From .com to .org

It is with great pride that I write this post: I have my own domain!

For some time I’d been considering the idea of getting one, but never knew when the right time was or when it would come. I’d had a suggestion from @colinmccarthy that I should get a domain name to host my blog that was small in character length, like my twitter name but when I enquired about getting “mled.com” I was shocked to receive word that it would cost $6500. Apparently four letter domains are hot property.

That pushed the notion away for at least a month until it was re-kindled with the emergence of domains using .me such as pleasedress.me which were suddenly a fashion. Because of the potential for sentences ending in .me I assumed (wrongly) that all .me domains were going to be priced at an even greater premium than .com, but curiosity got the better of me and I checked to see how much .me would cost. To my utter amazement 123-reg listed .me domain names at the same price as .co.uk and .org.uk. I dislike domain names that require you to press full stop more than once and that specify a country of origin; and in keeping with Colin’s wise words decided this was destiny – I should have a .me domain!

I registered http://mled.me and set about working on it in my free evenings. This work, coupled with joining @spode to write articles for thinkabouttech.com has meant that I’ve not posted anything here since Azure was launched. To add further neglect to this poor WordPress.com blog, it is with this post that I say goodbye to it forever – cue the madelines and violins. You are reading the output of a sublimely crafted piece of software which gave me my first real experience of blogging and got me hooked on the communication, discussion, debate and friendship that I’ve come to cherish and occasionally rely upon during quiet evenings.

Some might say, “but it’s just a blog” to which I argue that there’s so much that surrounds that blog – the reading, bookmarks, comments, and other interactions; not to mention themes, plugins and widgets. In short, there’s a vast spiral of other activity that grows out of a blog. Certainly now that I’ve joined thinkabouttech.com I hope to be attending more events, expos and launches like FOWA, with my blogging becoming more interesting, exciting and focused – surely showing how blogging has given me a whole aspect to my life, both digital and physical.

From here on then, my blog posts will be accessible from blog.mled.me and the rss feed can be found here

The scope of opportunity that comes bundled with your own domain is something I’ve not overlooked. If you load mled.me you’ll find it forwards to a twitter page which I’m using as a quick and cheap static site. Preemptive as I am, I’ve written this post on my re-homed Tumblr blog which is now called open.mled.me and I hope that gives some insight into twitter as well as proving there to be method in my madness. Other than the main WordPress.org blog and Tumblr blog, I’m going to be building a wiki for my projects which you’ll find on wiki.mled.me although it won’t be using MediaWiki for much longer as I’ve found something better suited to my needs. There’s also a Posterous account set up to receive funny emails that I forward to it, which you can find at post.mled.me

That’s it. The end of my WordPress.com days, and the start of a new life on my own WordPress.org blog. Thank you and goodnight!

The allure of Azure

It’s here! Microsoft have announced their own cloud to compete head on with the market already established by Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com. It’s called Azure and it’s currently in a beta preview phase. Determined to get their product right, Ray Ozzie has said that they’ll be taking baby steps with the unveiling – for instance there’s no real details yet of pricing.

We must assume that it’s competitively priced at the very least, but I have reason to believe Microsoft will look beyond a competitor orientated strategy and penetrate the market through innovating out the platform in a series of focus strategies. Based on what I saw and heard at Future of Web Apps, I believe that this cloud will be the technology at the core of a much grander picture yet to be painted by Microsoft.

Microsoft’s approach to startups and emerging business is to assist and nurture those building themselves through the supply of technology, licences, advice and introductions. They’re less inclined to acquire a startup and instead build out the business, almost in partnership, so that the future brings more customers their way.

There’s more to this platform than Microsoft have unveiled. I’ve tried out Live Mesh which is an impressive syncing online desktop, and I hope that Azure will mean developers can add to this experience. Next week we can expect another announcement that will be directly targeted at startups and hopefully make clearer where Microsoft are going next with B2B online services. From there I hope we’ll be able to see how this might all start to change the end user experience in time to align with Windows 7 and other offerings.

Intrepid Ibex testing

Over the last 3 weeks I’ve been using the latest beta of Intrepid Ibex, Canonical’s next release of Ubuntu. Because of reconstruction and redecoration of my living quarters, I’ve been restricted to using my laptop for the mean time. The laptop is a Fujitsu Amilo running as it came some 5-ish years ago with 512mb RAM and a 40gb HDD. The only modifications I have made are the removal of its dead battery which gave up about a year ago, somewhat limiting its mobility, and an awkward Linksys PCMCIA 802.11b/g wifi card.

I previously used the wifi card in an old Dell laptop which runs VectorLinux, so I’ve always encountered driver issues and had to run ndiswrapper at the start of every session. This was even the case when this Fujitsu laptop ran Hardy Heron. Imagine my surprise when it worked out of the box with Intrepid.

It’s not just wifi drivers that have been added to Intrepid: previously none of my machines running Hardy were able to make use of my networked printer as there were only drivers for the models above and below it in the product range and it proved invisible across port 9100. I thought I’d give it a shot and sure enough my printer’s drivers appear to have made it in the Intrepid release. Whatever bad tinkering I’d done to network visibility also seems to be resolved. I’m now working on copying this PPD file over to Hardy so other machines can print.

Brightside is a fantastic program for those running machines unable to handle compiz fusion but who wish to be able to jump workspace by moving their mouse off the edge of their screen. Ever since Gutsy Gibbon I’ve neglected the idea of ever being able to run compiz on any machine with less than 1GB RAM and associated specs. However upon installing Intrepid I was shocked to see that all windows wobbled without touching any settings. I believe Intrepid must handle graphics drivers differently, meaning that compiz can run effectively on lower spec machines. The upshot is that I’m able to operate the desktop cube that has always drawn me back to using my main desktop machine instead of just quickly reaching for a laptop. On this basis, I hope that the next release of Ubuntu-eee makes use of graphics better, because in its current form the refresh rate on my EeePC is visibly slow.

The only downside to running this Intrepid beta is in its title – “beta”. There are still bugs, and I’ve submitted a couple to Launchpad to find they were already well known and documented. On average when I run Synaptic Package Manager I receive around 100 updates and fixes per day. With 8 days to go until launch, I’m sure this will continue and perhaps the number will increase. Provided you keep on top of these updates, I deem Intrepid in its current form to be perfectly usable.

Ubuntu 8.10

Many thanks to Canonical, all the developers and contributors that have made Intrepid possible. I look forward to the release party and all the announcements and discussion about the next release in 6 months time.

FOWA London 2008

Last Friday I was extremely fortunate to attend the Future of Web Apps conference in London, hosted by Carsonified. Very many thanks to Ryan Carson and his superb team for putting on the event, but also to all those that attended and made the experience so memorable.

I was there to listen to and learn from the best in the industry. I’m trying to prepare a research proposal for my postgraduate dissertation (MSc International Business Management), so this was the prime opportunity to build a small rolodex of willing contacts who would be prepared to respond to some questions in a couple of months time. In short, I went to work, but I had a surprising amount of fun and gained much more than I expected.

______________________________________________________

Here is an overview of the university sessions:

Inuda talk from Jon Markwell (Founder)

They’re a 5 man team of Ruby on Rails programmers. In a long weekend off, they hacked together HowSociable – a tool to rate a brand name’s presence on social networks and the blogosphere by giving the Coca Cola brand’s online presence the score of 1000 and then using this as a benchmark.

It was a story of how important word of mouth is to get a product out. This wasn’t marketed in any way, and wasn’t even announced except in a note on a wiki. The tool is useful and stood the test of time. Users have started to email feedback and feature requests, offering to pay for the service.

Ways they plan to monetise – premium account with black box so popularity can be recorded over time, page ads perhaps.

Myspace talk from Chris Thorpe (Developer Platform Evangelist)

Sustainable communities and how they are looking to change apps on the API so that they’re profitable over a longer period of time. Myspace are looking to get rid of apps that have a 2 minute shelf life and that never get used after their first use and viral marketing. To do this, they’re launching an app development competition – £10k up for grabs to put their app to work.

This talk was important from a strategic HRM perspective – they’re making workers and outside coders hungry to write apps for them with rivalry and competition.

Marketing was also a big issue because the current system of small, cheap and nasty virally marketed apps has been recognised as not sustainable, not profitable, and actually pushing away end users from the service. The marketing isn’t appealing enough, and users have developed immunities to these style apps.

The competition, then, looks to address and manage these two business problems – spurring coders into fresh ideas on marketable apps.

Microsoft talk from Bindi Karia (VC/Emerging Business Lead)

“Start-up and stay up with Microsoft”

Microsoft take a different approach to Google and prefer to partner with startups than acquire them. Team provides contacts, technologies, licenses, business consultancy and advice, and sometimes cash.

Partnering offers more opportunities for business later on, adding more b2b as well as end users of a product. Partnering also ensures that products are made under Microsoft supervision yet with the fresh eyes staying outside of the company’s influence: allows workers to do what they are best at, innovation goes further.

______________________________________________________

There was a lot to take in from the stalls being run by various SaaS and PaaS providers, startups and others. I had a great time in both the Sun and Microsoft lounges, especially the demo of the Microsoft Surface, which you can see a video or two of on my Qik account. I took the following notes from the stalls around the expo floor:

BookingBug.com is a startup looking to sell their service to small businesses such as plumbers, electricians and so forth. They aim to be a classifieds but with an inbuilt calendar system so that when the business logs in, they can see customer requests for service, and choose to accept that booking. Helps small businesses to manage their time, and customers to see when the business is available for service. Good idea, but how likely are they to get businesses signed up?

Swirrl.com is a wiki service being bootstrapped. They’ve been live for a couple of weeks. 2 man team, very friendly. I was unable to see the difference between this and other wiki services like WetPaint, but I know nothing about programming and real technical workings, so perhaps there’s more to this than meets the eye. Very straight forward freemium business model with 3 levels of paying packages. I can see small and medium enterprises using this as a work and collaboration solution, but due to the quantity of similar wiki services mass or larger scale adoption not happening. I’m sure they’ve thought through the technical side of scaling it, but where’s the unique selling feature that would make everyone jump and grab at it? I definitely do want to give this a try though.

Adknowledge is an ad solutions company, looking to take on Google and Yahoo! with their pay per click system for advertisers. As well as trying to appeal to advertisers, they offer ad solutions up to publishers. They have funding from Technology Crossover Ventures, and can’t really go wrong with their ad business, it just seems that there’s a lot of competition in this arena already. I’d like to talk to them a lot more about monetising through ads and how the model can grow.

AbilityNet provide services for disabled people to enhance their interaction with technology. They’re a not-for-profit charity, backed by Microsoft and others.

Salesforce.com were demonstrating force.com platform as a service which is an incredibly powerful system. Looking around their stall, they demonstrated their services for other businesses, providing sales, crm, marketing, channel management, analytics, customisation, integration, and an app exchange market place. The marketplace was what impressed me the most, a place to trade in apps, it looked so simple and functional. The guys were extremely helpful with answering my questions and I’ll definitely be getting in touch with them at a later stage.

Anish Kapoor (CEO and Founder) from yuuguu demonstrated his cross platform remote assistance technology. Has an installed client for the desktop that launches the request, and then a web portal viewing for the support. Features integration with Google Talk, so the request can take place through your buddy list. This can be sold to consumers and businesses, although I came away confused as to who was the main focus. With services out there like LogMeIn and remote assistance built into Windows Live Messenger, will this take off?

Cmypitch.com is a way for startups to record themselves pitching their company, be rated and advised by other startups on their pitch, and then viewed by potential investors. I take this to be a way of removing the nerve racking experience of pitching that would take place in an office, and maybe saving some time and money for both sides. It’s more than that though: they are another social network, but with a business and video podcasting spin. I assume that businesses will have to pay to be listed in the directory, else there seems to be no way for the site to make money. Nice idea, and I hope it gets adopted by companies to make them more transparent to the community.

Veedow.com is all about “shopping without searching”. I was told to think of StumbleUpon clashed with Amazon. My answer to which is why not partner with StumbleUpon? I assume this will monetise by transaction percentage, and probably ads too.

Skimbit lets you research and compile your research into one page and then share this page with others, a little like delicious bookmarking, but aimed more at collaboration. It’s a nice idea, but I felt it filled a very small niche in the market, and that there are a bunch of other ways I could put together a similar result. I do think that there’s a ton of directions this product offering could be taken. At the moment it reminds me of instapaper, which I used for about 5 minutes and then realised that I saved a lot of time just leaving articles sat in my Google Reader and it was one less page to visit. Skim-in-a-box is great because it lets you put their service into full swing through your own site, a white label service. This and ads on their main site would seem to be monetising sorted.

Empressr is a competitor to SlideRocket. I didn’t get to chat to anyone from their team, so I was just left to guess about it from posters and leaflets.

GoodBarry is a webhost that make running your ebusiness a lot simpler. They have made the complete package of services and tools so that a business can be run through a backend web portal. The demo was impressive, and I’m sure they will attract a lot of customers who are looking to set up an online business but lack time and tech knowledge to do so. The interface was exceptionally clean and very quick to learn your way around. I really liked the live feed of usage, that’s a neat feature. As standard it lets you keep on top of every element to your business and produces stats on everything from page hits to revenue.

Fav.or.it is a blog aggregator, that to me seemed like cheating: it’s like turning your rss feed reader into a blog. You can import content through certain tags, feeds etc and add commentary, or just leave it to gather and publish all that info. What I like is that commenting through the interface actually posts the comment back to the original site that the article came from. Revenue comes from ads by Google, and they’re proudly powered by Sun who had brought a surf machine and internet cafe to the expo for everyone to enjoy.

These are the stalls I got to see, the people I got to speak to, and the interesting leaflets I picked up. Time flew, and as everyone began to pack up, the focus turned to the live taping of Diggnation. Congratulations to Alex and Heather on getting engaged! I had such fun watching this, meeting new people and drinking Google Beers. Marketing genius – provide free beer and people will love your brand. A couple of rounds at Fox bar run by Digg and Facebook finished a thoroughly enjoyable and productive day. Many thanks again to all those that made it happen!

Ubuntu Netbook Remix

Yesterday I installed Ubuntu Eee, the Netbook Remix. I’m very impressed! Testament to it’s functionality comes as this post was written entirely on it. What I like the most is that for the first time, things actually fit on the screen without having to use Alt and dragging, and the font size doesn’t give you a giant headache as you squint to read.

Ubuntu Eee

Installation couldn’t have been simpler. The hardest part was using the program that unpacks the iso onto your usb pen drive. The install onto the EeePC was so simple, it loaded the netbook remix as a live distro from the usb pen and then launched the install shortcut on the desktop for me, must have been set as a startup session. A few simple questions about my name, location and password later, I was partitioning the ssd.

I have partitioned the ssd so that there’s no swap at all. I didn’t deem it necessary as I have 2gig ram installed, and there’s not much room to play with on only a 4gig ssd. I’ve read on eeeuser.com about the pros and cons of not having a swap partition. I don’t fully understand what swap does for performance, but I can say that this is working fine, so I have zero regrets about saving on ssd space.

I had tried Netbook remix out once before when it was first announced on launchpad, but it was quite buggy and the icons didn’t fit into the main window space properly, especially the program names. The difference now is staggering, and this version looks promising. I would definitely buy a netbook/notebook with this installed by the maker.

I’d like to say thank you, on that basis, to the community that put together Ubuntu Eee, because it has made Ubuntu have the qualities I most enjoyed about the Easy Mode on the default Xandros installation to the 701 EeePC: big buttons, simple menus and speed.

When the 701 with the custom Xandros build first came out, there was no way to add icons for newly installed programs, so I spent a lot of time in terminal launching apps like Zattoo player. With Ubuntu Eee, you get the full Ubuntu repos and therefore all the software available through Synaptic package manager. Anything you install appears under the correct menu, just as it would in Ubuntu Hardy, but as a giant icon.

I’ve now used this for about 18 hours, and my observations so far have led me to find a couple of problems. Firstly, I love having a desktop cube and shiny effects, more commonly known as Compiz. Activating those functions completely messed up the screen display, and I lost the ability to have windows in the top tab bar. I will have to play around with this more, because I’m convinced there’s a way to have this view as a rotating cube. I think it’s just a case of disabling wobbly windows and any other features that conflict with the Netbook remix properties.

Cheese working properly

The second is with Cheese, which works, but can’t display properly on first load. I have to launch the program twice and then close the first instance which displays in a way that I can only describe as portrait over landscape – i.e. the control buttons are off the bottom of the screen, the orientation is the wrong way.

Thirdly, I had trouble with repositories. This Ubuntu Eee uses a custom kernel from Array.org, something that in my hurry to get it all working I didn’t take the time to sit back and read about. When I tried to use Synaptic package manager to update my sources list (having ticked archive.ubuntu.com in Settings, Repositories) and check for software updates, it was reporting errors fetching the lists, and reported the error “Media Mismatch”. I fixed this by opening Accessories, Terminal and then navigating to apt with “cd /etc/apt”.

Once in here, “ls” told me that there were two places to look through to find the list of sources: sources.list and array.list (located inside a sub directory called “sources.list.d”). I opened up each of these two lists with “sudo nano sources.list” or “sudo nano array.list” (having performed “cd sources.list.d”) and first disabled the array.org source in array.list by adding # to the front of that line. I then started a process of elimination: I changed sources.list so that only one source was active and all the rest from archive.ubuntu.com were inactive with #, I allowed Synaptic package manager to reload after every line change. I figured out the clash was with array.org because of the custom kernel, eventually.

I added some software, such as Xchat and all the Gstreamer plugins, and then turned the Array.org sources back on, because I’d like to continue to use this custom kernel. I’m yet to finish reading about it completely, but it seems attractive because I used to have to run RiceeeyTweak every time I performed a kernel upgrade on standard Ubuntu Hardy to re-install MadWifi and the other fixes for the EeePC.

Lastly, the volume control on the system notification panel displays is muted, even if the volume is way up and playing music. I suppose this is better than it being muted and stuck that way, because then I’d have no music, but it’s a little odd. If I turn the volume up, when I next turn the system on it will be back muted. *Edit* Fixed by re-installing the Alsa package, guessing this got slightly messed up during install somehow.

I’ve been listening to the Ubuntu UK podcasts for the last couple of days, and noted that Mark Shuttleworth and Co seem to be very keen on pushing Ubuntu into the mobile and small form factor spaces. LiMo is making big waves on devices and so I’m glad to see that Ubuntu Netbook remix is coming along so well to push the Canonical brand.

I will be keeping this version of my favourite distro installed on this 701, and I’ll be keeping it up to date with any changes available from the Array.org repo. I highly recommend this to anyone with a netbook/notebook looking to try out an OS different to the one it came preloaded with.

Ways of screaming, “LOOK AT ME!”

What do the following companies have in common? Ebay, Facebook, Myspace and Microsoft (please suggest others in comments).

Answer – they’ve all launched an ‘open’ platform for developers in the hope of stimulating or rejuvenating their core business. It seems that in the web world, once a company hits a certain size/maturity level that throttles and chokes the development of new ideas, the trend is to throw out an element to the developer space in the hope that something better will come from it. But is that always necessarily the case? They could just sell stuff.

Let’s compare that notion to Amazon who launched S3 and their suite of web services with an immediate openness so that it would be embraced from the word ‘go’ by developers as a strong yet flexible tool. Granted it’s in a different arena, but is there something to be said here about having an open strategy from the beginning of a business’ operations?

As well as opening up another chunk of their site, Ebay have partnered with a Vietnamese startup. This type of behaviour is not new from Ebay who, quite sensibly, have in the past collaborated or acquired national/local level auction sites in Asia to gain the specialisation of language and culture. One wonders if they’d adapt their structure in the future to take the trading down to a much more local level in Craigslist style, or if they’d look to go social by pushing their own messaging systems and allow greater in-site sharing on top of their current activities loading Ebay widgets into every other social network on the web.

When putting my face on the Zuckspace, my concerns lie primarily in what the media and authorities tell me about privacy, and then my experience as a consumer begins to become tiresome with the constant nagging of a thousand different invitations to join up to some virally marketed application with zero useful functionality. Imagine a parallel world where from day 1, Mark had opened doors on thefacebook to the developer community and attracted business through being 100% public about changes to services, rather than the ‘by-the-way we added this’ approach. Myspace wouldn’t have stood a chance, and maybe we’d have a half decent set of apps that are useful for our daily routines. It sickens me how much VC money goes into widgets and such, with no real revenue coming back out.

I think openness is something that business analysts should start to use to gauge the level of maturity or desperation of a company. Perhaps in some instances it’s just something of a gimmick in which case the company in question should be exposed as a surfer of the trend wave. Opening a developer platform or a part of your product is a huge move, and any company taking steps down that path should learn to walk before they start to run. I look forward to a time when VCs and angels see in potential investments the strength of an idea that embraces community, social and open concepts in a sensible and straight-forward blend. As the last couple of years have seen the web turn social, it is certain that the immediate future holds for someone the opportunity to make a big win by finding the perfect business model and in my opinion that will find its roots in the beekeeper open source example.

Openness for the purpose of having some hope to clutch on to as your firm levels off isn’t something anyone should push for, so instead we should ask these maturing companies to get smart and openly talk to each other. The future lies in good communication and the portability of services. EA Maxis have released their new game Spore which is the perfect example for what I’m trying to illustrate – there’s a real market out there for products that make sharing information simple and that blur the boundaries between our online and offline experience. The ability to make YouTube videos of game play and add them in-game is incredible, and I hope that GameVee take note of where games like Spore are going, and try to get some good partnerships in motion with game makers.

The directions that companies in the general tech but especially web2.0 fields need to be looking at are vertical (online and offline – helped already by Google Gears and Yahoo! Browser Plus), horizontal (desktop, laptop, giant plasma screen, UMPC or cell/mobile/smart phone – lets have a seamless experience wherever) and everything else in between which I’m naming ‘diagonally’ for want of a better word (integrating and cooperating with services provided by others that could make for sensible partnering and sharing). We’re all still waiting on total perfection in the ‘horizontal’ direction: I’m talking about mobile browsing and the recognised unfulfilled potential.

The latest developer craze is surely all about Apple’s shiny new iPhone (or not). VC activity is bound to go off the scale as startups show the world how you really make use of a platform. I’m praying that mobile platforms generally, whether Android or LiMo or iPhone, find productive and helpful apps housed, and that they don’t spin out of control like social network platforms have all seemed to. I’d love to be able to take ‘digital nomad’ really mobile… or rather, on my mobile. Currently that project is, for me, simply limited to getting all my operations inside a browser.

Firefox 3 has been officially released today, and hopefully now that’s out of the way Mozilla can take a step back and analyse their next moves on mobile platforms. Being a browser maker, they certainly sit in a favourable position, one in which they could stand to soak up an even greater number of users should they adapt products for ‘touchy’ devices.

Unsurprisingly RIM’s Blackberry line up contains a touch phone, and the phrase ‘line up’ is the exact reason that they’re going to keep making money despite just how great the new iPhone might be – there’s so much more choice for consumers. Besides, let’s not forget the business users that swear by them and their hardcore functionality.

Now that Windows 7 is in motion and we have days of staring at our grubby finger prints to look forward to, I think it’s high time that Windows Mobile caught up with Apple’s shiny software. I make no apology for using the word ’shiny’ twice next to ‘Apple’ – I’m no Mac Fanboy, I just think they deserve credit for making flashy (even though, laughably, Adobe Flash STILL isn’t on the iPhone) gizmos that everyone else can copy and make more practical. Microsoft need to push and push their speed at rolling out products and services because I don’t think it’ll be long now before their competitors gain enough market share and publicity to make everyone locked into their brand able to see the shiny stuff and lust after it.

Talking about the Big 3 (and AOL) is unavoidable in this blog post, and I’m not sorry about that. I’ve been avidly following this drama for months and have watched Microsoft’s obsession with joining the online advertising business grow. I strongly agree with Henry Blodget’s latest comment that this isn’t what Microsoft needs, it should focus on corporate business and make its core products so strong that they keep hold of their oligopoly.

I ca(h)n’t take this (bad pun? I don’t care) obnoxious muscling in on affairs and trying to force a sale just as much as I can’t believe how resilient (perhaps arrogant) Jerry has proven to be. He’s frozen the hiring, offered up a package to his quitting employees, and signed the deal with Google. Most incredible of all is just how severed any ties are with Microsoft and how badly this is reflecting on stock, as raised by NYT’s Joe Nocera. So what’s next?

I was so convinced at one stage that Microhoo would happen, and now it hasn’t I’m keeping my lips sealed. Others have not, and think that whilst Yahoo! would do well from acquiring AOL, it’s not going to happen because Microsoft will continually inject an offer that’s higher than Jerry’s, both out of spite for that poison pill and to feed the ad obsession.

REEELOOOAD!!!

“Had to reload, had to rewind. It’s a standard reset, no long ting.” – MC Skibadee @ NYE/NEC Drum n Bass Event 2008

Whilst I would hardly deem the tactics “standard”, the Microsoft-Yahoo state of play has seen this reload/rewind situation unfold, with Yahoo! trying to back-pedal their rejection of Microsoft’s $33 offer. After the last 5 days of frantic maneuvering we can’t predict what comes next, but we can say that it won’t take long to happen.

My internet connection has been wobbly over these last few days, making blog-reading a challenge and quite exciting when the bursts came in. All sorted now. This screen shot taken of my Gmail shows just how much coverage the pair have had:

It seems that for a time I was the only person happy that Microsoft had walked away from the deal. I’m a big user of Yahoo! services, mainly flickr and delicious, and don’t want anything to change with these services. I also like that there are a “Big 3″ of the internet – Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! – because everything in this universe comes in 3’s (a theory that will discussed in the future on my openness tumblog).

The question on everyone’s mind now is “What’s next?”

We’ve seen a real shambles of negotiation, and I enjoyed reading Henry Blodget’s extensive coverage where he discusses the seemingly amateur nature of a certain CEO’s performance. I believe that walking away from this deal came from Steve Balmer losing his temper combined with a slight delusion that this could be a smart move if it drops the Yahoo! value to a price that’s “not a dime more” than what it ’should’ be; but also because Jerry Yang has been a very stubborn founder throughout this period and has refused to accept that his company is worth anything less than what he sees it as being worth. To both sides of this equation: GET REAL. Please take some time to think properly about the outcome, where you want to end up, and what decision your stakeholders really want you to arrive at.

Either Microsoft and Yahoo! will get back to the table and work out a deal properly for a value currently estimated at $34, or the walking away gesture finds its roots and we watch Yahoo! get tied up with Google and AOL. I’m still semi astounded that despite the deadline for decision making, despite the supposed end to all this with Microsoft walking away, and despite the real flux that respective valuations have found themselves in, we are all STILL confused as to what will come next, and there’s still more than one potential outcome.

My next question is who will be in Microsoft’s sights next? Microsoft need to adopt a web presence and they seem unable to do that without acquisition. Could they snatch up AOL like pulling the rug out from under Yahoo!s feet? Peter Kafka believes Facebook (SAI 25 Live no.1 spot at the moment) could be an option. That’s not wildly inappropriate seeing as Microsoft have already bought an ad slice of the ZuckSpace. If they’re looking for a social network, LinkedIn might be an option which they could go on to leverage for business use, although something tells me they’re looking to spend serious cash to ensure a better chance against Google.

Microsoft’s latest offering Live Mesh is being deemed by many harsh (and overly critical) M$-hating journalists as an idea that completely misses the point. I can see what they mean, having run my Digital Nomad project, all services are moving to the cloud so that user experience is the same across platforms, and we only have to worry about the browser we use. They are missing this huge glaringly obvious fact though – just because web2.0 means you CAN doesn’t mean that everyone in the world DOES yet.

The cloud represents the next phase in technology and human interaction with it, that’s unquestionable. At this point in time there are problems- it creates concerns about privacy and security, not to mention the fact that not every computer in the world is connected to the internet. Mesh is the right idea for Microsoft at this phase in their product life cycle, because it sees their users encouraged to own all the devices that are available and effortlessly (ok, that part remains to be seen) sync them all and use them from other devices.

This mesh system looks to start the paradigm shift from local desktop activities to a harmony of synchronised files, tasks and processes on a series of machines and devices using the cloud to achieve this. Presumably users can also expect some flavour of collaboration and sharing experience to go hand-in-hand with this. We can assume that stage 3 of this system would then look to migrate users entirely out onto the cloud.

In the same way that Microsoft’s size and maturity makes quick and scaled change a real mission, it can look to its heavy adoption by users worldwide to make this thinking acceptable. For the mean time, having a stronger web presence seems out of reach, and acquisition is Microsoft’s only smooth route. Developing that web presence would give them time and means with which to build up services ready for integration with Live Mesh, but wait – wouldn’t that mean Microsoft would be pioneering user experience and the relationship between local and cloud based features?

Steve, you should have bought Yahoo!

Options? Great… Pick one!

The Microhoo situation has made some considerable developments since I last posted on the subject. Sadly though Jerry and his board haven’t made their minds up yet, but that’s justified to an extent now that so many interesting options have presented themselves. Next Tuesday we’ll get to see Yahoo’s earnings report which will (hopefully) give everyone a big clue as to where this is going. Of course other Q1 numbers that will prove interesting are those of AOL – rumoured to be down to the tune of 25-30%. Platform A is being streamlined, which has a short term cost cutting win and could be used to adjust the compatibility of the team for any longer term aspirations such as say a merger with Yahoo!

AOL’s moves as of late have been focused on turnaround. First Bebo was acquired for $850 million, allowing AOL to own a social network and have access to a lot of users. This huge jigsaw puzzle piece will give AOL what it needs over the next few years to allow it to compete with the big players on the Internet. Combined with Platform A, it means they can keep everything that’s ad revenue based in house which is much more respectable than just outsourcing to Google; aka admitting defeat or Yahoo’s great idea. Platform A has taken on Verizon’s web and mobile properties, offering AOL a real opportunity to lead innovation on how to target ads at the mobile internet and its ever increasing number of users. Ultimately whoever gets this right first will hit the jackpot, and the brain power Google has at its disposal makes competition high, so teaming with Verizon on this journey boosts AOL’s chances of success.

Next up, relationships have been built to boost usability and accessibility of AIM, but in this field allowing Google to merge GTalk contacts with AIM buddies is not admitting defeat to Google. It’s a sensible move because it keeps hold of those users that were slowly discovering that the switching costs of going to Google might actually be cheaper and more efficient; as well as being in line with the trend wave of opening up access for communication through web2.0’s like Meebo.

On April 15th, Sphere announced it had been bought buy AOL. Sphere started as a blog search engine that would compete directly with giants like Technorati and Google Blog Search, but it rapidly differentiated itself by becoming a related content engine. In short, it allowed blogging to link itself and search through the big news media sites, generating related stories from big news sites when viewing a blog. This acquisition will now sit squarely inside AOL’s content sites. AOL has been doing a good job of keeping these content sites fresh and relevant, with their recent launch of a women’s lifestyle site for example. There have been other acquisition moves that have made important differences to AOL’s sites and using Platform A ads on them, such as Goowy Media the widget makers and Perfiliate Technologies the Internet marketing specialists. The complete chain looks something like this:

AOL Content sites –> Bebo and public blogging of content –> Platform A ads generate revenue –> Back to start

As dumbed down as this might seem, it’s important to realise that AOL were lacking some of these critical elements (or components of these elements) only a few years ago; and that if they’ve got their heads sewn on properly, they’ll figure out how to make something of the mobile web. At least there’s a clear path that cash is flowing in, and it’s an encouraging direction. But it seems to me that there are two thought patterns or objectives at work inside the top management think-tank. The first objective shows us we have a company that’s trying to pull off this turn around and stand on its own two feet, whilst the opposing decision makers want to see AOL sold to Yahoo! (or anyone that will realistically buy them) to make some cash for TimeWarner.

Does no one else see the problem with this? Right now, having two objectives creates no conflict as they are both achieved by boosting the company’s size, revenue… essentially every method you have of measuring the success of a company. The problem arises when Yahoo! caves to M$’s persistence and leaves AOL out in the cold, or when something similarly devastating takes place in an environment outside of AOL’s control. We are going to see top management fighting it out over which path is right for them, with little or no consideration for the end user.

Digital Nomad… the conclusion

At the last LUG meet, I presented my findings from the Digital Nomad project I undertook, along with wifi encryption hacking (in theory). This project was started because of hard disk failure, complete paranoia at ever losing anything, and curiosity – can you JUST use a browser and some cunning Web2.0 offerings to run your life? (See Running your life and BACKUP posts) It has now officially concluded and I’m very proud to say the answer is YES! I gave myself bonus points for services that are free or dirt cheap.

Here’s the full list of services that come with the MLED “I like this” seal of approval:

Google Docs: If you have a Gmail account, utilise all the associated features to the fullest. You can put almost all your eggs in this one basket – Google provide blogging, reading, email, calendar, docs & spreads, photos, and they even have had a stab at social networking. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The best news is that Google Gears is being extended to include Google Docs, making this even more suited to serious and/or business needs. Gears lets you continue everything off-line, essentially your work is backed up and collaborated/shared as soon as you go online. Big thumbs up for Google.

Zoho: Google’s offerings have this superb competitor. They seem to be leading the way on some of their innovations, I’ve not found better or an alternative. This is very seriously geared towards businesses, and they do charge for heavy usage. Features that look particularly note worthy are Invoice, Projects, CRM and DB & Reports products. I have stopped using this suite because Google is too convenient and easy for me, but if you’re seriously looking to undertake a shift to the web-centric domain, do NOT ignore Zoho.

Scribd: The YouTube of documents. At the end of this year, I’ll probably upload some of my notes to actually participate in the sharing. This site has a great store of docs, white papers and articles and uses ads to monetise. I have found it immensely helpful as a resource so far, but it’s not quite like Wikipedia in terms of quick access to general knowledge. It’s the opposite angle to document making Web2.0 suites – it wants you to upload all your old notes and documents for sharing in the cloud, rather than providing you with a way to make new ones. They have an API and some interesting ways of embedding documents, presumably aimed more at journalists. I could see some potential uses for this as documents backup and hosting technical manuals.

Seeqpod: If my mp3 player is not pumping beats into my brain, then Seeqpod is how I now get at music. It’s superb. You can build playlists or just randomly search/stumble your way around tunes.

Flickr: Yahoo! did good. I absolutely love Flickr, and it is serves as a backup as well as a way of publicly displaying photos for me. I have forked out for a pro account so that I can freely display and store as much as I dare. A lot of people use Facebook for photos, but I’m not in favour of this as it cuts down images, doesn’t quite have the same freedom as “sets” and “collections”. But lets face it, Flickr is designed specifically for photos, whereas Facebook is now something of a joke where I now get spammed by silly application invitations.

Liquid Planner: Worth a click if you’re a manager. As the title might suggest, it makes planning easy and fluid. I have yet to properly start using this, so I can’t really give too much feedback on how it handles, but the account I have, the interface, and the feature list are all very impressive. A lot of people talk, blog about, and use Basecamp for business, and based on its popularity alone I recommend it in the same breath. I’ve not tried it though, so it’s not properly featuring in this list.

Jungle Disk: Storage and backup pleasure. Uses Amazon S3 at the moment, and should another company like M$ or Google release an alternative then I’m sure the company will explore using those as a back-end. They’re working on version 2.0 of the software which is already cross platform and superb. They’ve just taken on a new worker and announced a bundle of features that they plan on adding.

Meebo: Messaging made easy. I have messaging accounts on Yahoo, MSN, GTalk, Jabber and I’m looking into AIM now that they’ve partnered with Meebo and started to crawl back into the spotlight. Before I used Pidgin to unite all those accounts in one window, but now I use Meebo because it does the same but inside a browser. As a bonus, they have some products that they’re constantly adding to and updating, my favourite so far being the Meebo Me blog plugin —->

Netvibes: Homepage 2.0 and they’re French! This makes the perfect home page as you can literally put anything in a widget, so I no longer have to visit MySpace and wade through ads to check my messages, nor do I have to visit online comic pages. I’m probably missing out on half the features they have because I honestly haven’t found time to explore, but it’s certainly very powerful and worth looking at.

Blist: I got an email from them yesterday saying they’ve added social features – i.e. proper collaboration and sharing with permissions. This is a superb place to work on and collaborate on databases, and more specialised than Zoho’s offering I think.

Remember the Milk!: A reminders plugin for Gmail that sits where relevant text ads would normally be in the right hand column. This is incredibly useful for both simple and comprehensive to do lists. There’s also a plugin for Google Calendar that I haven’t explored because it provides text message reminders just like Google Calendar does, and I was worried that I’d get the two confused or conflicting.

I Want Sandy: My new PA! Remember the Milk! has passed by for me now because I Want Sandy acts fairly human and allows you to add entries to task lists and a calendar via text message, texting you back with reminders. UK residents need to communicate with the service via Twitter at the moment because it doesn’t have phone support for networks other than O2 UK and T-Mobile UK (I think). Twitter is the future, so even if your phone network is supported out of the box, grab a Twitter account anyway.

The concept of Digital Nomad is something I’ve come to both enjoy and rely upon, but with the good comes some disadvantages. Whilst you have a free (£/$/€) set of apps that you can access on literally any internet connected device, it limits you to such devices. Being permanently connected can prove costly in certain areas of the world! Additionally, I think it’ll be a long while yet before professional and specialist tools such as video, music and photo editing suites reach the internet platform. So don’t throw out your computer and bulky software suites yet, there’s still a few years of life needed from them. But what this project has shown is that being on a public terminal or a friend’s laptop shouldn’t slow you down if you’ve got the right service accounts.

For Kluggers: here is the link to the wifi hacking tutorial I discussed at the meet.

AOL’s turnaround strategy

AOL has been a company that has seen some slowdown recently. I wouldn’t go so far as to compare them to Yahoo! but lets face it – if they hadn’t had a drastic re-think about where they’re going, AOL were headed for being bought out.

So what have we seen from them recently that proves this new thinking? An entry on the Meeblog announced that Meebo were entering an alliance with AOL. Today Kevin Rose pownce-messaged a Digg story about AOL and their purchase of the social network Bebo for $850 million.

At the moment in the web 2.0 domain, we are seeing the tech giants looking to lower their costs and continue with their organic growth, while smaller firms and startups rush around like mad things trying to innovate the industry. The balance of this rain forest should hold up through the coming recession as the big players look to take on their favourite picks of those inventive startups.

What we have seen from AOL has been their top management frozen, satisfied with their position and not really pushing the company on to new heights. What has resulted has seen other firms like Google and Facebook enter the market and start to gobble up the revenue. Mention of the name AOL to me conjures the image of a company matured and resistant to change.

So it comes as a great relief to me to see that they appear to be concerned about their profitability – seeking alliances and acquisitions. With such a large company here, the “Big Bang” instant turn around is much less of an option, reassuringly they pursue something of a market adaptation strategy which will allow them to evolve and rejuvenate. After all, we all remember AOL as that company that gave away CDs with free internet and a bundle of warez that slowed down your Windows machine to a grinding pace.

Bring it on AOL! Let’s see your offering in this age of web 2.0 and beyond, we await your contribution to the revolution. Take your time though, because incremental change is surely the way to secure your longevity.