Windows Live, Qwest team up on Web 2.0

Software as a service, web applications, data portability – these are the sorts of themes that Microsoft is making moves in support of in the new computing world, in their own way. Tonight they announced a partnership with telecom provider Qwest to offer a custom, co-branded Windows Live software suite to every customer of Qwest’s internet services. This is the kind of thing that’s going to popularize Web 2.0 style software. For all the innovation and hotness of various inspiring start-ups – they are going to have a hard time competing with the market share of companies like MS and Qwest who are able to learn just fast enough to throw their weight around and really change large numbers of people’s computing experience. Can start ups be more than inexpensive labs for the big guys? Will all the free-data hippy stuff get thrown out the window when Windows takes what it wants from the paradigm and suffocates alternatives that were lost in the wilderness anyway? How much rhetoric can one get out of one press release?? 🙂

Seriously though, I think the Microsoft/Qwest partnership is big. And remember, Qwest is the one telecom that reportedly did not hand over call records to the NSA. How much is that worth? Probably not much, but maybe something.

International cultures of collaboration: a MicroSoft/Verizon study

A new survey from Microsoft and Verizon says that web collaboration is making a significant impact on workplace productivity around the world. While both companies have lots of collaboration tools they’d like to sell you, I think the survey they commissioned has some interesting finds to consider.

One was a 3 to 1 preference for working with teams, but doing that work from home! I have to admit, I love working from home – but I also love face to face time. It’s indispensable. I don’t think that goes without saying anymore, either.

Check these excerpts from the international comparisons:

“As for the regional differences, American professionals were more likely to enjoy working alone, and prefer to send e-mail rather than calling a person or leaving a voice mail message. They are also more comfortable with audio, video and Web conferencing technologies than people of other regions and tend to multitask the most when on conference calls.

Europeans thrive on teamwork more than their counterparts elsewhere and prefer to interact in real time with other people. They are more likely to feel it is irresponsible not to answer the phone and want people to call them back rather than leave a voice mail message. Professionals in the Asia-Pacific region, more so than anywhere else, want to be in touch constantly during the workday. As a result, they find the phone to be an indispensable tool and prefer instant messaging to e-mail. ”

Sounds like something that could behove us all to keep in mind when communicating internationally – but how true are these statements? Robin Good told me in a recent conversation that making statements about all Americans was like making statements about all fish. Personal observations re cultural differences in communication would be more than welcome…

Of all the collaboration technologies that were studied,3 three were more commonly present in high-performing companies than in low-performing ones: Web conferencing, audio conferencing and meeting-scheduler technologies. Web conferencing was cited by respondents as the most commonly present tool. (High vs. low performance was based on a split for companies based on their performance index, which was derived from items measured in the questionnaire.)

Newspaper website ads: curb your enthusiasm or freak out?

From IT Facts today
“Advertising on newspaper Web sites rose nearly 35% in Q1 2006 from Q1 2005, while print ad revenue rose 0.3%, Newspaper Association of America reported.”

Here comes the giant BUT

“Combined print and online advertising revenue rose 1.8% to $11.1 bln in Q1 2006, with spending for print ads accounting for $10.5 bln.”

So what we don’t have here are stats about ad revenue lost by print into the evil clutched of the online world. One way or the other the importance of print to advertisers remains clear. Perhaps the real moral of the story is that most advertisers are still not taking online media as seriously as it ought to be taken? I’m sure there are a thousand thoughts you could think based on the above handful of facts – I just thought readers here might like to see them.

Review of BlogBridge RSS reader

UPDATE: My complaints below proved unfounded after going through the system with its developer. My apologies. Please check out BlogBridge with confidence that it can in fact do the things I wrote below that it could not.

In my ongoing effort to find the best RSS reader for my serious feed reading needs, I just tried out BlogBridge. Though it has some very innovative features that have been widely written about and has a nice look to it, the first few minutes of use made its shortcomings for me clear.

It does not respect the folders in my OPML file. This alone is a deal-breaker. I have 600 RSS feeds carefully organized into folders by priority and if importing those files into a feed reader strips out the folders, I’ll be darned if I’m going to use the thing. I though I had selected the “import as multiple guides” option, but the OPML coming in from Net News Wire just landed in one undifferentiated pile called “my subscriptions.”

There is a limit to the number of feeds you can import – 500! After all the talk on the company’s front page about how BlogBridge users are different because they read a large number of feeds, this was a major disappointment. I can’t use a system that doesn’t welcome all my feeds in at import!

No “river of news” option. As far as I can tell, if HorsePigCow is the feed I’m subscribed to that has been most recently updated, I have to read every item in that feed – even ones a week old, before I the items in the second most recently updated feed appear. There is discussion of river of news throughout the BlogBridge site but I can’t see how to make it work that way.

I like the del.icio.us support, the dynamic reading lists shared with other users and some of the metadata about each feed in my subscription list, but there are too many shortcomings here for serious feed readers seeking to jump in. That’s how it appears to me at least.

Test rss to html