Apparently, there is no time lag anymore when it comes to telling the stories of epic fail on the Internet.

I got an email this afternoon from an anonymous Myspace employee who wrote about an interesting group-writing effort on Google Docs called “Real Myspace Stories.”

Said the page, which was created after the fire sale of the News Corp.-owned social networking company for $35 million to Specific Media today, which also included major layoffs:

The rise and fall of Myspace will be one of the more interesting tech stories for years to come. Nobody knows more about how and why things begin going wrong than the people who worked there everyday. We need to tell our story to help make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. This is not about News Corp executives, analysts, or other armchair quarterbacks — but real stories from the employees of Myspace. The good, the bad, the ugly, let’s tell it all. Fill out the short form below if you want to help make this happen and tell your stories.

Our goal is to quickly publish a crowdsourced book from Myspace employees about Myspace. Any profits will be donated to nonprofits, entrepreneur education, and/or a new VC fund that supports Myspace alumni’s new ventures.

Nice.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site; also, I took the odd photo above at a rest stop in California.)

Having watched as Google nudged its way into the office productivity business with its Google Apps service, Microsoft is now bringing the strength of its enormous Microsoft Office franchise to the world of cloud applications.

The problem is, there are some risks. Where Google Apps was an incremental new business for Google that in time may or may not become big enough to figure in Google’s financials — it’s not big enough yet — sales of Office are a fundamental pillar that hold Microsoft up.

Office constitutes a huge portion of the Microsoft Business Division, and last year that segment was worth $18.6 billion in revenue, or slightly less than 30 percent of overall sales. It’s also wildly profitable, bringing in about half of Microsoft’s $24 billion in operating income last year. When you think of it that way, it’s not overstating things to say that Microsoft has chosen to mess with some of its crown jewels. There’s no small risk that Microsoft may in time cannibalize some of its own best customers.

But it’s not as though Microsoft hasn’t been talking about this for a long time. We’ve talked with other Microsoft execs about it before. And it’s also clear, judging by Google’s success so far, that Office applications need to move from their desktop-bound paradigm to something more flexible that only the cloud can accommodate by converting it to a service.

Also? This is Microsoft. It does nothing fast; it has been studying the opportunity for several years and thinks it can actually add more customers with Office 365, customers that it couldn’t reach with its traditional Office Suite products. I caught up with Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office Division, to talk about all of these things. I also gave him the same chance I gave Google’s Shan Sinha earlier today to be catty about the competition. See if he took it below.

AllThingsD: So Kirk, we’ve known Office 365 has been coming for a while. That makes the market for these cloud-based office services more competitive. How does Microsoft see the market?

Koenigsbauer: First, it is an exciting day for us. We’ve been in the cloud business for six years. You heard Steve [Ballmer] mention Energizer, the battery company, as our first customer back then. We’re still deeply partnered with them and they are one of our best customers. Today is an important milestone for us because it is a new service. Office 365 brings the best of what we know about collaboration to the cloud. And so all of our modern capabilities are now in the service. The Office Web applications are now in the service. There are new capabilities that the service has not had historically, like conferencing and support for outside Web sites. It’s really where Office meets the cloud. We see a huge opportunity in the small and mid-sized company segment. Energizer is a huge company, and we work with lots of big companies, but with Office 365 we have the opportunity to meet the smaller companies that historically haven’t had the opportunity to have the best of what the big businesses have. Usually someone like the CEO or CFO has an additional part-time job as the IT person. And so they need things that are familiar and easy to use.

What’s a little unclear to me is the relationship between the traditional Microsoft Office boxed software and Office 365. Is this a fundamental rethinking of Office, or will this be a complement to the existing product or both?

I absolutely see this as the evolutionary step of taking Office to the cloud. One of the things that we’re really focused on with our cloud journey is providing it on the customers’ terms. And there’s a massive transformation happening in this space as you know, and small companies and large companies are going through it, and they all have a different pace and they all have different objectives. We want to make sure that our largest enterprise customers can decide for themselves if they want to use our multi-tenant service, or if they want to use the dedicated service. Do they want to run in a hybrid environment with some workloads running on-premise and some in the cloud? If they’re a government customer they often have to go through certain vendors. Sometimes they want to buy from a hosted provider or a private cloud provider, so we want to support all those options. For small businesses, sometimes all they want is to move their email to the cloud, so we have packages and services for them as well. We also have a version for big enterprise that includes the Office client, and it’s basically a subscription and it runs like a desktop client, but is deeply integrated into the service.

And it works with which versions of Microsoft Office? Please say it works with the Mac, too.

You can use Office 2007 or Office 2010 on the Windows side and then Office 2011 works with it on the Mac side.

When I talked with Google about their Google Apps service, they said that when they land a customer they’re often replacing an Exchange installation or traditional Microsoft Office. Here you’re bringing something that could conceivably do the same thing. Exchange and Office are part of Microsoft’s bread and butter. Are you worried that you’re going to be displacing yourself — and in the end hurting yourself financially in some of these situations?

I think there’s a few ways to think about it. First, we think about it as a great thing for our customers. Specifically, small and medium-sized companies are getting access to products and services that they didn’t have access to before. While we love products like Exchange and Sharepoint, those products have historically sold more into the large enterprise space. So when we can deliver through the small business offering the kind of richness that Sharepoint and Lync and Exchange have, that’s a huge upside for us. In the enterprise, it’s all about doing what’s right for the customer. This is a big transformation that’s happening and its going to take many years. And customers are going to go at different rates. So I don’t worry at all about it displacing revenue. By running a service for our customers we’ll have a longer-term relationship with them. They’ll have access to the most up-to-date version of our software. But we’re also displacing other things, too. We see a lot of customers coming from Lotus Notes and Groupwise. Seventy percent of our old BPOS (Business Productivity Online Standard Suite) came from Lotus.

Is the transition easy for customers?

We have migration and transition planning. We talk about strategies to consider based on the workflow. We’ve got a lot of experience in doing Notes migration that we can do outside of the cloud experience that we can bring to bear.

Talk about the pricing model. It seems like there’s an awful lot of options. Google Apps is either $50 per user per year or $5 per user per month. It seems Microsoft is a little more complicated.

It’s all about providing choice and flexibility for customers based on what they need. For small businesses, we know they want something super simple. And so we have a single offer, $6 per user per month. You can use the current version of Office if you want or you can add on another subscription of Office. On the enterprise side, we know our customers want more choice. We have four core plans labeled E1 through E4. You can imagine, it ranges from basic capabilities to a plan where we add the Web Apps, to a higher end plan where we add Sharepoint. The highest is E4, where we offer Lync Voice services. Then there are Kiosk versions for customers that we’ve never really reached before, who have a lightweight usage of, say, Sharepoint and Exchange. They may be mobile workers or retail shop floor workers. That’s a net new opportunity for us.

I offered Google the chance to get a little catty and they opted not to take it. I’m going to offer you the same chance. People are going to compare Office 365 to Google Apps. Size up the competition for me, if you would, and how do you like your chances?

My take on it is that of course we think about the competition. There’s a massive transformation that’s happening in the workplace. We’ve been in the collaboration and productivity space a long time. We understand it incredibly well. And we’ve been in the cloud collaboration and productivity space for five or six years. I feel like for us it’s like a transformation of our business model. We can update our software every 90 days. We can reach new segments of customers that we couldn’t reach before. Our customers will have the most modern software. That’s a big deal because they’ll be more satisfied, and happier with us. Those are the kinds of things I think about when I think about the marketplace out there.

At the time, I asked out loud, “Where’s Office 365?” The answer I got back from Redmond: “Later this year.”

Well, “later this year” equals today. In a few hours I’ll be headed to a Microsoft event in lower Manhattan, where the software behemoth will formally launch Office 365, its own Web-based office suite, essentially a cloud-based competitive response to Google Docs. In advance of that, I thought it worthwhile to check in once again with Sinha. You’ll remember he’s the former CEO and founder of DocVerse, a company that Google acquired, and whose product got turned into Google Cloud Connect. He’s now Group Product Manager at Google’s Enterprise Group. I caught up with him last week to talk about the soon to be more competitive market for cloud-based office services and about what’s going on at Google Apps.

As a counterpoint, tomorrow I’ll have seven questions for Kirk Koenigsbauer, Corporate VP of Microsoft’s Office Division, and we’ll be talking all about Office 365.

AllThingsD: Shan, this week things kind of come to a head, with Microsoft launching Office 365. Clearly there’s a lot going on in the cloud-based office suite business. How does Google see the state of play right now?

Sinha: The enterprise business at Google is actually really great. We’re seeing a lot of growth. It’s accelerating, which is more important. We’re going from zero to 60 faster than we ever have before. We’re talking about larger revenue bases. We’re obviously not breaking out our revenue yet, but it’s just been a really phenomenal year for us. We’ve got 30 million users of Google Apps; three million businesses have signed up. We’ve seen a tripling of signups this year alone. All the growth we’re seeing across the board. We’re seeing large enterprises, midmarket companies and small businesses.

I get the point with small business and education institutions, and even everyday people like myself. I’m a Google Apps user myself, but I also still have a Microsoft Office seat. But the part I find myself being a little more skeptical about is the large enterprises going to Google Apps. Who’s doing it, and how is it working out?

That’s a common thing that people worry about. It’s not unreasonable to ask if a cloud solution is suitable for something as critical as messaging. The answer we’re hearing a lot is “yes.” What’s even more interesting about it is that it feels like we’re breaking out of the early adopter segment of the market. If you look at some of the biggest customers we’re working with, there’s McClatchy, which rolled it out to 8,500 users, and there’s IHG, the International Hotel Group — that’s a 25,000-seat deployment. You might go so far as to say they’re on the early edge of the adoption cycle, but then we’ve also started working with the state of Wyoming, and I don’t know the last time that anyone considered a state government as part of the early adoption cycle of anything. Wyoming just deployed 10,000 seats for everyone in state government. A lot of people like to talk about the reticence of companies to adopt cloud-based applications, but I think that’s an artifact of two or three years ago, when the question was “why?” Now they get the benefits — there’s cost and ease of deployment. For something that’s as commoditized as email, which everyone has, it’s something that just makes sense.

What changed? You’re offering something that every office has.

Three things. First, email has changed. Every single company has email, so it’s not a strategic tool or technology. You just have to have it. Companies want simple, hassle-free ways to bring email into their organizations. Second, the world has changed. The world is no longer moving off typewriters and printouts. You’re talking about groups of connected people who work in teams, and Google Apps is built for that world. You get collaboration across the whole suite. You get integration between email and docs. Third, in an organization, you’re looking for the way to get the best leverage out of the IT organization. One of our biggest customers is Genentech. They told us that in the past, when they had Exchange deployed, they had a team of 12 managing hard disks and quota and backups and disaster recovery. Now that they’re on Google Apps, they have one person. Those 11 other people are working on more important things to help the company be more competitive.

So when you get into these companies and governments, are you displacing Office and Exchange? Or are you enhancing them or coexisting with them?

When we talk about mail, typically we’re displacing something. We’re either displacing Exchange or Lotus Notes, or some of the smaller products. Now, we do enable companies to incrementally roll out so that it’s not a night-and-day kind of switch. When it comes to Google Docs and collaboration, what we’re seeing is a need for two things: working in teams and working mobile. You’re seeing a need to support lots of different types of devices — iPhones, Android, BlackBerry, tablets, as well as traditional PC desktops. The second piece is centering around teams. If you look at Microsoft Office, it’s a product that was built for individuals, and it was built at a time when the goal was to get people off of typewriters. I think the last typewriter company in the world just shut down. And so what we’re really seeing is Google Docs enabling team collaboration to help people get the most out of teams and groups. Microsoft Office certainly isn’t going away. What we’re seeing is a shift in how people use it. In the past, companies would buy a sitewide license for Office and give it to everyone. Now, companies are considering buying it on a case by case basis. If the finance department is building complex financial models, sure, get them Office. But for everyone else, Google Docs has become a great set of tools for creating and editing documents.

Last time we talked, you told me about Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. You were the founder of DocVerse, which basically became Google Cloud Connect after Google acquired it. How has that been working out so far?

It’s rare that you see an acquisition stick so closely to its original intent. Our goal was to help create that bridge into the cloud. We’ve been seeing really great uptake of Google Cloud Connect, both at large companies and midsized companies. It’s only been three to four months, so we’re not going to break out any numbers, but so far we’re really pleased with the adoption we’re seeing.

So what are your priorities? What’s on your to-do list for the next six to 12 months? One thing I keep reading about is “offline availability” for both email and Docs. What can we expect?

When we think about our offering, it’s not just products and features, but it’s about a completely new way of doing business. At a product and feature level, yes, offline is important, and it’s coming later this summer across all the Google Apps products. We’re going to be making a lot of user interface improvements. And then there’s going to be a lot of rapid iteration. We have a release that comes out every two weeks. Last year we did more than 200 feature releases. This year we’ve done about 100 so far. We push them out to users so that they don’t have to wait three years for the next version. But it’s also important to think about all the ways we do business. We’re going to be making significant improvements to our support infrastructure so our customers can go and get support more easily and in a broader way. We’re also going to make improvements to the collaboration and communications aspects across the suite. We also just changed the billing arrangement. We used to have a $50 per user, per year flat model. And we actually just introduced a $5 per user, per month no-commit model. We’ve seen a tripling in signups because of changes like that.

Let’s get a little catty here. Microsoft is out with its big Office 365 release today. How do you see the competition coming from them? Google Apps is fair competition for Microsoft. But is Microsoft’s online offering going to provide fair competition for Google Apps now?

I think at a very high level, it’s exciting to see a real emphasis on the cloud. This is great for the market. This is where customers are headed, and where they want to be headed. To see Microsoft going in that direction is a great thing for the industry and it’s a great thing for customers. Stepping down a bit, what I would say, it’s reassuring for us that Microsoft is competing on our turf. This is a business we’ve been doing for a few years, and it’s something we know how to do. We’ve built systems processes and products all geared around the cloud, because we don’t have a business model to compete with. Microsoft has to compete with a business model from the past in order to make its way into the cloud-based way of doing things. Microsoft is taking its existing product and kind of putting a cloud sticker on some pieces of it, but it’s still vested in desktop software. You’re still running Outlook, you’re still running Office. And there are still management headaches that come with it. I think we compare favorably on licensing terms. We have one pricing and licensing model. Microsoft has 1,000 people working on Enterprise licenses and schemes, and has 11 different editions and versions. Its a more complicated picture, when we think the world is looking for some simple solutions to problems that frankly aren’t strategic anymore.

For instance, with Project Origami, it was Microsoft — not Apple — that presaged the coming of a cheap, touch-centric tablet with all-day battery life. But, as we all know, the iPad hails from Cupertino, not Redmond.

With last week’s announcement of iCloud, we may be on the verge of seeing history repeat itself.

For years, Microsoft, under Ray Ozzie, has been on about the opportunity of merging software with the cloud. In particular, Ozzie’s team laid the groundwork for Live Mesh, a software service designed to keep documents in sync, in the cloud and on devices.

But after a quick start out of the gate when it was launched back in 2008, Mesh has been at best running in place for the past several years. It has gone through name changes, feature changes and switched places in the Microsoft organization. Yet, it remains limited by its caveats and complexity.

While Google touted its cloud-only approach with Docs and Microsoft allowed Mesh to stagnate, Apple flew largely under the radar. It took baby steps of its own, mainly with a little-known product called iDisk that allowed documents to be saved to the cloud. Like Mesh, it was limited and cumbersome. But Apple has clearly learned from its mistakes.

Has Microsoft?

To be fair, we don’t totally know the answer to this. There are indications that there will be greater cloud integration in the upcoming Mango version of Windows Phone and little is known of Windows 8, beyond ARM chip support and the new interface shown at D9.

What we do know is what Apple is pledging to deliver this fall: a service that synchronizes all one’s documents, wherever they are saved and on PCs, Macs and mobile devices — at least the mobile ones with an Apple logo. By contrast, Microsoft’s Mesh remains a work in progress, and one where users still have to actively decide which files and folders they want to keep in sync.

The company’s signature product is a “smartpen” that writes with standard ink, but captures audio and uses special paper so that, in addition to showing up on paper, the notes are also recorded digitally for transfer to a computer. The new Livescribe Connect service, being announced on Monday, allows the digital notes and audio recordings to be sent from to a variety of other programs and services, including Evernote, Google Docs and Facebook. Users will also be able to mark their notes to be sent as a PDF document via e-mail the next time the pen is docked.

CEO Jim Marggraff said at an event for reporters that the shift to smart wireless devices has highlighted the fact that, although his company’s product has helped allow handwritten notes go digital, “the Livescribe smartpen remains a disconnected device in a connected world.”

The Livescribe Connect service is designed to take a step toward addressing that, but still requires the pen be docked to a computer in order to send notes via e-mail or transfer them to another program. Though not sharing any details, Marggraff acknowledged that a wireless connection from the pen would be the next logical step.

Livescribe, which demoed its first smartpen back at D5 in 2007, is also adding a 2GB, $99 version of its Echo smartpen.

The Livescribe Connect service will work with all of the companies Echo and older Pulse pens. Most of the connectors will be free for all pen owners, while connections to Google Docs and e-mail will require the purchase of a $15 upgrade for owners of the older Pulse pens or those who buy the new entry-level Echo pen.

Now it’s 2011, and the company is trying to repeat the trick with better results. Scrybe has spent the last few years creating a corporate collaboration platform called Convofy, as well as another preview video to show off its nifty features. There’s no offline component this time, but there is a business model.

Convofy is a bit like a social interface for Google Docs or an alternative to corporate social networks like Yammer that goes beyond status messages to help people collaborate on documents, research and to-do lists. It is primarily an Adobe Air app, but there is also a simplified mobile Web version.

For instance, a key Convofy feature allows users to mark up and make minor edits to text documents, spreadsheets, images and PDFs, with other team members also able to see and make edits in real time. Every comment or chat message is tied to its context, so it shows the piece of an image or snippet of text it refers to, and viewers can click to jump directly to that spot.

So, as an example, a design firm could post mock-ups of its latest project on Convofy, with co-workers marking areas they want changed, creating a comment archive of those notes over time. Or a research team could use Convofy to share Web links of interest, as Convofy includes a Web browser to help users mark up the pages they are talking about.

This probably sounds rather complicated, and it is. Convofy may well be a solution looking for a problem. But organizations that collaborate remotely may be willing to put in the time to learn to use the product and its many interface tweaks, such as online presence bubbles for each user that enlarge commensurate with their activity. If you’re interested only in seeing how Convofy actually works, skip to two minutes into the video, where the real demo starts.

Scrybe has subsisted for all these years with less than $2 million in funding (its investors are Adobe Ventures and LMKR), founder and CEO Faizan Buzdar said in an interview this weekend. The company employs 25 people in Denver, Pakistan and elsewhere. Convofy will cost $5 per user per month, and Scrybe expects to open the Convofy platform to developers soon. The company is working to build integrations with Web apps like Google Maps and Twitter to demonstrate its potential.

These omissions have led many readers to ask me how you get files—especially Microsoft Office files and PDFs—into and out of iPads. They have bolstered the contention that the popular tablet is really just a “consumption device,” not a productivity tool.

So, here’s a brief primer on how to get such documents into and out of an iPad, and how to view, edit and create them on the tablet. This isn’t an in-depth product review, though I’ve tested every product and method I will mention here. It’s merely a quick, practical guide to how to work with documents on an iPad.

Three faces of creating iPad documents: From left, Keynote, Pages and Numbers apps running on an iPad 2

Before we start, let me mention some caveats. First, to get the most out of documents on the iPad, you have to download add-on apps. Second, while many of these apps can store and organize files, those file systems are silos within the apps. Third, these apps often lack full fidelity with Office on a PC or Mac, especially for complex documents. Fonts and layouts may be changed, and none of the apps I tested was able to display revision histories in Office documents.

Finally, unless you buy an add-on keyboard, typing on an iPad isn’t as easy for many people as on a regular computer. For instance, I wouldn’t want to type a 30-page legal brief on an iPad. But you can use an iPad with Office documents and PDFs.

Creating and Editing Files

Microsoft hasn’t built a version of Microsoft Office for the iPad. But several companies make office suites for the tablet that aim to emulate Office by allowing you to create and export Office-compatible documents, and to import and edit documents created in Office on PCs and Macs.

The three most notable of these are Quickoffice Connect, which costs $15; Documents To Go, which comes in two versions costing $10 and $17; and Apple’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which cost $10 each.

All of these apps are more limited than Office on a PC, but I have found they worked pretty well. All have their own internal file-storage system, and each can be connected to cloud-based services, or can open email attachments or receive wired file transfers from iTunes.

Wired File Transfers

When you plug an iPad into one of the recent versions of Apple’s iTunes program on your computer, and select the iPad icon in the left column, a section appears at the bottom of the Apps tab that is called File Sharing. This module lists all the apps on your iPad that can handle various kinds of documents, and shows you what files they contain. You can then add files from your computer to one of the listed apps, or save the files to your computer, using buttons labeled Add or “Save to….” Even veteran iTunes users may not know about this feature, because Apple hasn’t publicized it much, and you have to scroll down in iTunes to see it.

Viewing Email Attachments

Out of the box, the iPad allows you to view a wide variety of documents attached to emails. If somebody emails you a Microsoft Office file, a PDF file, or other common types of files, you get an icon in the email, and, if you tap and hold your finger on the icon, a pop-up menu appears that allows you to view it in full-screen mode, a function called Quick Look. Just this week, I used this method to review and catch an error in a Microsoft Word document I received from a colleague while riding in a New York taxi with an iPad.

If you have an app like Quickoffice installed that allows saving or organizing documents, or editing them, the email pop-up menu becomes even more useful. In addition to the Quick Look option, it gives you an “Open In…” option that lets you move the document to an app of your choice, where you can store it permanently, or even edit it, if the app allows for that. This “Open In…” option also appears in various apps other than email, so you can move documents from one app to another.

Wireless File Transfers

There are some iPad apps available that allow you to move documents wirelessly if your computer and iPad are on the same Wi-Fi network. One that I have used successfully is called Air Sharing and costs $2.99. It mounts your iPad on your computer as if it were an external drive, and allows you to drag files between your computer and iPad.

Cloud-Based File Transfers

If you back up your PC or Mac files to a cloud-based remote service, like SugarSync, Dropbox, or Apple’s own iDisk, many of these services provide iPad apps that allow you to fetch the files to your iPad, or, in some cases, upload files from your iPad to these services. These apps typically allow you only to view or perhaps store the files on the iPad, but some include the “Open in…” feature to let you move the file to another app where you can edit it.

Sophisticated File Viewers

Some apps for the iPad let you store large numbers of different types of files, view them and even annotate them. My favorite, GoodReader, is a $4.99 app that handles all the Microsoft Office file types, plus PDFs and more.

GoodReader even lets you type notes on, or draw on, PDFs, and then save and email the annotated version. It also allows you to organize files into folders and rename them. And it lets you retrieve files from cloud-based services, without having to switch to a separate app provided by those services. Among the cloud services it supports are Google Docs, Dropbox, SugarSync and iDisk.

Bottom Line

It’s perfectly fair to criticize Apple for leaving out a USB port and a shared file system. The company is reputed to be working on a cloud-based file sharing system that may alleviate these omissions. But, even today, you can work with common file types on an iPad, if you know how.

Watch a video with Walt Mossberg on transferring files to an iPad at WSJ.com/PersonalTech. Find all of his columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110316/in-and-out-of-office-putting-ipads-to-work/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110316/google-turns-word-comments-a-necessary-office-evil-into-discussions/ http://allthingsd.com/20110316/google-turns-word-comments-a-necessary-office-evil-into-discussions/#comments Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:00:23 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=4033 One of the great annoyances of office life is collaborating on a written document. Once the original writer seeks feedback from more than one or two people, the process of wrangling the comments embedded in the multiple copies that have been sent around the office as email attachments quickly takes on a life of its own. Wouldn’t it all be easier if everyone’s comments appeared in a single, unified stream?

That’s the idea behind a new commenting system being introduced in Google Docs today. Comments have been converted into what Google is calling Discussions. And these discussions are comparable to the streams in so many social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, complete with the Twitter-like convention of “@ mentions” (A sample comment is pictured) but they’re also linked to email, so you can participate in the discussion without having sign into Google Docs. You can also tell who made a comment and when, as it includes timestamps, profile pictures and email notifications make it easy to keep track of the feedback process.

The feature is going live today, but only on new documents, and for those Google Apps users who have opted for the Rapid Release track on new features–those who haven’t will get it over the next week or so. A two-minute video below gives you a pretty good idea of what it looks like.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110316/google-turns-word-comments-a-necessary-office-evil-into-discussions/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110315/google-makes-it-easy-to-try-new-apps-right-away-or-not/ http://allthingsd.com/20110315/google-makes-it-easy-to-try-new-apps-right-away-or-not/#comments Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:00:21 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=3993 IT managers crave stability because new applications and features have a tendency to create chaos. If you’ve ever worked in an office where the IT manager hasn’t upgraded to the latest version of this or that application, you’ve probably seen that craving in action. New things can have unintended consequences, and so don’t get deployed until they’ve been tested–which in some places doesn’t happen until long after they’re new.

Cloud applications like those found in Google Apps are a little different. Since everything works within the browser, there are fewer, if any, things that are likely to break when a new app or feature gets introduced. And Google likes nothing more than pushing the latest shiny things–new features and apps–to its users as soon as they’re ready. Not all IT managers are cool with that, however, because it forces them to get familiar with the new apps and features before they’re ready to field questions about them from their users.

Today, Google is making it possible to choose between being an early adopter or taking a more careful approach by giving Google Apps administrators a two-track deployment approach. One track, known as Rapid Release, gives users access to new apps and features as soon as Google rolls them out.

The second track is known as Scheduled Release, and gives admins a week to familiarize themselves with new apps and then allow their users to get them on a weekly basis, with updates taking place every Tuesday. Google says new features for GMail, Contacts, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Sites will follow this new release schedule going forward.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110315/google-makes-it-easy-to-try-new-apps-right-away-or-not/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110224/googles-cloud-connect-beta-is-over-now-wheres-office365/ http://allthingsd.com/20110224/googles-cloud-connect-beta-is-over-now-wheres-office365/#comments Thu, 24 Feb 2011 13:37:24 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=3574 Last November, when Google first announced its plans to give users of several versions of Microsoft Office the ability to sync their documents with Google Apps, Google’s line of cloud-based office productivity apps, and sought volunteers to try it out, thousands stepped up, and Google had to turn many away.

It’s called Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office, and it’s going live today for all Windows users running Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010. (Sorry Mac users.) It’s a plug-in (reader Ben provides a download link in the comments below) that gives Office users in multiple locations the ability to edit and collaborate on Office documents at the same time. The new service grew out of Google’s acquisition of DocVerse last year.

Alongside the new service Google says it is launching a 90-day trial period that will allow companies that haven’t yet embraced the notion of cloud-based productivity and collaboration to try Google Apps for 90 days. Google is calling it the 90-Day Appsperience, and it’s available for what Google calls “a nominal fee.” Companies who take advantage of the trial get unlimited use of Google Apps for 90 days, plus support.

This is taking place as the competitive scrum between Google and Microsoft concerning cloud-based office tools heats up. Microsoft of course has the huge Microsoft Office franchise, which is the Big Kahuna within the Microsoft Business division, which reported $18.6 billion in sale last year. Its own cloud-based enhancement for Office, known as Office365, was first announced in October, but remains in a limited Beta test period, and so isn’t generally available. Microsoft has promised to release it generally during the second half of later this year. Google is clearly trying to take advantage by finishing its beta test of Cloud Connect well before Office365 is ready. Maybe this will spur Microsoft to speed it up a little.

Earlier this year, BoomTown’s Kara Swisher visited with Shan Sinha, former DocVerse CEO, who’s now product manager for Google Apps. In the interview below he talks about the learning process Google has been going through as it goes after the enterprise market.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110224/googles-cloud-connect-beta-is-over-now-wheres-office365/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20110223/google-tool-to-move-microsoft-files-to-web/ http://allthingsd.com/20110223/google-tool-to-move-microsoft-files-to-web/#comments Wed, 23 Feb 2011 22:19:45 +0000 Amir Efrati http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=36710 Google Inc., taking aim at Microsoft Corp.’s lucrative Office franchise, plans to release a free tool allowing users to transfer files from the widely used software suite to the Web so that multiple people can edit and collaborate on them.

The long-anticipated move is intended to bolster one of Google’s fastest-growing businesses not related to its popular search engine–selling online software to companies. The company’s Google Apps offering includes online word-processing, spreadsheet and collaboration tools used through a Web browser that are part of a service called Google Docs. They compete with Office applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Though Google Apps comes in free and paid versions that are much less expensive than Office, some customers have resisted using them because employees are accustomed to Office.

Google plans to formally introduce the new Google tool, called Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office, later this week after releasing it to early testers in November.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110223/google-tool-to-move-microsoft-files-to-web/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110114/docverse-now-google-cloud-connect-head-shan-sinha-talks-about-biz-apps/ http://allthingsd.com/20110114/docverse-now-google-cloud-connect-head-shan-sinha-talks-about-biz-apps/#comments Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:00:22 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39519

Earlier this week, I motored the Mini down to the Googleplex in Silicon Valley to visit with entrepreneur Shan Sinha.

He headed the start-up DocVerse, which was acquired by the search giant in March for a reported $25 million to $30 million.

Since then, Sinha has been ferreting away on scaling up DocVerse’s product, which allows users of Microsoft Office documents to collaborate in real-time on the Web.

Its new name: Google Cloud Connect.

About 4,000 companies quickly signed up to be early testers in the preview program, and Google said it had thousands of requests to be notified when it becomes available, which will be in a few weeks.

DocVerse was founded in 2008 by Sinha and Alex DeNeui, who both used to work at Microsoft. It raised only $1.3 million in venture funding from Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal and Naval Ravikant.

Google’s acquisition of it was yet another shot across Microsoft’s software bow, along with a range of mashups of cloud computing and productivity applications.

For example, Google has been pushing its own cloud-based Google Docs to compete against the Office juggernaut.

For its part, Microsoft has committed itself to moving its hugely popular productivity suite–which includes Word, PowerPoint and Excel–into the cloud, in order to protect its software hegemony.

Why? Simultaneous group-editing and collaboration online is the future of Office.

Clearly, the race for productivity applications is in the cloud.

So–along with Cloud Connect –Sinha has been put in charge of deploying a $50 a person package of them, including Sites, Gmail, Docs, Calendar and Video, to millions of business users.

Here is Sinha talking about all of that and more in the video interview I did with him:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110114/docverse-now-google-cloud-connect-head-shan-sinha-talks-about-biz-apps/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101117/google-docs-adds-mobile-editing/ http://allthingsd.com/20101117/google-docs-adds-mobile-editing/#comments Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:06:24 +0000 Voices http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=32723 Google Docs just got substantially more useful for folks on the move. With a rollout starting today, the cloud-based productivity apps will now allow users to edit the contents of documents and spreadsheets (collaboratively, if they want) from mobile devices (specifically those running Android 2.2 or Apple’s iOS 3.0+).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101117/google-docs-adds-mobile-editing/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101018/google-adds-cloud-access-to-enterprise-search-appliance/ http://allthingsd.com/20101018/google-adds-cloud-access-to-enterprise-search-appliance/#comments Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:27:57 +0000 Voices http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=31197 Google, which is encouraging businesses to adopt its Google Apps productivity applications, is now making that cloud-based data more accessible for companies that also use its Search Appliance. Now, in addition to enabling intranet searches, the updated Search Appliance’s Cloud Connect will also pull in results from Google Docs, Google Sites and Twitter. The new version also adds People Search, which lists the company employees related to the search subject.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101018/google-adds-cloud-access-to-enterprise-search-appliance/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100714/office-2010-sales-disappointing/ http://allthingsd.com/20100714/office-2010-sales-disappointing/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:58:41 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=44728

We’ve had an incredible reception to the new version of Office, Office 2010, SharePoint, Exchange.”

– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, July 12, 2010

Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer describes the reception given to Office 2010 as “incredible,” but according to NPD, it’s been anything but. In the research house’s view, the first two weeks of Office 2010 sales have been “a bit disappointing.”

The latest data from NPD’s Weekly Tracking Service reveals Office 2010 units sold and dollars earned to be down from Office 2007’s initial two weeks of sales, though slightly ahead of sales trends for the aging software suite so far this year. That doesn’t mean it’s not a strong product–the reviews have been largely positive–just that it is having difficulty gaining momentum in a saturated market. A vast improvement over Office 2003, Office 2007 sold 10 million new copies retail during its lifetime. But folks who shelled out $399 to buy it three years ago aren’t feeling so compelled to do it again for its successor.

“Office 2007 was a radical new design that certainly helped deliver a lot of curious buyers and it was launched nearly parallel with Vista, adding a good deal of promotional activity in the software aisle, both of which likely helped drive initial sales of Office 2007,” NPD analyst Stephen Baker explains. “This time Office was launched during a seasonally slow period for PC purchases which have, over time, proven to be a have a strong impact on Office sales. The combination of these factors, plus the increasingly saturated installed base likely explains most of the initial weakness in sales of Office 2010.”

What about new challenges from online office suites like Google (GOOG) Docs? Surely they must play a role here as well? Not really, says Baker. “These products have little awareness among the mainstream consumer who is the retail boxed version’s primary customer. Over time it is certainly likely that we will see some slowdown in retail sales as consumers alter their productivity software habits, but that time is not now.”

So Office 2010 sales will be a bit slower to ramp up than those of its predecessor. At least until the PC refresh cycle really kicks in–and there are signs that that’s beginning to happen.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100714/office-2010-sales-disappointing/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100611/survey-2020-vision-of-computing-mostly-cloudy/ http://allthingsd.com/20100611/survey-2020-vision-of-computing-mostly-cloudy/#comments Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:30:25 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=42435 By 2020, the transition from desktop to cloud will be largely complete and we’ll all view the former as we view the latter today–an adjunct to our primary workspace.

That’s the conclusion of a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that found a majority of tech-savvy folks believe they won’t be doing nearly so much work on the desktop a decade from now. Seventy-one percent of the 900 “technology experts and stakeholders” Pew interviewed agreed with the following statement:

“By 2020, most people won’t do their work with software running on a general-purpose PC. Instead, they will work in Internet-based applications such as Google Docs, and in applications run from smartphones. Aspiring application developers will develop for smartphone vendors and companies that provide Internet-based applications, because most innovative work will be done in that domain, instead of designing applications that run on a PC operating system.”

Given the growing enthusiasm for cloud-based social networking services (Twitter, Facebook), cloud-based entertainment services (Hulu, YouTube, Pandora) and cloud-based productivity suites (Zoho, Google Docs and the latest version of Microsoft Office), this doesn’t seem like a particularly aggressive prediction.

Clearly, though, there are some obstacles to be overcome. Privacy and security are, and will continue to be, big issues here, as is bandwidth. But once they’re resolved, the division between “cloud computing” and “computing” as we think of it today will likely be gone, as Google’s (GOOG) chief economist, Hal Varian notes. “In the future we will neither know, nor care where our data resides,” he said. “In fact, our data will be distributed in the cloud, where it can be accessed any time, any place, on any device, by any authorized user.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100611/survey-2020-vision-of-computing-mostly-cloudy/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100608/hp-eprint-printers-for-those-who-prefer-their-spam-in-hard-copy/ http://allthingsd.com/20100608/hp-eprint-printers-for-those-who-prefer-their-spam-in-hard-copy/#comments Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:02:07 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=41997 Hewlett-Packard makes a fair bit of money selling printers, but it makes even more selling print cartridges, where its margins are 20-plus percent. So it’s in the company’s best interests to do all that it can to drive cartridge demand by encouraging as much printing as possible. Which is what it intends to do with a new line of Internet-connected printers that can print documents emailed to them.

This week, HP (HPQ) is rolling out a new line of touchscreen printers with Web access and their own email addresses. The company’s pitch: If you can email it or store it in the cloud, you can print it. Email a document or photo to one of its new ePrint printers and the device will automatically print it. Alternately, users can print Google Docs or Picasa photos directly from the cloud without using their desktop computers.

“What we believe is whereas in the old world where you had a PC and a printer and a driver, the new world is all about the Web-connected devices,” Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of HP’s Imaging and Printing Group, said at a launch event yesterday. “This is all about how we can create that content and print anywhere, anytime. What we want to do is add cloud-aware capabilities to our core printing business.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100608/hp-eprint-printers-for-those-who-prefer-their-spam-in-hard-copy/feed/ 0