Jason Fried of 37 Signals has a post critical of Office Live entitled Microsoft Office Live is "web based" where he writes

Office Live, Microsoft’s entry into the web-based office application space, went beta today.

Check out some of the system requirements for certain features of this “web-based” service:

• To use the Edit in Datasheet feature within the Business Applications and Shared Sites areas requires Microsoft Office 2003.
• To export to Business Contact Manager requires Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office XP, or Microsoft Office 2000.
• To import contacts from Microsoft Office Outlook requires Microsoft Office 2003 or Microsoft Office XP.
• To link contacts to Microsoft Office Outlook requires Microsoft Office 2003.

And of course you must use IE. I never thought I’d see a web app suite that has more system requirements than a desktop app, but I guess I should never underestimate Microsoft.

A number of comments in response to the blog post have pointed out that it is misleading since it implies that Office Live requires Microsoft Office when in truth most of the features mentioned are related to importing and exporting data to and from Microsoft Office products like Outlook. Since the target audience for Office Live is the same as that for the majority of the products of 37 Signals it is unsurprising that they are so hostile to the service.

However this isn't to say that there isn't some valid criticism here. Jason is right that Internet Explorer is required to use Office Live. I also had an issue with this especially since in Windows Live we have an explicit goal that Internet Explorer and Firefox users should get an equivalent user experience. When I talked to the Office Live folks about this they pointed out to me that although Internet Explorer is required to create a site using the service, the websites created with it (such as http://daresofficelivesite.com) work fine in all major Web browsers. This is a good step but they know they can do better.

As it is with all feature requests in product development, the best way to get Firefox support to show up in Office Live is for users demand it. That's what happened with Windows Live and I'm sure the same will end up happening for  Office Live. I'm sure the question won't be if but rather when it shows up. 

 

A few days ago, I asked Edgeio: An eBay Killer or Just Another Lame Startup? which seems to be a question that was asked by several other bloggers. On the Edgeio blog there is a post entitled More Bloggers Discuss Edgeio which promises to address some of the questions raised about the service. The blog post states

There are three key things people bring up when questioning whether or not edgeio will be successful.

1. Will bloggers want to post classified listings on blogs?

2. How to deal with the inevitable spam onslaught?

3. Assuming 1 & 2 are overcome, what stops everyone from entering the market?

These are all great questions whose answers I'd love to see. For #1 the edgeio folks have to convince vendors of blogging tools and hosted blogging services to make it easy for people to mark up their blog posts as auction listings. I called this a 'Make this blog post a classified listing' checkbox in my previous post on Edgeio. Then there is the task of convincing people that instead of listing items for sale on eBay or Craig's List, they should instead post an entry in their blog. This will be an uphill battle. Assuming they solve that, question #2 points out that the next hurdle is dealing with the inevitable avalanche of splogs which will pollute the system. Blog search engines like Technorati seem to be doing a decent job at filtering out splogs so this is tough but not an insurmountable problem.

The real doozy is question #3. Once they've convinced the blogosphere to start posting classified listings on their blogs instead of using existing listing sites AND have done a decent job holding down spam, they still have to contend with the Google factor. From my perspective, the functionality Edgeio plans to provide is the kind of feature that could be added to Google Base by an enterprising developer in his or her 20% time let alone if a bigger player like eBay or Craig's List decides to get in this space.  Besides proclaiming that they have patents protecting their business model, I can't see how Edgeio plans to answer question #3 above. I'll be watching their blog to see what their answers to the above questions. My curiousity is definitely piqued. 

 

David Hunter has a blog post entitled Microsoft relaunches bCentral, calls it Office Live where he writes

Press release:

Sept. 23, 1999 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the launch of Microsoft® bCentral, a new portal created specifically to meet the needs of small and growing companies. Microsoft bCentral provides a comprehensive and integrated suite of services to help growing companies leverage the Internet to improve their business. The site delivers services in three key areas: getting a business started online by connecting to the Web and building a Web site; promoting and marketing online to reach new customers; and managing a business more effectively. A beta version of the new site will be available in the United States beginning Sept. 30, 1999, at http://www.bCentral.com/ .

Change the menu a little and call it Office Live and you have today’s announcement:

Feb. 15, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the beta availability of Microsoft® Office Live (http://www.OfficeLive.com), offering small-business customers a cost-free opportunity to experience the company’s new Internet-based software services firsthand. A milestone for the online services previewed last fall, Microsoft Office Live combines the power of software and services to deliver rich and seamless experiences to small companies that want a presence online.

Microsoft Office Live helps lower the barriers to doing business online by offering small companies a set of Internet-based business services. Designed for ease of use and affordability, the online services are designed to give small businesses the same advantages as larger enterprises by getting them up and running on the Internet quickly, easily and inexpensively.

There were no surprises from the various “preannouncements” yesterday or even from the original Office Live announcement...So what’s with the Office moniker? There had been some expectations, despite all the clues to the contrary, that there were to be online versions of at least some of the Office products. Those hopes were dashed...The use of “Office” in “Office Live” apparently connotes business usage, and that’s it...So I guess we take it for what it is. There may well be a play in the hosted “intranet replacement” offering if they roll out some useful applications, but that’s a story we heard about the now defunct bCentral too (e.g. [1], [2]). Presumably, Microsoft thinks they’ll have more luck this time around, but it’s not clear why.

The folks working on Office Live have big plans for the service. The big question is whether our execs will let them execute on their vision or whether we'll continue to practice death by risk aversion.

 

Office Live is now live at http://www.officelive.com. As I mentioned yesterday, our team has been working closely with the folks behind Office Live. This means that I got the hook up with regards to early access to the service. I've heard it's okay to post screenshots so I'll be posting some with my review of the service. There are 3 basic SKUs of the service

1. Office Live Basics: This service makes it easy for a small business to create and manage its website. It features all the basics you need to create your first Web site including free Web hosting, Web site statistics, a personalized domain name (bring your own domain or get one through Microsoft), and up to 5 e-mail accounts for your domain.
   

2. Office Live Collaboration: This service makes it easy to store, share, and manage your everyday business information in one central online location. Users can create any number of password-protected Web sites for collaborating among internal employees and external customers, suppliers, and vendors. The service provides access to business applications for managing one's customer relationships, employees and project management.

3. Office Live Essentials:  A combination of the Basics and Collaboration SKUs with a few more benefits such as getting 50 email accounts instead of just 5 with your custom domain. 

Office Live is a mix of a number of core services a small business needs to exist today. It gives them a domain registrar, email hosting, internal and external web site hosting, as well as line of business applications all in a single place.

When I tested the service, I got myself an Office Live Essentials account. The sign up steps including choosing a domain name which was automatically registered for me by the service, providing my contact information, entering my credit card information and agreeing to the terms of use. The domain I created was http://www.daresofficelivesite.com/ which may not be available until a few hours after this posting. Below are some screenshots of the service, click the images for larger versions of the screenshots.

Member Center - Overview

Web Site - Overview

Web Site - Page Editor

Business Applications - Dashboard

Users & Accounts

In general I think Microsoft has a winner here. My girlfriend used to be a professional photographer and she definitely could have used a service like Office Live. It definitely hits the sweet spot for small businesses. 

However there is a bunch of work that needs to be done. As you can see from the screenshots, the service provides a lot of functionality and options. I think perhaps too much which could be overwhelming to the target audience of small businesses that are likely too small to even have an IT staff. I found features such as the business dash board a bit overwhelming. Another small gripe is that I couldn't set up email accounts because it kept giving me an 'invalid password' error when I tried to create an email account. I assume this is because I was using a weak password but it didn't say that. That was rather irritating and I gave up trying to create a new email account. Thus I couldn't get a screenshot to confirm that the user interface for the hosted email is that of Windows Live Mail. I know the folks behind Office Live will be eagerly awaiting feedback on their product, so give it a shot

I should probably see about asking some of these folks to start blogging if they haven't already. :)

 

Our team has been partnering with the Office Live folks and I've been pretty impressed at how far along they have come in a short time. I haven't been able to blog about their product yet but today I saw a post from Joe Wilcox entitled What Office Live Is Not which gives good insight into the goals of the product.

He writes

Last night, Microsoft lifted the NDA for Office Live, so I am rapidly blogging a day sooner than expected. Office Live goes live--at least in limited beta--tomorrow.

So there is to confusion about Office Live:

* Office Live absolutely is not a hosted version of Microsoft Office. People have asked me if Microsoft is hosting Office applications or would do so in the future. Answers are no and highly unlikely. I don't expect Microsoft to offer a hosted version of Office as part of Office Live. Ever. While Microsoft obviously is concerned about the Web 2.0 concept, the company is not going into the hosted applications business.

Most of the extended capabilities do functionally derive from Microsoft server software, such as Exchange, SharePoint and Project. The service provides basic e-mail and calendaring capabilities (such as might be seen from Exchange), collaboration functions (such as come with SharePoint Portal Server) and for working on projects (such as supported by Project Server).

Based on JupiterResearch surveys, Microsoft's target market of businesses with fewer than 10 employees would be highly unlikely to run server software products like Exchange, SharePoint or Project. Microsoft's approach extends those products' capabilities--and their potential benefits--to the smallest businesses. As those businesses grow, Microsoft has created opportunity for its partners to upsell server software that would maintain and extend Office Live capabilities. Smart.

For now, small businesses would largely consume these services in a Web browser. There are some ties back to Office products, and I expect to see more of these ties with the release of Office 12. I will discuss more of this in another post.

* Google isn't the target here and, in many respects, neither is the nebulous Web 2.0 concept. As I wrote back in November, "Microsoft hopes to generate greater customer value and make new-version Office and Windows upgrades more appealing. MSN has done a tremendous job cranking out new products and services, well ahead of the long Office and Windows development cycles. The point: If Google didn't exist, Microsoft probably still would have embarked on a services strategy."

Microsoft is probably more concerned about a Salesforce.com than a Google here. Microsoft's core business is applications and operating systems. Services like Salesforce.com negate the value of both applications and operating systems, territory Microsoft won't easily cede. It's no coincidence that CRM is a major Office Live feature.

Once the product goes into beta I'll probably do a review along with some screenshots [if the team doesn't mind]. There is definitely good stuff coming down the pipe here.

 

Harry Pierson has a blog post entitled SPARK is Out of the Bag where he writes

As part of the new job, I'm involved in the planning a workshop called SPARK, which Dion Hinchcliffe blogged about this morning. (Dion also writes a blog here - bringing the total to three - so I created a combined feed just to keep track of all the places he writes). My new boss Mike also mentioned SPARK this morning. In the hopes of sparking futher interest (pun intended), here's the overview of SPARK:

SPARK is the first in a series of high-level forums hosted by Microsoft that use a workshop setting to examine “the issues that matter most” in the practice of strategic architecture and produce guidance for the industry as a whole.

Today, new social movements, advances in technology, and forces within business are overlapping to create a landscape glutted with challenges and opportunities. In many cases, these forces have driven the deployment of new technologies and the adoption of new behaviors, adding multiple layers to an already complex set of issues that must be navigated. Architects are searching for a solution that helps manage this complexity.

SOA, Software as a Service, Web 2.0, and Edge are all elements of the solution, but are they the complete picture? Are they a sufficient answer to the issues?  Can they be used together in a productive and efficient fashion? What matters most?

SPARK is an invite-only event and it looks like I was invited. I'm not sure what to expect. On the one hand it looks like one giant game of buzzword bingo with Web 2.0 hypesters and SOA propaganda-ists trying to outdo each other throwing out spurious buzzwords and grand proclamations. On the other hand some of the invitees have me intrigued and it would be good to compare notes on building services for the World Wide Web in today's world with other folks facing the same kind of issues I do in my day job.

I'll definitely be attending this workshop but not the accompanying MIX '06 conference. However I still plan to flip the bozo bit on any idiot that tries to talk to me about Web 2.0 while at this workshop.

 

From the USA Today article Bill would keep servers out of China we learn

Now, Congress is stepping in with proposed legislation that could hobble the companies as they plunge deeper into one of the world's hottest economies. This is Round 2 for Congress. Last year, it scrutinized and slowed other business deals with ties to China's government among oil companies and computer makers.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., is drafting a bill that would force Internet companies including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to keep vital computer servers out of China and other nations the State Department deems repressive to human rights. Moving servers would keep personal data they house from government reach. But that also could weaken the firms' crucial Internet search engines. (Related: AOL tries to speak Chinese.)
...
Google last month launched Google.cn, a version of its No. 1 search engine that prevents Chinese residents from seeing, for example, photos of tanks confronting Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989. Also last month, Microsoft acknowledged shutting down a blog run by a Chinese journalist critical of the government.

Last fall, Yahoo acknowledged giving information to Chinese officials that led to a 10-year prison sentence for a journalist accused of divulging state secrets. Last week, Reporters Without Borders, a journalism group critical of Yahoo's cooperation with Chinese officials, accused it of working with the Chinese government in another case that led to a dissident being jailed. Yahoo said it was unaware of the case.

The companies say they are unhappy with the restrictions yet must honor local laws.
...
Google's site launch came days after it rebuffed a U.S. Justice Department subpoena demanding that it turn over data on how millions of users search the Internet.

In contrast, Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online all cooperated with Justice.

Since this affects my day job I won't comment on it other than to say I find this entire debate very interesting. I will mention that unlike the USA Today reporter who wrote this story I'm not sure that the U.S. government's interest in the IBM/Lenovo or Unocal/CNOOC deals last year is comparable to the current efforts by members of congress.

 

Last month, Dave Winer wrote the following in a post on his blog

Today's been a day for epiphanies, small and large. A small one is that tech.memeorandum.com is not really about technology, it's about the business of technology. Actually it's narrower than that, it's the West Coast-centered technology business. I'd love to see a Memeorandum-like service that focused on technology, the ones and zeroes, and left out the fluff and the bubbles.

I agree a 100% with Dave Winer here. I think the concept and implementation of tech.memeorandum.com is nothing short of fantastic. On the other hand, the content typically leaves much to be desired. For example, this morning's top story is that some analysts are now pessimistic on Google's stock price because they just realized they have competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo. As a technology geek, I couldn't care less about such mindless crap. Like Dave Winer I'm more interested in what programmer types are currently geeking about as opposed to what pundits pontificating on Google vs. Microsoft vs. Yahoo are gabbing about.

I gather that the tech.memeorandum.com algorithm is based on figuring what the current hot topics are among certain A-list bloggers. The problem with this is that most A-list technology bloggers are pundits not technologists. This means they spend most of their time talking about technology companies not technology. There's a big difference between what you'll find on Robert Scoble or John Battelle's blogs versus what you'll see on the blog of Simon Willison or Don Box. I personally would rather see a tech.memeorandum.com that was based on showing me what was hot amongst technology implementers like Simon and Don versus among technology watchers like Scoble and Battelle.  

Ideally, I should be able to customize tech.memeorandum.com so I can treat it as a personal aggregator. I'd love to be able to provide it the OPML for blogs.msdn.com and have it show me what the hot topics were among Microsoft bloggers. From my perspective,  tech.memeorandum.com is a good implementation of a great idea. However it is just the beginning. I wonder who will be first to take it to the next level and enable us to build personalized meme trackers? 

 

Work has been quite hectic the past few weeks so I've gotten behind on checking out the sexy new startups coming out of Silicon Valley. The startup that has recently caught my interest is Edgeio, the brain child of Mike Arrington of TechCrunch.

The most succint post I've found on the company is Edgeio - Mike’s Little eBay Killer by Pete Cashmore where he writes

Essentially, Edgeio is an aggregator for classified listings. You can write a classified ad on your blog, tag it with "listing" and let Edgeio pick it up from your feed. Add a few more tags to describe your ad and Edgeio will grab those too. The service will pick up anything tagged with "listing" and obviously that raises the question of spam. But after speaking to Mike, I’m pretty sure he’s on top of it. For instance, you can claim your blog on Edgeio, just like on Technorati. Claiming your blog means that you are now a "member" and your listings are considered more trustworthy. There are also automated ways to remove the worst of the spam. And then there are the user-powered methods - "report spam" buttons and the like.
...
Last of all: the business model. Unlike about 90% of the stuff that gets labelled (tagged?) Web 2.0, Edgeio actually has one. Actually it has a few, but the main monetization method appears to be sponsored listings - pay 25 cents a day to get your listing bumped up to the top. I would have been tempted to pursue a transaction-based model (ie. you take a cut from every sale), but I can see why Edgeio isn’t taking that path for now - handling transactions is a huge job and requires a reputation system, among other things. (And if Edgeio did build a reputation system, I’m pretty sure it would be portable).

Calling Edgeio an eBay killer is probably a bit hyperbolic, but I do think it points the way to how decentralization will undermine the centralized business models of old. Your little walled garden will never be as large, rich and varied as the content that exists out on the open web.

As you can expect from a "Web 2.0 blog", Pete Cashmore's post is full of hyperbole and leaps of faith but there are some interesting ideas here nonetheless. From a technology perspective I assume that Edgeio depends on microformats just like other metadata-in-your-blog-post initiatives such as Structured Blogging. This indicates to me that there now seems to be general consensus amongst the Silicon Valley startup crowd that building a company based on searching blogs and screen scraping their HTML such as PubSub and Technorati have done is the new hotness.

The more interesting thing to me is that the folks at Edgeio are implying that there is a market for a 'Make this blog post a classified listing' checkbox in traditional blog posting tools. From my perspective as someone who works closely with the MSN Spaces and Windows Live Expo teams this sounds very interesting. There is already some integration planned between both services but I'm not sure this is one of the options that was considered. I wonder how much user validation of this beilief Mike Arrington and company did before going ahead with launching their startup?

As far as business models go, I find it hard to imagine why anyone would consider this an eBay killer. I'm not going to claim that people posting things for sale on their blog and then having that picked up by classified listing services is inferior to eBay's model. However, I wonder why anyone thinks that services like eBay, Craig's List and Windows Live Expo wouldn't jump into this market if it turned out to be profitable. Since there doesn't seem to be any barrier to entry, ability to write a Web crawler and minor HTML parsing is all that is required, I wouldn't start eulogizing  eBay just yet. 

 

A couple of folks at work have been commenting on how the blogosphere has been raving about a couple of recent announcements from Google yet seemed to ignore similar functionality when it showed up in competing products. Here are three examples from this week.

1. In his post entitled I know, cry me a river Reeves Little writes

   Case in point: looks like Google is in some sort of closed beta for a domains service and the digerati are all a-buzz.  Hmmm... turns out some of my colleagues in Redmond launched a new domains service for Windows Live way back in November, it's open to the public AND we have a bunch of folks using it including a slew of universities around the world. 

   I like that there is a Windows Live @ edu video so people can see what the program is like. But as Reeves points out, you don't have to be an educational institution to bring your own domain to Microsoft and have us host your email. With domains.live.com anyone can do that.

2. In his post entitled Hotmail & IM Mike Torres writes

   The web is abuzz with talk of Google's new Gmail feature; Gmail Chat. I'm not too happy about giving one of our competitors airplay on my blog for integration that has been available in Hotmail for years... so instead, I'll take this opportunity to discuss the Hotmail features in a little more depth.  Note that I'm talking about the vanilla, standard-issue Hotmail used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide - not the amazing Windows Live Mail currently in limited beta testing.

    

   If you're already using Hotmail, you may know that Hotmail blended instant messaging with email a while back in a bunch of interesting ways. We started with merging your contact list into a unified list; a project I worked on about three years ago when I first joined MSN. Your Hotmail (or Windows Live Mail) contact list and your MSN Messenger (or Windows Live Messenger) contact list are one and the same - the only difference is that some contacts are "Messenger enabled".  It's fun to see other service providers start to pick up on this concept, as we've always thought this approach made a lot of sense.  A contact is a contact is a contact!
   

   
   Now that you've got your unified contact list... from within Hotmail, you can also see online presence information (online/offline/away) next to any email you receive or from within the Contacts tab (provided you have access to that contact's presence).

    

   Taking this a step further, whenever you receive an email from someone on your contact list, you can "Instant Reply" via IM instead of sending an email. Very handy feature for those of us smitten with IM. The Instant Reply feature immediately pops open a conversation window, complete with voice, video, games, and of course, text chat. No shortage of things to do with your friends here!
   

   
   But one of the great (and somewhat unsung) features in Hotmail is its ability to use MSN Web Messenger (http://webmessenger.msn.com) if you don't have the MSN Messenger client running on your PC. This means you don't have to install anything to get this stuff to sing. It just works for you.  When you sign-in to Hotmail, you immediately - without having to run anything else - have the ability to send and receive instant messages and check to see if your contacts are online.  Of course, things get a lot more interesting if you download MSN/Windows Live Messenger (http://messenger.msn.com) but if you're at a friend's house or at a kiosk in Bali, you don't have to.
   

   The IM integration into all of Microsoft's mail offerings (both Outlook & Hotmail) is something I keep seeing people ignore whenever they talk about IM integration in mail clients.

3. Last but not least is Brandon Paddock's post entitled Want to search all your PCs from anywhere? Use Windows Desktop Search. where he writes

   Want to search all your PCs from anywhere?

   Don’t want all your personal data stored on an advertising companies’ server?

   Then you should try Windows Desktop Search combined with the free FolderShare application.  With FolderShare your data remains safely on your PCs, but you can search, browse, and access your data from any internet-connected PC.  FolderShare added search integration with WDS last summer.  They were acquired by Microsoft a few months ago and the product was made free at that time.

   Also, here’s more discussion about Google’s new "feature."

And that's just this week. Whew...