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Gary Edwards

Five reasons why Microsoft can't compete (and Steve Ballmer isn't one of them) - 2 views

betanews.com/...teve-ballmer-isn-t-one-of-them

Microsoft Joe-Wilcox Google IBM Monopolist OpenWeb

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • discontinued
  • 1. U.S. and European antitrust cases put lawyers and non-technologists in charge of important final product decisions.
  • The company long resisted releasing pertinent interoperability information in the United States. On the European Continent, this resistance led to huge fines. Meanwhile, Microsoft steered away from exclusive contracts and from pushing into adjacent markets.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Additionally, Microsoft curtailed development of the so-called middleware at the core of the U.S. case: E-mail, instant messaging, media playback and Web browsing:
  • Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates learned several important lessons from IBM. Among them: The value of controlling key technology endpoints. For IBM, it was control interfaces. For Microsoft: Computing standards and file formats
  • 2. Microsoft lost control of file formats.
  • Charles Simonyi, the father of Microsoft, and his team achieved two important goals by the mid 1990s: Established format standards that resolved problems sharing documents created by disparate products.
  • nsured that Microsoft file formats would become the adopted desktop productivity standards. Format lock-in helped drive Office sales throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s -- and Windows along with it. However, the Web emerged as a potent threat, which Gates warned about in his May 1995 "Internet Tidal Wave" memo. Gates specifically identified HTML, HTTP and TCP/IP as formats outside Microsoft's control. "Browsing the Web, you find almost no Microsoft file formats," Gates wrote. He observed not seeing a single Microsoft file format "after 10 hours of browsing," but plenty of Apple QuickTime videos and Adobe PDF documents. He warned that "the Internet is the most important single development to come along since the IBM PC was introduced in 1981. It is even more important than the arrival of the graphical user interface (GUI)."
  • 3. Microsoft's senior leadership is middle-aging.
  • Google resembles Microsoft in the 1980s and 1990s:
  • Microsoft's middle-management structure is too large.
  • 5. Microsoft's corporate culture is risk adverse.
  • Microsoft's
  • . Microsoft was nimbler during the transition from mainframe to PC dominance. IBM had built up massive corporate infrastructure, large customer base and revenue streams attached to both. With few customers, Microsoft had little to lose but much to gain; the upstart took risks IBM wouldn't for fear of losing customers or jeopardizing existing revenue streams. Microsoft's role is similar today. Two product lines, Office and Windows, account for the majority of Microsoft products, and the majority of sales are to enterprises -- the same kind of customers IBM had during the mainframe era.
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Aug 11
     
    Excellent summary and historical discussion about Microsoft and why they can't seem to compete.  Lot's of anti trust and monopolist swtuff - including file formats and interop lock ins (end points).  Microsoft's problems started with the World Wide Web and continue with mobile devices connected to cloud services.
Paul Merrell

Microsoft's Sidekick/Pink problems blamed on dogfooding and sabotage - RoughlyDrafted M... - 0 views

www.roughlydrafted.com/...med-on-dogfooding-and-sabotage

Microsoft cloud T-Mobile Verison Google

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Additional insiders have stepped forward to shed more light into Microsoft’s troubled acquisition of Danger, its beleaguered Pink Project, and what has become one of the most high profile Information Technology disasters in recent memory.
  • The sources point to longstanding management issues, a culture of “dogfooding,” and evidence that could suggest the issue was a deliberate act of sabotage.
  • Beyond T-Mobile, observers say Microsoft’s problems with Danger are likely to reflect poorly on the company’s own Azure Services cloud computing initiative, as well as its MyPhone cloud service for Windows Mobile phones. The sidelining of the Pink Project is also a likely setback to Microsoft’s ongoing relationship with Verizon, which has been an early advocate of Microsoft’s other mobile related technologies, including the DRM used in Verizon’s VCast music and media service.
cecilia marie

Choosing the Right Software Support Provider is Everything - 1 views

I was having problems with my computer that I did not know what to do. So I searched the internet for a reliable computer software support service provider and I came across Tech Software Support....

software support

started by cecilia marie on 04 Nov 11 no follow-up yet
Gary Edwards

Microsoft has failed | SemiAccurate - 0 views

semiaccurate.com/...microsoft-has-failed

Microsoft Microsoft-Death-Spiral Charlie-Demerjian

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • heir product lines have stagnated,
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Nov 12
     
    Charlie nails it in this analysis of Microsoft's future.  Most interesting is Charlie's explanation of how Microsoft so totally missed the needs of their corporate business user base - the heart of the monopoly!  Windows 8 is a disaster for productivity.  Great analysis! excerpt: Microsoft is in deep trouble, their two main product lines are failing, and the blame game is intensifying. Steve Sinofsky gets the blame this time for the failure of Windows 8, but the real problem is the patterns that are so clearly illustrated by these actions. Microsoft is largely irrelevant to computing of late, the only markets they still play in are evaporating with stunning rapidity. Their long history of circling the wagons tighter and tighter works decently as long as there is not a credible alternative, and that strategy has been the entirety of the Microsoft playbook for so long that there is nothing else now. It works, and as the walls grow higher, customer enmity builds while the value of an alternative grows. This cycle repeats as long as there is no alternative. If there is, everything unravels with frightening rapidity.
Gary Edwards

How to buy and sell Bitcoins -- Part 2: Practical | ZDNet - 0 views

www.zdnet.com/ns-part-2-practical-7000013662

BitCoin

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Apr 13
     
    Good explanation of Bitcoin: what it is, how it works, and how to get started. excerpt: "Summary: So you want to buy and sell Bitcoins, but how is it done? In the second part of this two-part series, I'll show you how to transfer money from your bank to a Bitcoin exchange, how to use your wallet, and how to buy real things." In this two part series I'm looking at the practicalities of buying and selling Bitcoins. In Part 1, I looked at the theory of Bitcoins In Part 2 (this part), I'll take you through how I bought and sold them. As I mentioned in Part 1, "mining" is no longer a practical way to get into Bitcoins because of the requirement for specialised hardware and because it's very difficult for small scale operations to get any money to drop out in that way. The easiest way to get started is to send some "proper" money to a Bitcoin exchange. There are a few of these, the most famous being Mt. Gox. I used Bitstamp -- my method of selection being "random". I went to Bitcoin Charts to find a list of exchanges, and went through a few until I found one that made me feel in some way vaguely confident. You can't get started on this journey with a credit card -- you need something more like hard cash. I had to phone my bank to incept a wire transfer to Bitstamp's bank. This happened to be a bank located in Slovenia. The problem with credit cards is that they can be clawed back on the lightest suspicion of fraud. Everyone involved wants Bitcoin to feel and act like cash -- if you have Bitcoins, the premise is that they are definitely yours. (Plus, if you could use credit cards, the whole system would be absolutely slapped to pieces by credit card fraud.)
Gary Edwards

Crocodoc's HTML Document Viewer Infiltrates the Enterprise | Xconomy - 0 views

www.xconomy.com/...wer-infiltrates-the-enterprise

crocodoc HTML5

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Dec 12
     
    Excellent report on Crocodoc and their ability to convert MANY different document file types to HTML5.  Including all MSOffice formats - OOXML, ODF, and PDF. " Crocodoc, and took on the much larger problem of allowing groups to collaborate on editing a document online, no matter what the document type: PowerPoint, PDF, Word, Photoshop, JPEG, or PNG. In the process, they had to build an embeddable viewer that could take apart any document and reassemble it accurately within a Web browser. And as soon as they'd finished that, they had to tear their own system apart and rebuild it around HTML5 rather than Flash, the Adobe multimedia format that's edging closer and closer to extinction. The result of all that iterating is what's probably the world's most flexible and faithful HTML5-based document viewer: when you open a PDF, PowerPoint, or Word document in Crocodoc, the Web version looks exactly like the native version, even though it's basically been stripped down and re-rendered from scratch. When I talked with Damico in February of 2011, the startup had visions of building on this technology to become a kind of central, Web-based clearinghouse for everyone's documents-a cross between Scribd, Dropbox, and Google Docs, but with a focus on consumers, and with prettier viewing tools. In the last year, though, Crocodoc's direction has changed dramatically. Damico and his colleagues realized that it would be smarter to partner with the fastest growing providers of document-sharing services and social business-tool providers than to try to compete with them. "The massive, seismic change for us is that we had a huge opportunity to partner with Dropbox and LinkedIn and SAP and Yammer, and let them build on top of Crocodoc and make it into a core piece of their own products," Damico says. In other words, every time an office worker opens a document from within a Web app like Dropbox or Yammer, they're activating a white-label version
Gary Edwards

FeedHenry Secures $9M Funding Led By Intel Capital To Feed Boom in Mobile Enterprise | ... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...feed-boom-in-mobile-enterprise

FeedHenry Mobile-Application-Platform Integrated-Cloud BaaS

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 May 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 May 13
     
    FeedHenry provides a cloud Mobile Application Platform that simplifies the development, integration, deployment and management of secure mobile apps for business. This mobile platform-as-a-service (PaaS) allows apps to be developed in HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS and deployed to multiple mobile devices from a single code base. The node.js backend service offers a complete range of APIs designed to simplify and secure the connectivity of mobile apps to backend and third party systems. The platform can be deployed to private, public or hybrid clouds. FeedHenry's PaaS offers developers speed of development, instant scalability, device and cloud independence, and the ability to easily integrate to backend information. ................................ If, say, a company uses both Sharepoint and Salesforce inside a mobile app, to get that data into one app they need multiple levels of API integration. Because of the enormous boom in mobile and tablet apps, so-called 'back-end as a service' (BaaS) platforms like FeedHenry - which solve these problems - are hugely expanding. Thus, today FeedHenry has secured $9M (€7M) in a funding round led by Intel Capital, alongside a "seven figure" investment from existing investor Kernel Capital. Other existing investors VMware Inc., Enterprise Ireland and private investors also participated and were joined by new investment from ACT Venture Capital. The funds will be used on an international roll out. FeedHenry's mobile application platform - built between Ireland and the U.S. - helps businesses build mobile apps that integrate securely to their business through the cloud. This is a competitive market that includes StackMob, Usergrid, Appcelerator, Sencha.io, Applicasa ,Parse, CloudMine , CloudyRec , iKnode, yorAPI, Buddy and ScottyApp.
Paul Merrell

He Was a Hacker for the NSA and He Was Willing to Talk. I Was Willing to Listen. - 0 views

theintercept.com/...o-talk-i-was-willing-to-listen

surveillance state NSA-hacker-interview

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • he message arrived at night and consisted of three words: “Good evening sir!” The sender was a hacker who had written a series of provocative memos at the National Security Agency. His secret memos had explained — with an earthy use of slang and emojis that was unusual for an operative of the largest eavesdropping organization in the world — how the NSA breaks into the digital accounts of people who manage computer networks, and how it tries to unmask people who use Tor to browse the web anonymously. Outlining some of the NSA’s most sensitive activities, the memos were leaked by Edward Snowden, and I had written about a few of them for The Intercept. There is no Miss Manners for exchanging pleasantries with a man the government has trained to be the digital equivalent of a Navy SEAL. Though I had initiated the contact, I was wary of how he might respond. The hacker had publicly expressed a visceral dislike for Snowden and had accused The Intercept of jeopardizing lives by publishing classified information. One of his memos outlined the ways the NSA reroutes (or “shapes”) the internet traffic of entire countries, and another memo was titled “I Hunt Sysadmins.” I felt sure he could hack anyone’s computer, including mine. Good evening sir!
  • The sender was a hacker who had written a series of provocative memos at the National Security Agency. His secret memos had explained — with an earthy use of slang and emojis that was unusual for an operative of the largest eavesdropping organization in the world — how the NSA breaks into the digital accounts of people who manage computer networks, and how it tries to unmask people who use Tor to browse the web anonymously. Outlining some of the NSA’s most sensitive activities, the memos were leaked by Edward Snowden, and I had written about a few of them for The Intercept. There is no Miss Manners for exchanging pleasantries with a man the government has trained to be the digital equivalent of a Navy SEAL. Though I had initiated the contact, I was wary of how he might respond. The hacker had publicly expressed a visceral dislike for Snowden and had accused The Intercept of jeopardizing lives by publishing classified information. One of his memos outlined the ways the NSA reroutes (or “shapes”) the internet traffic of entire countries, and another memo was titled “I Hunt Sysadmins.” I felt sure he could hack anyone’s computer, including mine.
  • I got lucky with the hacker, because he recently left the agency for the cybersecurity industry; it would be his choice to talk, not the NSA’s. Fortunately, speaking out is his second nature.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The Lamb’s memos on cool ways to hunt sysadmins triggered a strong reaction when I wrote about them in 2014 with my colleague Ryan Gallagher. The memos explained how the NSA tracks down the email and Facebook accounts of systems administrators who oversee computer networks. After plundering their accounts, the NSA can impersonate the admins to get into their computer networks and pilfer the data flowing through them. As the Lamb wrote, “sys admins generally are not my end target. My end target is the extremist/terrorist or government official that happens to be using the network … who better to target than the person that already has the ‘keys to the kingdom’?” Another of his NSA memos, “Network Shaping 101,” used Yemen as a theoretical case study for secretly redirecting the entirety of a country’s internet traffic to NSA servers.
  • In recent years, two developments have helped make hacking for the government a lot more attractive than hacking for yourself. First, the Department of Justice has cracked down on freelance hacking, whether it be altruistic or malignant. If the DOJ doesn’t like the way you hack, you are going to jail. Meanwhile, hackers have been warmly invited to deploy their transgressive impulses in service to the homeland, because the NSA and other federal agencies have turned themselves into licensed hives of breaking into other people’s computers. For many, it’s a techno sandbox of irresistible delights, according to Gabriella Coleman, a professor at McGill University who studies hackers. “The NSA is a very exciting place for hackers because you have unlimited resources, you have some of the best talent in the world, whether it’s cryptographers or mathematicians or hackers,” she said. “It is just too intellectually exciting not to go there.”
  • He agreed to a video chat that turned into a three-hour discussion sprawling from the ethics of surveillance to the downsides of home improvements and the difficulty of securing your laptop.
  • “If I turn the tables on you,” I asked the Lamb, “and say, OK, you’re a target for all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. How do you feel about being a target and that kind of justification being used to justify getting all of your credentials and the keys to your kingdom?” The Lamb smiled. “There is no real safe, sacred ground on the internet,” he replied. “Whatever you do on the internet is an attack surface of some sort and is just something that you live with. Any time that I do something on the internet, yeah, that is on the back of my mind. Anyone from a script kiddie to some random hacker to some other foreign intelligence service, each with their different capabilities — what could they be doing to me?”
  • “You know, the situation is what it is,” he said. “There are protocols that were designed years ago before anybody had any care about security, because when they were developed, nobody was foreseeing that they would be taken advantage of. … A lot of people on the internet seem to approach the problem [with the attitude of] ‘I’m just going to walk naked outside of my house and hope that nobody looks at me.’ From a security perspective, is that a good way to go about thinking? No, horrible … There are good ways to be more secure on the internet. But do most people use Tor? No. Do most people use Signal? No. Do most people use insecure things that most people can hack? Yes. Is that a bash against the intelligence community that people use stuff that’s easily exploitable? That’s a hard argument for me to make.”
  • I mentioned that lots of people, including Snowden, are now working on the problem of how to make the internet more secure, yet he seemed to do the opposite at the NSA by trying to find ways to track and identify people who use Tor and other anonymizers. Would he consider working on the other side of things? He wouldn’t rule it out, he said, but dismally suggested the game was over as far as having a liberating and safe internet, because our laptops and smartphones will betray us no matter what we do with them. “There’s the old adage that the only secure computer is one that is turned off, buried in a box ten feet underground, and never turned on,” he said. “From a user perspective, someone trying to find holes by day and then just live on the internet by night, there’s the expectation [that] if somebody wants to have access to your computer bad enough, they’re going to get it. Whether that’s an intelligence agency or a cybercrimes syndicate, whoever that is, it’s probably going to happen.”
  • There are precautions one can take, and I did that with the Lamb. When we had our video chat, I used a computer that had been wiped clean of everything except its operating system and essential applications. Afterward, it was wiped clean again. My concern was that the Lamb might use the session to obtain data from or about the computer I was using; there are a lot of things he might have tried, if he was in a scheming mood. At the end of our three hours together, I mentioned to him that I had taken these precautions—and he approved. “That’s fair,” he said. “I’m glad you have that appreciation. … From a perspective of a journalist who has access to classified information, it would be remiss to think you’re not a target of foreign intelligence services.” He was telling me the U.S. government should be the least of my worries. He was trying to help me. Documents published with this article: Tracking Targets Through Proxies & Anonymizers Network Shaping 101 Shaping Diagram I Hunt Sys Admins (first published in 2014)
Gary Edwards

Matt On Stuff: Hadoop For The Rest Of Us - 0 views

mattonstuff.blogspot.com/...hadoop-for-rest-of-us.html

Hadoop_Hive Java-API Oracle Google Map_Reduce Cloud Cloud-Productivity-Platform

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 May 12
     
    Excellent Hadoop/Hive explanation.  Hat tip to Matt Asay for the link.  I eft a comment on Matt's blog questioning the consequences of the Oracle vs. Google Android lawsuit, and the possible enforcement of the Java API copyright claim against Hadoop/Hive.  Based on this explanation of Hadoop/Hive, i'm wondering if Oracle is making a move to claim the entire era of Big Data Cloud Computing?  To understand why, it's first necessary to read Matt the Hadoople's explanation.   kill shot excerpt: "You've built your Hadoop job, and have successfully processed the data. You've generated some structured output, and that resides on HDFS. Naturally you want to run some reports, so you load your data into a MySQL or an Oracle database. Problem is, the data is large. In fact it's so large that when you try to run a query against the table you've just created, your database begins to cry. If you listen to its sobs, you'll probably hear "I was built to process Megabytes, maybe Gigabytes of data. Not Terabytes. Not Perabytes. That's not my job. I was built in the 80's and 90's, back when floppy drives were used. Just leave me alone". "This is where Hive comes to the rescue. Hive lets you run an SQL statement against structured data stored on HDFS. When you issue an SQL query, it parses it, and translates it into a Java Map/Reduce job, which is then executed on your data. Although Hive does some optimizations, in general it just goes record by record against all your data. This means that it's relatively slow - a typical Hive query takes 5 or 10 minutes to complete, depending on how much data you have. However, that's what makes it effective. Unlike a relational database, you don't waste time on query optimization, adding indexes, etc. Instead, what keeps the processing time down is the fact that the query is run on all machines in your Hadoop cluster, and the scalability is taken care of for you." "Hive is extremely useful in data-warehousing kind of scenarios. You would
Gary Edwards

The Terrible Management Technique That Cost Microsoft Its Creativity - Forbes - 2 views

www.forbes.com/...-cost-microsoft-its-creativity

Microsoft

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Jul 12
     
    Summary of a very interesting Vanity Fair article (linked) describing why the failure of Microsoft is certain.  A second Forbes article titled,  "That's All Folks:  The Writing is on the Wall at Microsoft", compliments the Vanity Fair piece.  Good stuff.  Hasta la bye-bye Microsoft. Nice knowin ya. excerpt: Vanity Fair has an article in its August issue that tells the story of how Microsoft "since 2000 . . . has fallen flat in every area it entered: e-books, music, search, social networking, etc., etc." According to a summary available online, the article finds a devastatingly destructive management technique at the heart of Microsoft's problems.
Gary Edwards

That's All Folks: Why the Writing Is on the Wall at Microsoft - Forbes - 1 views

www.forbes.com/...ng-is-on-the-wall-at-microsoft

Microsoft

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Jul 12
     
    Control vs. Creativity.  As the ulitmate control freak, Ballmer was guanteed to crush the life out of Microsoft's most creative individuals and teams.  Gates was focused on Windows and MSOffice, and Ballmer on control.  That one-two punch made certain that Microsoft would not be a player in the next great wave of computing; The Cloud.   excerpt: This is yet another example of what I like to call the Wile E. Coyote syndrome. Like the unfortunate character in the old Warner Bros. cartoons, Microsoft now seems to be a company that has long since run off the cliff but, with legs spinning for all they are worth, doesn't know yet that it is ready to drop. Yet drop it most certainly will. Microsoft Win8 Tablet Is NOT a Game Changer Adam Hartung Contributor Snapshot: Steve Ballmer Follow (93) #44 Billionaires IDC Analyst: Microsoft's Surface Sizzle Needs Win8 Steak Daniel Nye Griffiths Contributor To understand how this happens, take a look at the work of Arnold J. Toynbee, a historian who studied the rise and fall of civilizations. He argued that a civilization flourishes when it motivates insiders and attracts outsiders with its creative dynamism and culture. The civilization breaks down when its leadership loses this creative capacity and gives way to, or transforms itself into, a dominant minority. When this happens, the driver of the civilization becomes control, not attraction. And it's precisely this switch from attraction to control that is the source of the breakdown. Interestingly, Toynbee says that the consequences may not be immediately apparent. A civilization can keep up momentum because the controls it puts in place generate some short-term efficiency. But eventually it will run its course and collapse, because no amount of control can replace the loss of collective creativity. Observe this in the corporate world by looking at the example of General Motors. G.M.'s 2009 bankruptcy came at the end of a long decline dating back to the early 197
Gary Edwards

Combining the Best of Gmail and Zoho CRM Produces Amazing Results By James Kimmons of A... - 0 views

realestate.about.com/...gmail_zoho.htm

real-estate ZOHO mail-merge data-merge

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Jul 12
     
    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
Gary Edwards

Office to finally fully support ODF, Open XML, and PDF formats | ZDNet - 0 views

www.zdnet.com/xml-and-pdf-formats-7000002696

ODF ODF-interop MSOffice-productivity Cloud-Compound-Document

shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Aug 12
     
    The king of clicks returns!  No doubt there was a time when the mere mention of ODF and the now legendary XML "document" format wars with Microsoft could drive click counts into the statisphere.  Sorry to say though, those times are long gone. It's still a good story though.  Even if the fate of mankind and the future of the Internet no longer hinges on the outcome.  There is that question that continues defy answer; "Did Microsoft win or lose?"  So the mere announcement of supported formats in MSOffice XX is guaranteed to rev the clicks somewhat. Veteran ODF clickmeister SVN does make an interesting observation though: "The ironic thing is that, while this was as hotly debated am issue in the mid-2000s as are mobile patents and cloud implementation is today, this news was barely noticed. That's a mistake. Updegrove points out, "document interoperability and vendor neutrality matter more now than ever before as paper archives disappear and literally all of human knowledge is entrusted to electronic storage." He concluded, "Only if documents can be easily exchanged and reliably accessed on an ongoing basis will competition in the present be preserved, and the availability of knowledge down through the ages be assured. Without robust, universally adopted document formats, both of those goals will be impossible to attain." Updegrove's right of course. Don't believe me? Go into your office's archives and try to bring up documents your wrote in the 90s in WordPerfect or papers your staff created in the 80s with WordStar. If you don't want to lose your institutional memory, open document standards support is more important than ever. "....................................... Sorry but Updegrove is wrong.  Woefully wrong. The Web is the future.  Sure interoperability matters, but only as far as the Web and the future of Cloud Computing is concerned.  Sadly neither ODF or Open XML are Web ready.  The language of the Web is famously HTML, now HTML5+
Gary Edwards

Kindle Format 8 Overview - 0 views

www.amazon.com/...feature.html

KF8 compound-documents Cloud-Productivity-Platform Cloud-Compound-Document

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Jan 12
     
    Amazon releases a new version of the KF8 Format, with greatly improved HTML5-CSS3 capabilities.  Details of the KF8 spec can be found here: http://goo.gl/XY39v A couple of things i'm wondering about here.  One is, the KindleGen conversion tool can convert HTML, XHTML and EPUB to KF8.  Has anyone tried to push a OpenOffice XHTML compound document through this latest KF8 version of  KGen?  I'm thinking that perhaps the OOo HTML problem could be solved in this way? There is no doubt in my mind that HTML5 will continue to grow, and eventually replace the desktop XML "compound document" formats. The great transition from desktop client/server business productivity environments, where legacy compound documents rule the roost and fuel the engines of all business systems, to a Cloud Productivity Platform, will require an HTML5 compound document format model.  Also needed will be HTML5 capable applications participating in the production of Cloud ready compound documents.  Is KF8 a reasonable starting place? excerpt: Kindle Format 8 is Amazon's next generation file format offering a wide range of new features and enhancements - including HTML5 and CSS3 support that publishers can use to create all types of books. KF8 adds over 150 new formatting capabilities, including drop caps, numbered lists, fixed layouts, nested tables, callouts, sidebars and Scalable Vector Graphics - opening up more opportunities to create Kindle books that readers will love. Kindle Fire is the first Kindle device to support KF8 - in the coming months KF8 will be rolled out to our latest generation Kindle e-ink devices as well as our free Kindle reading apps.
shalani mujer

Top-Notch Computer Tech Support Service - 1 views

I will always be thankful to ComputerTechSupportService because they always provide top caliber computer support service that you can never find anywhere. They have certified PC technicians wh...

computer support service

started by shalani mujer on 10 Nov 11 no follow-up yet
Gary Edwards

You Are (Probably) Wrong About You - 0 views

feeds.harvardbusiness.org/...re_probably_wrong_about_y.html

success coaching olivia HBR

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Jul 12
     
    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.
Gary Edwards

Asus shows off ARM-based Windows 8 tablet - Computerworld - 0 views

www.computerworld.com/...off_ARM_based_Windows_8_tablet

Cloud-Productivity-Platform Visual-Productivity MS-Business-Productivity-Platform Compat-Interop

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Jun 12
     
    Is Intel right?  Is there a "compatibility-interoperability" problem between Windows RT Office (ARM) and legacy (x86) Windows MS Office productivity environments?  It seems to me that the entire reason iPAD, Android and other ARM based tablet systems want MSOffice and MSOffice Visual Document Viewers is exactly because they want and expect a high level of compat-interop with legacy Windows productivity workgroups and client/server systems. What's the truth?  And is there anything x86 providers like Intel and AMD can do about compat-interop and the unstoppable cloud-mobility revolution? excerpt: The Asus tablet has a quad-core Tegra 3 processor from Nvidia. Windows RT comes preloaded with Office 15, a group of widely used productivity applications. Microsoft has said it had to re-engineer Windows RT to deal with expectations for ARM based devices, which include all-day connectivity and low power consumption. The tablet also has an 8-megapixel camera at the rear with LED flash, and a 2-megapixel camera at the front. It has 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. Intel has already started the war of words against ARM around Windows 8, with Intel's CEO Paul Otellini saying that ARM devices will be incompatible with existing Windows applications and drivers. But analysts have said that Windows RT devices will likely be attractive to users who have few ties with legacy Windows PCs. Low prices could also attract users to Windows on ARM devices.
Gary Edwards

How would you fix the Linux desktop? | ITworld - 0 views

www.itworld.com/...ow-would-you-fix-linux-desktop

Linux-desktop Brian-Proffitt productivity-environment Cloud-Computing Cloud-Productivity-Platform

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • VB integrates with COM
  • QL Server has a DCE/RPC interface. 
  • MS-Office?  all the components (Excel, Word etc.) have a COM and an OLE interface.
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Sep 12
     
    Comment posted 1 week ago in reply to Zzgomes .....  by Ed Carp.  Finally someone who gets it! OBTW, i replaced Windows 7 with Linux Mint over a year ago and hope to never return.  The thing is though, i am not a member of a Windows productivity workgroup, nor do i need to connect to any Windows databases or servers.  Essentially i am not using any Windows business process or systems.  It's all Internet!!! 100% Web and Cloud Services systems.  And that's why i can dump Windows without a blink! While working for Sursen Corp, it was a very different story.  I had to have Windows XP and Windows 7, plus MSOffice 2003-2007, plus Internet Explorer with access to SharePoint, Skydrive/Live.com.  It's all about the business processes and systems you're part of, or must join.   And that's exactly why the Linux Desktop has failed.  Give Cloud Computing the time needed to re-engineer and re-invent those many Windows business processes, and the Linux Desktop might suceed.  The trick will be in advancing both the Linux Desktop and Application developer layers to target the same Cloud Computing services mobility targets.  ..... Windows will take of itself.   The real fight is in the great transition of business systems and processes moving from the Windows desktp/workgroup productivity model to the Cloud.  Linux Communities must fight to win the great transition. And yes, in the end this all about a massive platform shift.  The fourth wave of computing began with the Internet, and will finally close out the desktop client/server computing model as the Web evolves into the Cloud. excerpt: Most posters here have it completely wrong...the *real* reason Linux doesn't have a decent penetration into the desktop market is quite obvious if you look at the most successful desktop in history - Windows.  All this nonsense about binary driver compatibility, distro fragmentation, CORBA, and all the other red herrings that people are talking about are completely irrelevant
Gary Edwards

Cloud file-sharing for enterprise users - 1 views

www.computerweekly.com/...e-sharing-for-enterprise-users

SurDoc Sync-Share-Store sync-share-store-collaboration DropBox

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Aug 13
     
    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
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Sep 13
     
    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.
Paul Merrell

The Government's Secret Plan to Shut Off Cellphones and the Internet, Explained | Conne... - 0 views

billmoyers.com/...nes-and-the-internet-explained

cyberwar internet-kill-switch cellphone-kill-switch DHS litigation FOIA

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • This month, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Department of Homeland Security must make its plan to shut off the Internet and cellphone communications available to the American public. You, of course, may now be thinking: What plan?! Though President Barack Obama swiftly disapproved of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak turning off the Internet in his country (to quell widespread civil disobedience) in 2011, the US government has the authority to do the same sort of thing, under a plan that was devised during the George W. Bush administration. Many details of the government’s controversial “kill switch” authority have been classified, such as the conditions under which it can be implemented and how the switch can be used. But thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), DHS has to reveal those details by December 12 — or mount an appeal. (The smart betting is on an appeal, since DHS has fought to release this information so far.) Yet here’s what we do know about the government’s “kill switch” plan:
  • What are the constitutional problems? Civil liberties advocates argue that kill switches violate the First Amendment and pose a problem because they aren’t subject to rigorous judicial and congressional oversight. “There is no court in the loop at all, at any stage in the SOP 303 process,” according to the Center for Democracy and Technology. ”The executive branch, untethered by the checks and balances of court oversight, clear instruction from Congress, or transparency to the public, is free to act as it will and in secret.” David Jacobs of EPIC says, “Cutting off communications imposes a prior restraint on speech, so the First Amendment imposes the strictest of limitations…We don’t know how DHS thinks [the kill switch] is consistent with the First Amendment.” He adds, “Such a policy, unbounded by clear rules and oversight, just invites abuse.”
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