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ZOHO has demonstrated some very effective and easy to use data merging. They have also released a ZOHO Writer extension for Chrome that is awesome. The problem with "merge" is that, while full featured, the only usable data source is ZOHO CRM. Not good, but zCRM does fully integrate with ZOHO eMail, which enables the full two way transparent integration with zCRM. Easier to do than explain. Real Estate example excerpt: Zoho is smart, allowing you to integrate Gmail: The best of both worlds is available, because Zoho had the foresight to allow you to use Gmail and integrate your emails with the Zoho CRM system. Once you've set it up, you use Gmail the way you've always used it. I get to continue using all of the things I love about Gmail. But, every email, in or out of Gmail, attaches itself to the appropriate contact in the Zoho CRM system. When I send or receive an email in Gmail that is to or from one of my Zoho contacts or leads, the email automatically is picked up by Zoho and becomes a part of that contact/prospect's record, even though I never opened Zoho. If you've wondered about backing up Gmail, let Zoho do it: A bonus benefit in using Zoho mail is that you can set it up to receive all of your Gmail, sent and received, as well. It's a ready-made backup for your Gmail. So, if CRM isn't something you want to do with Zoho, at least set up the free email to copy all of your Gmail. And, if you're still using Outlook...why? The Internet is Improving Our Business at a Lower Cost: Here we have two free email systems that give you amazing flexibility and backup. Then the Zoho CRM system, with the email module installed, is only $15/month. You can do mass marketing emails, auto-responders, and take in new contacts and prospects with Web forms. Once you tie Gmail and Zoho together, your email and CRM will be top-notch, at a very low cost. Though you may wish for one, there isn't a reasonably priced "does it all" solution out there. This is an

Precious stuff! And funny too: Summary statement: Abstract Valley Girl 2.0 Acronymitis Using Meaningless Expressions This is when you combine the four diseases above. So you get phrases like, "You should meet this guy with the SIO. He's sort of this kind of social entrepreneur thinking outside of the box in the sustainability space and working on these ideas around sort of web-based social media, and he's in a round two capital raise in the VP space with the people at SVNP." How many times have you heard what you now recall to be precisely this sentence? This would all be funny if it weren't true. People just don't make sense anymore. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble if you internalize this. Observe it, deconstruct it, and appreciate just how ridiculous most business conversation has become.

Incredible interview with Ben Milne of Dwolla, the PayPal and Square killer that promises to take a huge chunk out of the Credit Card transaction industry.  Incredible must read!  This is page 2 out of four.  Starts at: http://bit.ly/vzVUy3 excerpt: How does Dwolla work and how is it different from PayPal? With Dwolla, payments are made directly from your bank account.  No credit or debit cards are allowed.  And because they don't exist in the system, we don't have to bring the fees into the system.  You can spend any amount of money and when you do that, the person on the other end doesn't have to pay 1, 2, 3 or 4%. They only pay $0.25 a transaction, which is especially helpful when it's $1,000, $2,000 or $5,000 transactions.  Obviously PayPal becomes very cost prohibitive with those larger transactions.   The biggest difference between ideas like this and a PayPal - and PayPal is a phenomenal idea, Square is too - is that those are built on top of networks like Visa and MasterCard. We're building our own.

When you fail to reach a goal - say, for instance, you give an important presentation and it doesn't go well - you become the detective (once again, largely unconsciously). You gather up the usual suspects to see who is responsible for your failure: lack of innate ability, lack of effort, poor preparation, using the wrong strategy, bad luck, etc. Of all of these possible culprits, it's lack of innate ability we most frequently hold responsible, like the much-maligned butler in an Agatha Christie novel. In Western countries - and nowhere more so than in the U.S. - innate ability is the go-to explanation for all of our successes and our failures. The problem is that the evidence - the kind gathered by scientists over the last thirty years of study of motivation and achievement - suggests that innate ability is rarely to blame for either succeeding or falling short. (If you've blamed your poor performances in the past on a lack of ability, don't feel bad. We've all done it. The butler seems guilty. Just please don't do it anymore.) If we are going to ever improve performance, we need to place blame where it belongs. We need solid evidence about where we went wrong. Unfortunately, that's the kind of evidence that usually doesn't make it to our consciousness on its own, making self-diagnosis practically impossible. We need help getting the right answers.

Nice catch by Jason.  The lesson learned is one we've seen time and again.  excerpt: Web startups are made out of two things: people and code. The people make the code, and the code makes the people rich. Code is like a poem; it has to follow certain structural requirements, and yet out of that structure can come art. But code is art that does something. It is the assembly of something brand new from nothing but an idea. This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change that shaped the Internet we know today. This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way. Do you remember Flickr's tag line? It reads "almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world." It was an epic humble brag, a momentously tongue in cheek understatement. Because until three years ago, of course Flickr was the best photo sharing service in the world. Nothing else could touch it. If you cared about digital photography, or wanted to share photos with friends, you were on Flickr. Yet today, that tagline simply sounds like delusional posturing. The photo service that was once poised to take on the the world has now become an afterthought. Want to share photos on the Web? That's what Facebook is for. Want to look at the pictures your friends are snapping on the go? Fire up Instagram.

Quick review of different sync-share-store services, starting with DropBox and ending with three Open Source services. Very interesting. Things have progressed since I last worked on the SurDocs project for Sursen. No mention in this review of file formats, conversion or viewing issues. I do know that CrocoDoc is used by near every sync-share-store service to convert documents to either pdf or html formats for viewing. No servie however has been able to hit the "native document" sweet spot. Not even SurDocs - which was the whole purpose behind the project!!! "Native Documents" means that the document is in it's native / original application format. That format is needed for the round tripping and reloading of the document. Although most sync-share-store services work with MSOffice OXML formatted documents, only Microsoft provides a true "native" format viewer (Office 365). Office 365 enables direct edit, view and collaboration on native documents. Which is an enormous advantage given that conversion of any sort is guaranteed to "break" a native document and disrupt any related business processes or round tripping need. It was here that SurDoc was to provide a break-through technology. Sadly, we're still waiting :( excerpt: The availability of cheap, easy-to-use and accessible cloud file-sharing services means users have more freedom and choice than ever before. Dropbox pioneered simplicity and ease of use, and so quickly picked up users inside the enterprise. Similar services have followed Dropbox's lead and now there are dozens, including well-known ones such as Google Drive, SkyDrive and Ubuntu One. cloud.jpg Valdis Filks , research director at analyst firm Gartner explained the appeal of cloud file-sharing services. Filks said: "Enterprise employees use Dropbox and Google because they are consumer products that are simple to use, can be purchased without officially requesting new infrastructure or budget expenditure, and can be installed qu

Odd that the reporter mentions the importance of security near the top of the article but gives that topic such short shrift in his evaluation of the services. For example, "secured by 256-bit AES encryption" is meaningless without discussing other factors such as: [i] who creates the encryption keys and on which side of the server/client divide; and [ii] the service's ability to decrypt the customer's content. Encrypt/decryt must be done on the client side using unique keys that are unknown to the service, else security is broken and if the service does business in the U.S. or any of its territories or possessions, it is subject to gagged orders to turn over the decrypted customer information. My wisdom so far is to avoid file sync services to the extent you can, boycott U.S. services until the spy agencies are encaged, and reward services that provide good security from nations with more respect for digital privacy, to give U.S.-based services an incentive to lobby *effectively* on behalf of their customer's privacy in Congress. The proof that they are not doing so is the complete absence of bills in Congress that would deal effectively with the abuse by U.S. spy agencies. From that standpoint, the Switzerland-based http://wuala.com/ file sync service is looking pretty good so far. I'm using it.

"Startup Numecent has come out of stealth mode today with some of the most impressive enterprise technology we've seen in a decade. Plus the company is interesting for other reasons, like its business model and its founder. Numecent offers something it calls "cloud paging" and, if successful, it could be a game-changer for enterprise software, video gaming, and smartphone apps. Red Hat thinks so. It has already partnered with the company to help it offer Windows software to Linux users. "Cloud paging" instantly "cloudifies" any software, even an operating system like Windows itself, says founder and CEO Osman Kent. It lets any software, with no modification, be delivered from the cloud and run as fast or faster than if the app was on your desktop. Lots of so-called "desktop virtualization" services work fast. But cloud-paging can even operate the cloud software if the PC gets disconnected from the network or Internet. It can also turn a smartphone into a server. That means a bunch of devices like tablets can run the software -- like a game -- off of the smartphone. Imagine showing up to a party and letting all your friends play the latest version of Halo from your phone. That's crazy cool. Cloudpaging can do all this because it doesn't use "pixel-streaming" technology like other virtualization tech. Instead it temporarily downloads bits of the application itself (instructions) and runs them on the device. It can almost magically predict which parts of the app the user will need, and downloads only those parts. For business owners, that's not even the best part. It also helps enterprises sidestep extra licensing fees associated with the cloud. For instance, Microsoft licenses its software by the device, not by the user, and, in many cases, charges a "Virtual Desktop Access" fee for each device using a virtual version of Windows. (For a bit of light reading, check out the Microsoft virtual desktop licensing white paper: PDF) Cloudpaging has what Kent calls "f

Republic Wireless provides a new kind of smartphone cellular service based on a technology that handles the roll over from WiFi to 3G or 4G cellular in the middle of a call. Very cool, but currently it only works with specially outfitted (custom ROM) Android Moto X phones. (They are working on how to port this custom ROM technology to all Android phones :) The concept is based on the fact that WiFi is cheap, very open and near universally available; while 3G and 4G Cellular is expensive, contractual and proprietary. The idea is to leverage free WiFi wherever they can, and roll over to the Sprint 3G - 4G network when needed. Very cool and the business model seems to have it right. ......................................................................... "Which Moto X plan is right for me? Here's the lowdown on our four new plan options. Depending on your needs and how you want to use your phone, you can choose the plan that's best for you. $5 WiFi only plan This is the most powerful tool in your arsenal of options. Why? You can drop your smartphone bill-at will-to $5. If you're interested in getting serious about cutting costs, you can use this tool to best leverage the WiFi in your life to reduce your phone bill. It's also the ultimate plan for home base stickers and kids who don't need a cellular plan. It's fully unlimited data, talk and text-on WiFi only. $10 WiFi + Cell Talk & Text One of our members, 10thdoctor said :  "I use WiFi for everything, except when I'm traveling and for voice at my school." Yep, this is the perfect plan for that. Our members are around WiFi about 90% of the time. During that 10% of the time where you're away from WiFi, this plan gives you cellular backup for communicating when you need to. This plan both cuts costs and accommodates what's quickly becoming the norm: a day filled with WiFi. $25 WiFi + Cell (3G) Talk, Text & Data Lots of people are on 3G plans today and are paying upwards of $100 a month on

"FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS What is WhiteHat Aviator? WhiteHat Aviator; is the most secure , most private Web browser available anywhere. By default, it provides an easy way to bank, shop, and use social networks while stopping viruses from infecting computers, preventing accounts from being hacked, and blocking advertisers from invisibly spying on every click. Why do I need a secure Web browser? According to CA Technologies, 84 percent of hacker attacks in 2009 took advantage of vulnerabilities in Web browsers. Similarly, Symantec found that four of the top five vulnerabilities being exploited were client-side vulnerabilities that were frequently targeted by Web-based attacks. The fact is, that when you visit any website you run the risk of having your surfing history, passwords, real name, workplace, home address, phone number, email, gender, political affiliation, sexual preferences, income bracket, education level, and medical history stolen - and your computer infected with viruses. Sadly, this happens on millions of websites every day. Before you have any chance at protecting yourself, other browsers force you to follow complicated how-to guides, modify settings that only serve advertising empires and install obscure third-party software. What makes WhiteHat Aviator so secure? WhiteHat Aviator; is built on Chromium, the same open-source foundation used by Google Chrome. Chromium has several unique, powerful security features. One is a "sandbox" that prevents websites from stealing files off your computer or infecting it with viruses. As good as Chromium is, we went much further to create the safest online experience possible. WhiteHat Aviator comes ready-to-go with hardened security and privacy settings, giving hackers less to work with. And our browser downloads to you - without any hidden user-tracking functionality. Our default search engine is DuckDuckGo - not Google, which logs your activity. For good measure, Aviator integrates Disconnect

Of course Comcast, et ilk don't want Title II regulation. "Hey, just because we've divvied up the turf so that we've got geographical monopolies doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to leverage our monopolies into new monopolies." But the big cable companies got where they are by buying up community-granted and regulated monopoly utility companies. As part of consolidating those markets, the soon-to-be-gnormous cable companies, lobbied to get community regulation weakened and here we are with the FCC, with the cable companies now acting as ISPs too, which is straightforward telecommunications provider service, and these guys want to be able to charge a premium to the big internet content companies for fast-service after their ISP customers have already paid for fast service? So they can slow down the competition for their own content services.  Heck, yes, FCC. No one forced Comcast and crew to become telecommunications providers. Make 'em live with telecommunications regulation like all the other telcos. They are government-created monopolies and they should be regulated as such.   

The blurb is a bit misleading. This is a project that's been under way since last year; what's new is that they're moving under the Linux Foundation umbrella for various non-technical suoport purposes. By sometime this summer, encrypting web site data and broadcasting it over https is  slated to become a two-click process. Or on the linux command line: $ sudo apt-get install lets-encrypt $ lets-encrypt example.com This is a project that grew out of public disgust with NSA surveillance, designed to flood the NSA (and other bad actors) with so much encrypted data that they will be able to decrypt only a tiny fraction (decryption without the decryption key takes gobs of computer cycles).  The other half of the solution is already available, the HTTPS Everywhere extension for the Chrome, FIrefox, and Opera web browsers by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the TOR Project that translates your every request for a http address into an effort to connect to an https address preferentially before establishing an http connection if https is not available. HTTPS Everywhere is fast and does not noticeably add to your page loading time. If you'd like to effortlessly imoprove your online security and help burden NSA, install HTTPS Everywhere. Get it at https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

Excellent Wave coverage from Scott M. Fulton III.  The Hollywood Movie industry use case scenario is very interesting.  But Scott is one of the few people to draw an analogy between Google Wave convergence of concurrent communications and collaborative content and the early days of the Microsoft Office Productivity Platform where we saw DDE, OLE and MAPI rise and rule. Excerpt: Today, Google is expected to invite as many as 100,000 more participants into the private beta of its concurrent communications system, called Wave. As that happens, many more participants will be able to not only communicate with one another in a more granular form of real-time, but potentially collaborate on work and projects. It's that latter part of the program that's supposed to congeal at some point into a collective sense of purpose. But this time, unlike Microsoft's first experiments with Dynamic Data Exchange between applications on the same computer three decades ago, there isn't yet a clear, single purpose for the system. No question it could bring individuals as close together as people separated by indefinite distance could become; but as to the question of what they do with one another once they do get together, Google is hoping this question -- like so many others it puts out there in the open -- resolves itself. Yesterday, Google offered links to a number of different independent assessments of the possible, eventual purpose of Google Wave, though it offered them as use-case scenarios rather than projections of possible goals for the product...which is what many actually were.

Good interview with Charles Jolley - SproutCore - WebKit (met Charles at Web 2.0).  He has left Apple and started a SproutCore Web App development company called "Strobe".  Looking very good Charles! The Blended Brew Apps have become a preferred way of accessing information on mobile devices. But developers want to provide a unified experience, and that is why Jolley believes that we will soon have apps that use HTML5 inside a native app wrapper. "People are looking for an either/or solution, but it is not going to end up like that," he said. Think of Strobe's offerings as a way to create an experience that is a blend of HTML5 and native mobile apps. How this works is that an application is developed in HTML5 instead of proprietary formats. It is wrapped in a native app wrapper for, say, the iPhone, but when accessed through a web browser on a PC or any other device, like tablet, it offers the same user experience. This is a good way to solve a problem that is only going to get compounded many fold as multiple endpoints for content start to emerge. The co-existence of web and native apps also means content publishers need to think differently about content and how it is offered to consumers. The multiplicity of endpoints (iPhone, iPad, TV and PC) is going to force content producers to think differently about how they build the user experiences for different sets of screens. Jolley argues that the best way to do so is to stop taking a document-centric view that is part of the PC-era. In the touch-based mobile device era, folks need to think of ways to have a single technology stack married to the ability to create unique experiences for different devices. And if you do that, there is no doubt that HTML5 and native apps can live in harmony.

The General Services Administration made a bold decision to move its email and collaboration systems to the cloud.  This is a huge win for cloud-computing, but perhaps should have been expected since last week the Feds announced a new requisition and purchase mandate that cloud-computing had to be the FIRST consideration for federal agency purchases.  Note that the General Services Administration oversees requisitions and purchases for all Federal agencies!  This is huge.  Estimated to be worth $8 billion to cloud-computing providers. The cloud-computing market is estimated to be $30 Billion, but Gartner did not anticipate or expect Federal Agencies to embrace cloud-computing let alone issue a mandate for it.   In the RFP issued last June, it was easy to see their goals in the statement of objectives: This Statement of Objectives (SOO) describes the goals that GSA expects to achieve with regard to the 1. modernization of its e-mail system; 2. provision of an effective collaborative working environment; 3. reduction of the government's in-house system maintenance burden by providing related business, technical, and management functions; and 4. application of appropriate security and privacy safeguards. GSA announced yesterday that they choose Google Apps for email and collaboration and Unisys as the implementation partner. So what does this mean? What it means (WIM) #1: GSA employees will be using a next-generation information workplace. And that means mobile, device-agnostic, and location-agile. Gmail on an iPad? No problem. Email from a home computer? Yep. For GSA and for every other agency and most companies, it's important to give employees the tools to be productive and engage from every location on every device. "Work becomes a thing you do and not a place you go." [Thanks to Earl Newsome of Estee Lauder for that quote.] WIM #2: GSA will save 50% of the cost of email over five years. This is also what our research on the cost of email o

Excellent product release.  MarkLogic is trying to become the Google Search, Organize and Work for all things MSOffice.  Focus on MSOffice 2007 OOXML documents.

Lengthy article written by Tim Berners-Lee describes his concerns for the future of the Open Web.  Tim details the history of the Web, describing the principles that made the Web an Open Platform of universal access, exchange and collaborative computing.   excerpt: Universality Is the Foundation Several principles are key to assuring that the Web becomes ever more valuable. The primary design principle underlying the Web's usefulness and growth is universality. When you make a link, you can link to anything. That means people must be able to put anything on the Web, no matter what computer they have, software they use or human language they speak and regardless of whether they have a wired or wireless Internet connection. The Web should be usable by people with disabilities. It must work with any form of information, be it a document or a point of data, and information of any quality-from a silly tweet to a scholarly paper. And it should be accessible from any kind of hardware that can connect to the Internet: stationary or mobile, small screen or large.

Neil McAllister provides a good intro to HTML5 and what it will mean to the future of the Web.  It's just an intro, but the links he provides are excellent resources for deep dive. excerpt:  "Among Web developers, anticipation is mounting for HTML 5, the overhaul of the Web markup language currently under way at the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C). For many, the revamping is long overdue. HTML hasn't had a proper upgrade in more than a decade. In fact, the last markup language to win W3C Recommendation status -- the final stage of the Web standards process -- was XHTML 1.1 in 2001. In the intervening years, Web developers have grown increasingly restless. Many claim the HTML and XHTML standards have become outdated, and that their document-centric focus does not adequately address the needs of modern Web applications. HTML 5 aims to change all that. When it is finalized, the new standard will include tags and APIs for improved interactivity, multimedia, and localization. As experimental support for HTML 5 features has crept into the current crop of Web browsers, some developers have even begun voicing hope that this new, modernized HTML will free them from reliance on proprietary plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight."

Google has been making a number of acquisitions that are clearly Docs-related. Over the weekend, TechCrunch reported that the search giant is in the final stages of talks to acquire DocVerse, a startup that lets users collaborate around Office documents, for $25 million. The deal would also bring Google some key hires, since the startup's co-founders were managers on SharePoint, Microsoft's popular collaboration service. This follows the November acquisition of AppJet, a company founded by former Googlers that created a collaborative word processor. (It's worth noting that Google Docs itself was the offspring of several acquisitions, including Google's purchase of Writely.) Meanwhile, Google has been talking up the splash it wants Google Docs to make in 2010. Don Dodge, who just made the move from Microsoft to Google, recently told me, "2010 is going to be the year of Gmail and Google Docs and Google Apps." Even more concretely, Enterprise President Dave Girouard said last month that Docs will see 30 to 50 improvements over the next year, at which point big companies will be able to "get rid of Office if they choose to." Presumably features from AppJet and DocVerse will be among those improvements. I'd certainly be thrilled to see the battle between Office Docs become a real competition, rather than upstart Google slowly chipping away at Microsoft's Office behemoth.

Eucalyptus, an open-source platform that implements "infrastructure as a service" (IaaS) style cloud computing, aims to take open source front and center in the cloud-computing craze. The project, founded by academics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is now a Benchmark-funded company with an ambitious goal: become the universal cloud platform that everyone from Amazon to Microsoft to Red Hat to VMware ties into. [Eucalyptus] is architected to be compatible with such a wide variety of commonly installed data center technologies, [and hence] provides an easy and low-risk way of building private (i.e. on-premise or internal) clouds...Thus data center operators choosing Eucalyptus are assured of compatibility with the emerging application development and operational cloud ecosystem while attaining the security and IT investment amortization levels they desire without the "fear" of being locked into a single public cloud platform.