Published by Robert Scoble
I give you a front-row seat on the future. Focusing most of my efforts now on next-generation augmented reality and artificial intelligence, AKA "mixed reality."
SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER: http://clevermoe.com/scobleizer-news/
BUY OUR NEW BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Transformation-Robert-Scoble/dp/1539894444 "The Fourth Transformation: How augmented reality and artificial intelligence will change everything."
WATCH MY LATEST SPEECHES:
State of VR with Philip Rosedale (done in VR itself, very cool): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zAA1EVGUZU
At GEOINT, June 2017: http://trajectorymagazine.com/glimpse-new-world/
Augmented World Expo, June 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4xHILvLD8E
At Leade.rs, April 2017: https://youtu.be/52_0JshgjXI
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BIO:
Scoble gives you a front-row seat on the future.
Literally. He had the first ride in the first Tesla. Siri was launched in his house. He's been the first to share all sorts of technologies and companies with you, from Flipboard to Pandora to Instagram.
Today he's focusing on mixed reality, AKA "next-generation augmented reality" which will include a new user interface for EVERYTHING in your life (IoT, Smart Cities, driverless cars, robots, drones, etc).
That's based on his view thanks to his past experience as futurist at Rackspace.
Best place to find Scoble? On his Facebook profile at https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble
He has been a technology blogger since 2000, was one of five people who built Microsoft's Channel 9 video blog/community, worked at Fast Company Magazine running its TV efforts, and has been part of technology media businesses since 1993.
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SPEAKER PITCH:
Apple and Facebook now have revealed their Augmented Reality strategies, which means your business needs one too. Rely on Robert Scoble, the world's top authority on AR, to bring to your conference what businesses should do next.
SPEECH ABSTRACT #1:
TITLE: The Fourth Transformation: What's next in mixed reality (AR and AI) and the future of technology?
Here's an example of this talk at Leade.rs in Paris in April, 2017: https://youtu.be/52_0JshgjXI
Why "the Fourth Transformation?"
Soon we will have phones and glasses that do full on augmented reality. Everything you look at will potentially be augmented. This world is coming in late 2017 with a new iPhone from Apple, amongst other products. Microsoft is betting everything on its HoloLens glasses that do mixed reality and the industry is spending many billions of dollars in R&D and funding new companies like Magic Leap.
This future will be the user interface for IoT, Smart Cities, autonomous cars, robots, drones, and your TV.
This is a big deal and Robert will take you through what mixed reality is and how it will change every business.
Learn more about Robert's speaking style and contact his agent at http://odemanagement.com/robert-scoble/Robert-Scoble.html
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SPEECH ABSTRACT #2:
"The Next Two Clicks of Moore's Law."
Over the next four years, or two clicks of Moore's Law, a ton about our technology world will change. Scoble will bring you the best from his travels visiting R&D labs, startups, and innovators around the world.
He views the world through his rose-colored-mixed-reality glasses, which will be the new user interface for self driving cars, Smart Cities, IoT, and many other things in our world.
He'll send you off with some lessons for companies both large and small.
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SPEECH ABSTRACT #3:
"Personalized Meaning: What is Augmented Reality For?"
As we enter a far more technological world where even cars drive themselves, I predict we'll see a blowback toward the analog, more authentic world.
What role does augmented reality play in both worlds?
Get Scoble's insight into where augmented reality is going, see tons of real-world demos, and understand what he means by 'personalized meaning.'
CONTACT:
If you are looking to contact me, email is best: scobleizer@gmail.com.
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ENDORSEMENTS:
IZEA Top 25 Tech Influencers: https://izea.com/2017/07/07/25-top-tech-influencers/
Time: One of the top 140 Twitterers!
FT: One of the five most influential Twitterers!
Inc. Top 5 on list of Tech Power Players You Need to Know: http://www.inc.com/john-rampton/30-power-players-in-tech-you-need-to-know.html
Next Reality: #4 on top 50 AR influencer list: https://next.reality.news/news/nr50-next-realitys-50-people-watch-augmented-mixed-reality-0177454/
View all posts by Robert Scoble
I don’t think longevity is the biggest issue… the biggest issue is feature differentiation. If there’s two choices, and they both do the same thing, folks are going to go with the Yahoo/MS/Google version because they know those companies. If the smaller company’s version has some great features not yet adopted by the big boys… that’s where the startups have a chance to shine.
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I don’t think longevity is the biggest issue… the biggest issue is feature differentiation. If there’s two choices, and they both do the same thing, folks are going to go with the Yahoo/MS/Google version because they know those companies. If the smaller company’s version has some great features not yet adopted by the big boys… that’s where the startups have a chance to shine.
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Aaron, I’m not even sure about that. After all, I’m already a Gmail user, I’m playing with Calendar and soon will get locked into that, so I’ll probably stick with Google’s word processor even if it has a few less features than others.
It’s why Microsoft Office ended up kicking ass over the other competitors.
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Aaron, I’m not even sure about that. After all, I’m already a Gmail user, I’m playing with Calendar and soon will get locked into that, so I’ll probably stick with Google’s word processor even if it has a few less features than others.
It’s why Microsoft Office ended up kicking ass over the other competitors.
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Good point… another issue is word of mouth and advertising. Portal/destination sites such as Google/Yahoo/MSN can easily advertise their new service to existing users of other services… whereas an “unknown” site has to try to break into the market as a newbie. Before your post today I’d never even heard of Zoho.
People won’t use what they don’t know exists.
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Good point… another issue is word of mouth and advertising. Portal/destination sites such as Google/Yahoo/MSN can easily advertise their new service to existing users of other services… whereas an “unknown” site has to try to break into the market as a newbie. Before your post today I’d never even heard of Zoho.
People won’t use what they don’t know exists.
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Hmm I think that is true of all small companies everywhere, in every market.
Hope you are a strong swimmer. ๐
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Hmm I think that is true of all small companies everywhere, in every market.
Hope you are a strong swimmer. ๐
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I think, eventually, the online collaboration space will shake out w/the big players (google, yahoo, microsoft, whomever) having the dominant online word processors … but enormous profits available to smaller competitors who differentiate with niche offerings.
An online word processor is a utility. An online word processor, for example, w/a customized, paid-subscription plan for specific industries, pre-populated with marketing communications pieces and other industry-specific text … goes beyond a utility and to a “done for us” system … and can command an enormous premium for use.
Beyond the initial “get bought out” model, niche models are always available with high-profits with small numbers to those who are willing to shift paradigms.
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I think, eventually, the online collaboration space will shake out w/the big players (google, yahoo, microsoft, whomever) having the dominant online word processors … but enormous profits available to smaller competitors who differentiate with niche offerings.
An online word processor is a utility. An online word processor, for example, w/a customized, paid-subscription plan for specific industries, pre-populated with marketing communications pieces and other industry-specific text … goes beyond a utility and to a “done for us” system … and can command an enormous premium for use.
Beyond the initial “get bought out” model, niche models are always available with high-profits with small numbers to those who are willing to shift paradigms.
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If I am a normal user, not a geek, Yahoo, Google, or Microsoft (as brands) are not nearly as important as you imply.
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If I am a normal user, not a geek, Yahoo, Google, or Microsoft (as brands) are not nearly as important as you imply.
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I blogged about this previously Robert. One of the problems I see with Zoho Writer is its inability to work properly (or consistently) on the mac platform.
I worked with the developers from Zoho to try to test this for them but they couldn’t get it to work.
Writely works perfectly on my Mac.
Case closed.
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I blogged about this previously Robert. One of the problems I see with Zoho Writer is its inability to work properly (or consistently) on the mac platform.
I worked with the developers from Zoho to try to test this for them but they couldn’t get it to work.
Writely works perfectly on my Mac.
Case closed.
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You wouldn’t have to worry about it sticking around if it (a) can sync your data to your local hard drive, and (b) stores its data in an open or widely-used format. That way you could easily switch to another provider if needed. Sadly, few Web 2.0 apps seem to understand that.
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You wouldn’t have to worry about it sticking around if it (a) can sync your data to your local hard drive, and (b) stores its data in an open or widely-used format. That way you could easily switch to another provider if needed. Sadly, few Web 2.0 apps seem to understand that.
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I agree with Micahel Cage – we believe there are many opportunities to specialize and differentiate for us at Zoho. Second, this market is still young, and there is plenty of evolution ahead. A smaller player, by definition, needs only a smaller bite of the market to be successful.
Tom, we apologize for the trouble with Safari on Mac. Zoho works on Firefox on Mac. We are still having trouble with Safari, but we will support it in future. The rapid pace of evolution is making it hard to test on Safari, in addition to IE and Firefox.
Sridhar Vembu
http://zoho.com
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I agree with Micahel Cage – we believe there are many opportunities to specialize and differentiate for us at Zoho. Second, this market is still young, and there is plenty of evolution ahead. A smaller player, by definition, needs only a smaller bite of the market to be successful.
Tom, we apologize for the trouble with Safari on Mac. Zoho works on Firefox on Mac. We are still having trouble with Safari, but we will support it in future. The rapid pace of evolution is making it hard to test on Safari, in addition to IE and Firefox.
Sridhar Vembu
http://zoho.com
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… And forgot to mention that Zoho is a division of AdventNet, a profitable software company in business for 10 years, navigating the tech bubble, without ever needing outside capital. Let’s just say we know a thing or two about survival ๐
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… And forgot to mention that Zoho is a division of AdventNet, a profitable software company in business for 10 years, navigating the tech bubble, without ever needing outside capital. Let’s just say we know a thing or two about survival ๐
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Robert,
you’re right if all online wordprocessors remain effectively the same plus or minus a few features. A small entrant has to recast this market. For example, journalists need less formatting features and just want to write. But mashup those features with apporpriate research features and other market specific features might make a product very attractive to jourmalists. Now expand this to other markers which have need of wordprocessing, but really need/desire a features or a user experience that’s outside of what a mainstream product will do.
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Robert,
you’re right if all online wordprocessors remain effectively the same plus or minus a few features. A small entrant has to recast this market. For example, journalists need less formatting features and just want to write. But mashup those features with apporpriate research features and other market specific features might make a product very attractive to jourmalists. Now expand this to other markers which have need of wordprocessing, but really need/desire a features or a user experience that’s outside of what a mainstream product will do.
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Yes i agree with ” j.marlowe “
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Yes i agree with ” j.marlowe “
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“After all, Iโm already a Gmail user”
And? Prior to gmail, did you not use something else? You didn’t become a gmail user because you had already been using it, you weren’t “locked” in. They created a service with differentiating features.
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“After all, Iโm already a Gmail user”
And? Prior to gmail, did you not use something else? You didn’t become a gmail user because you had already been using it, you weren’t “locked” in. They created a service with differentiating features.
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Microsoft and Google swam upstream once upon a time too.
I agree with Tom above though – you need to it to work on all platforms (Writely), but you also need it to re-think the paradigm of a word processor. MS Word just has too much feature bloat. I’ll be happy when the new version has less features, not more but marketeers can’t get their head around that (unlike 37 Signals, who can).
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Microsoft and Google swam upstream once upon a time too.
I agree with Tom above though – you need to it to work on all platforms (Writely), but you also need it to re-think the paradigm of a word processor. MS Word just has too much feature bloat. I’ll be happy when the new version has less features, not more but marketeers can’t get their head around that (unlike 37 Signals, who can).
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So Robert, if you have to be a big fish to swim in today’s technology pond, what were you thinking when you left MS for a start-up?
I don’t buy the big fish theory. If a new product’s functionality and cost ratio makes it a better value, I’m not only using it, but I’m telling all my non-geek and half-geek friends and colleagues about it.
That’s why I traded-in IE for Firefox, Win2K for Linux, FrontPage for Cute HTML, etc. The viral impact of early adopters, espeically with the help of blogs and social networks, drive a product’s acceptance faster than the size of its parent. In fact I tend to steer clear of new software from large companies because I know it’s half-baked when its released.
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So Robert, if you have to be a big fish to swim in today’s technology pond, what were you thinking when you left MS for a start-up?
I don’t buy the big fish theory. If a new product’s functionality and cost ratio makes it a better value, I’m not only using it, but I’m telling all my non-geek and half-geek friends and colleagues about it.
That’s why I traded-in IE for Firefox, Win2K for Linux, FrontPage for Cute HTML, etc. The viral impact of early adopters, espeically with the help of blogs and social networks, drive a product’s acceptance faster than the size of its parent. In fact I tend to steer clear of new software from large companies because I know it’s half-baked when its released.
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“If I am a normal user”
Normal users don’t read scoble.
Anyway, 80 percent of what I need in a word processor can, in fact, be done in this little text box above the “Submit Comment”. Add the local persistence features of Notepad, and you’re up to 95 percent of what I need. Add Text centering, margins, and page numbers, and that’s about it.
My company pays, what?, 300 dollars per Office installation. Wait, I’ll check…
Okay, I blew 5 minutes and couldn’t figure out what “suite” I’ve got. It’s the big one. It’s got Access (snort) and Visio. The only one I ever use is Outlook and I hate it.
There are certain advantages to everybody using Windows–it helps ensure wide availability of software. In the old days, you’d go to a software store and they’d have 10 different sections. Amiga, C64, Apple II, PC, Atari, etc. There really wasn’t any advantage to that.
But Office? Bleh. It’s a goner.
But forget web versions of office. What you’ll really have happen is–little companies saving money by using Open office (or whatever) and then growing into big companies.
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“If I am a normal user”
Normal users don’t read scoble.
Anyway, 80 percent of what I need in a word processor can, in fact, be done in this little text box above the “Submit Comment”. Add the local persistence features of Notepad, and you’re up to 95 percent of what I need. Add Text centering, margins, and page numbers, and that’s about it.
My company pays, what?, 300 dollars per Office installation. Wait, I’ll check…
Okay, I blew 5 minutes and couldn’t figure out what “suite” I’ve got. It’s the big one. It’s got Access (snort) and Visio. The only one I ever use is Outlook and I hate it.
There are certain advantages to everybody using Windows–it helps ensure wide availability of software. In the old days, you’d go to a software store and they’d have 10 different sections. Amiga, C64, Apple II, PC, Atari, etc. There really wasn’t any advantage to that.
But Office? Bleh. It’s a goner.
But forget web versions of office. What you’ll really have happen is–little companies saving money by using Open office (or whatever) and then growing into big companies.
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>So Robert, if you have to be a big fish to swim in todayโs technology pond, what were you thinking when you left MS for a start-up?
In the content business I believe I can come up with something unique that the big players aren’t doing.
But, in the word processor business? That’s a lot harder.
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Scoble, you’re not a geek. I’m a geek, so don’t lump yourself in with me. You don’t rip apart old computers and install FreeNAS (based on FreeBSD) to make a NAS, and you don’t have an OpenBSD SSH/Proxy server running in your house, and you couldn’t live without a GUI. You don’t attend LUGs (Linux User Groups), and you don’t write software and/or scripts. You don’t know how to install a LAMP system, and I could go on and on and on.
I mean, you’ve worked at Microsoft talking to people about Microsoft products. That does NOT make you a geek.
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>So Robert, if you have to be a big fish to swim in todayโs technology pond, what were you thinking when you left MS for a start-up?
In the content business I believe I can come up with something unique that the big players aren’t doing.
But, in the word processor business? That’s a lot harder.
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Scoble, you’re not a geek. I’m a geek, so don’t lump yourself in with me. You don’t rip apart old computers and install FreeNAS (based on FreeBSD) to make a NAS, and you don’t have an OpenBSD SSH/Proxy server running in your house, and you couldn’t live without a GUI. You don’t attend LUGs (Linux User Groups), and you don’t write software and/or scripts. You don’t know how to install a LAMP system, and I could go on and on and on.
I mean, you’ve worked at Microsoft talking to people about Microsoft products. That does NOT make you a geek.
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>And? Prior to gmail, did you not use something else?
I still do. It’s called Hotmail. From Microsoft. Lots of smaller companies tried to do free email too. Which is sort of why I came to this place.
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>And? Prior to gmail, did you not use something else?
I still do. It’s called Hotmail. From Microsoft. Lots of smaller companies tried to do free email too. Which is sort of why I came to this place.
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Not sure about word processors – I don’t quite get that – I can always find a text processor on the machine I have.
OTOH, DabbleDB is the bomb – like MS Access only better. This is the killer desktop to web app for me.
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Not sure about word processors – I don’t quite get that – I can always find a text processor on the machine I have.
OTOH, DabbleDB is the bomb – like MS Access only better. This is the killer desktop to web app for me.
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I think Roberts point is dead on. If it somes down to functionality vs reliability for document storage then reliability on storage will generally win.
An interesting one though is WordPress. Somehow over the last few months they have gone to dead reliable in my mind, and I am less concerned about doing my own personal backup. My confidence may be misplaced, but thats how I feel. So can Zoho develop that confidence level – if so, they have a winner.
I keep thinking about Roberts key point – how the small things get missed, such as the importance of search, back 7 years ago. This could be one of those situations.
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I think Roberts point is dead on. If it somes down to functionality vs reliability for document storage then reliability on storage will generally win.
An interesting one though is WordPress. Somehow over the last few months they have gone to dead reliable in my mind, and I am less concerned about doing my own personal backup. My confidence may be misplaced, but thats how I feel. So can Zoho develop that confidence level – if so, they have a winner.
I keep thinking about Roberts key point – how the small things get missed, such as the importance of search, back 7 years ago. This could be one of those situations.
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>But, in the word processor business? Thatโs a lot harder.
If the little guys (or the big guys, for that matter) think they are in the word processor business, they’ll be crushed. Google is in the attention business at the moment … and there is a logical place for a word processor to play a role there. There are many *other* business models that can also use an online, collaborative word processor to drive the outcomes of their markets.
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>But, in the word processor business? Thatโs a lot harder.
If the little guys (or the big guys, for that matter) think they are in the word processor business, they’ll be crushed. Google is in the attention business at the moment … and there is a logical place for a word processor to play a role there. There are many *other* business models that can also use an online, collaborative word processor to drive the outcomes of their markets.
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As long as a word processor supports ODF it should not matter that the software was not built by a large company. As long as my data is in a portabe non-proprietary standard format, the big companies won’t be able to lock me in to using their tool.
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Todd, have you looked at Zoho Creator http://zohocreator.com which provides an online application creation tool? We are marrying database and scripting on that one.
Sridhar Vembu
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Todd, have you looked at Zoho Creator http://zohocreator.com which provides an online application creation tool? We are marrying database and scripting on that one.
Sridhar Vembu
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As long as a word processor supports ODF it should not matter that the software was not built by a large company. As long as my data is in a portabe non-proprietary standard format, the big companies won’t be able to lock me in to using their tool.
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Just checked it out and they offer broad document import and export facilities (including OpenDocument), so they get a nod from me – they give me the freedom to leave, so I may well have the confidence to stay. These days that’s the precondition, ahead of features (assuming basic feature hygiene).
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Just checked it out and they offer broad document import and export facilities (including OpenDocument), so they get a nod from me – they give me the freedom to leave, so I may well have the confidence to stay. These days that’s the precondition, ahead of features (assuming basic feature hygiene).
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“Aaron, Iโm not even sure about that. After all, Iโm already a Gmail user, Iโm playing with Calendar and soon will get locked into that, so Iโll probably stick with Googleโs word processor even if it has a few less features than others.
Itโs why Microsoft Office ended up kicking ass over the other competitors. ”
Oh my. Scoble, I’m starting to agree with you more and more. One of us is changing ๐
Incumbency is a big advantage, and for the use that MOST people make of computers, it is the ONLY advantage.
That is why I poo-pooed the idea that 2005 was “the year of Linux on the desktop” (ditto for 2004, 2003, 2002, …)
But resentments DO build up when a vendor consistently fails to deliver things users want (or consistently delivers things that users DON’T want). I was probably one of the first few thousand people to sign up for a Yahoo account, and only a few years later did I learn that with a Yahoo ID I got free e-mail (either that or I had just forgotten about it). The web interface seemed pretty slick at first. You could also download messages with a standard POP program, and I think at one point they were giving away 15-20 meg of storage which at the time seemed enormous.
I was so sold on the Yahoo brand that I got a Yahoo pager, hosted domains with them, and switched to using them as my ISP when I was still on dial-up. But it wasn’t Google that got me to switch, it was Yahoo…
They changed the rules on e-mail storage so that you suddenly got much less space unless you wanted to pay for an account. The Yahoo pager, a deal with RIM, was discontinued after only a year, leaving me with a useless device that I had paid several hundred dollars for. Their hosting service as well as their ISP service were also third party deals (as in: the third party does all the work, takes all the risk, Yahoo puts their name on it). The ISP had serious billing problems. They cancelled my account having never sent me a bill. The domains hosting was pretty good, but it seemed that every 6 months or so the third-party company was either changed or the services changed in some dramatic way. The consistency I would have expected with the Yahoo name simply was a myth.
Their initial response to Gmail, which was to start giving away space again, was pathetic. When they went to a Gig, Gmail went to two, and Google made it fairly clear that they would not take second place to any of the majors when it came to giving away Inbox space. Next Yahoo (and Microsoft) promised AJAX based webmail. That was what, almost two years ago? I just got mine working on Hotmail last week. On Yahoo I’m still waiting.
Users (at least this user) have a long memory about being played for suckers by vendors they trust.
I think competition is good, and I wish more users were willing to try alternatives when they do arrise, but the fact is, many users stick with what they have even if it causes them daily grief. They remember how hard it was to learn DOS, then OS/2 then Windows, then Wordperfect and on and on and they have no desire to repeat that learning process unless there is some fundamentally new capability that comes with it. Having your stuff online, all the time is that capability, and I suspect that most users are quite willing to give up Wing-Ding fonts and a lot of other silly stuff to be able to seamlessly share things among he computers they use, with family members, etc. Sooner or later that concept will find its way into the workplace.
We are finally reaching the point where users don’t have to upgrade their PCs every two years just to do ordinary things Let the battleground go back to server space where it belongs (and has belonged for a long time) and let users view their computers as appliances that “just work” no matter what OS they are running. Windows, OS X and Linux all have the equivalent of Notepad (except OS X’s will format Word documents just fine, and I think the all incorporate spellchecking now) and most peoples only use for a database are the back-ends to their Content Management Systems and so forth, maintained and backed-up by people paid to do just that.
I pronounce 2007 as the year of the “who cares desktop”. It’s about time!
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“Aaron, Iโm not even sure about that. After all, Iโm already a Gmail user, Iโm playing with Calendar and soon will get locked into that, so Iโll probably stick with Googleโs word processor even if it has a few less features than others.
Itโs why Microsoft Office ended up kicking ass over the other competitors. ”
Oh my. Scoble, I’m starting to agree with you more and more. One of us is changing ๐
Incumbency is a big advantage, and for the use that MOST people make of computers, it is the ONLY advantage.
That is why I poo-pooed the idea that 2005 was “the year of Linux on the desktop” (ditto for 2004, 2003, 2002, …)
But resentments DO build up when a vendor consistently fails to deliver things users want (or consistently delivers things that users DON’T want). I was probably one of the first few thousand people to sign up for a Yahoo account, and only a few years later did I learn that with a Yahoo ID I got free e-mail (either that or I had just forgotten about it). The web interface seemed pretty slick at first. You could also download messages with a standard POP program, and I think at one point they were giving away 15-20 meg of storage which at the time seemed enormous.
I was so sold on the Yahoo brand that I got a Yahoo pager, hosted domains with them, and switched to using them as my ISP when I was still on dial-up. But it wasn’t Google that got me to switch, it was Yahoo…
They changed the rules on e-mail storage so that you suddenly got much less space unless you wanted to pay for an account. The Yahoo pager, a deal with RIM, was discontinued after only a year, leaving me with a useless device that I had paid several hundred dollars for. Their hosting service as well as their ISP service were also third party deals (as in: the third party does all the work, takes all the risk, Yahoo puts their name on it). The ISP had serious billing problems. They cancelled my account having never sent me a bill. The domains hosting was pretty good, but it seemed that every 6 months or so the third-party company was either changed or the services changed in some dramatic way. The consistency I would have expected with the Yahoo name simply was a myth.
Their initial response to Gmail, which was to start giving away space again, was pathetic. When they went to a Gig, Gmail went to two, and Google made it fairly clear that they would not take second place to any of the majors when it came to giving away Inbox space. Next Yahoo (and Microsoft) promised AJAX based webmail. That was what, almost two years ago? I just got mine working on Hotmail last week. On Yahoo I’m still waiting.
Users (at least this user) have a long memory about being played for suckers by vendors they trust.
I think competition is good, and I wish more users were willing to try alternatives when they do arrise, but the fact is, many users stick with what they have even if it causes them daily grief. They remember how hard it was to learn DOS, then OS/2 then Windows, then Wordperfect and on and on and they have no desire to repeat that learning process unless there is some fundamentally new capability that comes with it. Having your stuff online, all the time is that capability, and I suspect that most users are quite willing to give up Wing-Ding fonts and a lot of other silly stuff to be able to seamlessly share things among he computers they use, with family members, etc. Sooner or later that concept will find its way into the workplace.
We are finally reaching the point where users don’t have to upgrade their PCs every two years just to do ordinary things Let the battleground go back to server space where it belongs (and has belonged for a long time) and let users view their computers as appliances that “just work” no matter what OS they are running. Windows, OS X and Linux all have the equivalent of Notepad (except OS X’s will format Word documents just fine, and I think the all incorporate spellchecking now) and most peoples only use for a database are the back-ends to their Content Management Systems and so forth, maintained and backed-up by people paid to do just that.
I pronounce 2007 as the year of the “who cares desktop”. It’s about time!
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Nice to see that a lot of people think the same as I do. There is nothing wrong with being the small guy. There are many small companies that make something sweet and special and thus carve our a living for themselves. Of course I do not expect an ex Microsoft employee to understand that.
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Nice to see that a lot of people think the same as I do. There is nothing wrong with being the small guy. There are many small companies that make something sweet and special and thus carve our a living for themselves. Of course I do not expect an ex Microsoft employee to understand that.
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I consider myself a normal user, and the only way I’ll ever try a non-Yahoo/MS/Google product is if it has very strong word-of-mouth. This happened when I switched from Firefox to IE a couple years ago. When it comes to word processing, there would have to be many compelling reasons for me to give up MS Word.
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I consider myself a normal user, and the only way I’ll ever try a non-Yahoo/MS/Google product is if it has very strong word-of-mouth. This happened when I switched from Firefox to IE a couple years ago. When it comes to word processing, there would have to be many compelling reasons for me to give up MS Word.
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Robert, Zoho is not a financially shaky startup that may or may not be around tomorrow. They are part of Adventnet, a company that grew for 10 years organically (no VC’s) from nothing to 500 or so employees and dozens of networking, security…etc. products. That was the “old boring (but moneymaker) product line, and I think they made a smart move to brand all the Office 2.0 stuff as Zoho – fresh, new, fashionable ๐
So I don’t think longevity is an issue with them, which will really be important when we decide to trust them with all our online data, not just newly created documents – they will soon have ZohoDrive. While on the subject, they are the only ones with a complete office suite, including the Excel and PowerPoint replacements. Yes, I know, functionally just a subset, yadayada, but you know what I mean .. for the 90% of us who use 10% of the functionality, it’s good enough:-) Btw, they also have calendar as part of Virtual Office (yes, the Outlook replacement), Creator, a CRM-package, Polls, and I don’t even know what else.
I have not heard of them until half a year or so ago, but they appear to be a formidable force quite bent on being the Web App provider for small businesses and individuals.
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Robert, Zoho is not a financially shaky startup that may or may not be around tomorrow. They are part of Adventnet, a company that grew for 10 years organically (no VC’s) from nothing to 500 or so employees and dozens of networking, security…etc. products. That was the “old boring (but moneymaker) product line, and I think they made a smart move to brand all the Office 2.0 stuff as Zoho – fresh, new, fashionable ๐
So I don’t think longevity is an issue with them, which will really be important when we decide to trust them with all our online data, not just newly created documents – they will soon have ZohoDrive. While on the subject, they are the only ones with a complete office suite, including the Excel and PowerPoint replacements. Yes, I know, functionally just a subset, yadayada, but you know what I mean .. for the 90% of us who use 10% of the functionality, it’s good enough:-) Btw, they also have calendar as part of Virtual Office (yes, the Outlook replacement), Creator, a CRM-package, Polls, and I don’t even know what else.
I have not heard of them until half a year or so ago, but they appear to be a formidable force quite bent on being the Web App provider for small businesses and individuals.
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I forgot to add, you are right, “Microsoft Office ended up kicking ass” for having all components, but let’s just remember the early years, you had Word and Excel not talking to each other, moving data was a major pain… it was not a Suite, just individual applications. (In fact I used Works back then, it was a hands-down winner for me due to the integration…).
Anyway, that’s exactly the point the Zoho guys have not missed, first delivering all components of a Suite, then integrating them – these will not be point solutions for long.
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I forgot to add, you are right, “Microsoft Office ended up kicking ass” for having all components, but let’s just remember the early years, you had Word and Excel not talking to each other, moving data was a major pain… it was not a Suite, just individual applications. (In fact I used Works back then, it was a hands-down winner for me due to the integration…).
Anyway, that’s exactly the point the Zoho guys have not missed, first delivering all components of a Suite, then integrating them – these will not be point solutions for long.
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I”m sort of with Zoli on this Robert – Writer isn’t the only trick in the box. There are issues but they’re being addressed aggressively. The business blogging community is giving them input. Seen IT Redux on this – the guys behind that crew are part funded by SAP so they’re no slouches either? Well worth a view. If Zoho gets the integrations right then I’d seriously consider moving from the rag bag of service ‘stuff’ I currently have – which includes Gmail and Writely.
Yes – it is an uphill srtuggle at times getting Office people who haven’t seen anything different to understand the value these services bring but they’re getting there. And at a decent clip.
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I”m sort of with Zoli on this Robert – Writer isn’t the only trick in the box. There are issues but they’re being addressed aggressively. The business blogging community is giving them input. Seen IT Redux on this – the guys behind that crew are part funded by SAP so they’re no slouches either? Well worth a view. If Zoho gets the integrations right then I’d seriously consider moving from the rag bag of service ‘stuff’ I currently have – which includes Gmail and Writely.
Yes – it is an uphill srtuggle at times getting Office people who haven’t seen anything different to understand the value these services bring but they’re getting there. And at a decent clip.
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I agree with posters 8 (Ryan Walters) and 25 (Simon Phipps). The issues they raise may be the very reasons that allow small players to become big in the future.
With various of their computer systems, and in various ways, the Google, Yahoo and Microsoft guys all go out of their way to try to lock users in. One reason Microsoft got big was because it made it super-easy to *import* data from third party apps, but hard to export it really well. In 2007, this is no longer good enough. My prediction is that the big players of the future will get big by making it easy for people to export their data.
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I agree with posters 8 (Ryan Walters) and 25 (Simon Phipps). The issues they raise may be the very reasons that allow small players to become big in the future.
With various of their computer systems, and in various ways, the Google, Yahoo and Microsoft guys all go out of their way to try to lock users in. One reason Microsoft got big was because it made it super-easy to *import* data from third party apps, but hard to export it really well. In 2007, this is no longer good enough. My prediction is that the big players of the future will get big by making it easy for people to export their data.
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Cody: you’re a nerd. Hope that helps.
Anyway, let’s let Google settle this one. Search for “Geek Blogger” and I don’t find your name. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=geek+blogger
In fact, search for “geek” and you’ll see I’m #24 & #25. http://www.google.com/search?q=geek&hl=en&lr=&start=20&sa=N
Since Google is now the arbiter of all things cultural my answer is: too bad.
By the way, what an elitist attitude you have! So someone needs to grok Linux just to be a geek? Wonderful. And people say +I’m+ arrogant? Whew!
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Cody: you’re a nerd. Hope that helps.
Anyway, let’s let Google settle this one. Search for “Geek Blogger” and I don’t find your name. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=geek+blogger
In fact, search for “geek” and you’ll see I’m #24 & #25. http://www.google.com/search?q=geek&hl=en&lr=&start=20&sa=N
Since Google is now the arbiter of all things cultural my answer is: too bad.
By the way, what an elitist attitude you have! So someone needs to grok Linux just to be a geek? Wonderful. And people say +I’m+ arrogant? Whew!
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Hi, I am Cliff from EditGrid. I want to invite you to take a look to EditGrid. We are taking a different way as zoho or other online office. We are concentrate to do our spreadsheet instead of developing a portfolio of service, and provide the best services of all online spreadsheets.
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This is fascinating: I was a relatively early user of Zoho Writer, and since got a Writely invite and have been using it more. I haven’t touched Zoho in weeks, particularly because it has some nasty bugs that interfere with its operation in Firefox. These put me up–but much to the credit of the AdventNet folks making it, esp. Arvind, they contacted me personally for feedback. I really appreciated it! ๐
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This is fascinating: I was a relatively early user of Zoho Writer, and since got a Writely invite and have been using it more. I haven’t touched Zoho in weeks, particularly because it has some nasty bugs that interfere with its operation in Firefox. These put me up–but much to the credit of the AdventNet folks making it, esp. Arvind, they contacted me personally for feedback. I really appreciated it! ๐
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Hi, I am Cliff from EditGrid. I want to invite you to take a look to EditGrid. We are taking a different way as zoho or other online office. We are concentrate to do our spreadsheet instead of developing a portfolio of service, and provide the best services of all online spreadsheets.
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I could waffle this out into several hundred words but there are several examples of this happening recently, the biggest by far is MySpace, they were a small company (once ๐ and “normal users” definately use that service, in their millions.
Would I go up against an already established Google/MS/Yahoo service as a small company? Hell no, but if you can be different then I think you still have a good chance.
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I could waffle this out into several hundred words but there are several examples of this happening recently, the biggest by far is MySpace, they were a small company (once ๐ and “normal users” definately use that service, in their millions.
Would I go up against an already established Google/MS/Yahoo service as a small company? Hell no, but if you can be different then I think you still have a good chance.
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Not a prayer…
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Not a prayer…
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I’m not using a web-based office product – ever. I use an online CMS at work and I can’t begin to tell you how many times people have been writing (sometimes for hours) only to have their browser crash and they lose everything.
Even if it had an autosave, there’s just no reason to be doing it over the web. I can terminal to my work PC so it isn’t like I need my files on a server somewhere.
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I’m not using a web-based office product – ever. I use an online CMS at work and I can’t begin to tell you how many times people have been writing (sometimes for hours) only to have their browser crash and they lose everything.
Even if it had an autosave, there’s just no reason to be doing it over the web. I can terminal to my work PC so it isn’t like I need my files on a server somewhere.
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Success isn’t about who has the best idea. If it was, OS/2 would’ve won. Success is convincing the most people that they need what you have. That’s certainly what powered the success of Microsoft’s empire, and Apple’s Ipod. Success is therefore a matter of marketting.
I have found myself in the medical software business since Shell Oil opted to move their IT operations to Malaysia. I am disabled with Cerebral Palsy, and can only talk with computer assistance. I had to develop my own software to speak because my Shell employers found none of the commerically available products acceptable. Even now, ten years later, my software makes the stuff Dr. Stephen Hawkins uses sound sick by comparsion. Yet, I have come to the sad conclusion that I’ll probably never sell a single copy.
I say that because the people who really need my software will never know it exists. The people who vet such things don’t see enough disabled people in working environments to ever think they need real quality speech software. Meanwhile, I get poorer and poorer. It takes money to make money.
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Success isn’t about who has the best idea. If it was, OS/2 would’ve won. Success is convincing the most people that they need what you have. That’s certainly what powered the success of Microsoft’s empire, and Apple’s Ipod. Success is therefore a matter of marketting.
I have found myself in the medical software business since Shell Oil opted to move their IT operations to Malaysia. I am disabled with Cerebral Palsy, and can only talk with computer assistance. I had to develop my own software to speak because my Shell employers found none of the commerically available products acceptable. Even now, ten years later, my software makes the stuff Dr. Stephen Hawkins uses sound sick by comparsion. Yet, I have come to the sad conclusion that I’ll probably never sell a single copy.
I say that because the people who really need my software will never know it exists. The people who vet such things don’t see enough disabled people in working environments to ever think they need real quality speech software. Meanwhile, I get poorer and poorer. It takes money to make money.
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I am a writly user, but I asked for just one feature before they were aquired, The ability to post to multiple blogs. Now that Google has them I am sure they will only let you “Blog This” for new users.
So when I saw that Zoho lets you blog, I am in baby! Mind you my wife and I use the same computer posting to multiple blogs with multiple logins. Thank you Zoho!
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I am a writly user, but I asked for just one feature before they were aquired, The ability to post to multiple blogs. Now that Google has them I am sure they will only let you “Blog This” for new users.
So when I saw that Zoho lets you blog, I am in baby! Mind you my wife and I use the same computer posting to multiple blogs with multiple logins. Thank you Zoho!
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Robert, do you think that small companies should stop trying – because consumers will only use it if it comes from giants like MS, Google or Yahoo. Historically, that’s not correct – all great innovations have come from small companies in last couple of decades. MS itself was a small company that challenged existing companies like Digital Research and won the OS game. Recently you can think of ICQ, MySpace, Skype and tons of other examples.
Now you may be right about these small companies survining as independent companies in the long run – acquisition by larger companies seems to be the current trend. But that doesn’t mean the products launched by these small companies will not become popular with very large user bases
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Robert, do you think that small companies should stop trying – because consumers will only use it if it comes from giants like MS, Google or Yahoo. Historically, that’s not correct – all great innovations have come from small companies in last couple of decades. MS itself was a small company that challenged existing companies like Digital Research and won the OS game. Recently you can think of ICQ, MySpace, Skype and tons of other examples.
Now you may be right about these small companies survining as independent companies in the long run – acquisition by larger companies seems to be the current trend. But that doesn’t mean the products launched by these small companies will not become popular with very large user bases
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I like the idea of a calendar about which you can organise everything..Rather like whats available in Outlook. It’s mentioned here in comments..but alas, i’m unable to find it…Anyone ?
thanks,
Brad
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I like the idea of a calendar about which you can organise everything..Rather like whats available in Outlook. It’s mentioned here in comments..but alas, i’m unable to find it…Anyone ?
thanks,
Brad
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