Web 2.0, meet Software as a Service.
SaaS, meet Web 2.0.
You two need to talk. You’re working on many of the same problems, but you don’t communicate well, and sometimes it seems like each of you barely knows that the other exists.
Tag Archives | Tech & Trends
The “Lamest Feature Ever” on a Corporate Weblog
All right, it’s probably not the lamest one ever. But it’s the lamest one we’ve seen in quite a while.
Sprint has a weblog that lists podcasts the company has created. That’s fine. But for some reason the site has a prominent tool to let the user change the background highlight color used in the weblog’s graphics. Not the whole background, just the highlight color. And there are only four choices.
Understanding the full impact of the web
This will probably sound crazy, but despite all the hype about Web 2.0 and web startups, the most common mistake we see tech companies making with regard to the web is underestimating its long-term impact on their businesses.
I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s a reaction to the Internet bubble — because the short-term effects of the web were oversold, people also tuned out the long-term effects. I know some companies are so settled in their current franchises that they don’t understand how vulnerable they are over time to the changes taking place in the marketplace. Others take the web very seriously in one respect, but don’t understand its full impact across their entire company.
To understand what the web is going to do to our businesses, you have to look at it as both an application development platform and a new communication medium. Either change alone would have huge impacts, but the two together are especially powerful. Here’s what we see happening in each area, followed by some ideas on what they mean for businesses.
Yahoo Partners with Motorola: Should You Care?
Yahoo and Motorola recently announced a multi-year deal where Motorola will pre-load Yahoo Go for Mobile on “tens of millions” of mid-priced and high-end Motorola phones. The deal is similar to the deal Yahoo and Nokia struck in January. Currently, Yahoo Go for Mobile is available in US only from Cingular on a single Nokia phone (S60-based Nokia 8862) available since February. 5-10 models are shipping with the service in Europe and Asia.
Web 2.0 Takes Another Step Forward
Market analyst powerhouse Gartner recently came out strongly behind Web 2.0, which we and others see as another step toward the Web 2.0 vision. While Gartner expects the majority of Global 1000 companies to adopt some technology-related aspects of Web 2.0 by 2008, companies will be much slower to adopt the social dimensions of Web 2.0.
Flash: The New Computing Platform?
The newly-merged Adobe/Macromedia is rolling out ambitions plans for Flash, its Web animation tool. Most of the tech community is expecting there to be a battle between Adobe and Microsoft over Web graphics, but we think the competition goes a lot deeper than that, to the heart of the Windows franchise. We think Adobe is trying to make Windows irrelevant, and it might work.
To explain what’s happening, we have to spend a little time discussing what exactly an operating system like Windows is. To a computer scientist, an OS is the software that enables computing hardware to work. It manages the basic operations of the system (thus the name), so applications can perform the tasks desired by a designer or user.
Are the Mammals Eating Your Eggs?
Clients ask us lots of questions, but with the world buzzing about Web 2.0 and software changing in some pretty significant ways, one question that clients should ask but never do is, “Is my company becoming a dinosaur?” Maybe it’s because people don’t want to know, or perhaps Rai Wasner, a former colleague, had it right years ago when he said that life can be pretty good for the last dinosaur as you seem to have the whole swamp to yourself.
Once you stop innovating, you’re stuck in the status quo, and if—really when—the world changes, you’ll be unable to adapt. Your company’s name will be added to the corporate “Where are they now?” file.
As a public service, Rubicon Consulting has compiled a list of signs that your company may not be as nimble and innovative as it needs to be to defeat challenges from upstart competitors.
Software as a Service: The New Cargo Cult
The big buzzword at April’s Software 2006 conference was Software as a Service. What does it mean, what impact will it have, and what should companies do about it? Former Oracle exec Ray Lane, now a venture capitalist, listed the key attributes of hot new software companies. They included software that’s viral (anyone can download it and try it out), that generates value for an end user (so they’ll have an incentive to install it), that doesn’t require any data entry or training (so users can work with it instantly), and that generates immediate value (he called it "value first, pay later").
New Drivers for Digital Video Editing: A Personal View
My experience over the past year with digital video (DV) makes me wonder if the market is changing in important ways that are perhaps not being picked up by the market. Like so many parents, I bought my first camcorder after the birth of my first child. My wife and I took lots of video the first few years, and I spent many, many, many hours turning the first couple of years into a decent—but not great—movie. By the time my son turned six, I had four years of partially edited video and was falling further behind even though we were taking less video and I had better software. Suddenly, a year ago I started taking a lot more video and within days turned it into dozens of five to eight minute videos kids and adults love to watch.
I don’t have a whole lot more time on my hands, so what changed? Hint: the difference is not the fabulous editing software now available for consumers, nor any of the snazzy little DV cameras on the market. It is more fundamental than that.
CTIA: Thin Phones and Fat Interfaces
The recent CTIA show in Las Vegas was awash in new mobile phones. If you didn’t make it to the show, here’s one highlight and one lowlight: