Web 2.0 For Dummies June 23, 2006
Posted by Jerry Bowles in Companies, Google, Microsoft, Web 2.0.4 comments
Okay, so you think Ajax is a sink cleaner and a mashup is the freeway fender bender that made you late for work this morning. Your eyes glaze over when you scan the latest heavy-breathing geek porn at web sites like Scripting News or Slashdot. Everything you know about social networking you learned from typing “babe” in the MySpace search box.
But, let’s get real. How much of this Web 2.0 stuff do operational managers and workers—people in finance and accounting, HR, marketing and so on—need to know or even understand? The answer, at this early stage, is probably not a lot. Big companies today are cloistered in gated communities and they like it that way. They view the web as a great place to visit and sell products and services but you wouldn’t want to have your enterprise applications live there. At least, not yet, until you’re absolutely certain that it’s as safe and reliable as your IT infrastructure behind the firewall. For now, the still-unsolved problems of security, reliability, transaction integrity, scalability and performance preclude any large-scale movement of strategic enterprise applications to the web.
All that will change over time. The Internet simply offers too many competitive advantages–global reach, round-the-clock access, richer applications with deeper, real-time features and lower application development and IT infrastructure costs–to be ignored. Serious, grown-up open source web development companies like Nexaweb and OpenLaszlo and many others are hard at work, sprucing up the neighborhood, setting standards, and fixing the potholes.
Ironically, the Internet grassroots movement to preserve so-called “net neutrality” may hinder the development of the enterprise web because if it is successful infrastructure providers will have no financial incentive to develop and offer the enhanced levels of security and reliability that large companies require, which means they will invest less in infrastructure. Ultimately, that is a bad thing for everybody.
The first companies to benefit from Web 2.0 are the web natives, companies built from the ground up to perform functions that leverage the huge web marketplace and its real-time immediacy and e-commerce capabilities. Traditional enterprises will get there but not that much and not that soon. The old saying about a leader being the guy out front on the horse with the arrow in his chest still holds true
So, cheer up, Mr. or Ms. Tech-Challenged. Play with your Excel spreadsheet and waste an hour trying to find a missing e-mail by searching with the Outlook “find” function. But, if you really want know what the revolution is about, sneak a copy of Google’s free Desktop Search on to your machine when your resident geek isn’t looking, type in a couple of words that you remember from the missing e-mail, and see how startling fast it appears on your screen. That’s what all the cool kids at Microsoft do these days.
What Business is Google In Anyway? June 22, 2006
Posted by Jerry Bowles in Companies, Enterprise Mashups, Google, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
If you think the Evil Empire of Redmond works in paranoid ways, consider the case of Google, the undisputed heavyweight champ of next generation web technologies. Seldom has a company become so big and so powerful without explaining to investors exactly why it does what it does and how it plans to make money in the future.
The $64-billion question is: Will Google continue to focus on its core search and keyword-based advertising business or is it gearing up to try to replace Microsoft as the main provider of productivity applications to enterprises and average computer users?
Company executives deny or deflect such speculation but you have to think that it didn't introduce an online word processor, calendar, e-mail manager, instant-messaging program, photo manager, web page creator and, most recently, a spreadsheet just for the heck of it.
The reality is that Google is the only company big enough and Web-dominent enough to challenge Microsoft, not only in the office tool space, but also in the larger goal of transforming the web into a universal OS. Nobody ever bought a Windows machine because they loved the Windows operating system. Most users go with Windows because that is what you need to run Outlook and MS Office and most of the other most-widely used desktop software. Its dominance in office productivity applications made the Windows OS standard and gave Microsoft its so-called network effect.
Perhaps, as a result of being the unchallenged market leader for a very long time Microsoft has become bloated and risk-adverse and its products seem more dated and clunky by the day. We have now reached the point where the quality of office tools available as online applications is approaching parity with Microsoft's Office line. The long-predicted concept that the network is the computer is finally coming true. Google is the company best-positioned to benefit from this profound shift.
And let's face it; an all-out innovation slugfest between Microsoft and its homies and the Google gang would be good for the industry, good for web users, and great fun to watch. It might also save Microsoft from a long and nasty slide into irrelevance.
But, before all this can happen, Google has to decide what it wants to be when it grows up.
Software AG Pushes Ajax Enhancements June 21, 2006
Posted by Jerry Bowles in Ajax, Application Development, Companies, Enterprise Mashups.add a comment
One of the most positive signs that Web 2.0 technologies are going mainstream enterprise is that the big software developers are beginning to rally around Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, (Ajax) as the core framework for building next-generation web applications. The German-giant Software AG announced this morning several enhancements its crossvision Application Designer, a design-time and run-time environment that uses Ajax to create sophisticated Web-browser interfaces as part of a Service Oriented Architecture. Version 2.1 of the company's Application Designer includes Generic Web Service support, WYSIWYG layout capabilities and a new, friendlier HTML editor/word processor through Software AG's recent alliance with pintexx.
With the crossvision Application Designer, developers can use Ajax to design and deploy Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that enable desktop-like capabilities without having to code complex JavaScript, HTML or CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
Software AG has been well ahead of the pack on the Ajax front. Last year Application Designer was announced as the first Ajax-based product to include a user interface control for Google maps–just one of more than 80 Ajax graphical controls shipped with Application Designer.
"Thanks to the rapid popularization of Ajax, people are able to create highly functional applications in completely new and simple ways," said Dr. Peter Kuerpick, Member of the Board, Software AG and responsible for the development of crossvision. "The combination of our crossvision Application Designer and Application Composer sets a straight course directly from a Service-Oriented Architecture to the hands and eyes of the individual employee with a vital job to accomplish."
Software AG recently joined the OpenAJAX Alliance, whose mission is to advance the adoption of Ajax.
Near-Time Launches Collaboration Service June 20, 2006
Posted by Jerry Bowles in Collaboration, Collective Intelligence, Social Networking.add a comment
Near-Time, Inc. , based in Chapel Hill, NC, is launching its hosted collaboration service of the same name today following a six-month beta period which included thousands of users in segments spanning enterprise, small business, government, NGO, and education.
CEO Reid Conrad started the company more than two years ago as a MAC-only knowledge management solution but the platform has now evolved into a hosted Web-based collaboration and team support service for all environments.
The Near-Time pitch is that by integrating Weblogs and Wikis, the service enables groups to create a knowledge repository as they collaborate. Near-Time Wiki pages include version history, making it easy to keep up with group iterations. Institutional memory helps groups build upon experience and quickly brings new members up-to-speed. And the intuitive WYSIWYG authoring environment gives groups a familiar word-processing like interface to work within.
"As organizations become increasingly distributed, Near-Time brings internal and external communities together seamlessly,” Conrad says. “Email just does not cut it and most traditional platforms are expensive and proprietary. With our new hosted service we are giving organizations and dispersed groups an easy way to take advantage of the Web 2.0 technologies that have drastically changed and improved ways in which people communicate, work together and discover knowledge."
Attention, Local Retailers. ZiXXo is Here to Help You Sell More. June 19, 2006
Posted by Jerry Bowles in Application Development, Companies, Retail, Self-Service Web.1 comment so far
Our old buddy Mike Hogan is officially launching ZiXXo, the first self-service online coupon service at the Supernova Conference this week. Sounds a little mundane until you realize what an enormous business merchant coupons really are. Last year, some 335 billion coupons were distributed in the U.S., and of those 4.5 billion were actually used so there is no shortage of coupon clippers out there. The problem for local businesses has always been that 88% of these coupons are distributed by national companies through Sunday newspaper inserts, an avenue that the locals usually can't afford. ZiXXo makes it easy and cost-effective for local businesses to get into the game.
ZiXXo has a simple interface that allows merchants to create a coupon online, or upload an image of an existing coupon, and then ZiXXo syndicates the coupons through its own website, custom email alerts, custom RSS feeds and a growing network of syndication partners. Consumers simply print the coupons, on demand, and redeem them with local businesses. The local angle and the RSS distribution are the main tweaks. ZiXXo is launching its service at the Supernova 2006 Conference in San Francisco June 21-23 and is one of only 12 companies selected as a “Connected Innovator” by Michael Arrington of Techcunch.com and The Supernova Group, in conjunction with The Wharton School.
The 5-Minute Enterprise App June 18, 2006
Posted by Jerry Bowles in Application Development, Companies, IBM.add a comment
One of the many things that has the Big Guys excited about Web 2.0 is the ease and speed with which new productivity-enhancing applications can be developed and customized with off-the-shelf components. Rod Smith, IBM's vice president of emerging Internet technologies, unveiled at a trade show a prototype "IBM Enterprise Mashup" based on Web services and wiki technologies that allows users to create a customized application in less than five minutes.
"The embrace of open standards and Web 2.0 technologies is forcing businesses to rethink the paradigm of the proprietary, one-size-fits-all productivity application," declared Smith. "In today's business climate, with business collaborations quickly forming and disbanding, customers are rethinking how they can enable innovation to occur.
"Customers I talk to are abuzz about Web 2.0 and the creation of popular Internet services that seem to quickly appear out of nowhere, becoming instant global phenomena that are enjoyed by the masses — including their employees. They want to apply that new paradigm to make their businesses act faster and grab new opportunities. There's no going back."
