• Home
• About us
• Contact
• Downloads
• Sitemap
• RSS

Migration to online office applications

Put together on August 3, 2007 1:13 pm by Thomas
What do you think?

I was reading a post by Chris Pirillo about the forthcoming online office suite that Microsoft will launch at some point in the future. I agree that it is inevitable that this will happen, although I’m sure that Microsoft will try to milk the Office cash cow a bit longer before venturing into no man’s land.

Chris was discussing the incompatibilities between current online vendors and that got me into thinking about file formats. Using local thick clients has made us accustomed to file types, storing files, moving them around, etc. However, the vendor of an online office might be tempted to make this process transparent to its users. He could come up with a proprietary file type which is stored online, and facilitate collaboration and sharing with other users transparently, without having to copy or send files to other users.

That’s not a very good prospect and hopefully things won’t happen this way. Despite all the current action, I don’t think that an online office will really take off until Microsoft comes into the game. The reason is that there’s one thing that Microsoft can do well, and that is to make the transition from a PC-based office software to an online web office application completely seamless. And since many users will without a doubt continue using the thick client for some time, files will need to be kept around, imported and exported out of both types of applications, until more and more users migrate to the online office.

But all that is still far away. For the time being what we need is a browser which does not consume memory like there’s not tomorrow. Because right now there really is no viable platform to build these apps on.

Trackback

Digg |

Del.icio.us |

Ma.gnolia |

Newsvine |

Technorati

Comments

Latest Comments



Question search engine

tulip:
You're right!It sounds funny, but a search engine providing people with questions would be helpful, but only for the sake of learning how to think, so that someone will get used to wanting to know more about a specific subject...On the other hand when someone wants to learn something fast, it would be rational to just stick to the old...
You're right!It sounds funny, but a search engine providing people with questions would be helpful, but only for the sake of learning how to think, so that someone will get used to wanting to know more about a specific subject...On the other hand when someone wants to learn something fast, it would be rational to just stick to the old... - 6 months ago
...
Dimitris:
Yes, strictly educational purposes aside, a question search engine is appropriate for more long-term goals, not just to look up a piece of info. If someone wanted to write up an in-depth analysis, a report or some kind of detailed exploration of an issue, they would benefit from such a tool - which I admit is perhaps somewhat too early to consider.
Yes, strictly educational purposes aside, a question search engine is appropriate for more long-term goals, not just to look up a piece of info. If someone wanted to write up an in-depth analysis, a report or some kind of detailed exploration of an issue, they would benefit from such a tool - which I admit is perhaps somewhat too early to consider. - 6 months ago
...
Web Annotation & Social Bookmarking

Tom Kehoe:
We at YayTrail (http://www.yaytrail.com) love the idea of a universal, cross-website content platform, a way to 'mash up' sites. But we disliked the implementations in these kinds of services. We didn't like that there's a big sidebar taking up screen real estate. We didn't like the idea of sticky-notes living on layers on top of - and often obscuring - the original page. We think these characteristics have kind of helped give annotation a bit of a bad name and limited more casual adoption and traction.We therefore decided to make a tool that strips away the things we didn't like about existing services. To do this, we've worked on technology that allows the user to enhance pages in-line. The user's content lives as a native part of the page, not 'out-of-line' in a side bar or non-native content layer. In the 'first layer' as you put it. We think that gives a different level of control and power to the user, gives a different value to their content, and rids us of the heavyweight UI elements of previous services in one swoop. We let people share their enhancements with others...so you can follow people of interest, and their enhancements get merged into your view of the web. We're still really raw ( pre-start-up) but that's our vision. You can try out our preview if you wish, with FireFox at http://www.yaytrail.com. Please also take a look at our introductory brief at http://www.yaytrail.com/brief/dec09 and what our users are saying at http://yaytrail.blogspot.com/Thanks for your time and I hope to see you soon on YayTrail.Tom Kehoe
We at YayTrail (http://www.yaytrail.com) love the idea of a universal, cross-website content platform, a way to 'mash up' sites. But we disliked the implementations in these kinds of services. We didn't like that there's a big sidebar taking up screen real estate. We didn't like the idea of sticky-notes living on layers on top of - and often obscuring - the original page. We think these characteristics have kind of helped give annotation a bit of a bad name and limited more casual adoption and traction.

We therefore decided to make a tool that strips away the things we didn't like about existing services. To do this, we've worked on technology that allows the user to enhance pages in-line. The user's content lives as a native part of the page, not 'out-of-line' in a side bar or non-native content layer. In the 'first layer' as you put it. We think that gives a different level of control and power to the user, gives a different value to their content, and rids us of the heavyweight UI elements of previous services in one swoop. We let people share their enhancements with others...so you can follow people of interest, and their enhancements get merged into your view of the web.
We're still really raw ( pre-start-up) but that's our vision. You can try out our preview if you wish, with FireFox at http://www.yaytrail.com. Please also take a look at our introductory brief at http://www.yaytrail.com/brief/dec09 and what our users are saying at http://yaytrail.blogspot.com/
Thanks for your time and I hope to see you soon on YayTrail.

Tom Kehoe - 8 months ago
...
Enabling content shortening

vrypan:
Or, use Google Reader's "share with note" notes :-)
Or, use Google Reader's "share with note" notes :-) - last year
...
Dimitris:
Thanks for the comment vrypan. That sure is an option but whoever accesses the site through means other than Google Reader (e.g. twitter, other RSS reader, etc) misses that added content (and value). It's way better if the short version stays in the website it refers to. Or even better (?), writing a summary could optionally initiate an update of the RSS feed.
Thanks for the comment vrypan. That sure is an option but whoever accesses the site through means other than Google Reader (e.g. twitter, other RSS reader, etc) misses that added content (and value). It's way better if the short version stays in the website it refers to. Or even better (?), writing a summary could optionally initiate an update of the RSS feed. - last year
...
vrypan:
I meant one could write a program to find the Google Reader notes and bring them back to your site automatically.
I meant one could write a program to find the Google Reader notes and bring them back to your site automatically. - last year
...
Dimitris:
Yes, Google Reader is a good place to start as lots of people use it, it is based on 'the real web' (i.e. is not inside a walled-garden) and it should be easy to process the 'shared notes' it offers. Other services may be possible or useful to add after that.
Yes, Google Reader is a good place to start as lots of people use it, it is based on 'the real web' (i.e. is not inside a walled-garden) and it should be easy to process the 'shared notes' it offers. Other services may be possible or useful to add after that. - last year
...
Question search engine | terrainnova.org:
[...] also be integrated quite well with the ‘paragraph summary’ platform I described in this post) tags: idea, [...]
[...] also be integrated quite well with the ‘paragraph summary’ platform I described in this post) tags: idea, [...] - last year
...
Information building blocks

Enabling content shortening | terrainnova.org:
[...] my previous post I wrote about how information can be broken down to its components. Following that, these [...]
[...] my previous post I wrote about how information can be broken down to its components. Following that, these [...] - last year
...
Marketing local and online

The Marketing Technology Blog:
What Are We Missing? Or Who’s Missing Us?...Robert Scoble asks, What are the tech bloggers missing? Your business!The post hit a nerve with me. Robert is absolutely right!As I read my RSS feeds on a daily basis, I’m tired of the same crap over and over again. Are Microsoft and Yahoo! t...
What Are We Missing? Or Who’s Missing Us?...

Robert Scoble asks, What are the tech bloggers missing? Your business!
The post hit a nerve with me. Robert is absolutely right!
As I read my RSS feeds on a daily basis, I’m tired of the same crap over and over again. Are Microsoft and Yahoo! t... - last year
...
by terrainnova.org

• Categories

  • analysis
  • best
  • community
  • conversation
  • idea
  • insight
  • lessons
  • marketing
  • news
  • people
  • product
  • project
  • question
  • report
  • summary
  • Uncategorized

Twitter Updates

Follow Dimitris on Twitter

Archives

• November 2009
• October 2009
• July 2009
• April 2009
• March 2009
• January 2009
• December 2008
• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• July 2008
• June 2008
• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007