Archive for June, 2006
Office on a Keychain
The more experience I gain with Office 2.0, the more I realize that some of the rules I stated for it back in January would benefit from some fine tuning. Among them, the requirement not to store any file on one’s personal computer, and the interdiction to use any browser extension. As was suggested by multiple readers in the past, carrying a thumb drive might help solve several problems at once, among them the need to log once for each application being used. [Continue…]
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Mobile Tabs
When your browser is your desktop, your tab bar becomes your most trusted ally. Each tab is used for a specific application, and you move from application to application by simply switching tabs. Problem is, tabs are usually created from bookmarks, which means that you need to import your bookmarks every time you move to a new computer. [Continue…]
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Office 2.0 Phone
Until recently, Skype required that you store your contacts on your desktop or laptop. This reduced mobility, and broke one of the rules for Office 2.0. Skype changed this and is storing contacts online now. Combined with the proper headset, this might make it the first Office 2.0 phone. [Continue…]
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NC Redux
In its original incarnation circa 1996, the concept for a Network Computer (NC) did not really make sense. It offered a fraction of the functionality provided by a regular Personal Computer (PC), at a similar purchase price. But most importantly, nobody really cared. The web was just starting and the promoters of this new platform (Oracle and Sun Microsystems) found it difficult to make a case for it, beyond their common distaste for anything Microsoft. Today, the man who brought us eMachines is having another run at it, and this time around, it seems to be working out a lot better. [Continue…]
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What is Dynamic Process Optimization
This is the sixteenth edition of our weekly BPM 2.0 post. Today, I will try to explain what is dynamic process optimization. A couple of years ago, the tagline for a now-defunct BPM company was “Go ahead. Change.”, and the ability to make rapid changes to processes has always been heralded by vendors as one of the major benefits offered by BPM. Dynamic process optimization is all about taking this idea a step further. [Continue…]
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I Want a Web Event Broker
My good friend Charlie Wood at Spanning Partners just released the excellent Spanning Feed Builder 1.0 on the AppExchange. It gives Salesforce.com users the ability to customize RSS feeds for pretty much any object managed by the online application. The tool is great, but it begs the following question: how many feed processing services do we really need? And shouldn’t we use a generic one instead anyway? [Continue…]
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On Browser Extensions
One of the rules for Office 2.0 is that applications should not require browser extensions or plugins. Nevertheless, some much-needed features, such as delegated opening of email attachments, cannot be supported without them. This raises the question of how such extensions should be developed in order to work seamlessly across web browsers. [Continue…]
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Looking for a Better To Do List
Brian Benzinger at SolutionWatch made another of his incredible posts, this time listing 25 To Do Lists to help you stay productive, and following his truly amazing Fifty Ways to Take Notes. I personally use Salesforce.com to manage my tasks, mainly because it lets me link tasks to any object such as marketing campaigns or sales opportunities. Nevertheless, going through Brian’s list made me think about a couple of areas where to-do lists need to be improved. [Continue…]
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Zoho is Complete
A couple of weeks ago, I described what an Office 2.0 alternative to the beloved Microsoft PowerPoint could look like. Today, the good folks at AdventNet released Zoho Show, which comes really close to what I had in mind, and makes Zoho the first complete Office 2.0 productivity suite. [Continue…]
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XForms 1.1 is Coming
In a recent post, James Governor talked about the upcoming XForms 1.1 specification and how IBM is supporting it in Workplace, refering to an article written by John Boyer, Senior Product Architect for IBM Workplace Forms and co-chair of the XForms working group. Intalio is using Orbeon’s open source implementation of XForms for Intalio|Workflow, and I asked my good friend Alessandro Vernet what their plans were regarding version 1.1 of the specification. Here is a transcript of his answer. [Continue…]
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How to Open Email Attachments
A lunch break with Assaf and the rest of my team brought some interesting discussions on email attachments and Office 2.0 today. Currently, the only way to open a Microsoft Word document using an online word processor such as Writely or Zoho Writer is to save it on the local file system, then upload it to the online application. A one-step approach would dramatically improve the overall end-user experience. [Continue…]
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Why a BPMS Should Support Process Simulation
This is the fifteenth edition of our weekly BPM 2.0 post. Today, I will try to explain why a BPMS should support process simulation. The original BPM 2.0 post suggested that the core process engine should be used as process simulator. Yet, it did not provide much explanation as to why a process simulator is needed at the first place. [Continue…]
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Office 2.0 is going Mainstream
This morning, I received a link to a very nice New York Times article introducing its readers to the concept of web-based alternatives to Microsoft Office. This is one of the first times that a mainstream publication covers this topic. It does not make Office 2.0 a mainstream phenomenon yet, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction, and one that we can learn a couple of things from. [Continue…]
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Dabble DB Rocks
Along with WordPress, Dabble DB powers most of IT|Redux and intalio.com. This Office 2.0 alternative to Microsoft Access not only has the best user interface currently available, but the team developing it — Andrew, Avi and Colin over at Smallthought Systems — is one of the most supportive I came across in my quest for building a good Office 2.0 setup. [Continue…]
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Computer for the Elite
Following recent discussions about high-profile users switching from Mac OS to Linux, Nicholas Carr posted a great article on the PC elite, presenting Linux as the preferred operating system for the techno-savvy elite today. Nicholas’ writing is superb — as usual — and I very much liked the sociological twist he gave to his story — my father was a sociologist. Nevertheless, I had to disagree with Nick on this one. The computer of the elite does not care about the operating system it’s running, for all it needs is a web browser. [Continue…]
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How To Build a Website with Office 2.0
There are many tools one can use to develop a corporate website, ranging from desktop applications such as Microsoft FrontPage to more sophisticated portal offerings such as Alfresco. One can even find some great online applications to do the job, one of the best certainly being NetClime’s SiteKreator. When time came to redesign the intalio.com, I opted for a best-of-breed collection of Office 2.0 applications. Here is what I learned in the process. [Continue…]
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BPMS Challenge
Last week, I challenged my friend and industry analyst Bruce Silver to point me to a BPM vendor that could identify three customers who successfully managed to use its product to build a complex business process that would leverge a Service Oriented Architecture, and managed to do it without writing code and with no technical support from the vendor. If you read the comments that followed Bruce’s post on the challenge, it looks like not all BPM vendors like the idea. I’ll be honest with you, this did not really come as a surprise. [Continue…]
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Office 2.0 Quotes
Apple Computer’s Get a Mac ads are really funny, but I almost preferred the previous ads from the Switch campaign. They showed real people telling you and me why they switched from a PC to a Mac, and I found them to be quite effective. We need the same for Office 2.0. [Continue…]
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Why a BPMS needs a BAM Platform
This is the fourteenth edition of our weekly BPM 2.0 post. Today, I will try to explain why a BPMS should include a real-time BAM platform. In a nutshell, the reasons are the same as why a BPMS should include a Business Rules Engine and which were heavily debated following last week’s article. [Continue…]
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Objections to Office 2.0
When a new thing comes out and threatens the positions of established players, objections are expressed, initially playing Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) out. Counter-arguments are crafted, which then lead to more sophisticated objections. As the debate goes on, objections gain in maturity and start addressing real issues that need to be seriously considered by the promoters of the new thing. Of course, this is true for Office 2.0 as much as it is for anything else, and the debate is only six month old, so we’re still at the FUD stage. Among the objections listed on the Office 2.0 bug tracker, some are expressed more often than not. Here are my top 3 as of today. [Continue…]
