ocupofilms.com

The real problem, he said during his talk, is not that Web 2.0 technology is easy to use, it’s that it is too easy to build. Which means that there is “too much noise”: too many new products vying for the attention of the early adopters who can give a start-up its first taste of success. And blogs don’t help, he says: They encourage readers to skim without “chewing” on content, just as they encourage writers to post often and quickly, without writing thoughtful pieces.

NEW YORK–After listening to Jason Fried (37 Signals) give his compelling Web 2.0 Expo talk Wednesday about building companies in the modern world–which could be summed up as “simplify, and don’t work too hard doing so”–I walked across the hall to hear Fraser Kelton (Adaptive Blue) discuss the negative ramifications of this strategy.

Obviously, it’s easier to build just another single-function service than it is to come up with a plausible growth strategy and a unique service back-end. So both Fried and Kelton are right: Users gravitate to simplicity and focus. But if your business itself is so simple that anyone can replicate it, you don’t have much of a business after all.

Kelton posed the question this way in his pre-conference writeup: “What happens when early adopters have become spoiled by single-feature technologies that take no more than a moment to grasp? The challenge faced by the next wave of innovative start-ups for technology adoption increases by an order of magnitude.”

Kelton has two possibly workable solutions to the start-up’s dilemma: First, “make magic,” he says. But on the back end, not the interface. Build a simple interface to a complicated service that isn’t so easily replicated. He points to Google search. Simple UI. Rather complex on the server side.

Click here for full coverage of Web 2.0 Expo

In other words, there’s a deluge of choice. Yet at the same time, social technologies moving into Web 2.0 products lock users in. Who wants to try a new, possibly better photo-sharing site when he or she has 10,000 photos already in Flickr?

Second, improve on existing products. Pointing in this example to Summize (acquired by Twitter) and Disqus (we’re waiting) as services that add important improvements to existing platforms (Twitter; blogs), Kelton says that a start-up can ride on the success of a previous wave if its founders find a smart way to embed their technology in that of the key players in the market.

These functions, plus a revised and streamlined user interface, will be embedded in the Socialtext suite, along with a new feature that records a running stream of who’s doing what and where on the system, which users can subscribe to from their profile pages or their dashboards. It’s almost, but not quite, Socialtext’s own Twitter for enterprise customers. Missing is the capability for users to post free-form, Twitter-like items into the stream. That function is coming later, according to Ross Mayfield, chairman, president, and co-founder of Socialtext.

Mayfield says that just giving users a Twitter clone doesn’t solve the dual problems of information overload on the one hand, and personal isolation at work on the other. He believes that the most important communication between workers in a company is what they are doing. “When I work,” Mayfield says, “I’m sharing knowledge as a byproduct of getting work done. In the enterprise, what someone does is more important than what they say.”

So the new Socialtext will let users subscribe to wiki pages and to the activity stream of other users, to see when files are edited, and when tasks are accepting and finishing. The product also displays comments left on wiki pages. But the feature that lets users ask free-form questions to their workgroup is missing.

What’s the hold-up? Mayfield showed me a prototype business nanoblog called Socialtext Signals, as if to prove that the company could make such an app. (It didn’t take long, he admitted). But he said of the app, “We’re going to throw it away”–the code, that is–and start over to build a more robust business nanoblog that offers what people in a workplace really need.

Socialtext 3.0 gets a social network and a quasi-Twitter function.

Related Webware reviews:

Yammer: A ‘Twitter for the enterprise’

Present.ly is smarter than Yammer

Socialcast is FriendFeed for your business

You can't have it yet.

(Credit:
Socialtext)

I’m glad to see a contemporary groupware company like Socialtext taking the longer view of the Twitter concept than upstarts like Yammer and Present.ly. In this space, I’ve been a fan of Socialcast more than those apps, because it’s based on the larger vision of integrating information from numerous group applications. That’s what Socialtext is doing, too, and it’s the right thing for business. “The end state for this kind of application is a connected collaboration platform, not standalone microblogging, which is relatively shallow,” Mayfield said. But I still believe that the company should hustle up and get its Twitter-alike product into the hands of its customers. Not everyone appreciates the long view.

Mayfield told me Socialtext will eventually release a standalone, desktop version of Signals that lets users “Twitter” to their co-workers. A private beta of the app is entering testing now.

Enterprise social software company Socialtext is releasing Socialtext 3.0, with the features we previewed here in April: the corporate social network Socialtext People, and a revised home page for business users, Socialtext Dashboard.

I’m not sure Socialtext’s delay is due to a lag in development or if it’s strategic. I suspect the latter. Mayfield, who speaks in somewhat Delphic riddles regarding the nature of work, says, “The updates box (in Socialtext Signals) is less about trying to have conversations. It’s about surfacing conversations that people are having in workspaces.”

Microsoft buys
Although Microsoft isn’t known for its massive acquisitions, the company has made some sizeable purchases over the years. Here’s a look at some of the company’s largest deals. Company Year Estimated cost Fast 2008 $1.2 billion Aquantive 2007 $6 billion Tellme 2007 $800 million Navision 2002 $1.33 billion Great Plains 2001 $1.1 billion Visio 1999 $1.3 billion Hotmail 1998 $400 million WebTV 1997 $425 million Source: CNET News.com

While Microsoft is no Oracle when it comes to acquisitions, the company has been getting accustomed to cracking open its oversized wallet.

Historically, Microsoft has focused largely on smaller deals to acquire technology, as opposed to megadeals to buy established businesses. Microsoft is, of course, in the throes of a multibillion-dollar bid for Net pioneer Yahoo.

“It’s a different type of acquisition for Microsoft,” Directions on Microsoft analyst Matt Rosoff said of the Yahoo bid. “It’s a new way of thinking.” (Rosoff is a contributor to the CNET Blog Network.)

It’s too soon to say how Microsoft will fare with two recent acquisitions, including Microsoft’s $6 billion purchase of Aquantive, as well as last year’s purchase of Tellme Networks. Microsoft certainly has big hopes for both–counting on Tellme to help in everything from the Office unit to mobile search and hoping Aquantive will make it a more serious player in the online advertising space. But if Aquantive is a big bet on online advertising, Microsoft is more than doubling down by pursuing Yahoo.

Microsoft used several purchases, most notably that of Great Plains Software in 2001 and Navision in 2002, to get into the business application space. The company has a decent-size business with its Dynamics line, but efforts to unify the products have proved thorny from both a technical and customer acceptance standpoint.

WebTV’s subscriber base of folks using their TVs to get their e-mail largely plateaued at the 1 million mark, making the deal pricey from that standpoint. However, both the technology and the people helped form the basis of the Microsoft TV unit, which now focuses on Internet Protocol television. Hotmail was left alone for years, but has assumed new prominence as part of Microsoft’s broader Windows Live push. As for the economic return, Web-based e-mail has not yet proved to be a huge money maker for any of the market leaders, though Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are working hard to change that.

Also, while Microsoft likes to point to its track record as a reason why it will be able to handle integration issues, it’s important to note that almost all of these acquisitions took Microsoft into new businesses, with minimal overlap. A purchase of Yahoo will have tons of overlap, not to mention all of the cultural issues. Oh yeah, and there’s also the matter of Yahoo not returning Microsoft’s phone calls.

The company has made a few larger deals over the years. (Check out the chart to see the details.)

The Internet has been the source of several of Microsoft’s biggest purchases, dating back to the purchase of WebTV and Hotmail in the 1990s, both deals that set back Microsoft by several hundred million dollars.

Microsoft painted a much brighter picture when it bought those companies, Rosoff said. “Those expectations weren’t met.”

Update 1 p.m. PST: Added analyst comments throughout.

(Credit: PaperKraft.net)

Ron over at PaperKraft.net has put together a wonderful paper rendition of the lovable droid. While not as intricate as his Howl’s Moving Castle or as nerdy as the paper weighted companion cube from Portal, I’m thinking about making one of these for some cubicle kitsch.

When the U.S. Postal Service launched several hundred R2-D2-skinned postal drop boxes around the country last year, it also quietly released a printable paper craft version for Star Wars fans who don’t live near one of the limited edition mail receptacles. Being that I don’t have good enough quality paper or glue stick skills to accomplish such a feat myself, I let the pros do the work then post their shots to Flickr.

“Now is the time. The vacuum has been created, and we feel the suction,” said Rafael Laguna de la Vera, who took over as chief executive in January. “Yahoo is not a software company…Now, with Microsoft (trying to acquire Yahoo), I think it’s over for Zimbra.”

Open-Xchange is using Yahoo’s acquisition of rival Zimbra last year as an invitation to tackle the U.S. market with its open-source server software for e-mail, calendars, and other collaboration tools.

• Laguna plans to hire U.S. programmers and other staff to augment the company’s current staff of 40. “Marketing, management, global sales, user interface usability–all will be here,” he said.

• On Thursday, Open-Xchange plans to announce a broader release of its software as open-source under the General Public License (GPL). Coming will be installation and administration tools that previously were proprietary.

The company, originally called Netline Internet Service and based in Olpe, Germany, made its way to market chiefly through a partnership with Suse Linux. It’s been trying for years to stand on its own, in particular after Suse was acquired by Novell, whose GroupWise product competes.

Those are bold words for a CEO of an unprofitable company with 2007 revenue of $2.5 million that has struggled for years to penetrate the crowded “collaboration” software market. But Laguna also shared other plans to elevate Open-Xchange’s profile:

• The company plans to join the Eclipse Foundation during the first half of 2008 to take advantage of the OSGI (which formerly stood for Open Services Gateway Initiative) tools to integrate software components. “We will be dual-license the server code under the Eclipse Public License,” Laguna said.

• Open-Xchange might raise a new round of funding to hasten these expansion efforts.

He’s not the only Suse veteran at Open-Xchange with experience trying to perform this sort of conquest. Suse’s former chief, Richard Seibt, is on Open-Xchange’s board, and its chief technology officer is Juergen Geck, who held that post at Suse.

• Two other non-open-source components, a connector that lets Microsoft Outlook connect to an Open-Xchange server and the Ajax-based user interface for the Web-based access to the server product, will eventually become open-source, too, within a year or two, Laguna said.

Because of the strength of open-source rival Zimbra and its willingness to sell at low prices, though, Open-Xchange chose to concentrate its efforts in Europe, Laguna said. “You pick your battles,” he said.

The overseas ambition resembles those made by Suse, where Laguna worked until its acquisition by Novell. Suse wasn’t terribly successful, but Laguna thinks things will be different: Suse was thwarted by Red Hat in the Linux market, but Laguna believes Open-Xchange now can take on Zimbra.

• The company’s current main sales approach is to sign partnerships with Internet hosting companies that can offer the software as an add-on subscription service to those registering Internet domains. Its biggest partner to date, 1&1 Internet, plans to extend its partnership to the United States within the first half of 2008, Laguna said.

Sony Alpha DSLR-A350

(Credit:
Sony Electronics)

2/1/2008: Thanks to lack of sleep and rusty HTML skills, the previous table entries for the A700 were incorrect. Sorry for my own addition to the confusion. Fixed now. Lori.

I suppose it was inevitable. With its latest camera announcements, Sony brings its scorched-earth camera marketing philosophy–blanketing each price segment with multiple choices in hopes that one combination of design and features hits pay dirt–to consumer digital SLRs. Today’s announcement of the Alpha DSLR-A300 and A350 brings Sony’s total number of dSLRs in the $700 to $900 range to three. The models, despite some really nice feature sets, have just enough significant trade-offs to engender frustration rather than delight at the variety.

First, here’s an overview of the new consumer lineup:

 
Alpha DSLR-A200
Alpha DSLR-A300
Alpha DSLR-A350
Alpha DSLR-A700 Sensor
10.2-megapixel CCD
23.6 x 15.8 mm
10.2-megapixel CCD
23.6 x 15.8 mm
14.2-megapixel CCD
23.6 x 15.8 mm
12.2-megapixel CCD
23.6 x 15.8 mm Continuous shooting
3fps
unlimited JPEG/6 raw
3fps
unlimited JPEG/6 raw
2 fps
unlimited JPEG/4 raw
5fps
unlimited JPEG/17 raw Viewfinder
0.83X magnification
fixed matte focusing screen 95% coverage
0.74X magnification
fixed matte focusing screen
95% coverage
0.74X magnification
fixed matte focusing screen
95% coverage
0.9X magnification
interchangeable matte focusing screen Autofocus
9-pt AF
one cross-type sensor in center
9-pt AF
one cross-type sensor in center
9-pt AF
one cross-type sensor in center
11-pt AF
two cross-type sensors in center (one f/2.8) Live View
No
Yes
Yes
No LCD size
2.7 inches/fixed
2.7 inches/tiltable
2.7 inches/tiltable
3 inches/fixed Price
$699 (w/ 18-70mm lens)
$799 (w/ 18-70mm lens)
$799 (body only); $899 (w/ 18-70mm lens)
$1,399 (body only) Availability
End of February
End of April
Mid March
Now

Sony Alpha DSLR-A350 with optional battery grip

(Credit:
Sony Electronics)

All the models have Super SteadyShot sensor-shift image stabilization and support sensitivities that range from ISO 100-3200, as well as the typical array of firmware-based features, such as Advanced Dynamic Range Optimization. With the A300 and A350, Sony also introduces Live View shooting mode to its dSLRs. Sony’s 2-sensor implementation harks back to the more seamless approach pioneered–and subsequently discarded–by Olympus. With a secondary sensor dedicated to receiving a preview image off the imaging sensor, there’s no need to flip the mirror up for preview and focus, then flip it back down to shoot, proving a more typical snapshot-like experience when framing via the LCD. In addition, Sony incorporates a flip-up LCD, which makes the feature not just practical, but actually useful (predominantly for overhead and from-the-hip shooting). We would prefer a flip-and-twist display, like that found on the Olympus E-3, but hey–you can’t have everything.

Sony Alpha DSLR-A300

(Credit:
Sony Electronics)

So the extra $100 you pay to go from the A200 to A300 gets you Live View. Or Live View, plus higher resolution but minus a lens, 1 frame-per-second continuous shooting speed, and a significantly lower-magnification viewfinder (A200 to A350). Between the A300 and the A350, which have the same tiny viewfinder and Live View, for the same $799 you have to decide whether you want the lens kit, or higher resolution and slower speed. You could opt for the Canon EOS Rebel XSi, which competes directly against the A350 at that $799 body-only price, but which delivers a better combination of resolution and performance for the money.

Also debuting at PMA, Sony introduces a pair of lenses: a pricey-but-probably-yummy Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* 24-70mm f/2.8 ZA ($1,749) and a basic telephoto zoom 70-300mm f/4.5-6.3 G SSM ($799). Both will be available this spring.

The following products are available:

On Sale Now: $849.95
View the latest prices for Sony Alpha DSLR-A350 (body only)

On Sale Now: $899.95
View the latest prices for Sony Alpha DSLR-A350 (with 18-70mm lens)