How long before Microsoft drops SharePoint 'On Premise' altogether?
So Microsoft went ahead and bought Yammer. Amongst the wider coverage were some interesting comments from Kurt Delbene, President of the Microsoft Office Division. In the official press conference he seemed to suggest that any future Yammer integration would be limited to cloud products:
"Yammer provides Microsoft best-in-class enterprise social networking service, as well as a phenomenal list of talented employees that know how to deliver rapid innovation in the cloud. Yammer will be an important addition to Microsoft's cloud services, and this acquisition underscores our commitment to helping customers move to the cloud."
Kicking me on the way out the door, Network Solutions emailed: 'We value your business'
About a week ago I finally moved the cringely.com domain to EasyDNS from Network Solutions, my registrar since 1992. I have written in the past about how much I hate Network Solutions, but this was our final connection and I am now free. But not without them kicking me on my way out the door, crashing this blog for four hours over the weekend.
I began the domain transfer last Monday but Network Solutions, in its infinite wisdom, decided to complete the transfer on June 24, Sunday, at 2:04 pm Pacific time. That’s when they simply shut down my DNS despite the fact that I’m still paying for their service (I’m paid up until November). According to EasyDNS, of all the domain registrars only Network Solutions and GoDaddy drop customers cold like that.
Symform offers 200GB free cloud storage
Online backup services have traditionally been all about storing files from lots of users in a single, large data centre. Which is fine, but can be expensive, as there’s a lot of costly infrastructure to maintain.
Symform takes a more distributed approach, spreading its data around the hard drives of other Symform users. And with that meaning the service is more about managing this distribution than the data itself, the company can offer you up to 200GB of cloud storage space at no cost at all.
Microsoft's road to redemption
Microsoft just put behind it an eventful and positive week, coming off two major announcements on its two major computing platforms -- Windows and Windows Phone: Surface and WP8. Consumer and expert scepticism hobbled much of the excitement, as Microsoft nose dives into paradigm change. Nevertheless, the third week of June 2012 is indicative of a profoundly new direction for Microsoft, characterized by refreshing perspectives and paves a path that leads ultimately in the right direction.
Microsoft is making genuine inroads towards a new strategy that represents a complete paradigm shift from the fundamentals that defined the company and its products over the last couple of decades. The company used to be the antithesis of Apple in practically every sense, selling products based on the abundance of choice as opposed to Apple's strategy of marketing a small hardware lineup. Apple's strategy has always focused on ease of use, simplicity and form; whereas Microsoft, although not neglecting form and aesthetic, put functionality first and foremost and wrapped design around this in the most appealing way possible. The announcements this week represent a fully-committed digression from this strategy from Microsoft.
I'm not someone to light a torch and raise a pitchfork over the FCC, but...
Over the weekend, I got to thinking more about the role of the Federal Communications Commission.
You see, last week, the Supreme Court, in an eight-to-zero ruling, struck down fines that the FCC had issued to Fox Television and ABC Broadcasting. The judges found violations of “fleeting” indecency standards by Fox and ABC to be void. However, the Court sidestepped the broadcasters' protest of First Amendment rights, ruling on the matter as an issue of basic fairness and due process of the FCC fines as 5th and 14th amendment breaches instead.
Nexus 7 tablet rumors all point at Amazon's growing Android dominance
The existence of a 7-inch Google-branded Android tablet has been rumored for a couple of months, and Asus has proudly taken credit for manufacturing the device. Still, the specifics have not be officially laid out, so we have to rely on unnamed sources and ambiguous evidence for the next few days until Google I/O begins.
Reportedly, some "training materials" uncovered by Gizmodo Australia related to a tablet known as the "Nexus 7" provide some confirmation to prior rumors of an Asus-made Google Tablet, similar to the MeMO 370T that was debuted by Asus earlier this year.
Box OneCloud third-party sync solution now available for Android
Cloud storage service Box extended its mobile app framework OneCloud to the Android platform on Monday, allowing apps to use Box as storage for data. The company released a similar offering for iOS developers back in March.
Both platforms offer Box compatibility with 50 productivity apps on either platform. An SDK and API have been made available so that other developers may use Box in their own apps. The apps supported here initially with OneCloud for Android include iAnnotate, Breezy, Docusign Ink and Fetchnotes.
Microsoft’s Surface pricing dilemma is two opportunities waiting to be missed
In an article that appeared earlier today on BetaNews, Robert Cringely talks about how Microsoft can compete with Apple on pricing but -- due to supply and manufacturing issues -- won’t be able to undercut its rival. It’s an interesting observation, and one that’s based on sound thinking.
But Surface is a curious beast. The iPad is, to all intents and purposes, a scaled-up Smartphone. Microsoft’s tablet (or tablets, rather) is a touch-screen PC. It runs Windows 8, and Office, and applications like Photoshop.
Apple admits malware defeat
Apple is one of the single software companies that hasn't really faced the problem of viruses, for years claiming their operating system is the most secure among all. Seemingly every Mac user claims that his or her computer is the safest and greatest -- they’re invincible!
But those claims collapse as Apple products grow in popularity. Back in April 2012, Flashback infected 670,000 Macs worldwide. The Mac maker responded so well it needed to do the job twice, as the first security patch wasn’t so good. In light of all this one has to wonder whether Apple needs to call it quits and just admit defeat.
New Sony Google TV launches ... in the UK, oh goody
The Google TV platform kind of flopped when first launched in the United States two years ago. Anemic hardware and wonky UI made the experience a total cluster bomb of grief and end-user cursing for anyone that purchased it. Logitech took a $30 million write-off and ditched their failed Google TV product, Logitech Revue.
The set-top box that "augmented" your television viewing experience also launched with the Sony NSZ-GT1 and Sony Internet TV with Google TV. The old consumer electronics behemoth that is no stranger to showing gumption for beating a dead horse will try again. Starting July 25, Sony will release the NSZ-GS7 set-top box in the UK for £200/$199. International launch will follow.
FolderChangesView tracks file changes in real time
Your hard drive is buzzing, and you don’t know why. Finding out what’s going on is probably a good idea: at best a legitimate program is tying up resources and slowing you down, at worst you’ve got a malware infection. But what do you do now?
Launching FolderChangesView, the latest release from NirSoft, could be a good first move.
RIM is a far more formidable player than either Google or Apple
I like it when I’m right. Whether it’s dispelling the myths surrounding the Windows 7 kernel (I was right), or bursting the bubble of the VDI-everywhere zealots (right again), I enjoy having my predictions come true.
I’m also an operating system technology purist. I believe that a strong OS foundation is what determines whether or not a given platform will succeed over the long haul. This is why I’m convinced that Microsoft will ultimately dominate the enterprise mobile computing space (Windows Phone 8 is based on Windows NT, an OS for which I have tremendous respect). And it’s also why I believe they eventually will share this space not with Apple or Google, but rather the company that everyone likes to write-off: Research in Motion.
Microsoft and Google won’t have a price advantage with iPad, so they’ll have to actually make a better product
Last week Microsoft kinda-sorta announced its new Surface tablet computer. This week will come a Google-branded tablet. Both are pitted against the mighty iPad. Both companies see opportunity because of what they perceive as a Steve Jobs blind spot. And both companies are introducing tablets under their own brands because they can’t get their OEM’s to do tablets correctly.
For all the speculation about why Microsoft or Google would risk offending hardware OEMs by introducing name branded tablets, the reality is that neither company really had any choice but to make the hardware. In the commodity PC market, no one company is likely to be willing to make the investment necessary to compete with the highly-integrated iPad. Samsung tried, and even then it didn’t pay off for them. Taiwan Inc + Dell just don’t seem to run that way. Furthermore, it is a lot easier to make a product when you control the operating system. You have the experts right there. You don’t have to go through support channels to fix stuff. So ultimately, Microsoft and Google should be able to make much better products than their licensees.
Makeover Windows with open-source Rainmeter 2.3
Open-source desktop customization tool Rainmeter 2.3 has been released, boasting a number of major changes. Rainmeter allows Windows users to customise their desktop well beyond the options provided by the OS using a range of “skins”, which can be downloaded from other sites or created from scratch by the user.
Version 2.3’s headline new feature is a new, improved Rainmeter Skin Package system, which will simplify the process of distributing new user-created skins to others.
Looking for an affordable, compatible Excel alternative? Try Gnumeric
If you’re looking to equip your PC with a free spreadsheet, then your first thought will probably be to download one of the open-source Office competitors: OpenOffice, maybe, or LibreOffice.
But if you prefer something a little more lightweight then there’s an interesting alternative in the GNOME Project’s Gnumeric.
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