Open Web

Google tests a service called Cloudboard, an online clipboard that should make it easy to copy data between Gmail, Google Docs and other Google services. The service is not publicly available yet, but there are many references to it. lengthy comment from ~ge~

The U.S. Justice Department has opened an investigation into allegations that International Business Machines (IBM.N) abused its dominance of the mainframe business, said Computer and Communications Industry Association chairman Ed Black.

Too little, too late? IBM enters the SaaS cloud market with an email-calendaring offering. But where's the IBM SaaS cloud ecosystem? 

Interesting discussion about SVG, and the push Google is making with their SVG Conference. excerpt:  Vector graphics describe imagery mathematically with lines, curves, shapes, and color values rather than the grid of colored pixels used by bitmapped file formats such as JPEG or GIF widely used on the Web today. Where appropriate, such as with corporate logos but not photographs, vector graphics bring smaller file sizes and better resizing flexibility. That's good for faster downloads and use on varying screen sizes.

Some good questions are being asked about the future of Google Wave and collaborative computing.  He misses however another important play for Wave; moving to the center of the emerging Open Web Productivity Environment. excerpt:  Google Wave is another grab for the Holy Grail of collaborative computing. But, will it be more successful than previous attempts? Whenever you see something compared to Lotus Notes, as Google Wave has been, you know to expect an uphill slog. Add a comparison to Microsoft Groove, which I have not seen but seems reasonable, and you can expect deep trouble. Both Notes and Groove are wonderful, innovative applications that have never caught on as I had hoped. Why? They are too difficult to use and develop for. They were way ahead of their time. Maybe Google Wave, a workplace collaboration application that is being rolled out to an additional 100,000 beta testers, has arrived at the right time, finding the right mix of power vs. ease-of-use, and the right metaphor for delivering it. We have an excellent story that offers "Five Reasons To Dive Into Google Wave." That is, if you can find a way to get into the beta. The big question: Can Google Wave succeed where seemingly every collaboration application that has gone has failed?

While the proof is always in the details, Google's approach to vendor lock-in issues for its apps at least outwardly stands in stark contrast to Microsoft's long reliance on vendor lock-in tactics. 

Is this the wrath of Sutor?  Last week he threw the Linux desktop under the bus.  And now this?  No wonder @rcweir  has shut down the slime machine. excerpt:  IBM has essentially declared war on the technical standards process. The words seem supportive enough, but when you read between them, you can see that a systematic round of arm-twisting is likely about to happen. Anyone who knows tech is used to the dance that standard setting is. Experts from various companies serve on the committees, each with a sense of what ought to work "best" and trying to wrangle decisions in their direction. This is competitive dominance in action and the stakes are high. That's what makes Big Blue's more-collegial-than-thou stance so amusing, with the following "tenets":

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.

Talk about a game changer: Excerpt:  An epic battle is brewing out West with much more than a lucrative technology contract at stake: Microsoft Office or Google's cloud? As the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday, Microsoft and Google are bidding for a $7.25 million contract to replace the city of Los Angeles' outdated email system. Los Angeles put out a call for bids in 2008. "Google Apps got the nod because city administrators believed it would be cheaper and less labor-intensive," writes LA Times reporter David Sarno. We all knew this day of reckoning was coming. For Microsoft, the fight to hold on to its Office base is on. Google Apps, the Web-based office suite that includes the viral Gmail, promises less overhead and potentially big savings to fiscally strapped cities, corporations and college campuses. In addition to dispatching teams of lobbyists, both Steve Ballmer and Eric Schmidt have offered to put in appearances at city hall, if city officials think it will help, according to a city councilman quoted in the article.

Michael Hickins weighs in the war between Microsoft and Google.  This time he focuses in Microsoft's attempt to move the point of assembly from the desktop productivity environment to an exclusive MS-Web center. The question is whether enterprises will move to Google (or some other standards- and Web-based vendor) in time, or whether they will get trapped in the fly-paper of Microsoft code, from which they will be hard pressed to detach their documents. This was the problem Massachusetts faced when the state wanted to abandon Microsoft in favor of standards-based applications; their legacy documents were filled with Microsoft code they couldn't translate cleanly into another format. When the race is finished, that may turn out to be Microsoft's greatest strength. While the rest of the world embraces openness and cooperation, Microsoft remains proprietary and closed like a fist.

Daniel Eran Dilger has compiled a remarkable history of HTML.  One strange thing though.  He gives Microsoft a pass at every turn!  Very odd.  Especially since Dilger is the original fan boy.

Wow.  Google has re-purposed IE for the Open Web! excerpts: A number of modern Web features cannot be used pervasively on the Internet because Microsoft's dominant browser, Internet Explorer, often fails to support current and emerging standards. Google has a plan to drag IE into the world of modern browsing by building a plugin that will allow it to use Chrome's HTML renderer and high-performance JavaScript engine. Google hopes that delivering Chrome's rendering engine in an IE plugin will provide a pragmatic compromise for users who can't upgrade. Web developers will be able to use an X-UA-Compatible meta tag to specify that their page should be displayed with the Chrome renderer plugin instead of using Internet Explorer's Trident engine. This approach will ensure that the Chrome engine is only used when it is supposed to and that it won't disrupt the browser's handling of legacy Web applications that require IE6 compatibility. Google is opening the source code now to get feedback and assistance with testing. The plugin will include Google's speedy V8 JavaScript engine, support for Canvas, SVG, and all of the other features that users enjoy today in Chrome. That also includes the next-generation CSS rendering features of WebKit such as rounded corners. The pages will look just like they would if they were rendered in Chrome. Google is going much further [than Mozilla] by providing the entire renderer. If the plugin is adopted by a sufficiently broad number of users, then Web developers will never again have to contend with IE's limitations. It could also open the door for adoption of HTML 5 and other important emerging standards.

Interesting strategy. Now if we could just get da Vinci/HTML+ to market ...