The whole 'online office' thing

Sometime between yesterday and today, Sabeer Bhatia (creator of Hotmail) released Live Documents; a service exclusively for Microsoft Office, which allows you to do all the things you can with Google’s and Zoho’s applications, but now with Office. Personally, I feel like this is the tagging thing all over again!

We already have enough players in the ‘office on the web’ market, and very frankly, I don’t think the user count of the existing one’s is good enough for one more to popup. I know people prefer to stick to the desktop versions, simply because they’ve grown used to it, and most of the time they’re on the move and hence not connected. People who use office applications at a high frequency are mostly executives. I’ve yet to meet an executive who lives outside of Outlook, and by default, Microsoft Office. If you’re on a Mac, it has to be iWorkOr by the looks of it, Office 2008 for the Mac. In both cases, you’re offline because it’s faster and you have many more features than a web counterpart.

But most importantly, there is nothing new that these services have to offer, except for the technology they use, which only increases their speed and to a very small degree, what they can do. Google brought in AJAX, and Live Documents is bringing in Flex.

Same goes with Google Documents. I was happy when Writely was Writely. Ever since the change to Google Documents, it just looks and feels so bland. It’s useful for finishing English assignments because friends can get together and collaborate, but I honestly don’t see real world uses of these features. I haven’t even touched Zoho ...

It'd do us all good if we got more consumable services which have scope to grow. But as of now, I’m not even bothering applying for an invitation. Let’s see if I’m wrong on this ....

The reason behind the action: Your motive

I’ve been looking at various sites the past few days. Sites that keep people like Arrington and Om Malik busy. Sites that keep PostBubble up and running. Sites that we hear about all the time, and just go around to have a look because of all the hype created. There have been quite a lot of these since the ‘startup’ times, but how many do you see still being counted among the ‘big guys’? I think the reason can’t be bottled down to sustainability measures…

Stick to your basics

This whole topic came to mind as I was reading about Facebook’s rise up the ladder these past few years. Out of all the network’s, Facebook is the one which has really caught on. There were networks before Facebook, and there have been attempts after it, but you don’t see mention of them as regularly, do you?

I think one of the reasons for this is that unlike other networks, Facebook is always looking to grow. Not just in it’s user base, or number of page views/hits. They want to grow technologically as well. They want to enter forays others haven’t. For example, the whole concept of a mini–feed is something “extremely” new, and it’s worked so well. Of course, it didn’t start off initially the way it was supposed to, but after a few refinements, it’s something that almost defines Facebook.

An API! When was the last time you saw a social network allow piping out of the data from your account? It’s like the perfect way to build applications that works with the greatest resource — people, based on an established platform which does the hard work of getting you the data. Keeping people together was the only thing Facebook started with, and went on building around that, implementing whatever they thought sounded good. And look at where they are now.

In all facets of development

Whenever you create and develop a project, you always have “something” in mind. It’s that something which you shouldn’t lose focus of no matter what stage of development you are at. Everything you add, implement, should have a purpose, a reason. That purpose or reason should complement your initial “something”. Wonton features won’t help your application, or your time, because just like you, people expect features related to the core reasoning of an application.

So, keeping all those things in mind, next time you come up with a game plan, or are asked to join in the development of the “killer–new–app”, look for one word that probably doesn’t get as much attention as it should — focus!

Firefox: 3.0 and future plans #

It just so happens to be our favourite browser. With more and more vulnerabilities showing up in IE7, it’s pretty much a no brainer selection. Coders love it, designers love it even more! With such a strong past backing them up, Mozilla plans to make some serious headway with Firefox 3.0, and in a way, redefine browsing 'again'!

InforWorld reports that there are hosts of new features planned for Firefox 3.0. You can read the whole list on the article there, but I want to take up just two of the features which sound extremely promising, and as these things go, open up a whole new door of possibilities for geeks! :)

Databases and offline web app-ing

The article says that Fx 3.0 will likely contain a feature which makes working with web applications offline, possible. Scratching your head? Ok, I’ll take the example from the article, since it’s something people can relate to. Imagine having GMail functionality, offline. You can write a mail, and save it. When you next go online, Fx 3.0 and GMail will work together to automatically send that mail. Pretty much what your desktop e–mail client does at the moment. Now isn’t that cool!

What this effectively does is take away an active Internet connection as the restriction to a lot of things. Maybe Blogger will work with this as well, with you being able to store posts offline while on the move, and transfer them to your blog (published/drafts) the moment Firefox discovers an active connection. This feature is almost an answer from Firefox to features like the in–built e–mail client in Opera, the blogging and photo–uploading tools in Flock and any other feature which integrates a web service application natively into a browser. Personally, I think Mozilla has been freagin’ brilliant at coming up with this! It sure makes me want to add sexy to the browser’s name ;)

The next feature, will appeal mostly to people who know how to use it. That, for the record, does not include me for the most part. They plan to integrate SQL Lite into the browser, albeit in a rather small form. It is going to be used to query content from the browser’s content cache. The immediate use Mozilla sees for this is a vastly improved ‘history’ and bookmarking system. However, there is a good chance this might ‘not’ make it into 3.0. That is not really a problem. Just the fact that such a feature is being developed, is pretty much enough at this point. I can see a lot of load–from–cache and history–extend extensions coming up to use and beat this feature black and blue. This also moves Firefox closer to what Mozilla ultimately plans for the browser, to turn it into an information broker. Maybe they could change the way existing variables are handled in Firefox, allowing Greasemonkey scripts to become a little more robust and share data between scripts? (Hey! Just saying!)

Looking good indeed!

The next version is slated for a ‘07 second half release. Ideas and features such as this make the next release one of the bigger ones yet. I didn’t see anything about the much spoken about Places, and am guessing they are going to chuck that idea, and make everything searchable (the latest toy of the application world) using the embedded SQL database. It’ll surely much more user–friendly, since the first attempt at using Places didn’t go so well, and people still complain whenever they have to use it.

So the next thing to do is keep fiddling through their nightly builds and see which one of them show hints of these features. Or else, wait and watch how the news unfolds. Something tells me this is going to create a wave as big as the lull we see at the moment! :)

Digg doesn't impress me

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the concept, and the implementation as well. I am not one of those who is predicting the death of Digg as the behemoth that drives traffic throughout the Internet. I think for what it’s worth, Digg is doing a rather good job. But, it’s the people who need to realise and understand what ‘news’ actually is. Short of riddling this post with screenshots of the various Digg front pages at the time of writing this, all I can say is that the stories hitting those pages are not impressive.

I actually find a few articles to read from Google News, but none from Digg. None to hold my attention for more than the description atleast. Digg has repeatedly said that they “love their algorithm”. It is what drives Digg and keeps spam away. I guess they need human intervention now to make things work properly, a la Slashdot.

Quality, ‘and’ quantity

A site like Digg doesn’t have problem coming up with the numbers, and quantity of posts. They have goodness–knows how many hits in a day, out of which I’m sure 20% are new articles being submitted. I wonder how many people actually check the ‘upcoming’ section. I rarely do, relying on other people’s sense of judgement in pushing a story to the first three pages. However, seeing the stories hitting those pages, I’ve started going through the upcoming section as well, just to be sure than it’s not me and Digg is actually losing it.

People will Digg just about anything. The Digg darlings are stories about Apple and Linux. However, anything out of the ordinary will also begin to attract diggs. This results in rather strange stories showing, and hence, pushing out the ones which really deserve some attention. For example, this story, and this oneThis story actually spun me off to this story, so it wasn’t a complete waste! :P and finally this one. What a big waste of time those stories are, I cannot even begin to explain. And yet, they’ve all been front pagers. I’m not ‘not’ impressed for no reason...

Digg started off as a Technology news site. I believe they were the best thing at the time. The whole concept of democratizing the web to allow the people to decide where to drive traffic, was actually amazing. But, Digg deciding to open their doors to various other topics was asking for trouble. Thankfully, the voting system keeps maximum stories off the front page, but even then, the ones that make it surely don’t seem to live up to Digg’s reputation.

Conspiracy theory

In the very recent past, there have been many stories about how Digg’s credibility is more compromised than is immediately apparent, and article defending that. But at the heart of it, we all know how and which way things will turn unless some pro–active measures are taken to fix things. Digg removed their top digger’s list, but brought it back—although rather silently—because the motivation of making it into that list was the reason a lot of people would Digg quality stories. With the list gone, there wasn’t anymore reason to really digg articles. This was all amidst the story of companies paying the users in that list to digg their stories so that they’d make the front page.

Ofcourse, there have been premeditated and intentional steps taken by rival companies to dethrone Digg, which have forced Digg to take decisions and steps which haven’t really worked for their popularity. But at the end of the day, Digg still stands as the one source which drives traffic to news and new happenings around the Internet, even if weird stories don’t impress me. It won’t be easy to take them out of that spot, but just because they’re nice and snuggly, doesn’t mean that the quality of their news will go down.

I again call for human intervensionI’m sure a few out of the 10+ board members can put in jury duty, if the result is Digg again churning top quality stuff. I’m sure it’s worth the effort, because there is nothing like having a human decide what to show others. Any other means will also be welcome. But things surely have to change. It’ll be interesting to see the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ :)

What Web 2.0 Actually Was

The Web 2.0 boom was something that stirred everybody and everything that had a remote connection with the Internet. Startups, mashups, networks ... you name it! Everything began to appear everywhere you looked. We called it 'opening the Internet to the people'. But was it really that? Thinking back at everything that has happened, everything we call and label 'Web 2.0', I realised that it can be put together with a better definition than what we've come to call it.

Web 2.0!!

Web 2.0, or the second generation Internet, served the purpose of defining the Internet as an application platform. Very simply put, it opened up the minds of (many more) people to the possibility of creating applications (or apps, as we call them) and developing them for the Internet. Adding functionalities, features and throwing it out to people for use, all pretty much free of cost and with minimum production glitches, well, at least for most. It makes sense! :D

Every social network or startup that you've seen since the boom offers some kind of a service which boosts inter-connectivity or exchange of data between people and applications. They became interfaces, becoming the middlemen between people and data. Offering choices as to how the user would like his data, it 'opened' up the Internet' to the 'people' to the data and technology that already existed. If you'd have noticed, close to nothing new was created during the entire time Web 2.0 was so heavy in our lives. Concepts were mixed and matched to organise the data better, and then present them to a user.

FeedsJSON became the format of choice for all developers, since it made transfer of data so easy, because of the format it uses. It also allowed a refreshing workaround to cross-domain AJAX calls. was one of the few creations and genius of this time, with many services depending on it. Bookmarking / Tagging was another, which served to just organise the data and make it shareable amongst people. Social Networks had existed before, but got more exposure thanks to the 'Connecting people' approach.

If you're thinking about the Web 2.0 'look' and other peripherals, then all I'll say it was just things that piggybacked on the success of the buzzword doing the rounds. The look was a simple, fresh, eye-catching and functional design, and the reason it was labelled Web 2.0-ish was because it did visually what applications did with data. It provided a simple interface between people and content/data.

So now what?

Well, nothing! The boom is now receding, and slowly fading. The madness is over, but good services will continue to rise and show up since the trend has been started. It was high time people saw the Internet as a platform for data, not just as a medium/media. Now, those with enough creativity can go ahead and develop new applications and services for this new (but old) Internet and continue to improve it for all of us!

Maybe my point of view has changed yours? :)