E-Piphanies

Handicapping Microsoft And Google's Online Collision

Now that Microsoft has given its partners a limited preview of its Office applications suite,  the race to dominate the market for online productivity tools has officially begun.

On the face of it, despite its tardy entry to this race Microsoft has an enormous head start because of its base of users of the ubiquitous Office suite, which includes Word, Excel PowerPoint and a few other applications. (Microsoft also likes to claim that it’s an old hand at software-as-a-service (SaaS) because it’s been delivering Hotmail, Outlook Web Access (OWA) and several other products via the Web for years, but that’s a red herring; Microsoft has little experience with the actual business of delivering and charging for SaaS applications, and most of the experience it has is with consumers rather than enterprise customers.)

To read more, please see Handicapping Microsoft And Google's Online Collision on my Technology Insights blog at BNET.

Defending Our Ethos On Facebook

Yesterday I posted my outrage about a poll that appeared on Facebook asking if President Obama should be killed. Yesterday, I wondered how we should balance our needs for civility against the equally pressing need for everyone to have access to this kind of vehicle for expression and connection.

Then I received an email in response, which from its tone, defiant and yet defensive, appears to be from the author of the poll. And today I wonder about the wisdom of my equanimity, and the extent to which we can tolerate incitement to violence in a free and peaceful society, online or otherwise.

(Please note that Facebook issued a statement saying that the application used to create the poll was suspended as soon as the poll was brought to its attention. A spokeswoman also told me that Facebook is cooperating with the Secret Service.)

To read more, please see Defending Our Ethos On Facebook on my Digital Life blog at InformationWeek.

Facebook Promotes Tolerance/Intolerance

My initial reaction when I saw that Facebook hosted a poll asking whether or not President Obama should be killed was blind fury. Why haven't they stopped this? Where are the voices of outrage from national political leaders who stir up a hue and cry whenever someone allows a kitten to fall from a tree?

Then I tried to talk myself off the ledge. How quickly, after all, can we expect Facebook to spot this, let alone react? Maybe our political leaders have been asked to stay quiet so as not to fan the flames of hate and idiocy.

To read more, please see Facebook Promotes Tolerance/Intolerance on my Digital Life blog at InformationWeek.

Xerox Joining Health Care Fray

While Xerox has been reinventing itself as a “document management” company, the name that became eponymous with photocopying has quietly shifted into lucrative health care industry. Its acquisition of outsourced services vendor ACS [Affiliated Computer Services], announced today, will further its ambitions in this market.

The deal also perpetuates a trend several years in the making, epitomized by HP’s acquisition of EDS last year and Dell’s deal to acquire Perot Systems earlier this September. These deals allow equipment vendors to diversify their revenue streams, and append higher-margin services deals to their hardware sales. It’s odd when you consider that only a few years ago the pendulum was swinging the other way (as exemplified by IBM’s 2004 divestiture of its hardware business to Lenovo so that it could focus on software and services).  Clearly these deals are as much a function of external circumstances as they are deeply-held business philosophies professed by the executives during their press conferences.

To read more, please see Xerox Joining Health Care Fray on my Technology Insights blog at BNET.

AT&T Accuses Google Of Violating Net Neutrality

AT&T is trying to play a vicious game of “I know you are, but what am I” with Google, using the Federal Communications Commission as a name-calling playground. In a letter to the FCC, AT&T’s Robert Quinn called Google

one of the most noisome trumpeters of so-called “net neutrality” regulation

According to AT&T’s screed, Google is in violation of net neutrality rules because its Google Voice application blocks certain services it doesn’t like. One of the principles of net neutrality is that carriers and owners of networks shouldn’t discriminate against other services. Here’s the thing, though: Google isn’t a carrier or a network, and Google Voice is itself nothing but an application.

To read more, please see AT&T Accuses Google Of Violating Net Neutrality on my Technology Insights blog at BNET.

IT Lessons From Foiled Qaeda Terror Plot

Qaeda-linked terror suspect Najibullah Zazi left a digital trail a mile wide for federal investigators to follow, but stopping seems to have required too much luck and footwork.

Based on information that federal investigators have released to the public, it's clear that Zazi left a suspicious electronic footprint in a number of areas, including landlines, cell phones, his laptop computer and video footage of him buying bomb-making chemicals. It's all available to investigators and prosecutors because they know where to look for the data -- and they used enormous amounts of human intelligence to keep track of him and his whereabouts.

To read more, please see IT Lessons From Foiled Qaeda Terror Plot on my Digital Life blog at InformationWeek.

iPhone Making Enterprise Inroads

Based from the number of enterprise apps being adapted for iPhone usage, it’s becoming clear that Apple’s smartphone is making significant inroads into the enterprise space. Given the troubles Microsoft is having with Windows Mobile, Apple could well emerge as a serious competitor to Research in Motion, Palm and Nokia in the enterprise mobile device market.

Apple’s snafus and missteps notwithstanding, application vendors are apparently convinced that the iPhone in the enterprise is a real phenomenon, and not just a marketing manager’s fantasy. NetSuite, a vendor of on-demand software used by corporations to manage their businesses, recently paved the way for customers to run their applications over the iPhone and says “more than 1,000″ of their apps were downloaded from the Apple App Store.

To read more, please see iPhone Making Enterprise Inroads on my Technology Insights blog at BNET.

The Rise Of The Digital Superego

Gordon Bell, often described as "the Frank Lloyd Wright of the Internet," firmly believes we'll all be paperless and recording our lives digitally within a decade.

If that sounds like an unlikely change to occur within the next ten years, keep in mind that the role of a futurist isn't to tell us when so much as what.

To read more, please see The Rise Of The Digital Superego on my Digital Life blog at InformationWeek.

How Cloud Computing Is Slowing Cloud Adoption

There’s the cloud, and then there’s the cloud. The first cloud everyone talked about was really software-as-a-service (SaaS), a method for delivering applications over the Internet (the cloud) more effectively and cheaply than traditional implementations installed behind corporate firewalls, as exemplified by the likes of Salesforce.com, Successfactors, NetSuite and many others.

Then along came this other cloud, the infrastructure that you could rent by the processor, by the gigabyte of storage, and by the month, and which would expand and contract dynamically according to your needs, which Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and many other vendors offer.

To read more, please see How Cloud Computing Is Slowing Cloud Adoption on my Technology Insights blog at BNET.

Does Network Neutrality Stifle Innovation Or Boost It?

The sky is falling, to hear the incumbent carriers and their industry association shills, because the FCC under new chairman Julius Genachowski is going to enforce network neutrality provisions.

Most of what Genachowski is proposing to codify isn't even new -- it's based on four principles of network neutrality espoused in 2005 by former FCC chairman and wireless industry fanboi Kevin Martin, namely:

To read more, please see Does Network Neutrality Stifle Innovation Or Boost It? on my Digital Life blog at InformationWeek.