Three random updates: Bing, iPhones, and Dropbox
On Microsoft’s Bing what’s new in web search: By all accounts, Microsoft has a success with its re-crafted bing search site. I posted something about it mainly to say, competition can re-emerge even in a market as dominated as web search. With the follow-on Microsoft-Yahoo deal, bing on TV, and all the rest, bing + Yahoo + related now can claim almost third of the search marketplace to google’s almost two thirds, with others nestled in there in single digits.
How good is bing? Or, how good is it for you? Here is a great site for doing a “blind taste test” style search comparison among google, bing and yahoo. http://blindsearch.fejus.com/. Its beta, but it’s fun.
On Apple and the hole it is digging for itself by stridently controlling iPhone software: I wrote about this on idealware recently. The iPhone App Store saga has really emerged as a major business news story for the summer. Apple finally conceded a more standard version of Gmail for the iPhone (one with email push out to the phone). The fact that these developments are covered like the daily sports says a lot. Here is a great run-down of some of the reaction to Apple’s brinksmanship on the iPhone.
The stickiness of this story reflects an important development of wider significance. Having changed the game in audio and mobile devices, consumers expect more and different of it. Sure, part of it is pressure to be more responsive on price. What is really fascinating is how much the pressure is about being more open, as in open source/open content. Compared to the beginning of this decade, having great design is not enough.
We are really in a new era in which “pure” Open Source software has given way to much more of a continuum between being completely closed, proprietary, license-driven and being completely open. And Apple is catching it as much as Microsoft, Oracle and other hold-outs of the last decade. Its about as likely that iTunes be open sourced as Windows, yet the issues of intellectual property, “walled gardens” of controlled add-ons, DRM and so on have become part of much wider social awareness and consumer thinking. This is a good thing for software and technology development generally.
On drop box. When I wrote about dropbox last spring, I really was just looking for something to keep home and work computers in sync. Start with a free Dropbox account and create folders on Windows, Mac or Linux computers (including servers) that will dynamically sync the files, simple as that. I am seeing now just how useful Dropbox really is.
First, it offers another piece in the project management, project planning puzzle. You can share a sub-folder of your drop box with a project team for working collaborative on documents. You can do this in a larger way with Basecamp, Sharepoint, Microsoft Office Live, a Google site and others. What’s nice about Dropbox is that setting up the sharing is really light-weight and easy where collaboration is short-term, project-specific, and not particularly staff-based. It is easy and free to get an account, and it only takes a minute to share out a folder for a team. You are still working in your standard desktop office applications. Yes, the documents are on their server, so there is that Web 2.0 trust factor, but they are also always on your computer. And the web interface includes revisions and other features in simple format.
The other thing I have been thinking about with dropbox is drop box as a full back-up alternative. The free version allows 2 GB of storage. If that doesn’t cover your current, active documents and more, then you lead a different life than me. Moving up, the price for 50GB and beyond, and is more than, say, Mozy or Cabonite, but reasonable enough to consider using it to back up everything. I don’t think I would even true to have it back-up Exchange Server, but I have been playing around with ways to ensure it will back-up active shared files (such as a database). Check it out at getdropbox.com or use this link, and yes, help me get even more storage free! https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTU4MjExMTk.
Dropbox seems like an ambitious small company. Hope they survive.
How good is bing? Or, how good is it for you? Here is a great site for doing a “blind taste test” style search comparison among google, bing and yahoo. http://blindsearch.fejus.com/. Its beta, but it’s fun.
On Apple and the hole it is digging for itself by stridently controlling iPhone software: I wrote about this on idealware recently. The iPhone App Store saga has really emerged as a major business news story for the summer. Apple finally conceded a more standard version of Gmail for the iPhone (one with email push out to the phone). The fact that these developments are covered like the daily sports says a lot. Here is a great run-down of some of the reaction to Apple’s brinksmanship on the iPhone.
The stickiness of this story reflects an important development of wider significance. Having changed the game in audio and mobile devices, consumers expect more and different of it. Sure, part of it is pressure to be more responsive on price. What is really fascinating is how much the pressure is about being more open, as in open source/open content. Compared to the beginning of this decade, having great design is not enough.
We are really in a new era in which “pure” Open Source software has given way to much more of a continuum between being completely closed, proprietary, license-driven and being completely open. And Apple is catching it as much as Microsoft, Oracle and other hold-outs of the last decade. Its about as likely that iTunes be open sourced as Windows, yet the issues of intellectual property, “walled gardens” of controlled add-ons, DRM and so on have become part of much wider social awareness and consumer thinking. This is a good thing for software and technology development generally.
On drop box. When I wrote about dropbox last spring, I really was just looking for something to keep home and work computers in sync. Start with a free Dropbox account and create folders on Windows, Mac or Linux computers (including servers) that will dynamically sync the files, simple as that. I am seeing now just how useful Dropbox really is.
First, it offers another piece in the project management, project planning puzzle. You can share a sub-folder of your drop box with a project team for working collaborative on documents. You can do this in a larger way with Basecamp, Sharepoint, Microsoft Office Live, a Google site and others. What’s nice about Dropbox is that setting up the sharing is really light-weight and easy where collaboration is short-term, project-specific, and not particularly staff-based. It is easy and free to get an account, and it only takes a minute to share out a folder for a team. You are still working in your standard desktop office applications. Yes, the documents are on their server, so there is that Web 2.0 trust factor, but they are also always on your computer. And the web interface includes revisions and other features in simple format.
The other thing I have been thinking about with dropbox is drop box as a full back-up alternative. The free version allows 2 GB of storage. If that doesn’t cover your current, active documents and more, then you lead a different life than me. Moving up, the price for 50GB and beyond, and is more than, say, Mozy or Cabonite, but reasonable enough to consider using it to back up everything. I don’t think I would even true to have it back-up Exchange Server, but I have been playing around with ways to ensure it will back-up active shared files (such as a database). Check it out at getdropbox.com or use this link, and yes, help me get even more storage free! https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTU4MjExMTk.
Dropbox seems like an ambitious small company. Hope they survive.
Labels: apple, back-up, bing, collaboration, intellectual property, search
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