WARNING! this post contains nothing other than speculation and conjecture but... What if Google's Desktop was actually a trojan horse for Google apps off-lining. By off-lining I mean the ability for a web based app to operate at least partially, in offline (i.e. disconnected from the net) mode, like a browser based address book that still works when the internet is disconnected.

Here me out, in order to enable off-lining of web applications (browser based) one needs some kind on desktop (offline) runtime or functionality. The basic form of this runtime should provide features like local storage, the ability to query that storage and synchronisation with the main servers.

Now Google desktop already unifies local and remote search, adding email, docs and even reader search from their online apps would be obvious. Slowly this joining or bonding of Google desktop (including the Google Toolbar) and their online apps features seems none to distant.

And what if Google opened the desktop API so that it could be used from say Firefox, enabling web based apps to provide the desired offline functionality (A developers nirvana) perhaps with built in Google search built in for free. Combine this with some support for development tools or plugins and both Microsoft and Adobe could be in big trouble with developers, developers , developers......

Technorati Tags: offlining, developers

I figured it was about time I expressed our thinking around platforms here at Folknology, not because I personally wish to illustrate preferences or ways forward, but rather deal with the oncoming emergence of the new platform.

The very nature of our roles at Folknology dictate we have to have some kind of foresight, businesses come to us to seek the benefits from such knowledge. But right now we are facing a somewhat obscured or misty future, even though we have some ideas about it's features and shape, we cannot yet predict its implementation. The reason that it is so difficult to predict the outcome is because we are poised just before a critical fork in the development road. Let me explain what I mean by this, but first some history to put it into perspective.

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To me EchoSign represents a near perfect example of how to create a successful service for the internet platform. Their execution has been excellent and from day one they have really focused on solving a particular class of problem.

In contrast many services that pass across my radar seem to make the critical mistake of either not solving something that needs solving or worse trying to solve to many things. In fact the latter tends to change the service offering into a platform which puts them up against the big boys where they can easily be outgunned.

EchoSign has not done this here is what they have done that I think is a good service solution recipe:

1. Find a solve a basic business problem - Tracking and signing of colloborative documents
2. Ensure there is a prolific market - Businesses trading contracts/agreements etc..
3. Make the solution simple - EchoSign execute this perfectly, anyone can use this
4. Provide an open API early on - They did this which allowed mashups and service integration
5. Partner and integrate with other service providers - These guys have done this better than any other emergent service out there
6. Realise you are part of a new eco system - No service should be an island or platform
7. Get attention - check out their press and blog or do a search on Technorati for them.

Thus I would have to give EchoSign an A+ and an example to follow, anyone else out there got a star service that they put put into this kind of execution bracket?

Technorati Tags: EchoSign, SAAS, service

This is an SaaS post for all the smaller players. Now that Services are shifting into second gear, the bigger players start to extend their offerings from web apps to web platforms. With there burgeoning users base they can actually start pushing the smaller players around or at least apply pain on their pressure points. So I figured I should start the open conversation around some strategy to help fend of the big guns:

1. The obvious one - continue to be nimble, out think them, listener more attentively and innovate more quickly.
2. Form partnerships with the other smaller players to help create a bonded services eco system,
3. Excel at what you do, don't be a jack of all trades and be passionate about it
4. Stay open, use APIs, encourage mashups, don't try to be come a platform, thats what the big players do and it traps in their user base. Offer a better alternative to this, provide real choice and competition the market will benefit from it and it will grow in response.
5. Don't ever give up, be tenacious, work with your customers find out what they really need and give it to them. Don't just think about what your service offers, think about how it can dovetail with others to create more than the sum value.

Of course I maybe teaching Grandma to suck eggs here, but I don't see enough of this happening, I worry that the big guns are going to find it all to easy, come on folks work it.. how do you win this battle for the hearts an minds of the participants heading for the SaaS sluice gates. If you work together then you may get their attention before they hit the feeding grounds where the sharks lie in wait.

Idea for this list?

* Update I just thought of two more that could be added :

1. From Dennis - Unify your pricing, make it work with other services so it can be combined sensibly, work out how mixed service pricing should look.
2. Use back ends like Amazons S3 and EC2 that may help fend of the criticisms around infrastructure and longevity vs the big fish.

Technorati Tags: SAAS, Servicess

Ok I am going to admit it, I've been having an affair, It hasn't been happening for very long, just a few weeks. You see I couldn't resist, it started with just a fleeting glimpse, a recognition of something beguiling, her elegance, her sophistication. It made me feel young again, like a new geek. her name ? 'Erlang' (even here name has a ring to it) heaven knows what 'Groovy' and 'Java' are going to say, how will I break it to them, sssh keep it under your hat ;)

Technorati Tags: code, fun, geekhumor

Ok bit of a fun post, future talk in blogs that I read is popular, this game is guess who becomes who. Here is how it works 'A -> B' means a becomes b in the future so here are some fun ones from the industry I am familiar with, can you answer them, do you agree, can your suggest some others?

Google -> Microsoft
Microsoft -> IBM
IBM -> ?

37 Signals -> Apple
Apple -> Sony
Sony -> ?

You get the drift, give it a go ..

I must just briefly put my Operator hat on, There are some connections that should be encouraged, sorry if you guys are already there with this, but I wasn't aware of it.

Begining Operator call...

David Terrar of Twinfield, Stefan of WinWeb

Should both talk to David Lee of EditGrid why because he can add a lot of value to your service offerings:

1. Editgrid is SaaS and adds value, SaaS creates a 2+2 = 5 by combining services and sharing data
2. EditGrid is like a financial Wiki, you can add this feature in for no development cost
3. EditGrid promotes software as a service and will always operate better than desktop software with your services.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Talk to David
2. Bundle EditGrid
3. Add compatible import/export even is its only CSV
4. Fully integrate EditGrid

The key point here is that adding the right services together provides more than the sum, not only that but it also means you help support each over in the services eco system, especially before the big boys step in, it makes it much harder for them to squash you.

"Together we stand, divided we fall"

This ends the Operator call....

PS. NJSAAS = Non-Joined-up SAAS which I will use as an alert tag in future..

PPS . Thanks to Dennis's Integrated practice management for making me make the call..

Technorati Tags: EditGrid, operator, WinWeb, Twinfield, SAAS

I am a strong believer of Clarke's third law - Arthur C. Clarke's Profiles of the future quote :

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

That is for the technology we call the 'net' will become indistinguishable from magic, or in other words, reality itself will be indistinguishable from it - the net. Thus I do not believe in the construct as our eventual 'net' destination (one with connect/disconnect emergence). I do not believe that Second Life + evolution of this meme represents the future. I believe that rather than us going into the 'net' as second life suggests, the net will come to us, it will actually seep into reality through the pores and cracks of our bombarded attention. Attention is our subconscious barrier or front to the emergent 'net', it is the battle field for our very consciousness. Emergent technology may eventually pierce that facade permanently to the point the net will be indistinguishable from reality, the two will become one and we will move forward.

I should also indicate some examples rather than just waxing lyrically here. In the net coming to us I mean it will actually start manifesting itself more physically, it will become more a part of every day life rather than viewed through the glass of our displays. Let me give you some examples that could point the way :

1) Multitouch - here we are not just passively interacting we are becoming more physically involved, engaging in touch with the 'net' interface, waving our hands, physically jesturing. check out the demos to get an idea if you haven't already seen this.

2) Voice and audio communication may well emerge for some situations, we already see this with in-car navigation equipment, this could be extended to more complex interactions with the net whilst in one's vechicle.

3) Other things such as RFID implants that mean the 'net' knows where you are, this will extend to medical monitoring, 'your collestral is to high - suggestion take some ..' you get the picture.

4) Sub aural gestures from the net whispered in your ear 'You should clean up this meeeting within the next 5 minutes Al, or you will miss the flight which is currently scheduled on time'

in fact the real second life will be the escape from the 'net', it will be vacations where there is no technology, where we unwire and allow our attention shields down.

Oh and yes I know, I am missing the flying car from my list, I did it on purpose we are never going to get flying cars. In fact if we let the governments get there own way, they will actually ban personal transport in the future.

P.S. Roo motivated this train of rant, not that it was Roo's fault, it's been in the old noodle for a while, it's just his post triggered it's release!

Sorry rant over for now..

Technorati Tags: Immersion, Multitouch, SecondLife

David Terrar has a choice quote over at Business two zero "but It’s nice to hear that us SaaS evangelists are taking over the asylum.", whilst reviewing at Gartner's SaaS analysis and promoting the TCO leveraged from it. Nice one David and I agree that the one-to-many model is likely to win out long term.

Given yesterdays post around SaaS stemming from Dennis's posts I took a small survey of service pricing available for the items businesses might be interested in pursueing.

Some of it can be a little complicated, as there are some divergent pricing models, for example Blinksale charges per invoice, Freshbooks per account and others per user. I therefore figured it was time for a collaborated effort to make this easier to review ones options. The closes thing to utility pricing currently appears to be user based pricing, but this is by no means standard and pricing varies considerably.

Thus I have created the Business Services Matrix (BSM) aimed to illustrate service costing at a quick glance. It is open for anyone to edit, so add your favourite business web service or fill in any missing gaps.

Enjoy ;)

Dennis has done some great coalface work with a grown up mashup of Blinksale/Freshbooks + Basecamp. I know how time consuming and tricky doing these things is for the first time, so hats of to D for leading the way for the rest of us. I won't cover the specifics as D does this justice himself, what I want to riff on is the service cost issues that D brings to the table both in this post and in a later post SaaS pricing and integration .

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Ok so we have all heard about agile and it's benefits over waterfall as a development strategy. We can also now see how that agility has enabled rapid delivery and public betas to create social feedback that helps shape new products. But how about taking this further into a new zone, a zone that punches back through beta and splits alpha into mashable fragments, software that users construct for themselves...

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Ok couple of questions already about the changes here so I shall deal with those quickly.

1. The previous (old) posts have not been imported and I am not sure that it is beneficial to import them, However you can get to them from the archive page as I have kept this running. Also the older posts retain there permalinks and I have no intention of removing these.
2. Given that you cannot see the older post in the new blog about wanting to change the blogging system, I should also give credit to Andy for suggesting I checkout Pebble, thanks for the recommendation, see talking really does help!!
3. Comments -  If you wish to track your comments or even just the site comments, there are feeds to do so. This is important as we have no intention of actually enabling the comments-email notification feature at this time. To get the feed of a posts comments see the feed icon next to the comments link. to get the feed for the entire blog's comments delete the '?entry=..."  from the afore mentioned comments feed - let me know your thoughts
4. We still have quite a few smaller changes top make yet and this will be a continual evolution, if you have any comments, feedback or ideas please let me know.

Wow this is so cool checkout CRM for Google from Etelos, this is shere marketing brilliance. I have spoken before about modular components (gadgets)  forming business solutions before, but these guys take the biscuit not only leveraging Google's goodies but on there own turf. It will be interesting to see how Google responds to this, they may not like the use of their name, although what is being done here is something they are encouraging with their tools. I think it's pretty cool and obviously the future, question is that it may just be a little close to the bone for Google, lets see. Thanks for the heads up from Richard MacManus. 

What are their chances with this one? is this fair game? How far can it go?