Challenges to Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office applications are ubiquitous, but they are being challenged on two fronts: the Open Office application suite and network-based suites from companies like Thinkfree.com, Zoho.com, and Google.

Open Office has been maturing for years, and it got a recent boost when IBM released a version with their own user interface. (Since Open Office is open source software, IBM or others can modify it).

As Nicholas Carr points out, Microsoft is responding by extending Office to use the Internet.

You can see a video on the advantages of online suites here, and a comparison of nine Office competitors here.

What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Office versus Open Office or an online suite for a student? For a small company? For a university? A large enterprise?

If you were running Microsoft, how would you respond to these challenges?

Looking to the future -- do technology trends tend to favor one approach over the others?

The cellular network is broken -- two examples

As we discuss, the Internet was designed to be an end-to-end, dumb network. The large ISPs would like to break that principle in order to give higher priority to certain users and applications, and, as we have seen, the cell phone network is even more restricted.

Developers cannot create and use cell phone applications without permission from cell phone carriers. We had a graphic example of this recently when Verizon would not permit an abortion rights organization to use their text messaging service. They later reversed the decision, but this illustrates how badly broken the cell phone network is.

Along the same lines, a software upgrade to Apple's iPhone renders phones with third party applications installed inoperable. This was not inadvertent. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said it was done to protect carrier networks and to make sure the phone was not damaged.

His first reason -- protecting the network -- was what AT&T claimed before the 1968 Carterphone decision that allowed people to connect equipment to their network as long as it did no harm. His second reason -- protecting the phone from damage -- is exactly what he has done -- turned them into worthless "bricks."

People are working on an open cell phone, and perhaps Wimax will lead to open network access one day.

Off shoring -- who are the big winners?

We talk about off shoring and its impact on individual careers, organizations and national economies. A UC Irvine study analyzed the iPod, asking where the 451 parts that go into it are made and who makes them. IPods are assembled in Asia by companies you have probably never heard of, but Apple is the big winner. Most value is added by companies with brand names that conceive of products and do user-interface and engineering design, marketing, distribution and sales. Those involved in manufacturing and assembly add less value.

UC Berkeley professor Hal Varian discusses the report in this New York Times article. (This is a very good article, but I would not mention and link to it while the Times charged a subscription fee).

Do you think US firms will have the same advantage as Apple does today in the future? Why?

The value of free: NY Times drops subscription fee

Internet sites generate revenue by charging directly for items (Amazon), subscription fees (Wall Street Journal, premium versions of services) or advertising. Until recently, the New York Times had a mixed revenue strategy -- current news was supported by advertising and they charged a subscription fee for opinion columns and archived articles. They have now dropped their subscription service in favor of advertising.

Times executives may have felt ad revenue would be greater than subscription revenue, but, even if that were not the case, there is a compelling reason to make information free. If access to information is restricted in any way, people will be less likely to refer to it. For example, I would not have linked to a New York Times article on this blog because students would not be able to read the article without paying a subscription fee. By charging a fee, the New York Times had removed itself from the Internet "conversation."

Doug Kaye of the Conversations Network pointed this out some time ago. The New York Times should have listened to his talk on "value of free."

Or, the Times could have read the Internet business classic The Cluetrain Manifesto, which states

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

These markets are conversations.

People also "pay" for information by registering on a site. Does having to register stop you from entering sites or using services?

Freebase -- Wikipedia for structured data?

We have discussed varying degrees of data structure on the Internet, ranging from free-text pages like Wikipedia to rigidly structured relational databases.

Freebase is like a structured Wikipedia, combining the advantages of free text and relational databases. Like Wikipedia, Freebase is open -- any user can create and change content. Unlike Wikipedia, Freebase data is structured so users can query it as they would a relational database.

This example illustrates Freebase. "Topics" are instances of formally defined "types." Here the type is person, and persons have formally defined properties like height, weight, and place of birth.

I am adding a new person (a new topic) to Freebase, myself. I was born in Pasadena, California, and when I began typing a value for place of birth, the system quickly showed the "Pasadenas" in its database with their structured descriptions. It knew that the value of the property had to be a location, and immediately displayed names and property values of locations named "Pasadena." This mechanism both saves time and assures that users have a common vocabulary.

Any Freebase user can create a new topic or change the property values of existing topic. For example, you could add yourself (a new person) to Freebase, and you could also change my place of birth from Pasadena, California to Santiago, Chile.

Thus far, Freebase sounds like a fancy relational database. However, qualified users can also change the structure itself. If one is qualified to be a "type administrator," he or she can create new types and modify the definitions of existing types. For example, one could add the property eye color to the definition of a person.

The developers of Freebase hope that, like Wikipedia, it will attract many users, some of whom are motivated to become type administrators. That way, both the content and structure of a domain of knowledge will evolve over time.

If this sounds interesting, listen to this wide ranging interveiw on Freebase and Metaweb, the system used to create it.

Fully networked (program and data) applications

Some networked applications use the Internet for communication and data storage. Others go further and use network-based programs accessed through a Web browser. Hotmail and other Web-based email applications were among the first of these fully-networked applications. There are now hundreds, perhaps thousands of them.

This database of fully-networked applications gives a brief description and has reviews of each. New entries are probably added (and others removed as companies fail) daily.

If you find the full list overwhelming, check out the list of applications used by Ismael ChangGhalimi who maintains the full database. Ghalimi is a true aficionado who has only one application -- a Web browser -- installed on his laptop.

VOIP in US and Europe

We cover voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP). VOIP is widely used for phone systems within organizations, and is taking off in the consumer market. A recent market research report compares VOIP growth in the United States with that in Europe. Note that growth is faster in Europe and that independent companies like Vonage are growing more slowly than the VOIP offerings of cable companies in the US. Unlike their US counterparts, European telephone companies are active participants in the VOIP market.

Google's Mountain View network

We have talked about municipal WiFi networks. Many municipal networks were oversold and have been disappointing. Still, the technology is evolving, and Google has operated a network in their headquarters city, Mountain View, California for a year. The network covers 12 square miles and 25,000 homes and serves approximately 15,000 unique users each month. This is a research project for Google, and perhaps the most interesting thing Google has learned is that over 100 distinct types of portable WiFi devices have been used -- not only laptops. Google applications on Apple's touchscreen portable devices also shows their interest in portable service. You can get a feeling for the Mountain View network at this support site.

Update, 8/2/12. Google's Fiber rollout in Kansas City reminded me of Google's WiFi trial in Mountain View, California (coverage map shown here).

I did not check with Google, but, based on the sparse Web site with a broken link, I would guess that the network was not a great success. Let's hope the KC rollout is!

Network-based image editors

We do most of our image editing using stand alone applications like Photoshop, but there are also network-based image editors. TechCrunch surveyed several recently and FotoFlexer has come out subsequently.

What are the pros and cons of using a network-based image editor compared to a desktop program?

Why connectivity is fast and cheap in Japan and is not in the US

We have seen that US Internet connectivity is rapidly falling behind other nations. This Washington Post article on Japanese connectivity sheds some light on the physical and policy differences that have led to their success. Japan has newer telephone infrastructure and is more densely populated than the US, but. more importantly, their policy makers have created competition where the United States has left control in the hands of powerful telephone and cable companies.

The US Congress sought to introduce competition by passing the 1996 Telecommunication Act. William Kennard, chairman of the United States Federal Communication from 1997-2001 was frustrated in implementing the Act. Near the end of his term he said “all too often companies work to change the regulations, instead of working to change the market,” and spoke of “regulatory capitalism” in which “companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists and politicians, instead of plant, people and customer service." He went on to remark that regulation is “too often used as a shield, to protect the status quo from new competition - often in the form of smaller, hungrier competitors -- and too infrequently as a sword -- to cut a pathway for new competitors to compete by creating new networks and services.”

The telephone and cable companies succeeded in stopping the intended competition, and now the US is falling behind. What are the implications of that failure?

Truveo -- specialized, programmable video search

The first search engines simply looked for key terms in Web pages. Searches quickly became "smarter" -- giving more weight if a term was used in a first line or heading, looking at the proximity of search terms, etc. (These techniques were developed and tested by people like H. P. Luhn in the late 1950s). Google rose to prominence by using the number of links to a page as a measure of its popularity and hence relevance. Search engines are becoming ever more sophisticated.

We are also seeing the rise of specialized search engines. A good example is Truveo. Truveo only searches for video clips, but it is comprehensive with searches of given categories, channels (like CNN or ESPN), tags, etc. Perhaps more important, the application programming interface allows developers to incorporate Truveo searches into their Web sites.

Can you find other, specialized search engines? If so, do they have application programming interfaces that allow them to be used by others?

Desktop-Internet integration

We have seen the evolution of development platforms from batch processing systems through timesharing, personal computers, local area networks and now the Internet. In a recent Dr. Dobb's Journal article, Michael Swaine discusses the return to the desktop.

Swaine outlines four phases of development on the Internet platform:

1. Static HTML pages
2. Dynamic behavior exemplified by AJAX and Flash
3. Application integration -- mashups
4. Integration of the desktop with network applications

He gives capsule descriptions of development tools that are facilitating network-desktop integration: the dojo Javascript toolkit, Adobe AIR, Google Gears, Microsoft Silverlight, and Joyent Slingshot. With these tools, one can build applications that can store data on either the server or desktop, enabling users to work on-line or off-line.

You can experience this today using Google's RSS Reader. Reader uses a beta version of Gears to transparently store 2,000 items on your desktop for access when you are off-line. The premier version of ThinkFree, built using Slingshot, let's you work with Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents whether they are stored on locally or on the Internet. The beta test is currently closed, but will open shortly.

Is anything wrong with this picture? Since these applications save information locally, a bug or malicious program might cause harm. (As you see here, Gears warns the user). Performance might also be a problem. (Synchronizing for off-line operation with Google Reader takes just over a minute over my slow DSL link even if I made no changes while on-line). But, if your network connection and the speed of your desktop PC were fast enough, you would see equal performance performance regardless of where a file was stored. (That is not the case today for most of us, but what about ten years from now)?

Synchronous collaboration in virtual worlds

Virtual worlds like Secondlife.com are used for synchronous communication. Here we see a panel discussion in a virtual classroom belonging to the Harvard University Berkman Center. Each panelist and attendee designs an avatar, which they control and move around in the virtual space. We see the panelists’ avatars seated at the front of the room and those of the attendees are seated around them. There are also shared spaces like the “flipchart” to the right of the panel. Organizations are experimenting with meetings, press conferences, concerts, and other synchronous events in Second Life.

Second Life is one of many virtual worlds. Some are geared toward a particular user group like children and others are focused on a game. Techcrunch.com tracks such developments and has lists 18 virtual worlds in this post.

Ning, a high-level development tool for social networks

We have spoken of varying levels of abstraction in a development platform, and seen that white-label social networking systems provide a high level of abstraction.

Ning.com is a good example. I used Ning to create a demonstration site. As you see, the site has a typical three column layout. I selected the color scheme and layout by clicking on one of several templates. The left column has links to threaded discussion forums and audio, video and photo libraries. I added them by dragging and dropping four icons. I added the blog in the center with another drag and drop. Note the Google Map mashups showing the locations of the photo and video. A single click could change the menu language from English to Spanish.

Creating the site, selecting the template and features to include, and uploading the library material took less than 30 minutes. There was no learning curve -- a wizard lead me through the steps.

I created this test site using the free version of Ning. I could have turned off the ads and used my own domain name for an additional $25 per month.

Ning is one of several white label social network tools. TechCrunch has published an excellent comparison of Ning and eight others.

Tools like Ning enable you to create complex Web sites with a few mouse clicks. Is there still a need to learn HTML and Web development tools?

An excellent review of white-label platforms for social networking

We have seen the evolution of development platforms from batch processing systems through timesharing, personal computers, local area networks and now the Internet.

Of course, there are varying levels of abstraction within a platform. One could program a batch processing application in assembly language or one could use a high level report generator like FARGO which gave you less control, but made application development much easier.

Today, the Internet is emerging as a first class development platform, and there are high and low-level tools. White-label social networking systems represent a high level of abstraction -- they are the FARGO's of today's Internet. "White-label" is a term taken from retailing, where, for example, a PC manufacuter places the retailer's brand name on their generic PCs. There are several vendors of general purpose social networking programs that allow the user customization.

An excellent review and discussion of these programs is available at TechCrunch.com. Be sure to check out the feature chart accompanying the review. The list of features is a good planning checklist for any Web site.

I kicked the tires on one of Ning, one of the white-label programs, by creating a demonstration site with a blog, forums and audio, video and image libraries. Building the site took under 30 minutes. That illustrates what I mean by a high level of abstraction. (Read more and see the demo site here).

Have you seen other high level tools that enable you to create complex applications without programming?

Quick eye candy for Web page images

swFIR is a simple tool that let's you transform images and render them in Flash. You can easily rotate an image, frame it, have it grow and shrink as the user resizes type, etc.

A hand-held projector -- for your cell phone?

Explay has demonstrated a hand-held projector that they plan to market in 2008. If the images are as bright as the one shown here, and the price is low, they will become ubiquitous. The display electronics fit on one chip, so your next cell phone (or the one after that, or ... ) might contain one of these projectors.

How could you use one of these projectors?

One Laptop per Child hardware ships

I previously posted a link to a presentation by Nicholas Negroponte on the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project. OLPC chairman Negroponte downplays focus on the laptop hardware, stressing that this is primarily an education project. However, the laptop has now gone into production, and the BBC has published an article highlighting its engineering innovations.

This is without doubt a significant project. At the very least, it will put a nifty PC and e-book reader in the hands of millions of poor children. Some of the engineering innovations, like a monochrome display mode suitable for use in bright light, may influence mainstream laptop manufacturers (as the new iPhone may inspire cell phone manufacturers).

Built-in mesh networking will be used for connecting to a local server or other laptops. (It will be interesting to see how well the network performs when a laptop is several hops from the server).

But the biggest win will occur if those village servers are Internet gateways connecting to the rest of the world. Connectivity in developing nations is very poor, and we can only hope that backbone infrastructure projects will match the audacity of the OLPC.

The Chiniese Internet and the dictator's dilemma

We have discussed the "dictator's dilemma" -- the desire to have the benefits of the Internet without the threat of political instability. How do you give people access to information for health care, education, science, entertainment, commerce, etc. while blocking political and culturally sensitive information? In this interview excerpt, former NPR China Correspondent Rob Gifford describes the Chinese Internet. Gifford feels the people who are economically well enough off to use the Internet are unlikely to use it against the regime.

This excerpt was taken from an Moira Gunn's interview of Gifford.

An excellent interview on outsourcing

Scott Lemon runs an outsourcing firm called HumanXtensions. He discussed his firm in a recent interview with Phil Windley. They talk about Scott's services, the differences between India and the Philippines, the management of oursource projects, the implications of globalization and outsourcing for today's students, etc. (18 minutes 32 seconds). This is an excerpt from a longer interview. This class note shows leading outsourcing nations.

Google wants the FCC to bring the entire Internet to your cell phone

We have contrasted a "dumb," end-to-end network like the Internet, where services are provided by network users, with a "smart" network, where services are provided by the network operator. In two earlier posts, we saw that Tim Wu and business customers have argued that the cellular networks should move to the open, Internet model.

Google has now joined the fray, saying they would bid on the spectrum that will be made available for auction by the FCC when the US converts to all digital television transmission in 2009 if the following were mandated by the FCC:

• Users should be able to install any software on their phones and PDAs
• Users should be able to connect any technically compatible device to the network
• Auction winners should be able to resell bandwidth to third parties
• The wireless network should connect to other networks

Of course cell phone companies are opposed to this sort of thing. Holy cow -- someone might install Skype on their smart phone and make VOIP calls or download a video from a Web site that was not paying the cell carrier a commission. The cell system is like the early telephone system. Before the 1968 Carterphone decision, we could not connect things to the telephone network -- not modems or computers or even answering machines.

Respected columnist Robert Cringley agrees with Google's goals, but thinks they will fail and have made a serious business mistake. What do you say?

Japanese cell phone service is better than in the US

Someone who moved from the US to Japan compared cell phone service in the two nations in a post on Slashdot. He wrote:

Before I left for Japan about a year ago, I was using a Nokia 3160. It cost me $40 US and I had to sign a one year contract that Cingular later decided was a two-year contract. I was paying about $40 a month for service and had extra fees for SMS messages.

After I got to Kyoto, I quickly ended up at an AU shop and landed a Casio W41CA. It does email, music, pc web browsing, gps, fm radio, tv, phone-wallet, pictures (2megapixel), videos, calculator etc. I walked out of the store for less than ¥5000 (about $41) including activation fees, and I was only paying slightly over ¥4000 (about $33) per month. That included ¥3000 for a voice plan I rarely used and ¥1000 for effectively unlimited data (emails and internet).

Perhaps someone with more knowledge of the costs facing American mobile providers can explain the huge technology and cost gap between the US and Japan. Why are we paying so much for such basic features?

For some answers to his final question, see the discussion below the post on Slashdot. Note that Slashdot has been an excellent source for discussion of networking for many years.

Scientific collaboration -- the first application

During World War II, President Roosevelt's science adviser Vannevar Bush imagined ways a network could facilitate scientific communication and collaboration. His 1945 Atlantic Monthly article As We May Think inspired internetworking pioneers like Doug Engelbart and J. C. R. Licklider. (See our Internet history notes).

Today, when we think of Internet applications, goofy movies on Youtube or downloading music come to mind -- not scientific collaboration. But the Internet is shaping and facilitating science.

John Udell discussed the role of the Internet in science in an interview of Timo Hannay, Director of Web Publishing, Nature Publishing Group. Nature is a leading scientific journal, and Hannay is looking for ways the Internet can facilitate science. For instance, he is interested in publishing data sets as well as articles and producing videos showing how experiments have been done. (See The Journal of Visualized Experiments). Some current examples of Nature's services are:

• Connotea.org (bookmarks for scientists -- like del.icio.us)
• Nature Network (A social network for scientists -- like MySpace)
• Nature Precedings (Preliminary publication and discussion -- like blogs with comments and a rating system)

Hannay is interested in helping scientists communicate with lay people as well as each other, and they are using Podcasts to that end. Check this short excerpt from the interview for their discussion of the advantages of podcasts.

Soundsnap -- free sound effects and loops

I've added a link to Soundsnap.com to our class notes on audio processing. Soundsnap, a growing library of free, user-contributed sound effects and loops, was established by 25 year old Tasos Frantzolas, a Greek sound designer.

Go to Soundsnap for the barking dog, meowing cat or explosion you need for your podcast, and, while you are at it, how about contributing a sound effect of your own to the collection?

Municipal networks and federal apathy in the US

We have seen that access networks in the United States have fallen behind those of many European and Asian nations. There is no federal government effort or planning, and the ISP industry is dominated by telephone and cable companies which were able to defeat Congress' attempt to generate competition in the 1996 Telecommunication Act.

William Kennard, who, as chairman of the United States Federal Communication from 1997-2001 was charged with implementing the Telecommunications Act, stated near the end of his term that “all too often companies work to change the regulations, instead of working to change the market,” and spoke of “regulatory capitalism” in which “companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists and politicians, instead of plant, people and customer service." He went on to remark that regulation is “too often used as a shield, to protect the status quo from new competition - often in the form of smaller, hungrier competitors -- and too infrequently as a sword -- to cut a pathway for new competitors to compete by creating new networks and services.”

In many cases, municpal governments have tried to close the access gap by developing and contracting for Internet access networks. They have a mix of motivations -- use by city employees, narrowing the digital divide, economic stimulation, providing a service to citizens, etc. and a mix of public-private funding and business models.

W2i organizes conferences on municipal networks, and they have compiled a database with 91 case studies. The case studies include an overview, contact information, and presentations on the projects as delivered at W2i conferences.

Muni-Wireless is another excellent source of information on these networks. They also organize conferences, have an excellent blog, and a Web site with sections on technology, applications, initiatives, and other topics.

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What are the implications of the US falling behind in access networks?