FLASH HQ

By the end of this week I expect all the trees lining the boulevards here in Fort Collins to be lined by brilliant yellow and gold leafed trees. Yes, fall has arrived and the days with pleasant daytime temperatures and gentle breezes rustling the turning leaves. Do we sleep better when the nights are cooler? I think we do, at least I know I do! I’ve updated the fall design of my website. I’ve been trying to be seasonal with my sites design, don’t ‘cha know. My banner images this fall is a great Colorado classic; The Maroon Bells of the Rocky Mountains with fall aspens at their feet.Did You Know?

Leaves have the same quantity of yellow pigment (xanthophyll) in July when they are green as they do in October when they are yellow. In July the darker green pigment (chlorophyll) masks the yellow color.

Moving Your Tech Life Online

IBM released an online application suite last week in a move to compete with Google. Google has been working tirelessly to provide online applications to compete with Microsoft Office. Their offerings, while not as convenient or powerful, do come close and in fact satisfy the needs of many users. IBM’s online offerings have bested Google in a couple areas and like Google are free. In today’s Wall Stree Journal I read where Microsoft too has rolled out a free service that lets users of its Office software create and share documents over the Internet in new ways. Not to be outdone Adobe, developers of Acrobat Portable Document Format (AKA PDF) have plans to unveil an online document-sharing service called Share.

There are pros and cons to be considered here. Yes there it a great convenience not having those apps installed on ones computer and your data being backed up by the various providers. Equally exciting is the potential to not have to purchase an upgrade to the very expensive Microsoft Office suite. On the downside your ‘editable’ data often remains on the app’s online server - under their control.

• Read more on Google Apps
• Read more on IBM’s Lotus Symphony
• Read more on Office Live
• Read more on Adobe Share

Stop Backing Up!

This is a post I’ve been wanting to write for a while, but the Mozy deal just brought it back to my attention. I’m surprised that all the talk of “the web as the platform” hasn’t led to this already.

Mozy, Carbonite, and others are all great for backing up your hard disk. Ultimately, though, backing up is dead as we move our lives online. In a few short years our documents, spreadsheets, photo albums, music, videos etc will be on the web. We’ll be happily collaborating and sharing on the web.

Knowing this, I can’t understand why all these online storage companies are so focused on providing consumers backup opportunities. There’s no point. If all our documents are online and stored by online file systems, they’ll be backed up automatically. And available. All over the world, from any net-connected computer. That being said you should know yours truly has just completed the Carbonite free trial and now have over thirty gigabytes safely (I hope) stored on their servers.

There’s a level of trust which needs to be obtained of course. But, I generally trust Flickr, Yahoo, Google, Openomy, etc. I know that once my files are stored, they’re safe. They’ll be replicated across many hard drives. Many machines. Many data centers throughout the world.

Mahalo Search

There is a new search engine on the web, Mahalo. I think Mahalo has great results. Especially for non-techies. I asked one of my web pals yesterday whether he’d rather look at the results for Mercedes Benz S-Class at Mahalo or at Google. He instantly wanted Mahalo. Me too.

Mahalo search results are hand generated. I think that is how Yahoo got its start before they went commercial to keep pace with Google?! There’s no question a human touch will help in the area of search results.

Google provides alright results for my example above, it’s just not as pretty and easy to understand as Mahalo. But Mahalo doesn’t provide any useful results for most other sites, while Google does. Sure, Mahalo is trying to use Google here, but their “More results from our friends at Google” thing just doesn’t cut it from the user experience (performance, grouped results, etc).

I think Mahalo can do well. Search is such a large market that even the smallest success is pretty good money. But it won’t be a Google killer, that’s for sure. I don’t know what the answer to this is yet, but it seems likely that an innovative solution in their upcoming platform could help them bridge the search gap and hit their sweet spot.

• Read more on Mahalo