The rumors of Adobe being bought by Apple come up every so often. Apple could easily afford such a purchase and the results would be interesting. I would love to see Adobe restructured by a company like Apple. Adobe has many applications that are the gold standard but it seems to lack focus. These are my thoughts on what Apple could do with Adobe’s biggest apps and make everyone’s life a lot easier.
Adobe’s video market could be trimmed down. Anything that can already be done in Final Cut Studio should be gone, including Premiere and Soundbooth. I’m not sure if After Effects would even be worth it in the end. Most believe that Final Cut is a very nice video suite on the Mac platform and in the PC world, AVID holds the crown. Why is a program like Premiere needed? It’s not quite AVID but way better than Windows Movie Maker. Now throw Sony Vegas in there and it’s starting to get crowded. Apple could create Final Cut for the PC or forget about them altogether. This would come down to money in the long run. I personally don’t think Apple needs to worry about the PC side unless they are going to legitimately compete against AVID for dominance.
Photoshop and Illustrator go hand in hand with Apple. The general public thinks of Apple when Photoshop is mentioned and vice versa. This is known as one of Apple’s strongest markets. Most believe that these design apps run better on a Mac but as we know, Adobe is slow in keeping these flagship apps on the cutting edge. Apple could force them to be designed for the latest and greatest environments. While they’re at it, stop releasing new versions every year that don’t have any significant improvements. Adobe needs the money to keep rolling in through yearly revisions but Apple wouldn’t have this problem. Make a new version when real features are created. In an educational environment, we are forced to upgrade every year because the textbooks only cover the newest versions. This puts a large strain on software budgets.
Acrobat should also be restructured and brought back to its core purpose. Every other week we hear of an exploit in PDF’s and it’s because they don’t do the simple task they were conceived to do. Strip out all the extra junk and just make PDF’s do what they need to do. Reader should be killed for the Mac OS also, Preview is way quicker and does the job just fine.
Then there’s the elephant in the room, Flash. Oh my dear old friend, you were once so cool. Animations, games, crazy navigation menus and long site intros were such a treat. Now I have grown bored with you.
The problem is that Flash is so ubiquitous with the web that it can’t just be tossed out into the street. Apple would need to clean it up significantly and keep it around until HTML5 took over. They should only provide security fixes but no new features. This would allow it a peaceful death.
Adobe has so many products that it’s kind of ridiculous. Most of them could either be worked into existing Apple products or forgotten forever. If Apple did purchase Adobe, what about the PC side of Adobe’s business? They would have to crunch the numbers to see what products are worth the extra cost of development, but Apple could really limit what’s available for Windows. Whether that would that be a good or bad thing, I’m not really sure. In Apple’s mind, if it sells more Macs then it’s worth doing.
I believe Apple could really improve Adobe’s products and make them more reliable than they ever have been. It would end the grudge that they have against each other and hopefully get applications like Acrobat and Flash back to their roots. Adding useless features just to sell a different version every year will not win you any fans. Make it a worthwhile upgrade or inexpensive and I will gladly support you.
For all intents and purposes, TiVo “invented” the DVR. Actually, they didn’t, but it’s a fair statement that they first successfully commercialized it and brought the concept to the massess. Further, they did it with competition (ReplayTV), which is often the exact thing that stalls new consumer technology adoption. The company’s product was loved by those who used it (I had the original 14-hour Philips version), and switching from TiVo to another DVR was a painful process for those of us who had to go through it (for whatever reason). But switch we did, as the company slowly got pushed out of dominance by failing to keep a healthy relationship with DirecTV (and Philips, Sharp, and others), and all other cable/sat co’s offered their own (mediocre at best) versions of the DVR. And when a consumer is given the choice of an effectively “free” DVR (an additional $5/mo = free in a purchase decision-making process when already spending $50-$100 on a bill) versus buying one with an upfront fee and a monthly tally, it’s a no brainer.
Over the past few years, the company has slowly settled from being the leader in both installed base and most evolved product into a bit of obscurity with the mainstream (other than potentially owning the brand-category, which doesn’t do much good for running a business). Their Series 3 and other launches in the late ’00s didn’t bring in a new rush of users, and last week’s launch of the Series 4 (aka TiVo Premiere) is at best a late entry in a crowded market, and at worst a product that massively missed the mark with modern day expectations. On the date of the launch, the company’s stock moved a little bit upwards. Not too shabby, but also not too interesting.
The next day, however, proved much more interesting, with a 61% increase in value:
What happened? In a nutshell, federal courts found TiVo’s patents held up against a Echostar/DISH claim.
I’m not a lawyer, nor do I generally support the present-day patent system, but that’s not really the point here. What is more relevant is that TiVo appears to have drifted from being a pioneer in the digital home to being a patent player. Instead of betting on the strength of their product team, innovation, and marketing, they are now betting on their lawyers. And I think that’s a sad state of affairs.
The digital home is a noisy, confusing place, fraught with terrible products. Further, most of the products I’ve seen on the radar or know are shipping soon are also now extremely impressive. In other words, there’s tons of opportunity today and in the future to build (and monetize) exciting products.
I’d love to see TiVo make a change in direction here. It’s time for the company to act like a startup again, and show real innovation like they once did. Truth be told I know the TiVo Premiere is unquestionably a better product than my Comcast DVR (a truly awful product). But as has been said many times before, and is unbelievably relevant in the convergence space, Good Enough is the biggest enemy of Great products. It’s going to take a heck of a lot more than “slightly better than the last version” for TiVo to regain a leadership position. The company needs to rebuild it’s team with new innovators who can build on the legacy, and stop investing in “me-too” minor touches, “dongles”, and other things that won’t move the needles. CableCard? Still? Come on.
If companies like Apple, Palm, and so many others can attempt to reinvent themselves, I think TiVo can too. Please try.
Coffee aficionados have been asking the question over and over again: is Portland's Stumptown coffee, the most conspicuous exponent of Coffee's "Third Wave," the new Starbucks?
Wait, you haven't heard of the third wave? Get with the program! In cities across America, a new fervid generation of caffeine evangelists are changing the way we drink coffee. They tend to be male, heavily bearded, zealous and very meticulous in what they do. And the coffee they produce is as much an improvement over Starbucks and its rivals as Starbucks was over Taster's Choice.
Google's recently announced $25 million acquisition of DocVerse represented one saga of an ongoing war between Google and Microsoft over dominance in the productivity suite place. Today, Israeli enterprise software company Mainsoft is launching a Docverse-like plug-in that may up the ante in the battle. Harmony is launching free plug-ins that bring Google Docs documents and Microsoft SharePoint document libraries directly to Microsoft Outlook.
Once downloaded, Harmony for Google Docs will open in a sidebar pane within Outlook. The new Harmony sidebar enables people to share a single, centralized copy of the document, eliminating the many intermediary steps associated with sending e-mail attachments back and forth. The plug-in allows users to locate, share, and work on Google documents directly from their email client. Google’s recently announced $25 million acquisition of DocVerse represented one saga of an ongoing war between Google and Microsoft over dominance in the productivity suite place. Today, Israeli enterprise software company Mainsoft is launching a Docverse-like plug-in that may up the ante in the battle. Harmony is launching free plug-ins that bring Google Docs documents and Microsoft SharePoint document libraries directly to Microsoft Outlook.
Once downloaded, Harmony for Google Docs will open in a sidebar pane within Outlook. The new Harmony sidebar enables people to share a single, centralized copy of the document, eliminating the many intermediary steps associated with sending e-mail attachments back and forth. The plug-in allows users to locate, share, and work on Google documents directly from their email client.
Once logged in to your Google account, you’ll be able to drag any files (ie Microsoft Word files, PDFs) directly from an email to the Harmony sidebar to upload and convert them to Google documents. You can drag a Google document from the sidebar to create links in your e-mail messages and meeting requests to other users and viewers. Harmony automatically shares the document with the recipients. You can decide to give recipients read or write access. Recipients simply click the link in the message to open the document in their browser and don’t need to have Harmony installed to view the document.
Harmony also allows you to search document contents on Google Docs from the Harmony search box and locate documents using the View Bar, which allows you to switch between common views, such as spreadsheets, starred items, items owned by or shared with you, and more. One of the major features of Harmony is the ability to actually open and edit Google documents from directly in Outlook. All your changes are saved online and are available to your colleagues. You can organize and create folders to store Google Docs and also save Google documents in Office format. Harmony can export Google documents to Office, Open Office, PDF, RTF, HTML, TXT, and image formats.
The SharePoint plug-in isn’t nearly as sexy as as the Google Docs app but still offers a useful set of tools for enterprise users. The plug-in aims to transform Microsoft Outlook into a collaboration console, with access to documents stored on SharePoint. Similar to the Google Docs plug-in, you can drag e-mail attachments or entire e-mail messages to publish them on SharePoint. You can search the contents of documents in your current SharePoint site or library and share documents via e-mail message, calendar appointment, or task. You can edit a document from within Outlook, view document history and more.
Harmony was built using SharePoint Web Services interfaces and Google Docs open APIs and in the process has transformed Microsoft Outlook into a more collaborative application. Most importantly, the Google Docs plug-in makes the transition between web-based documents and the desktop email client seamless. It gives Microsoft users the best of both worlds, much like Docverse did with Microsoft Word documents and web-based files. If you use Microsoft Outlook and Google Docs, the plug-in seems like a no brainer to download. Plus its conveniently free. Considering the fate of Docverse, it may only be a matter of time before Microsoft and Google come sniffing around Harmony.
Mainsoft’s Harmony Brings Google Docs To Microsoft Outlook
- Rob DianaMainsoft’s Harmony Brings Google Docs To Microsoft Outlook
- Niklas Sjostrom
Here’s why Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is advertising Bing on UK TV: it’s barely making the tiniest dent in Google’s search leadership.
Though Google (NSDQ: GOOG) piled on eight tenths of the 617 million additional searches Brits made since Bing launched in June, Bing took just four percent of them, according to data provided by comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) to paidContent:UK.
Whilst, in the U.S., Google had only a 64 percent share of searches this January (ahead of Yahoo’s 15 percent and Bing’s 10 percent), Google in the UK is so super-dominant, it’s a race of one - and Google just keeps pulling away...
Google served 88 percent of all January UK searches - Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) just 3.9 percent and Bing only 3.6 percent.
But, in the race of runners-up, Microsoft can take heart - as we approach its first anniversary, Bing has significantly improved its fortunes relative to the chasing pack; it’s now about to overtake Yahoo for second place amongst UK search engines...
Ask.com, too, has benefitted from Jeeves’ reappearance, while AOL (NYSE: AOL) haemorrhaged searchers last summer.
In fact, Yahoo’s UK share has crashed in the last year - from 5.2 percent to 3.9 percent. So, while a combined Yahoo-Bing might look good on paper, by the numbers the deal still doubles its share to only 7.5 percent.
Bing already has twice as many unique search users as Yahoo - 15.5 million a month, against just 8.8 million. At this rate, against the historical odds, Microsoft will go in to the partnership, in which it will power Yahoo’s search, the more powerful partner.
But, all the while, Google keeps printing money. No wonder murmurs are growing in Brussels about Google’s dominance.
It may be a little early to say this, but to me it seems like Microsoft took all the disappointment and fear resulting from Apple’s dominance of the mobile devices category over its own products through the years and used that energy to create the Courier. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen another company’s product and thought “That seems like something Apple would’ve made.”
Engadget posted more details about the device late last week, including two lengthy HD interface videos. Microsoft isn’t yet officially saying anything about whether or not this will become a production device, but Engadget seems very confident in its sources, and I’d be inclined to believe them since it seems more than likely Redmond is taking a page out of Apple’s marketing playbook by keeping things somewhat hush-hush but using “leaks” to steal focus.
Microsoft gets a lot of flak for doing a tablet the wrong way, as demonstrated by the HP model it unveiled ahead of the iPad to grab some of the attention away from that spotlight hog. But the Courier doesn’t have the same shortcomings. For one, it’s not based on Windows 7, but on a version of Windows CE 6, which also provides the basis for the Zune HD’s interface and the upcoming Windows Mobile 7 OS. It also runs on the Tegra 2, an impressive mobile processor.
It also has some considerable advantages over its Apple rival, especially if the hype is actually representative of what a production version will look like. First, there’s the size. The clamshell design allows it to be smaller than the iPad, while providing more screen real estate. Closed, it’s said to measure five by seven inches, and still remain less than an inch thick. It should also weigh less than a pound. It should take up just a little less space than the Amazon Kindle, for reference, which goes a long way toward making it truly, conveniently portable.
The Courier’s big advantage over the iPad, for me, isn’t the dual-screen design (although that helps), but the combination of pen and touch input. If I had to choose one, I’d go with touch, as Apple’s done with the iPad, but the opportunity to have both is a major selling point. Viewing the UI videos emphasizes why, and if you’ve ever used a tablet with a computer, especially those with a built-in display, you’ll know why a pen is a much better option than trying to learn to write or draw with your clumsy finger.
Microsoft’s notebook tablet is also refreshing because of its emphasis on interactivity between components and hardware features of the device. The software seems designed from the start to work perfectly not only with the specific features of the device, but also with every other software component of the OS, and all through a brilliantly intuitive UI. Nor is it a closed system despite this sharp focus, since the sharing features appear to be rich and varied.
Apple, for its part, emphasizes the apps. Apps are great, and they provide some pretty useful functions and terrific distractions, but they don’t really seem to work as well or with the same degree of interconnection as the Courier’s software promises to. Even Apple’s own built-in apps don’t have anywhere near as much potential for communication between and across each other.
In my opinion, where Apple got lazy with the iPad, Microsoft is throwing its entire mobile future behind the Courier. Not only that, but these previews are emphasizing the Courier’s strengths over the iPad without addressing things like media playback. The impression I get isn’t that the Courier is bad at those things, just that they’re taken as given. Instead, Redmond’s project is all about what a tablet can do that a media player can’t, something I’ve yet to really see illustrated by Apple regarding the iPad.
Related Research from GigaOM Pro:
A shift in leadership development has occurred. While it used to be that American and European companies had cornered the market on developing the leaders of tomorrow, our latest round of research shows that Europe is now second to organizations in Asia Pacific, with India making the fastest progress. And while US companies still excel at leadership development, companies from South America are developing homegrown models that chip away at North America's dominance of the field.
As with my last post, I'm going to dive deeper into the Top Companies for Leaders research that my firm, The RBL Group, along with Hewitt, publishes in Fortune magazine every two years.
How the Top Companies are Selected
First, HR executives from around the world are invited to participate in the study, which highlights companies that have gone beyond the basics of grooming strong leaders and have come up with new ways to test their employees in the global marketplace. It's open to organizations of all types (public, private, nonprofit) and sizes and from a variety of locations. From those invitations, 537 companies participated in the 2009 study.
To participate, each company completes a detailed 88-item questionnaire examining a variety of factors related to their depth and quality of leadership. Based on this preliminary analysis, 217 global finalists are identified. Each finalist company is interviewed to provide greater clarity about specific practices. In addition to HR and senior executive interviews, CEOs are interviewed in most finalist companies as well. All finalists are also screened for financial performance relative to their industry.
Armed with this common data set, a panel of judges is selected for each region. These judges are authors, academics and journalists from around the world who rank the companies for their region — North America, Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America. The judges consider variables including the survey and interview data, company reputation, leadership culture and values, and business performance over a five-year period. Finally, a separate panel, comprised of one representative from each regional panel, selects the Top Companies for Leaders list.
The Geographic Breakdown
Making the global top 25 list is no easy feat. During the 2009 judging, one criteria was that "leaders from this company would need to be candidates for senior leadership positions within any global top company." There was little sentiment for trying to balance the results. Even so, the 2009 results continued the trend of more companies from outside of North America and Europe making the global top 25 list of Top Companies for Leaders. Regionally, North America led all regions with 16 companies with headquarters within their boundary. In the past, Europe has been second, but in 2009, Asia Pacific came in second with five companies; followed by Europe in third (with three) and Latin America in fourth (with one company on the list). Since most of us in North America are more familiar with North America and Europe, I'm going to focus more on Asia Pacific and Latin America.
Within Asia Pacific, India had three companies in the top 25. Two of these — ICICI Bank and Hindustan Unilver — were in the top 10, and the other company, Infosys, came in at #24. For the first time, China had a top 10 company on the list: China Mobile Communications in Shanghai, which was rated #9. The final candidate from Asia Pacific to make the global list was Olam, based in Singapore and ranked #18. Within Latin America, one company, Brazil's Natura Cosmeticos, made the global list, coming in at a very respectable #11.
What the Asia Pacific Companies Get Right
Because it's the fastest growing region in the world, Asian companies recognize the need for building leaders fast. Much of the focus in this part of the world is in developing and preparing the next generation of leaders through selection, talent development, and accelerated development opportunities.
Top companies for leaders in Asia are more intentional in who they hire — they have specific selection strategies directly tied to business needs. One hundred percent of the top companies in Asia Pacific have a specific strategy for developing leaders from within the company, compared to 89 percent of other Asia Pacific countries. Even more pronounced is that 100 percent of the top companies in Asia have a specific strategy for selecting leaders from outside the company compared to 70 percent of other Asian companies. The result of this is that all of the top companies in our Asian group report having a sufficient talent pipeline to be successful in the future, compared to 50 percent of other Asia Pacific companies.
When it comes to how they develop those hires, two things distinguish the top companies in Asia Pacific. The first is the attention to the specific development needs of the individual leader coupled with corporate needs to produce an agenda that generates strong leaders. The second is the speed with which the top companies accelerate the development of key talent through experience, exposure and custom training programs. The aim is to move leaders quickly through the right portfolio of development experiences.
What Sets Latin American Companies Apart
The need for Latin American leaders to help companies rebound from the global downturn and drive sustained growth is among the top issues for the region. Much of the focus in Latin America is similar to Asia Pacific's around developing the next generation of leaders through selection, assessment and development. The top five companies in the region were: Natura Cosmeticos (Brazil), Bancocombia (Colombia), WEG Equipamentos Eletricos (Brazil), CPFL Energia (Brazil) and Wal-Mart de Mexico (Mexico).
Top companies in Latin America have selection strategies tied to business strategy. One hundred percent of the top companies have a specific strategy for hiring from within, vs. 91 percent of others. Eighty percent of the top companies have a specific strategy for hiring outside of the company compared to 67 percent of the others. And 80 percent of the top companies in Latin America reported having a sufficient talent pipeline for the future, compared to 49 percent of other companies.
The top companies set clear expectations for their developing leaders. One hundred percent of top companies in Latin America have a common leadership competency model, compared to 76 percent of other companies. More importantly, they apply these competencies to select leaders from within the company compared to 39 percent of other Latin American companies.
Finally, the top companies here practice what we've called "leadership brand." One hundred percent of Latin America's top companies have a deliberate process to build reputation for strong leadership, vs. only 52 percent of other companies. This serves to attract top talent and ensures a steady supply of future leaders. It also includes an emphasis on values, ethics and contributing to the community at large.
In summary, this data supports the hypothesis that as the global economy shifts, so do the sources of strong leadership. It will be very interesting to repeat this analysis after the next round in 2011. I predict an even higher representation from the fastest growing regions of Asia and Latin America.
Norm Smallwood is co-founder of The RBL Group, a strategic HR and leadership systems advisory firm. He is author, with Dave Ulrich and Kate Sweetman, of The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead By and with Dave Ulrich of the 2007 title Leadership Brand.
Intel's single chip cloud computer
Tilera, a startup building chips that contain anywhere from 16 to 100 cores, said today it’s raised $25 million in a third round of funding from investors including Broadcom. Chips made by Tilera, which we named as one of five multicore statups to watch two years ago, are aimed at boosting performance and energy efficiency for networking and cloud computing, which is likely why Broadcom invested. But as Tilera spends more time emphasizing the cloud and big players like Intel do the same, we have to ask: Do cloud computing and web-scale computing need their own chips?
Broadcom likely wants an edge should Tilera’s multiple RISC-based (rather than Intel’s x86) processors set fire to the cloud computing world as equipment companies attempt to develop power-efficient chips that can be adapted to specific workloads. For Broadcom, an investment in Tilera is a direct challenge to Intel’s dominance in the data center computing space, as well as a bet on faster networking chips.
Tilera has advantages in cloud computing because its chip architecture allows for a lot of lower-power processors to talk to one another using an interconnect technology that doesn’t cause bottlenecks. In plain English, Tilera has figured out a way to get a lot of cores to talk without having to pause to listen to one another, which slows things down as you add more cores. A Tilera executive told me last year that if just 10 percent of cloud computing or web-scale customers took a chance on the startup’s architecture, it could succeed.
But while Tilera, which started developing its chips in 2004, may have the lead when it comes to building massively multicore chips with a mesh-interconnect, Intel smells an opportunity as well and as such is building out what it calls a “single-chip cloud computer” with 48 cores for the cloud computing market. There are also systems vendors trying to solve similar problems for those needing energy-efficient web-scale computing, such as SeaMicro and Smooth-Stone.
A key problem in all of these endeavors is figuring out how to get the multiple chips or cores to function together in such a way that performance scales linearly with the addition of each new core rather than tapering off as the communications between the cores or chips becomes overloaded. Intel and Tilera are hoping to do this on the chip itself, while systems vendors are trying to do it with a better box.
Related GigaOM Pro Content (sub.req’d):
We Can Call It A Cloud, But It’s Still Hardware
Blackboard, a company that designs an education software for school groups, has acquired mobile messaging provider Saf-T-Net for $33 million. Saf-T-Net develops AlertNow, which is a mobile messaging technology aimed to the K-12 marketplace.
AlertNow’s technology delivers voice, e-mail and emergency SMS messages at a rate up to 2.5 million per hour to parents, students and school administrators. The company, which sent 25 million message in February alone, has over 2000 schools using its product and will be used to Blackboard’s mobile technology. Saf-T-Net will also help Blackboard further its dominance in the the K-12 market; Blackboard’s software has been used predominantly by colleges and universities.
Currently, Blackboard provides software for 5000 educational institutions. The company recently boughtTerriblyCleverDesigns, a startup that helped create iPhone and other mobile apps for colleges and universities, for $4 million.
Blackboard Buys Mobile Messaging Company Saf-T-Net For $33 Million
- Rob DianaThe Guardian UK is reporting that Microsoft Bing is preparing to launch a massive TV ad campaign aimed at challenging Google’s dominance in the UK search market. According to the report, the series of Bing promotional TV ads is set to begin airing this week and will be promoting Bing as a “decision engine.”
Microsoft has contracted the services of ad agency JWT. It aims to show how Bing simplifies the “information overload” that accompanies the results of other search engines – obviously hitting on Google.
Microsoft’s UK managing director Ashley Highfield said that people worldwide may have forgotten that there is an alternative search engine.
“People feel overawed by the internet and what they turn up when they are searching,” said Highfield.
The said TV ad campaign feature ordinary people asking for information and getting their answers from Bing, will run for a month and then on a two-week bursts until Mid-June. Backing up the Bing TV ad campaign is an equally massive digital campaign across Microsoft’s network and other media including social networking sites.
It looks like Microsoft is on the final stretch of its promotional campaign for Bing and is now desperate to gain more users even if it cost the company around $2 billion.
This is clearly stated by Mr. Highfield with the following statement:
“It is a battle not just of mind but of heart as well. We are wanting to make an emotional connection – we are ploughing a different furrow here.”
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Microsoft to Run a Massive Bing TV Campaign in the UK
Microsoft's 'Bing and decide' campaign, starting on television this week, attacks 'information overload' of rival's results
Microsoft is to launch a multimillion-pound TV ad campaign for its search engine Bing, as part of a major marketing push designed to challenge Google's dominance of the UK search market, MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal.
The campaign to promote Bing, the so-called "decision engine" that Microsoft is backing with $2bn, begins with a series of TV ads this week.
"This is a big moment – we are taking out our slingshots and taking on Goliath," said Microsoft's UK managing director, Ashley Highfield, adding that he believed Bing met a real desire from both consumers and advertisers.
The three-month campaign, which includes three TV ads created by the agency JWT, starts on Wednesday and uses the strapline "Bing and decide".
The ads aim to show that Bing simplifies the "information overload" that accompanies the results of many searches.
"People feel overawed by the internet and what they turn up when they are searching," said Highfield. "We are also in a world where people have forgotten there is an alternative search engine."
Microsoft will certainly have its work cut out winning over consumers – it currently holds about a 3% share of the search market while Google controls about 90%.
The ads feature ordinary people asking for information and receiving nonsensical, "speaking-in-tongues" answers; one early spot has a woman seeking directions to Euston station.
The TV campaign will run solidly for a month and then in two-week bursts until mid-June. It will be backed by a digital campaign across Microsoft's network and on media including social networking websites.
Highfield said that a key aim of the campaign was to contrast the "visually rich" Bing with the relatively austere-looking Google.
"It is a battle not just of mind but of heart as well," he said. "We are wanting to make an emotional connection – we are ploughing a different furrow here."
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Check out this psychedelic map illustrating the territorial dominance of McDonald's vs. other fast food chains around the country. (Via Consumerist )
Wireless carrier T-Mobile USA has recently replaced the Yahoo search option for its users with Google search, following the ending of its exclusive search deal with Yahoo, a move that also puts an end to Yahoo's dominance on mobile search in the US. Two of the top four carriers in the country now offer Google search to their users, as T-Mobile has ... (read more)
Well, its over! T-Mobile has ended its year old search deal with Yahoo. It comes as no surprise to hear that T-Mo has replaced Yahoo with its biggest rival—Google. The deal is important because it now shifts search dominance away from Yahoo, as the Big G is now working exclusively with two of the top four carriers in the United States. A Yahoo spokesperson said that Yahoo will still be working with the fourth-largest U.S. carrier on other content services, such as Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, News, Sports, Finance and Flickr. It should also be noted that Yahoo will continue to work for T-Mobile International in Europe. Interestingly, the break-up follows last weeks discovery that AT&T will replace Google with Yahoo on their upcoming Google Android device-the Motorola BACKFLIP(really? replacing Google on a Google Android handset?) Well folks, how many of you think the Google-T-Mobile search deal with last longer than the Yahoo one? Lets hear some comments below!
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Google has acquired a company that allows Microsoft Office users to edit their documents collaboratively on the Web. The acquisition of DocVerse will undoubtedly allow users who are married to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to edit their documents through Google's services, thanks to a "small, nimble team of talented developers who share [Google's] vision."
Both Google and DocVerse made their announcements Friday afternoon, with each noting that transitioning to cloud document storage and collaboration has been somewhat of a challenge for Office users. "Unfortunately, today, individuals are still forced to make a choice between those two worlds," reads the DocVerse blog post. "Google’s acquisition of DocVerse represents a first step to solve these problems."
Google says that current DocVerse users will be able to continue using the service as usual, but that new signups have been closed until the company is "ready to share what's next." This is no doubt a foreshadowing of Google's plan to integrate DocVerse's capabilities into Google Docs, which allows users to collaborate simultaneously on Google-hosted word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents.
The move is just another step in Google's strategy to chip away at Microsoft's dominance in the productivity space. Of course, there are other ways for Office users to share documents online—SharePoint is a popular solution among businesses, for example—but the functionality is still quite different from what's offered through Google Docs. The DocVerse acquisition, combined with Google's recently announced file-storage capabilities, will help beef up Google Docs to the point where it will be even harder for small businesses to resist signing up for Google Apps.
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Google buys DocVerse, steps closer to Office collaboration http://goo.gl/3PNd
- Ryan Singer
T-Mobile USA has ended its year-old exclusive search deal with Yahoo, and has replaced the company with its chief rival—Google (NSDQ: GOOG).
The deal shifts the U.S. mobile search dominance away from Yahoo and in favor of Google, which now works with two of the top four carriers. The hand-off between Yahoo and Google was completed as recently as Wednesday, and when visiting the T-Mobile portal from a BlackBerry today, it showed Google as the prominent search provider at the top of the screen—not Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO).
A Yahoo spokesperson confirmed it was no longer working with T-Mobile for search, and a T-Mobile USA spokesperson declined to comment.
Sources say T-Mobile is also working with search provider Medio Systems, which typically indexes and returns results for content, including ringtones and wallpapers, unlike Google, which returns results for the web.
While Yahoo is no longer providing mobile search, a spokesperson said it is still working with the fourth-largest U.S. carrier on other content services, such as Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, News, Sports, Finance and Flickr. Yahoo also continues to work for T-Mobile International in Europe, and more than 80 carrier partnerships around the globe. The shake-up follows the discovery earlier this week that AT&T (NYSE: T) replaced Google with Yahoo on the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) BackFlip, a Google Android device. At the time, we wondered if T-Mobile USA would do the same for Android-based devices, but now that seems highly unlikely.
The pay-off for the often pricey alliances between carriers and search providers is still largely unknown. While carriers can make it easy for a consumer to use one search provider over another, they are still at liberty to visit the search provider of their choice from the mobile browser. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) reportedly paid about $500 million to be the exclusive search provider on Verizon-branded phones. Yahoo continues to work with AT&T, and T-Mobile and Sprint (NYSE: S) now work with Google.
The deals can apparently also fall apart quickly, too. A year ago in November, T-Mobile USA and Yahoo made a big splash when their partnership was first unveiled. As part of it, T-Mobile revamped its entire portal strategy it calls web2go. Ironically, Yahoo first rolled out on T-Mobile in Europe, where it replaced Google. Since last year, Yahoo’s search was rolled out on most handsets, including feature phones, but not Android-based devices or Sidekicks.
This question was asked to me recently in an interview, "with the dominance of the internet is the salesperson even needed anymore?" It might surprise you to hear my answer. Understand I have worked as a 'sales expert' for over twenty years, rewritten sales processes for entire industries, licensed customized sales processes for organizations, and written three books on selling. My answer; I absolutely agree that the average sales person is no longer needed, valued and can even be a deterrent to the customer experience!
Who needs a sales person, if that's what you call him, that doesn't know the product, how it works, what makes it valuable and cannot justify the cost? Who needs someone that doesn't know how their own product works or how it compares to other similar products. We have all met the real estate agent that doesn't know the comps in the neighbor yet believes every house they showed you was a great deal. Or the car salesman that didn't know the price, the interest rates or what your trade-in was worth. How about the sales people huddled in the electronics store that do not even bother to greet you. With the influence of free information everywhere, websites, comparison information, virtual tours, social networking and the likes, really who needs the everyday-average sales person?
Today I can order a dozen pairs of shoes from Zappo's, have them shipped to my home, try them on at my leisure and ship them all back if I don't like them. So how much will Nordstrom's, Barney's, Macy's and the like have to improve their processes and the customer experience to compete. Or is the salesman dead and companies should just remove sales people from the process and let customers click and pick leaving the company to ship their inventories for free both ways and wait for a customer decision.
That scenario will is not realistic for most industries like real estate, autos, appliances, mortgages, computers, phone plans, jewelry, furniture stores, fund raisers, etc. The internet is the point of at which consumers can gain information and start the buying process. For instance my wife is interested in getting a new car so our first step was to access the net and use the manufacturer's beautiful multi-million dollar websites to be introduced to different models. These sites now allow me to build out and even price out what I think we are interested in. But they still can not help me make a decision. After just 15 minutes of browsing choices I found myself frustrated. What is the difference between the pearl black and the cobalt black, the light and dark interior, do I really need the camera in the back, how do I input information into the navigation system, and how does this compare to other makes and models?
At this point I will need a professional sales person to assist me in judging, evaluating, and helping me make a value justification so we can make a decision and purchase. An average sales person is NOT needed, not WANTED and not VALUED by anyone, especially today! For a sales person to be valued today the must be
1) empowered to provide information.
2) transparent and trusted.
3) able to build a value justification.
4) trained to deliver a world class experience.
Sales people have much more to deal with than ever before with so many more products available, increased competition, a stressed out public, customers that have less time, are more cynical, less trusting, better informed and more sensitive about how they spend their money.
Everything that is average in our society ceases to exist and will be replaced with things that are more valuable. The sales person that doesn't know his product, unable to answer questions, can't justify value, and unable to make sense of price and terms is no longer needed and will not be tolerated. Competition, new products and the influence of the net will make sure of that. That being said, at no time in my life has it been more important for a company to train, educate and prepare sales people to provide a consistent, world class customer 21st century experience in order to make the most of every sales opportunity.
Grant Cardone, Author and Business Expert
These fantastic infographics are from designer Stephen Taubman. In the first, he illustrates how all three factions would fare in the forthcoming ultimate three-way cage match for evolutionary dominance between aliens, predators, and human beings. Especially helpful is his advice, under "If you meet a Predator," not to attempt to engage it with a flying side-kick. This was the mistake that I made.
The second graphic explains the physics behind what Boing-Boinger Jimmy Guterman has described as "the greatest scene ever in the greatest movie of all time," viz. the destruction of a cruising jetliner by the eponymous "Mega Shark" from Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. You may be interested to know, for instance, that Mega Shark's air attack requires breaking the surface of the water with a velocity of 710 km/hr, which is faster than a bullet train but not quite so fast as a Tomahawk missile.
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Biology | Digg this!Filed under: Gaming, Portables, iPod touch
While Sony appears concerned about its eroding share of the mobile gaming market since the phenomenal success of Apple's App Store, gaming giant Nintendo isn't worried about Apple at all. In an interview with VentureBeat, Nintendo of America's Cammie Dunaway said that with 11.2 million DS units sold last year, and 125 million DS sales in total thus far, Apple's mobile platform isn't really a threat to Nintendo's dominance of mobile gaming. "Consumers are still finding fun with our products, and there is a lot of room to grow," Dunaway said.TUAWNintendo not concerned about competition from Apple originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
nintendo is either stupid or luring about not being at least concerned about apple. How many CEOs can go on record as not being concerned about apples moves into their niche??
- felixFiled under: Gaming, Portables, iPod touch
While Sony appears concerned about its eroding share of the mobile gaming market since the phenomenal success of Apple's App Store, gaming giant Nintendo isn't worried about Apple at all. In an interview with VentureBeat, Nintendo of America's Cammie Dunaway said that with 11.2 million DS units sold last year, and 125 million DS sales in total thus far, Apple's mobile platform isn't really a threat to Nintendo's dominance of mobile gaming. "Consumers are still finding fun with our products, and there is a lot of room to grow," Dunaway said.TUAWNintendo not concerned about competition from Apple originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Platform shifts happen every decade or so in computing. The leaders of the previous generation are rarely successful in dominating the next generation platform. IBM dominated the mainframe business. They didn’t lose their dominance because another company built a better mainframe. They lost it because the market shifted to a new platform…Mini computers. Digital Equipment, Data General, and a few others dominated that market. Another platform shift is happening today, from PCs to Mobile devices, and another industry leader will be left behind. John Herlihy of Google Europe says “In three years time desktops will be irrelevant”
The future of computing is that your cell phone will become your primary computer, communicator, camera, and entertainment device, all in one. The exciting new applications are running in the browser, with application code and data in the cloud, and the cell phone as a major platform. I think in the near future there will be docking stations everywhere with a screen and a keyboard. You simply pull out your phone, plug it into the docking station, and instantly all your applications and data are available to you. You can connect to the Internet via your cell phone service, WiFi hotspot, or wired connection. Your phone will have enough storage so you can decide which applications and data are stored on your phone, and which will be in the cloud. Replication will work seamlessly in the background so that you always have a backup copy of your data in the cloud. Where does that leave the PC industry leaders? Scrambling towards mobile.
Why do leaders fail to adapt? The Innovators Dilemma, made famous by Clayton Christensen, clearly explains why market leaders fail to make the leap. Innovation usually happens at the low end of the market where the products are simple, prices are low, margins thin, and the market totally undefined. The industry leaders have great margins, high prices, and customers who want more features and are willing to pay for them. The industry leaders always move up market and leave the new emerging market to smaller innovators. The process usually follows these 6 steps;
Giants don’t die quickly – IBM dominated the mainframe computer business in the 60’s and 70s. They didn’t make the shift to Mini-computers until it was too late. They did finally make the transition from a hardware company to a professional services company and IBM is still a very successful, but different company.
Digital Equipment, Data General, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, and others attacked IBM from the low end with Mini-computers and Workstations. They didn’t try to build a better mainframe. They moved the market to lower end, cheaper, faster, computing models. I worked at Digital Equipment in the late 80’s when they had over 130,000 employees and billions in revenue. However, when the platform shift to PCs happened none of these industry leaders made the leap fast enough. None of these companies exist today.
The platform shift to PCs was ironically started by IBM. However, they quickly lost the lead to Compaq, Dell, and others. The real winner in the PC platform shift was Microsoft. Microsoft dominated the PC software business in the 80s and 90s, and extended that dominance into server software like Windows Server, SQL Server, and Sharepoint. Like IBM, Microsoft will be a financially strong company for many years to come. But, an innovator and industry leader?
The move to Mobile is big and fast. Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley says Mobile Internet usage is bigger than most people think, and it is exploding. Every platform shift has 10X the number of devices and users. There were about 1M mainframes, 10M mini-computers, 100M PCs, and 1 Billion cell phones. The next wave of mobile devices will be over 10B.
Think about the mobile phone you had in 1999, just a little over 10 years ago. Mine was a Motorola StarTac flip phone. It was state of the art at the time, but it had no camera, no email, no text messaging, no web browsing…just a phone. Now think about where mobile devices will be in 10 years. The iPhone you have today will feel like the StarTac of 10 years ago.
There will be an explosion in mobile bandwidth too. Again, think about the Internet access you had 10 years ago…probably 56K dial up or 128K ISDN. Today broadband is nearly universal. With the roll out of the 700Mhz wireless spectrum over the next 5 years we will see an explosion in mobile bandwidth just like we did from dial up to broadband. This will enable amazing new mobile applications and businesses.
Google’s big bets on the future of computing line up perfectly with the vision of “exciting new applications are running in the browser (Chrome), with application code and data in the cloud (Gmail, Google Apps, Google App Engine), and the cell phone as a major platform (Android).
Will history repeat itself? Will the previous platform leaders (PCs) fail to make the leap to lead the new Mobile platform shift? Will it happen in three years? All good questions that are open to debate. The direction seems clear, it is just a matter of time.
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Can We Kick Our Keyboard Addiction by 2013? http://bit.ly/cneEWy
This morning, everyone is looking agog at the words of Google Europe boss John Herlihy, who's quoted in the Silicon Republic predicting the demise of the desktop computer.
"In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs," Herlihy said. Is this proclamation taking it one step too far or will we be keyboard-less and fancy free by the time 2013 rolls around?
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The Silicon Republic writes that Herlihy's comments echoed "comments by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the recent GSM Association Mobile World Congress 2010 that everything the company will do going forward will be via a mobile lens, centering on the cloud, computing and connectivity."
If, in fact, Herlihy is predicting the dominance of smartphones, and not just mobile technology, we have a few numbers for you.
According to an October 2009 Forrester report on technology adoption in the U.S. information workforce, only 11% use smartphones, while 76% use desktops and 35% use laptops. And these numbers are looking at workers in the information industry, a sector we would expect to be on the razor's edge of mobile technology adoption. A January report on the mobile workforce indicates that just over 30% of companies report that at least one quarter of their employees work in the field for more than half of their time. According to the article in Enterprise Mobile Today reviewing this report, "in the next three years, more than half of employees will be using smartphones in the enterprise".
At a recent event with our technologically savvy peers, we took an informal poll of everyone's work stations. Only one out of nearly 10 of us said we used a desktop computer. But are we working from our smartphones? No. Laptops and netbooks rule.
We're thinking that if Google is predicting desktops to be irrelevant and including laptops and netbooks in this category, they might be undervaluing our keyboard addiction. When we look at the iPad, do we really see something we'll use to manage databases, code, write or otherwise really create information?
Smartphones are obviously gaining speed with every day but they are far too limited to completely replace their keyboarded friends in three years time. But, if included in this definition of "mobile" are the ever-shrinking laptops, netbooks and tablets (with their accompanying keyboard docks) then we'd have to say we're nearing this future daily. Look around your local college campus and you'll see the next generation of computer users, each with a smartphone in their pocket and a laptop or netbook in their backpack. Look in some of the younger offices and you won't even see a desktop anymore, but instead desks with laptop docking stations.
When we take into consideration, however, developing and third-world nations, where the only web is mobile web, the situation may be completely different. We think that we can be sure of one thing though - outside of very specific uses, the age of the 30-pound clunker humming away beneath your desk is indeed coming to an end.
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Can We Kick Our Keyboard Addiction by 2013?
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