a web site and do useful things with it - online commerce, marketing, online document storage and collaboration, and more. A motivated business owner with strong technical skills can probably do wonderful things with it. I've only looked at the first few screens and I can see the potential, but wow, there's a lot of things to learn! The thought of working with them enough to be confident makes me want to go lie down.

Google offers simple web hosting for individuals and very small businesses with typical Google features - drop dead simple controls, nice designs for the templates, and all completely free. Details are on the Google Web Hosting page. For a modest monthly fee, you can hire professional designers to help put your site together.

All of these services have quirks. I don't know the details about Google's web hosting, but I can give you one quick example. Google is not offering to host http://www.yournamehere.com for free! The service creates pages with an address in this format: http://yoursitename.googlepages.com. That's fine for an individual, a bit funky for a business. That also means that Google will not be providing email to a custom domain name, although you can have mail from your site sent to any email address (including a Google GMail account.)

Let's be clear: that means you can have a web site online in minutes, for free, that can be updated from anywhere. Nice!

Today Google opened up another service that looks fascinating. Google Sites also lets you get a web site online in minutes, for free, that can be updated from anywhere. But these sites are designed for groups - sports teams, community groups, classrooms, clubs, families, anything that might involve more than one person.

The pages can easily be used for calendars, photos, videos, documents, blog-style news, gadgets, and more.

Anyone can view the pages online, but it's also easy to give people permission to add information - enter an email address and immediately give someone permission to update the calendar, contribute to the news items, or upload pictures, for example.

This is very good stuff! The world is pretty overwhelming, I know, but this ought to be in the back of your mind so you can use it when the need arises.

Sites created with Google Sites will have names in the format http://sitename.googlepages.com.

Here's Google's announcement that Google Sites is now available to anyone, and here's a news article with a few more details. Go put it to good use!

Labels: domains, Google, Internet, Microsoft, web_services

posted by bruceb at 5/23/2008 01:27:00 AM | permalink

GRANDCENTRAL GOES OOPS

GrandCentral is a phenomenally useful service for some people. The service assigns you a free phone number; you can route calls so when that number is dialed, the phone rings at any number of places you choose. When you call my GrandCentral number - the only number I give out now - both my office phone and my cell phone ring, so you can reach me wherever I am, crucial in an area like Sonoma County where cell phone coverage is spotty. The web interface plays voicemail messages, which are indefinitely archived, and allows calls to be rerouted on the fly - forward your calls to Grandma's house when you arrive for Thanksgiving, then turn the forwarding off when you leave. Brilliant! Here's my notes about GrandCentral when I signed up.

Google bought GrandCentral last year and seems a little uncertain what to do with it. The service immediately stopped accepting new users, instead offering signup on a waiting list with only occasional openings for new people to join. Service has been spotty at times lately. The features haven't changed and there's been little discussion about what to expect. The official blog is almost dead, although a post last month promised that work was proceeding on "the next great version of GrandCentral and a ton of cool new features."

Today's episode is probably just an "Oops!" moment, not an indication of anything. But it was almost a big Oops.

Google almost let the registration lapse on the domain name www.grandcentral.com. Somebody forgot to renew it.

The web site actually went dead for many people today, the last day of its registration, as the registrar began to take it over.

Late in the day, somebody from Google managed to get the site back online by renewing the name for a year.

Here's a blogger summing up the day's events.

Isn't that marvelous? It's some pretty embarrassing stuff. I hope Google is doing a better job on the big picture than it is on the details!

Labels: business, Google, Internet, phone

posted by bruceb at 5/21/2008 01:34:00 AM | permalink

MICROSOFT OFFICE LIVE WORKSPACE

There are many visions of our online future. Google and many others envision a world of cloud computing, where our programs and our data are both hosted online. Google Docs provides a word processor and spreadsheet, and online storage of files, all accessible from any computer anywhere. At the moment these services are mostly presented in an Internet browser but the technology is already appearing to let online programs run in their own windows like any other program, giving us access to programs that look elegant and can be accessed from anywhere. Google's vision (and Microsoft's nightmare) is a world where those programs run on any operating system, so you can have the same experience regardless of whether you're running Windows, Mac OS, or Linux.

Not a bad vision! So far the implementation isn't very exciting but Adobe Photoshop Express is quite nice for simple photo editing and sharing, and Google has come a long way with Google Docs.

The universe of computer users includes many people and businesses who are reluctant to change their habits. The habit of running programs on our desktop computers will be hard to break, and Microsoft may do quite well with a vision that takes smaller steps - allowing us to keep our familiar programs but integrating online services to enhance them. Microsoft Office Live Workspace is one of the steps on the way to fulfilling Microsoft's vision of "software plus service."

Microsoft is betting that you're comfortable with Word, Excel and Powerpoint installed on your computer. Office Live Workspace extends the familiar Office programs so files can be easily saved online, where they can be viewed by and shared with co-workers or third parties, or retrieved from a different computer to open in the Office programs on that computer. The online files can be accessed from a web browser but they can also be opened with a click on a toolbar button in the Office programs, just like you're used to doing when you open your Documents folder.

Office Live Workspace uses your Windows Live ID and it's currently free. Microsoft is mulling over the ways to make money - possibly advertising (although there are no ads now), possibly subscription packages (I'll describe one tomorrow Wednesday), and possibly "premium" packages for increased file storage space or other extra features.

This overlaps the Windows Live Skydrive service, which also offers free online storage and file sharing. Office Live Workspace is focused on Word, Excel & Powerpoint files - they can be previewed on the web site and opened directly from the web site into your Office program for editing, with no fumbling with uploads and downloads. There are rudimentary tools for collaboration - if two people have access to a file and one is editing it, the other will be told that the file has been "checked out."

This has the potential to be extremely useful but I don't suggest diving in without reading more about what to expect. Here's a few links to help you get oriented: a comparison with Google Docs; an overview of the new service; comments from a well-informed blogger; Microsoft's announcement at the official rollout. This is very exciting stuff! Small businesses may well want to start using this right away but there are issues of file security anytime files leave your local computers; this will require care to make sure documents are protected appropriately.

Labels: file_sharing, Google, Internet, Microsoft, Office, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 4/21/2008 01:22:00 AM | permalink

GOOGLE LAUNCHES FUTURE SEARCH

Google Australia launched Gday today, a new search engine that allows users to search content on the internet before it is created.

"Google spiders crawl publicly available web information and our index of historic, cached web content. Using a mashup of numerous factors such as recurrence plots, fuzzy measure analysis, online betting odds and the weather forecast from the iGoogle weather gadget, we can create a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like 24 hours from now.

"We can use this technique to predict almost anything on the web ? tomorrow?s share price movements, sports results or news events. Plus, using language regression analysis, Google can even predict the actual wording of blogs and newspaper columns, 24 hours before they?re written!"

Google has traditionally introduced innovative new products around this time of year. It's possible there will be more announcements from Google throughout the day.

Labels: Google, humor, Internet

posted by bruceb at 4/01/2008 12:42:00 AM | permalink

VISTA SP1 & SEARCH

Searching in Vista quickly becomes second nature. Clicking the Start button and typing the name of a program brings it up immediately - no need to hunt through the long list of program folders. There are immediate results from opening the "Documents" folder and typing a word in the upper right hand corner, or by searching all locations with a click on Search on the Start menu.

Google complained that Microsoft had made it too easy for people to search for things and the EU threatened to start another expensive round of litigation, so Microsoft rejiggered the Search options in Vista Service Pack 1. It's one of the few steps backward after installing the service pack.

Vista Service Pack 1  removes "Search" from its position on the right side of the Start menu and some right-click context menus. It's a small change but I missed it immediately. Theoretically Google and others can create their own indexing and search programs and fully integrate them with Vista but they're not here yet, so the effect is that an extra click or two is necessary to search all locations - document folders and Outlook folders and network shares.

These are my favorite ways to begin a search in Vista after installing Service Pack 1. Pick one and add it to the list of commands that you've memorized.

• Hit the Windows Key + F
• Click the task bar and hit F3 on the keyboard
• Open an Explorer window and hit F3
• Create a regular shortcut by right-clicking on your desktop and clicking on New / Shortcut.
• The location should be start-ms: search-ms:
• The name should be Search
• Once you've created the shortcut, drop a copy in the Quick Launch toolbar next to the Start button.
• (added 04/08) Open a search window by hitting Windows Key + F, then drag the little magnifying glass to the desktop.

It's also possible to restore the ability to search from right-click context menus after installing Vista SP1, but it requires editing the registry. Please don't edit the registry until  you have deeply considered the warnings in this post!

Within REGEDIT, navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\find

Rename or delete the REG_SZ: 'LegacyDisable' value.

Right clicking on the Start button or any other folder will now offer the 'Search' context-menu option.

Now go search for things!

(Thanks to alert reader Paul Kulik for the correction!)

Labels: Google, Microsoft, search, Vista

posted by bruceb at 3/24/2008 01:46:00 AM | permalink

TALES OF WOE: SOFTWARE DEPT.

My office computer is a powerful Dell tower, with an Nvidia video card and too much software.  I choose software carefully, but I use a lot of programs and there is an alarming number of icons down by the clock.  I am constantly installing new software, upgrading programs or installing security updates, and removing things that don't pass muster.  It doesn't surprise me when things get a little messy and I have to troubleshoot problems that develop.  Lately, though, it feels like everyone is in the same position and we're all seeing strange conflicts and crashes and unresolvable problems.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 was running slowly.  That's where the problems began. 

I started in the Adobe support forums, learning about tools in the program to optimize the database and reading about problems that other people had reported that were not quite the same but left open the possibility that the problem was in the program itself.  Since my photos and the Adobe catalog were on a network server, I turned on offline files to see if a locally stored copy would speed things up.  (Not really.) But programs were crashing and the system was freezing more often than I could explain just with problems in Photoshop Elements.

I started seeing symptoms that pointed to video problems so I focused for a while on the drivers for the video card. Nvidia updates its drivers every couple of months, although that's usually only important for gamers or to solve specific problems.  I had the most recent drivers but I was a little suspicious of them because I started getting an odd horizontal line smeared across the screen every so often after I installed them.  They had cured a couple of other problems, though, and I have been running them for a couple of months without any problems.  It seemed odd that they would start to cause a fuss but I downgraded to the previous WHQL certified version just to be safe. Problems continued unabated and crashes came more frequently until finally I got two blue screens in an hour, with the display driver identified as the culprit each time.  Worse, there were odd sparkling artifacts on the Dell logo displayed by the bios when the system restarted, suggesting that the video card was overheating or failing.

Yuck.  Time to spend a few minutes looking at the offer for discounted video cards from Microsoft through its new Vista Ultimate website, carrying on the tradition of unsatisfying Vista Ultimate promotions.  After only a half hour or so, I felt confident that I had no idea what kind of connector my existing video card uses, or for that matter what the choices are or how to find out.  I also was pretty sure I had no clue how much power a new video card would demand, what kind of power connector was required to support a new video card, whether my Dell computer had a big enough power supply for a new video card, or why I cared.

Something didn't feel right.  What might be causing grief with the video drivers? I turned off GForce, the program that creates incredible visual displays in Media Center, but it's been running happily for a long time - it didn't seem likely to be causing problems all of a sudden. I uninstalled the the CCCP audio and video codecs, which had been updated shortly before this all began.

But it wasn't until I uninstalled the Google Toolbar from Internet Explorer that thing seemed to go back to normal.  I had been running the beta of a new version of the toolbar, which allows auto fill settings and bookmarks to be synced among multiple computers. Other people had reported problems with the new version, although nothing remotely like what I had been seeing.

I can't be sure which change fixed the problems I was having.  My system has gone back to being silky smooth, fast, and happy.  It makes no sense whatsoever for the Google Toolbar to have any interaction with the display driver or to cause system crashes.  But I can't escape the feeling that it was the removal of that toolbar that made my computer settle down. Something did, anyway.

When you call and describe the problem you're having, forgive me if I sigh gently to myself, or possibly start weeping, before we launch into troubleshooting.

Labels: computers, Google, IE, Microsoft, software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 3/13/2008 01:04:00 PM | permalink

GOOGLE ANDROID

Here's a five minute film demonstrating Android, Google's new operating system for mobile phones. Very impressive!

Labels: Google, mobile

posted by bruceb at 2/22/2008 11:23:00 AM | permalink

VERIZON'S OPEN NETWORK

Verizon's announcement that it would open up its network next year to devices not sold in Verizon stores made headlines and generated lots of online buzz. It is a welcome development from a notoriously closed company and Verizon deserves kudos for stepping forward. Verizon might just be trying to polish up its image before the important 700Mhz spectrum auction coming soon, which looks like a battle between Verizon and Google after other major players decided not to bid. Or perhaps it genuinely wants to do the right thing in America, which lags badly in innovation, features, and prices compared to the regulated market in Europe. (The European cell phone market is one of several examples of regulated markets that are far more robust than the purportedly "free" market in the US, where the benefits of competition and innovation are all too often sacrificed to corporate greed and excess.)

It's worth keeping in mind that the Verizon announcement may be less significant than it appears. David Pogue details some of the reasons to be skeptical in this column:

• Verizon's network only supports a proprietary protocol, CDMA, and not the GSM protocol that's used by other carriers in the US and almost exclusively in Europe. Most devices designed to Verizon's standards won't be able to be used with any other carrier.
• Verizon will only allow use of phones it has approved, a rather glaring loophole that gives it tremendous control over the process - perhaps by requiring manufacturers to omit features (like VOIP calls) that would permit you to lower your Verizon bill.
• And most importantly, Verizon made no promises about the rates it will charge for network access by non-Verizon phones.

There are, however, a couple of reasons to be optimistic. One is another, less celebrated announcement by Verizon last week - in the long run, it intends to move to the industry-standard next-generation platform known as "LTE" ("Long Term Evolution"), supported by the other GSM carriers. This points to a true global standard that might avoid some of the equipment incompatibility that plagues us now.

The other is the possibility that Verizon's move will inspire other carriers to open up their own networks. Maybe we'd even see a little of that much-vaunted "competition" and the carriers will feel compelled to give us relatively free choices of equipment for our cell phone service.

Labels: business, Google, mobile, phone, wireless

posted by bruceb at 12/04/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FIRE MAPS
The Google Maps team put together this list of maps that have information about the devastating fires in Southern California. According to the Los Angeles Times, almost a million people have been evacuated as of Wednesday night. We hope for everyone's safety and a quick end to this tragedy.

Labels: Google

posted by bruceb at 10/24/2007 12:35:00 AM | permalink

E-MAIL CONVERSATIONS
Google Mail sorts e-mail messages into "conversations" - basically, all the messages with the same subject line are stacked on top of each other. If a new message comes in, the entire stack moves to the top. You can immediately see the context for a message. Labeling and archiving happens to entire conversations.

Some people engage in lengthy exchanges with a group of correspondents with the same subject line used continuously. Those people love Google Mail's conversation view. They can't understand why anyone would use Outlook and display messages in chronological order.

(Personally, I find conversation view to be infuriating. My mind doesn't work that way, my e-mail flow doesn't happen that way, and at some deep level I just don't get it. I'm much more in tune with all the people who find this page when they look for a way to disable Google Mail's conversation view. It can't be turned off, by the way.)

Outlook 2003 and 2007 both permit folders to be arranged in conversations. (Click on View / Arrange By - weird, huh? It was there all along.)

The conversation arrangement in Outlook does not gather messages from all folders, and that makes it fairly useless. Your half of the conversation is stored in Sent Items and won't show up in the conversation threads in your Inbox.

Microsoft's Outlook team just wrote a description of the "ultimate Inbox" - how to set up a rule that automatically moves your outgoing messages to your Inbox, where they can be included in the conversation view. Interesting trick!

Labels: Google, mail, Outlook

posted by bruceb at 10/09/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

MORE GOOGLE EARTH TRICKS
I mentioned a few days ago that the latest version of Google Earth includes "Google Sky," adding the ability to zoom through the universe viewing high-resolution photos of stars and galaxies.

Many features have been added in the last couple of years for displaying photos, Wikipedia entries, 3D skylines, and more. Here's two that are new to me.

This site has a long discussion of how to download high-resolution 3D images of structures around the world, created by real people and uploaded to Google's servers. The article focuses on buildings in Disneyland contributed by adoring fans, but there's more being constantly added around the world.

And recently someone discovered that a basic flight simulator has been built into Google Earth. You'll need to know the keyboard controls to start it and operate it, but the reward for simulator fans is a flight on an F-16 over Google Earth's highly-detailed photos.

Labels: games, Google

posted by bruceb at 9/02/2007 03:12:00 PM | permalink

GOOGLE NEWS
An interesting collection of news about Google projects today.

• As the new owner of YouTube, Google will introduce scrolling advertisements to YouTube videos today. They promise the ads will be unobtrusive, nearly-transparent banners that will appear at the bottom of videos for only 10 seconds.
• Google went into the online video business last year, selling DRM-laden TV shows. The business wasn't profitable so Google announced a few days ago that the web site would be shuttered and all downloaded Google videos would stop playing. (When the licensing server is turned off, DRM-infected files can no longer be played - a rude introduction to DRM for people who thought that purchasing a video actually gave them something that would last. It's kind of like what happens to people whose computers crash without backups of their iTunes libraries.) Google initially offered refunds to video purchasers through its Google Checkout service, which made people unhappy who wanted real money instead. Google quickly announced that it is going to credit back the purchases onto people's credit cards - and the Google Checkout credits will be a lovely gift, the licensing servers will stay plugged in for six months, and gosh darn, it's all just a silly misunderstanding.
• Google Maps is making code freely available to add a fully functional Google map to any website - clickable, draggable, zoomable. Expect the maps on business websites to improve considerably.
• Google Earth has added a service for scanning the sky and zooming around in images of 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies.

Labels: DRM, Google, video

posted by bruceb at 8/22/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS & ADVERTISING
Solicitations arrive constantly in my mailbox offering to help move bruceb.com to the top of search engine results (where it so clearly belongs). It is easy to become confused about the world of online searches and advertising. If you're brand new to the idea, let me give you the briefest of overviews, using Google as the example.


Google presents two kinds of search results.

There is paid advertising. Those are the links at the top or on the right side of a page of Google search results that say “Sponsored Links.”

You can easily have your web site appear in Google's paid ad results. Google’s paid advertising program is named “AdWords.” Information is available here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/ads/

It is easy to understand and sign up – you don’t need help from a third party. It is also very, very easy for it to become frighteningly expensive. Consider it in the same way you would examine your options for Yellow Pages or radio ads – it deserves research and planning!

Under the paid ads are the search results that Google provides for free. Although there are services that claim to be able to influence those results, in reality it is virtually impossible to buy your way to the top of those results. Google's page-ranking routines weigh many things but the most significant statistic is the number of links to your web site from other web sites. Your web site will rise in the rankings when you update it frequently and make it interesting enough that other web sites link to you.


Google has solid information about how to evaluate offers from "search engine optimizers," and briefly discusses how to increase your web site's ranking in Google.

Labels: business, Google, Internet

posted by bruceb at 8/07/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

GOOGLE AND WIRELESS BROADBAND
In 2009, new frequencies will become available in the US for handling voice and data. The frequencies are currently being used for analog television, but the FCC decided years ago that analog television would no longer be supported after 2009; the frequencies are being reclaimed and resold in an FCC auction.

A few days ago Google bid $4.6 billion dollars, the reserve price, for the 700Mhz band frequencies. Google's bid included a request that the FCC put conditions on any bid that might be successful:

'Google "requested that the Commission should extend to all CMRS-type spectrum licensees clearly delineated, explicitly enforceable, and unwavering obligations to provide (1) open applications, (2) open devices, (3) open wholesale services, and (4) open network access." For those of us who don't regularly hang with the FCC these proposed conditions mean: 1) users should be able to download software from anywhere and use it on their communication devices without restriction; 2) users should be able to use any communication device that meets the technical requirements for connecting to the network no matter who made the device; 3) third-party resellers should be able to buy wholesale bandwidth from auction winners, and; 4) other networks should be able to connect to the 700-MHz network.'

Although the major telcos and cable companies have made noises about supporting these goals, the reality is that they will never allow anything like this to become possible. US voice and broadband availability, speed, and pricing is built on the greed and selfishness of the telcos and cable companies, who have thrived on long-term contracts, closed networks, proprietary devices - every conceivable trick to restrict our choices and lock us in to a particular company. It would be a much different world if we could buy cell phones freely and activate them with any carrier, for example (ask the iPhone users stuck with Cingular). Or if VOIP - using the Internet to carry voice phone calls - was fully integrated into our devices, instead of being restricted from most mobile networks. Or if wide-area wireless Internet coverage was made available by cities, reducing the need for expensive DSL or cable connections.

This article discusses the Google bid and makes an interesting point. The telcos and cable companies can issue all the press releases they like about their support of Google's proposal, but there are two fundamental truths in the universe: (1) they will never allow those proposals to be realized, and (2) they will never allow Google to purchase these frequencies, no matter what they have to spend.

There is ample evidence from the last hundred years in this country that the telcos and cable companies are mean and spiteful. "The telcos and cable companies are far more skilled and cunning when it comes to lobbying and controlling politicians than Google can ever hope to be. The telcos have spent more than a century at this game and Google hasn't even been in it for a decade. And Google's pockets are no deeper than those of the other potential bidders."

The columnist even speculates that they have ways of getting their revenge at Google for having the audacity to suggest that there be open competition. The ISPs have many means at their disposal to direct traffic away from Google; the most obvious is to change the defaults in the software distributed to new subscribers.

This will be an interesting battle to watch, but it's hard to be optimistic that the result will change anything for the better in this country.

Labels: broadband, business, Google, mobile, phone, wireless

posted by bruceb at 7/27/2007 11:00:00 AM | permalink

GOOGLE ACQUIRES GRANDCENTRAL
Google announced on Monday that it has acquired GrandCentral, the remarkable collection of telephone services. Here's Google's announcement of the acquisition, and here's GrandCentral's announcement. I wrote about GrandCentral a few weeks ago; my experience with it has been flawless and I'm still learning new tricks that make it even more valuable.

GrandCentral has stopped accepting new users for a short while during the transition to Google's infrastructure, although you can sign up to "reserve" a number. Existing GrandCentral users can bypass that short delay and invite up to five new users, so my clients and friends should drop me a note if you're interested.

Labels: business, Google, phone

posted by bruceb at 7/03/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

GOOGLE MAPS MOBILE & PICASA MOBILE
If you have a Windows Mobile device (a Motorola Q or Treo 700W, for example), go to http://www.google.com/gmm on the mobile web browser and install "Google Maps Mobile." It's a special version of Google Maps optimized for a mobile phone, including street maps and satellite images, driving directions, and real-time traffic reports for folks in big cities.

Google also just announced an interesting addition to its Picasa program - it's possible to use "Picasa Web Albums" to store photos online, then view them on a Windows Mobile device at http://picasaweb.google.com/m. The pictures are automatically resized for a handheld screen. (Flickr has a crude version of the same feature - Flickr users can see their photos on a handheld device at http://m.flickr.com/. Expect many more sites to be optimized for handhelds soon.)

Labels: Google, mobile, web_services

posted by bruceb at 6/28/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

GOOGLE & DOUBLECLICK
In April, Google announced its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. It was treated as Big News and generated lots of press but I found it hard to understand what the deal meant to Google and its competitors. Clearly it meant a lot to Microsoft, which paid $6 billion in May to acquire Acquantive - another name unknown to consumers having something or other to do with online advertising.

A Google product manager has written an overview of the world of online advertising and an explanation of why Google purchased DoubleClick. It's got a bit of history and some figures that shed light on how things work in the online advertising economy. You might still be confused when you finish, but you'll be confused at a higher level, which is about all we can hope for these days.

Labels: business, Google

posted by bruceb at 6/27/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

GOOGLE MAPS STREET VIEW
Google Maps has introduced a very cool new feature, Google Maps Street View. In selected cities, the Street View button allows you to get street-level photographs in high resolution, capable of being zoomed and rotated thru 360 degrees. It may not be terribly useful but it's hard to resist killing a few minutes saying ooh and ah.

Google sent photographers with special cameras down the streets of San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver, spending an estimated $25 billion to bring you a virtual tour of any neighborhood you choose.

Here's the blog entry from the Google Maps team announcing Street View. There's a video introducing the feature, or you can go straight to Times Square in New York.

The pictures are detailed and full of people, so at least a few are potentially compromising. CNet accumulated a few of the interesting shots that turned up as people pored over the images.

Labels: Google, web_services

posted by bruceb at 6/01/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

DELL, GOOGLE, AND MONEY
Dell installs less crapware on new computers than any other manufacturer, but one of their latest money-making tactics is annoying. Dell and Google have partnered to install the Google Toolbar and Google Desktop on most new computers - along with some trickier under-the-hood stuff to present unexpected pages of ads during your Internet browsing.

Google Desktop indexes documents and e-mail for fast searches. It was already lagging behind Microsoft Windows Desktop Search and it's wholly irrelevant on a Windows Vista computer, where search is deeply integrated with the operating system.

The Google toolbar is an old friend, but also increasingly unnecessary for most people. There's a search box in the upper right corner of IE7 that can be easily set to do a Google search by default, and most people never use the other Google toolbar buttons. Most people could remove it and recover the screen space. (Take a look at "Autofill" though - it can be a real timesaver.)

Recently Dell and Google cooked up a new service that's much more slippery. If there's a typo in a URL that you type into the browser on a new Dell computer, it won't be automatically corrected and you won't see suggestions to reach the correct address; instead, you'll see a Dell-branded page with an entire screen full of advertising links.

Here's a long rant about this Dell/Google software, with a screenshot so you can see what it looks like. When you mistype a URL, you ought to immediately see a link to connect to the intended site. Google can do that easily and normally does. The Dell/Google software conceals that functionality in favor of advertising.

Yuck. Remember, when you set up a new computer, immediately run to Uninstall Programs and start to take off the crap. On Dell computers, that now includes "Browser Address Error Redirector." For the last couple of years I've also removed "Search Assistant" and "URL Assistant" from new Dell computers on the theory that anything with an ambiguous name that does not disclose its author is likely to be adware/spyware.

Labels: computers, Google, software

posted by bruceb at 5/23/2007 12:41:00 PM | permalink

iGOOGLE
Google has offered a personalized home page for years, but today it was relaunched with new features and the curious name "iGoogle." Curious because the letter "i" preceding a name is Apple's territory - Google is tweaking Apple pretty deliberately. (Reportedly Google has reassured Apple that it doesn't intend to offer any more "i" services.)

The features for personalizing the page are slick - check boxes to turn various news feeds and features on and off, drag and drop arrangement of the boxes onscreen, and a choice of "gadgets" - everything from weather boxes to daily photos of bunnies. It's possible to create a gadget with some personal photos in it and share it with other iGoogle users, no programming required. Here's an article about the new iGoogle page and here's a short description on the "official Google blog."

Of course it makes no sense to use that as your actual home page, right? Far better to use the official bruceb favorites page - there's a link to iGoogle right there at the top, under Portals. You wouldn't leave me, would you?

Labels: Google, Internet

posted by bruceb at 5/02/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

GOOGLE RISES, YAHOO SINKS
Only two years ago, Google and Yahoo earned the same revenue and it wasn't obvious which one would predominate for Web searches.

You probably saw the business news. Google's first-quarter revenue was more than twice Yahoo's, and the gap is widening. Here's an article comparing the two companies' performance. (Microsoft also wants to be a player in the world of web searches and advertising, but it's barely mentioned any more.)

Yahoo attempted to draw people to its web sites by featuring original content, including media created by the entertainment industry - and it has had some success doing that, but not enough to stay competitive with Google.

Google gets attention for its various software ventures - online office applications, Google Mail, and the like - but it's always worth remembering that those have virtually no relevance to Google's bottom line. Google is a company that places text ads on web pages, and it is making an unbelievable amount of money doing it.

Labels: business, Google

posted by bruceb at 4/23/2007 10:54:00 AM | permalink