Yes, it is, as well as for many other past articles.

I will need to find some time for it.

Take care!
 -Ismael

Isn’t it time to update this list?

Your faithful human-CRON friend…

I don’t think that putting data out into third parties is going to solve this part of the problem. In fact, it seems like it would accelerate the duplication of information. Services like Plaxo and LinkedIn start to address sharing data, but not from an enterprise perspective.

Of course, dealing with enterprise data strategy is not as sexy as using the latest Google tools, but from a business priority standpoint, it seems equally critical as generating data.

So I guess it depends on who the real users of Office 2.0 will be. At this stage it seems to me to be mainly personal, home office, very small companies — less than 10 people, and students. And of course it’s interesting that the only company that seems to really know how to make money off this group is Google, by selling access to eyeballs.

While I support Office 2.0, I do think that these objections should be taken far, far more seriously than they are taken here. While I’ll go along with you on the “offline” one, your response to the other two is inadequate, IMHO.

Primitive Feature Sets

While everyone knows that most people don’t use most of the features of rich applications like Microsoft Office, and users are often confused by complex applications, the problem is that the subset of useful features is different for each person. Since it is a royal pain if everyone in a company or workgroup doesn’t use the same tools, this naturally leads to choosing the most full featured one.

Attempts have been made in the past to create simple, trimmed-down applications, even by Microsoft, but they have failed fairly dramatically in the marketplace. They were tried in the mid- to late-90’s and fell flat. Microsoft’s response to this failure was to add interface features in Office that hid the more complex features until they were actually needed, thereby reducing the cognitive “footprint”.

Protect My Data

I believe the fear here is not one of invasion by outsiders. SaaS providers are likely to have much better security than the typical user. Instead, the problem is putting your data in the hands of others, and being subject to a variety of problems:

- The SaaS company may go out of business.

- The SaaS company’s employees may be careless. The current scandals in the federal government (lost laptops with private data) is enough to indicate a real problem.

- The SaaS company may be bought by another company and they discontinue the product.

While some of these issues can probably be addressed in Office 2.0, they should definitely be taken seriously.

Paul Topping

We have developed a similar concept for the Windows platform and specifically for Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. Do take a look at the Live Documents website. Would love to connect directly to see if what you are conceptualizing for the Mac platform is congruent to our approach.

Cheers,
 -Sumanth

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing.

I hope you’ll be successful, for I know many Mac users who could use this.

I hope you don’t mind my cross-posting this contribution to mydreamapp.com, a competition to design a new Mac killer app, where I introduce my idea for a STOD app : sync to on-demand. My Office 2.0 setup is built with the same services as yours, plus client applications on my Mac, which address the objections mentioned above.

Hope you like it,
 -Rup

STOD is Sync to OnDemand

On-demand (hosted) web services are great: you may be using one professionnally, or may also be a Web 2.0 service-addict for your own personal use. They have numerous advantages: hosted, usually good or excellent availability, you always have the latest version, free or low monthly subscription, no installation on your site, no maintenance on your site, no hardware on your site, etc.

However, they do have their drawbacks :
- Online : you need to be online to use these services, except for those which offer a sync feature
- Performance (speed) : although it is usually very good for a web site, it is low compared to local client applications running on your own Mac
- Usability : although Web 2.0 has much improved user interaction possibilities with web sites (vs. HTML), you are still stuck in a very basic user interface limited by your browser(s) capabilities and the web-page concept; this is much, much less nice than your usual applications on your Mac.

So, just imagine if you could join the great advantages of on-demand services with the perfect (no less!) usability, power, beauty of your Mac desktop: you have a STOD application (sync to on-demand).

This is a sync engine which sucks the data from your favorite on-demand service(s) onto you personal Mac, syncs them with .Mac on the way to give you access from all your different home/work/play Macs. It is delivered with CRUDL (Create, Read, Update, Delete, Link) user-interface consoles tuned for the specific service you usually use online, but with the best design of a Mac user-interface. Imagine a Mac app designed like Delicious Library or iSale, but for your favorite on-demand web service!

Here is my rating for my idea vs. the MyDreamApp competition’s criteria:

A) Innovation and Creativity : ***** (5/5)
This has never been done. I have been waiting for this application for 2 years, and not seen anyone mention anything like it. That is why I have started prototyping it, spending most of my time looking out for the technologies (now available) to implement it with.

B) Use of OS X and Leopard technologies : ****. (4.5/5)
Integrated with many desktop Mac applictions, STOD applications will also rely on lower-level Tiger and Leopard technologies like Spotlight, CoreData, TimeMachine, etc.

C) Feasibility of Development : ****. (4.5/5)
This has already been prototyped — more in future posts

D) Mass-Market Appeal : ***** (5/5)
I hope STOD applications (for business on-demand services) will simply be the Trojan Horse we have been waiting for to introduce the Mac massively into the entreprise.

Look out for future posts detailing each feature.

Beyond bringing valuable on-demand services right to your Mac, the STOD concept is the door open to a stream of Mac applications working locally with seamlessly-synced business services data and, turns those service platforms into an extension of the Mac and its .Mac/iDisk sync model.