Flowr's online business collaboration shows app threat to SharePoint tools updated

"Flowr is pitched squarely at small-to-medium businesses, and the pricing reflects that. It’s free for a basic account, which allows up to five users. Premium accounts, with a range of additional features, cost $59 per month for up to 15 users (additional users are $3 per month)."

Flowr's online business collaboration tools updated

The growth over the next decade in Enterprise collaboration is going to be around SMEs that today are using email as their only tool. Microsoft is going after this area with Office 365 but when you look at an app product like Flowr you see that a company can get moving with most of the same features from the Cloud for a fraction of the investment.

The app economy has blown the rough off development making faster innovation at lower cost and opening the pie to more smaller players. Will Microsoft be able to respond in time, well that will be very interesting.

Terence McKenna - Time Acceleration

Okay yesterday we talked about noosphere, today we are posting a short talk from the king of drug induced mysticism himself Terence McKenna. Are we crack pots?

Well this is a unusually lucid and almost materialistic presentation by McKenna, and we would suggest some of the wilder New Age ideas of the past century can provide means of thinking about the current changes in human culture facilitated by mobile Internet.

New Age was one of the key influential myths for early adopters of "Cyberspace", and we should not be surprised that the current revolution in our understanding is influenced in large part by it. Just as science was originally created by people influenced by alchemy.

The key question to ask is if McKenna's ideas sound familiar today because reality has come out as he predicted and is developing along the lines of ever rapid development, or because our culture has created a myth of such development. Certainly mobile computing and the Internet are evolving faster than anyone could have imagined, but the same can not be said for genomics, cancer treatment, space flight, or green energy.

Its important to keep in mind that part of the entire selling pitch of mobile technology is this kind of rapid evolution towards some kind of singularity. But in the end Web 3.0 devices are just mobile phones that go online. What we do with this simple concept is up to us as a civilization.

Web 3.0 Lab: Windows 8 will be a mobile OS

Web 3.0 Lab: Windows 8 will be a mobile OS:

The new version of Windows is aims at more mobile platform. Thing is they seem to be embracing the as yet unproven Windows 7 Mobile interface. The OS will potentially free Microsoft from the desktop and take on Google's Android and Mac iOS domination of the mobile computing world. Or it might get people to see that mobile can be extended to the PC and open the door to Android slates and Android PCs.

Microsoft is trying to put a positive spin on this, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that this is a move Microsoft was forced to take. They will be changing the core look and feel of their flagship product. They will be making it look more like their mobile product. And their mobile product is getting killed in the market.

The concept of a mobile Windows is cool, and Windows 8 is just more proof that Web 3.0 will be the mobile web. But Microsoft is going to play a game it has not played for a long time: second place.

(Personally we find the layout of the Windows Mobile phone too restrictive. The squares impose a certain pattern of presentation on you, all heavily branded by Microsoft. The entire joy of Androids is the fact it is a light weight OS with the apps you select arranged the way you want them arranged. We have a bad feeling about this one.)

Office 365 and Windows Phone 7

Tech Bubble 2.0, Wall Streets concern, given its record of getting things wrong, is no reason to worry

"Tech Bubble 2.0? Maybe. But many in the venture capital community have rebuffed that notion, saying that important lessons have been learned since the first bubble in the late 1990s. In other words: This time, it's different."

LinkedIn IPO Through The Roof, Funders Rebuff Talk Of Bubble from Huffington Post

Firstly let us make one thing very clear. The Dot Com bubble of 2000 never really happened, not the way the media reported it. Certainly there was a collapse in stock prices around a cluster of Internet companies. But this was not because the companies themselves were weak. Rather the collapse was a fiction created by a Wall Street out of control, one that three masses of money too early and pulled the money out a few years later when the largest transformation in communications since the printed word didn't fully form in two years. The Dot Com bomb was entirely due to the greed and stupidity of people on Wall Street.

After this so called collapse the Internet, freed of so much influence from the parasite class, was able to enter its true golden age. After the Dot Com collapsed we saw the rise of blogging, social network sites, the creation of Facebook, podcasting, video sharing, music downloads, and now geosocial. If Wall Street was with it or not the Internet rapidly moved from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 in large part by collective work of millions.

After Wall Street declared the Internet dead Wikipedia create the largest single store of information in world history through crowd sourcing, a Harvard undergrad made a company that now has 600 million members, Google's stock went public (and despite fears of another collapse back then) the stock and company is doing fine.

The Internet is not a fad. Nor is it really possible to value the contribution the Internet will place upon humanity. Asking how much the collection of Interent companies are actually worth long term would be like asking how much the first 100 printing presses of 50 steam engines would be worth to the world economy. In reality these innovations were worth more than the entire wealth of the planet at that time.

But that is not to say there is no danger of a short term collapse, there very much is such a danger. Not because of the firms themselves but because, as we should all know by now, Wall Street is dominated by a lot of disturbed drug addicted sex addict trying to steal as much money as they can who use masses of technology they are either too stupid or too drug out to understand. Its very likely they will dump masses of money in to new firms and as soon as the herd instinct changes pull it out in mass.

But the Internet itself will survive. In face as we saw from things like Wikipedia, Linux, and blogging the Internet is driven by a much bigger collective event than the money on Wall Street. The Web was actually better off after all the investors left in 2001. Freed of the pressure of bag men who didn't understand the industry people who did understand the web were free to actually built a better web.

Imagine if the investment houses has remain around, had bought out Wikipedia, all the blogging sites, and the social networks. Do you think crowd sourcing, creative commons, or citizen journalism would have gotten anywhere? I doubt it.

Cloud computing already flopping? Lessons from Sony

The BBC never comes out and just asks the obvious question. Are the cases of Sony and Amazon just growing pains for the Cloud, or is the Cloud over hyped? Well given what some people were saying last year about saving the environment, reducing costs to a fraction, and giving better service it should come as no surprise that the Cloud turns out to have serious real world.

I have worked a great deal with the Cloud, and the conclusion I have come to is that it is a lot harder to execute than most people relieve. That people are going to certainly put a lot of stuff on the Cloud, but data centers will very often be the best value option for most Enterprises most of the time.

Cloud will be a bit win for SME, but they will have to live with security problem, loss of data, and all the million problem with making your business someone else's concern. Outsourcing never lived up to the hype and neither will the Cloud. Essentially the problem is that you are giving the core of your business to someone else. The smaller you are the more Cloud can do for you, but the less and less you matter to Cloud.

BBC News - Cloud computing after Amazon and Sony: ready for primetime?: "Cloud computing may be the hottest thing in corporate computing right now, but two IT disasters - at Amazon and Sony - beg the question: Is cloud computing ready for primetime business?

It's a nightmare moment. You are under pressure - to meet customer orders, finish a project, execute a deal - and nothing. Your computers, servers or network are down. If you are lucky, a few nail biting hours and a reboot or three later, you and your IT team have restored services.

But what if your IT infrastructure goes down and there's nothing you can do because your computing power sits in the cloud, provided over the internet by another company? When a key part of Amazon's EC2 cloud service collapsed, many of the firm's customers were reduced to publishing apologies on their websites, and click 'refresh' on Amazon's service health dashboard.

Two of Sony's online gaming services, meanwhile, were hacked, compromising confidential data of more than 100 million customers."

Web 3.0 Lab: Huddle on death of the enterprise

Notes based on talk of Alastair Mitchell,, CEO and co-founder of Huddle: The death of enterprise as we know it

The talk was given by another staff.

Huddle provides content management and collaboration like SharePoint but in the Cloud.

The key is the "consumerization" of IT. As consumers we now have access of easy use of Cloud services on many devices. Especially the Digital Natives have grown up with apps and mobile devices that give easy functionality which they choose for themselves and configure to share and communicate.

The established structure of IT in the Enterprise is a restricted controlled access. But today 95% of users in the west use some form of their own devices or software to do their job. The personal device is breaking down the Enterprise's control over information systems inside the Enterprise. But also employees store personal data on company networks, perhaps as high as 50%.

Also techie workers want to work at companies with high tech new stuff.

So the Enterprise is being torn in part with IT departments on one side driven by FUD and techie users at the work space.

Huddle believes that its technology can resolve this debate at the center of Web 2.0. Huddle believes that IT needs change because staff life experiences will not.

Huddle holds up the Cloud as solution to this problem. IT departments need to put aside their security and control concerns and embrace the Clout. The Cloud will reduce cost and promote agility. Cloud applications will also allow more variable devices to connect in to the business functionality.

Huddle deals with security via several levels of security: physical, application security layer, testing of security. Huddle notices that 86% of SharePoint users say they would rather use email than SharePoint. Huddle sees adoption as a key feature over SharePoint. Huddle claims 90% adoption. Though the stats Huddle gives here is a bit misleading. They give Huddle adoption and SharePoint satisfaction. But they should compare adoption to adoption or satisfaction to satisfaction.

Huddle also points extensive adoption by the government of Huddle. I would also note the government makes extensive use of SharePoint.

Today any business need can be meet with a Cloud based service that can live on many devices. Rather than IT solutions are coming up with open APIs, based in the Cloud

These are Web 3.0 Lab notes and do not necessarily reflect the views of Huddle or any of the presenters at Internet World 2011.

Web 3.0 Lab: Huddle on death of the enterprise:

Web 3.0 Lab: Microsoft near $7 billion deal for Skype

Microsoft to buy Skype, will it be a game changer?

Microsoft is putting the finishing touches on a deal to buy Internet phone company Skype for between $7 billion and $8 billion, and a deal could be announced as early as tomorrow, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The report cited people familiar with the matter who said negotiations were ongoing and could still fall apart. Microsoft representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Luxembourg-based company provides a software-based communications service that allows people to make free voice and video calls over the Internet to other Skype users using almost any Internet-connected device. The voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP service also allows people to make and receive calls from regular telephone numbers using a paid service.

Interest in the Internet telephony giant has been high since online auction giant eBay, which had acquired Skype in 2006, sold off its controlling interest in Skype. Facebook and Google had previously been mentioned as possible suitors for the company, which has been around since 2003 and averages 124 million connected users per month.

The combination of the deal of Nokia and Skype could suddenly make Windows 7 mobile a game changer in the mobile industry. But the news so far has had no impact on Microsoft's stock. Looks like traders are taking a wait and see attitude about Microsoft's efforts to take over this stock. Certainly Microsoft's former domination of the PC universe has suffered under Web 2.0 failures. With Google and Facebook taking a lead people might be wise to be unsure that Microsoft will be able to take advantage of the mobile Internet or Web 3.0.

Out take is that Microsoft is very well position to make better use of Skype than eBay. Skype fits nicely in to the Office 365. And Skype will also extend the Nokia Windows 7 competitive position. We have noticed that the movement to mobile devices is speeding up the pace at which people change machines. People might use a PC for 5 to 7 years. People get new smartphones ever couple of years. So in 4 years from now people could have two upgrades of their smartphones. We have also seen people willing to change smartphones. People have moved from Palm to RIM, RIM to iPhones and iPhone to Android already. If the Windows 7 mobile phone on Nokia creates an attractive offering it might only take a few years for Microsoft to retake much of this area.

In the Pro are for Microsoft we have:

• Microsoft strong position in PC making it still the main platform people create and use information.
• Nokia new phones are excellent.
• Microsoft Office 365 could become the Office productivity platform of almost all business users very soon.
• Skype purchase.
• The excellent reviews Windows 7 Mobile has gotten.

Against Microsoft are these problems:

• Weak mobile reputation.
• Strong position of Android in mobile area.
• Web 2.0 owned by other firms like Google and Facebook.

Though it is hard to predict the future things look a lot better for Microsoft today after the Skype deal.

Web 3.0 Lab: Microsoft near $7 billion deal for Skype:

BCS - External Content Type in SharePoint Designer 2010

Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services (ReviewCam)

Microsoft and RIM to make partnership

Ballmer Microsoft CEO

Steve Ballmer Announces Big Partnership With Research In Motion:

"Steve Ballmer just took the stage at Research In Motion's conference to announce a new partnership between Microsoft and RIM.

"Bing search and maps are now the default on BlackBerrys at the OS level, says analyst Michael Gartenberg, who is on hand.

"Ballmer also said Microsoft would invest 'uniquely' in BlackBerry services."

From Jay Yarow at Business Insider

The potential alliance of RIM/Blackberry with Microsoft is so logical it is a bit surprising how long Microsoft avoided it. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft stack has had a mobile device for almost a decade now in Blackberry. With the massive presence of Blackberry already in place in Microsoft stack offices it makes more sense for Microsoft to work with RIM and maybe even merge than for Microsoft to try and salvage its own mobile business.

Office 365 beta, Microsoft finally makes it to the Cloud with SharePoint

UPDATE: Since I wrote this original post in 2011 Microsoft has released the mature ready to go Office365 for the Cloud.  And it is a vast improvement and a real game changer.  

It has a simpler new layout which works well with tablets, not just Surfaces.  I use my Office365 on my iPad and it is great.  It also has  a wonderful new App Development model which will make it much easier to add SharePoint to the entire Enterprise.  Things are just getting better and better from the Cloud.

Office 365 beta is here. And the wait is almost worth it. Almost. First the good news. You get SharePoint and Office Web Applications in a Cloud solution. And this is real SharePoint 2010. You even have the ability to start workflows, edit page layout, set site properties and even open the page in Designer 2010. Everything with the same ribbon and SharePoint 2010 because it is SharePoint 2010.

With a basic under 25 user Office 365 beta you get Outlook Web Application, which looks and feels like the real office. You get a basic web site which frankly is terrible. But the real killer app is, or will be, Cloud based document Management using Office Web Apps and SharePoint 2010 Team Sites!

Now on my computer I could not create document using the Web App, but I would imagine they will fix that soon or I will fix my machine. Oh and you get Lync too but frankly anyone in a small business who needs another cloud based IM service must be living under a rock.

Frankly for a 25 person of less business Lynch will be useless give Skype and other basic IM services. But the ability to use SharePoint and Outlook in the Cloud is pretty cool.

And I am going to be clear about this: Office 365 beta is not kind of SharePoint 2010, or something that looks like SharePoint 2010; it is SharePoint 2010. This is Microsoft breaking in to the Cloud in a massive way. Good job folks, now get the phone to sell.