Mail-to-weblog seems to be the only real way to contribute to weblog from different machines. I'm puzzled why Dave and Co still have not implemented the obvious functionality of being able to access weblog editing UI directly from http://radio.weblogs.com ???

Microsoft is preparing a version of MSN Messenger with new features that will be available exclusively to paying subscribers of the MSN 8 online service. Joe Wilcox reports on CNET.

One of the major MSN Messenger 5 features available exclusively to MSN 8 subscribers are enhanced parental controls, which can be applied to online service client and e-mail features.

MSN Messenger 5 [free XP-only version] offers a feature called "Browse the Web together" that was not activated in the beta. The client also offers access to the user's history of .Net Alerts, which serve up traffic, stock, auction and other tracking information in IM. Furthermore, the contact search appears in MSN Messenger 5 but not in Windows Messenger.

Head of Microsoft Research Rick Rashid talks about ongoing MSR projects.

"Sideshow" is the internal name for a project in which the company has developed an application that displays a series of windows with useful information on a user's desktop. Using XML and Microsoft's .Net Web services technology, Sideshow can reach out to the Web, corporate servers, or the computer's hard drive and provide quick views of data relevant to the user.

Sideshow team has published the project paper last month that described "notification and awareness platform". It looks like intelligent dashboard that apparently is being regularly used internally at Microsoft by 7000 users. Integrated in Office, this kind of tool will represent dramatic evolution of personal dashboard. I predict Office people are or will be working on productizing this. Groove team should definetely take note.

Cathleen Moore reports from IM Planet Conference. These seems to be a consensus amongst the players (Microsoft. Lotus, Groove) on the protocol.

In the end, rather than a feature/function bake-off among vendors, the real value differentiating corporate IM will be the ease with which enterprises can extend IM and presence awareness into applications and infrastructure, [Lotus'] Dies said.

Wanted: software designers who don't know software.

Thoughts on how to build future software.

Execution is king. After reading this interview with Larry Bossidy (ex Chairmain/CEO of Honeywell) I feel a bit uncomfortable spending more than a few minutes writing those strategy notes. His book may not be getting stellar reviews, but the interview is very refreshing.

Steve Gillmor and Mark Jones are interviewing Charles Fitzgerald .NET Strategy guy.

"We're certainly interested in the next generation of tools for access and collaboration and giving people tools to actually do something with that information. And today's portal model certainly falls far short of where we need to be. ... There's a broader road map where I think over the long term you're going to see a hybrid model of [collaboration] services, and we're big, big fans of peer services obviously."

 

Longhorn vs. Groove Platform, Next Office vs. Groove Desktop
The race is on.

Ever since I've learned about Groove I was amazed as to why such obviously useful technology has so little competition. I've explained it to myself as "Well, Ray and his team kick ass". Then, I've learned about that $51M deal and I though to myself - "Wow, Ray and his team really do kick ass! Not only they have great tech, but also Microsoft won't be killing them anytime soon. Perfect!"

Recent news about Windows group buying small P2P company didn't change my views of Groove's team of course, but comes as a sharp reminder of age-old truth about Microsoft - one should treat Microsoft's product groups as successful and highly competitive companies on their own. In order to succeed these "companies" sometimes step on each other's toes. They are opportunistic and may make business decisions that benefit their own group, but at the same time putting pressure on other groups. This rule is espetially true with cach-cows like Windows and Office.

What does this have to do with Groove? I'm guessing Office group (Jeff Raikes & Co.) was the primary proponent of Groove/Microsoft deal. They have good reasons to do so. As Office people were building their road-map, they desperately needed the technology that allowed cross-enterprise online/offline collaboration technology. I suspect they have talked to Windows group and inquired how Windows would address this requirement. At that time Windows people didn't have a good answer. By making the decision to invest in Groove, Office group got their roadmap in good shape. But it also have indirectly put the pressure on Windows group to come out with their answer as to how Windows itself would support the collaboration scenarios required by Office.

The acquisition of XDegrees by Windows' storage group illustrates that Windows group is now serious about providing cross-enterprise file sharing abilities. One can expect Longhorn to provide a lot of Groove-like technology. (One can also expect that Windows implementation will be built on GXA from the ground-up.)

What this all means for Groove? It will soon have competition - Windows. That's... serious competition. (Strictly speaking, Groove's basic productivity tools like calendar, project management kind-of competes with Office, but Groove's integration with Office will likely render those tools irrelevant for Office users).  The good news is Longhorn is far away, so Groove still has time to mature its platform and get good client base. 

The other good news is, Windows isn't after everything that Groove stands for. Groove has three crown jewels in its crown: Moving data cross-enterprise. Working online/offline transparently. Lastly, enabling collaboration features deep inside desktop applications. Windows Inc. wants the first two. The last one is still undisputed and has to be protected at all costs. So in order to sustain the business over the long term, Groove has to excel in enabling collaboration of desktop applications well beyond file sharing, well beyound Groove Desktop. This is Groove's chance to keep being one step ahead of its competitors.

Following-up yesturday's post :- As CNet's Stephanie Olsen reports, big banks begin to pressure IM companies to interoperate. The fact that customers take matters into their own hands shows how software companies have really screwed up with IM. It seems that this time around software companies have a real incentive - paying customers wanting the solution. The common standard will be good news for Groove.

The question is, how much AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo will be charging to let others IM with people on their networks.

 

Weblogs gave you the power of publishing.

Now Jay Link gives you O'Reily cover to go with it!

Make your own!

Thanks go to vowe.net

Lee Finck is ready to give up on IM. He has all the right to. To me and to many other people passionate about software, it is painful to see the lack of technological progress in IM space. It is painful to see so many souls locked up in Socialist Republic of AOL behind the Iron Curtain of proprietary protocols.

That said, I don't believe that the absence of open protocol is the primary reason why there's no IM-based killer app yet, apart plain-text IM itself. Declaring that IM is in dead-end because of absence of interoperability is like saying that software is in dead-end because we have several OS on the market!

First off, the protocol issue is not unsurmountable. Look no further than Trillian for proof. If Trillian managed to unify access to all popular IM platforms, why others can't? Secondly, if someone has a great idea on how to use IM to solve a real problem, why wait for everyone to be on the same network? Why not target one single IM platform? MSN Messenger is open enough. Yes, IM interoperability will help successful application more successful. But it will not turn mediocre software into a overnight hit. Groove is of course a good example of a successful application that will greatly benefit from unified IM. But inversely, if Groove fails, no one can blame the falure on the fact that IM world isn't unified.

It is not how AOL doesn't give a damn I'm frustrated about. It is near complete absence of commercial applications that innovate around IM to solve real problems that I'm puzzled about. Maybe I'm just too impatient...

Another addition to .NET developer's toolbox: Peter Drayton has a very useful little utility  that allows provides automatic call tracing. Extremely easy to use and very practical for debussing those triky remoting or multithreaded pieces.

The TraceHook.NET service is a context attribute that provides automatic call tracing on attributed classes. It traces instance method calls & field/property accesses to the debug output, allowing one to monitor an application as it runs. The trace includes type names, method names, parameter names & values (both [in] & [out]), as well as any return codes or thrown exceptions. Full, commented source is included, thus it should also serve as an interesting demonstration of the use of context attributes & interception in the .NET platform.

The source code was based on beta release of .NET, so I've sent Peter a few code changes to make the tool work with the latest framework.

This will be my next camera. That's when i'll quit developing film and focus on developing software!

Blog bombing

In a bizarre surreal bow to the power of perception on the web, what you say about a page becomes just as important as the actual content of the page. [Uber]

Uber have introduced the term "google bombing". What i'm talking about here is really is a particular instance of unintentional google bombing. Any informaiton in public domain is a double-edge sword.

[TODO - to complete]

Megnut's mom, who once was guest host on Meg's blog, has invented a new idea -- googlecooking. Meg says "My mother types whatever ingredients she has on hand into Google and then picks the most appealing recipe returned in the results." Smart! [Scripting News]

What a wonderful idea! So to define googlecooking in general terms, it is the process of searching the algorithms/resources needed to achieve all possible results using a set of ingridients and pre-conditions.

This might be far fetched, but I wonder how can this idea be applicable for things like supply chain management.  Might be an opportunity for google-based applications for various verticals.

Privacy vs. weblogs.

As people are creating webs of links between weblogs and establish common-interest communities, what are the consequences for privacy?

Preserving privacy means preserving the ability to own and control all of the personal information. It also means the ability to clearly understand what kind of personal information is being produced. From the first look at the issue, it would appear that we disclose exactly what we decide to post to weblog and not more. But as people begin to be part of weblog communities, another kind of personal information is being released. It becomes possible to determine the circle of friends for instance. It becomes possible to track patters behind individual's interests over time; to determine the level of interest of others to a given individual; to tell who's reading.

There's key difference between weblogs and newsgroups where most of the above bits of personal information was already in the public domain.  With weblogs you can reliably answer the question Show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are. Also, with weblogs it is much easier to build analysis tools.

Let's imagine for a second that some guy Joe is an recovering alcoholic. Joe is not talking about this particular problem of his on the weblog. He want to keep this fact private. Now, Joe has friends whom he met in rehabilitation clinic. They choose to disclose the fact that they are recovering alcoholics. Once it a while Joe's friends link to Joe's weblog. Now imagine a tool that tracks links between weblogs over time and achieves statistically representative data sample. When it becomes clear that 10 of his friends have problems with alcohol, will Joe be able to keep his secret for long??? What if Joe decides to run for president?

I'm not trying to be comprehensive here and I'm sure anyone can cook-up another technology-assisted privacy invasive scheme. My point is, many people are not realizing what kind of personal information is really being released as we continue to build these webs of weblogs. Maybe its too early to ring a bell, but weblog tool vendors should definitely think about this (or talk to experts). It is very important to realize they are developing tools that create wealth of personal information and it should be their responsibility to allow users to own and control all of the personal information.

Thanks to Jeroen Bekkers for encouraging me to switch to radio. The tool is very flexible. Switching could be made simpler though - couple of hours if you don't find the homepage template you like. I'll keep blogger-radio bridge running for a while.

My first feature requests:

• Allow automatic import of the content from a different blog and post it with the right dates (in the past).
  
• Pure Windows client for posting that would use MS Word for text entry (a-la Outlook)

Just about every blog I’ve checked this morning had a link to Ozzie’s reply to Joel’s article on Platforms. The fact that a lot of people expected a public reply from Groove/Ozzie tells a lot about how blogs have changed high-tech PR game. Can’t wait for other software executives to catch up!

In my opinion Ray Ozzie did a wonderful job explaining Groove’s strategy. The bit I especially like is the appearance of previously unpublished info on Groove OEM Kit. The existence of such kit confirms that Groove does recognizes the demand for Groove runtime and is working towards making it generally available. This is good news.

But notice have Ozzie skillfully blends two things together. He calls Groove Workspace an application, but it is a platform too. Yet, there’s “Groove Platform OEM Edition” as well, but its not yet generally available.

Let’s see if I can get it straight. First of all, there’s Groove Platform. 3rd parties can develop applications on it using OEM Kit. Then, there’s Groove Workspace. It is an application that runs on top of Groove Platform, but also allows 3rd parties to extend it by writing Groove Workspace Tools.

The best analogy I can find is Windows and Office. Windows is a platform. Office is a Windows application, but you can also extend it by writing Office plug-ins and marcos.

Ok, this sounds very very reasonable and healthy. So what’s wrong with Groove’s picture? The priority. Clearly, Groove has made a conscious decision to invest much more in support for developers of Groove Workspace Tools while providing a bare minimum support for Groove Platform developers. Imagine if 95% of MSDN was allocated for information on how to develop Office plug-ins and 5% was given to help out Windows application developers. And you had to "negotiate" with Microsoft to get that 5%!

From the architectural perspective, there’s a risk that some of the critical functionality would creep into Groove Workspace from Groove Platform. Don’t get me wrong, I’m convinced that Groove’s architects are very smart and experienced people, but its really tough to build a nice generic platform when you have one single application that tests it.

I think Groove has made a strategic mistake, but its not too late to correct it. Groove needs to increase the priority of getting Groove OEM Kit into general availability. They also need to start encouraging people to develop on Groove Platform just like they encourage to develop on top of Groove Workspace. So far Groove have done a really good job listening to developers, so if enough people complain, I believe they will find the way to solve the problem.

It's about time Groove has got some competition!

Matthew French reports on CADwire.net on Availl

From the first glance, it looks like Availl has solved pretty much the same problems that Groove runtime solves (security, firewall traversal, online/offline handling). In contrast with Groove Availl seems to be only focusing on selling the 'briefcase' solution - file sharing and synchronization. Compared to Groove, Availl's file sharing product looks extremely simple to setup and way more transparent - no shared spaces, no UI.

Joel Spolsky has some harsh criticism for Groove strategy. While I disagree with most points expressed in the article, I think the core message is consistent with the one expressed by me here and Philip King on Groove developer's forums. If this sounds odd, read on.

When talking about multi-layer product such as Groove, one should define the terms to avoid confusion. So first, a quick terminology intro. "Groove Runtime" defines a UI-less piece of code that offers such services like secure communication, firewall traversal, persistence model that allows efficient broadcast of data set changes, handling of online/offline contexts, etc. "Groove Transceiver" is an application that uses Groove Runtime to offer the UI for such features as shared space management, user management, instant messaging etc. "Groove Tools" are hosted inside the Transceiver and allow the user to perform a specific function inside Groove Transceiver.

Joel claims that Groove Inc. is making it hard to build applications (Tools) on Groove. I think this statement simply cannot be further from the truth. Clearly, Joel have never tried to create a Groove Tool with VS.NET Toolkit. For a young startup it is truly impressive to see how much effort was put to simply the creation of Groove tools.

Joel also claims that Groove Inc. doesn't know that Groove is a platform. I wonder why is there a developer's zone on Groove's site? Again, this argument doesn't stand basic analysis.

So do I think Joel's article is wrong? No, it simply fails to capture the real issue with Groove - there are two different views of "Groove Platform". One is being offered by Groove Inc. and another is wanted by ISVs.

Groove Inc. defines the platform as Runtime plus Transceiver. Want to build on the Groove Platform - write a Groove Tool. Most ISVs define the platform as Runtime. Period. Most of the people thinking of integrating Groove's collaboration capabilities only want the Runtime. This is why Joel's analysis of cost/benefit of integrating Groove with CityDesk is right on the money - it illustrates the Groove/ISV gap.

In Groove's defense, they do claim that the Runtime can in fact be used by ISVs in their applications (whoever there seem to be technical issues with this model in the current release). But still, the primary positioning of the platform is Runtime+Tranciever.

So, its not that Groove thinks they don't have a platform (or they're clueless) - its just that their priorities are out of sync with those of their partners. This strategy flaw can be corrected. And if enough people complain, I believe it will.