Microsoft prepares 'Albany' to compete with Google Docs

As more and more desktop applications are moving to the web, Microsoft is planning a low-end hosted and productivity suite to compete with similar services like Google Documents, Zoho, etc. Although it is unclear how low-end it is, Albany will combine Office, Office Live Workspaces, Windows Live OneCare, and the Windows Live suite of services. With the strong presence of Microsoft in desktop arena, it will be interesting to see how much this online complement can hurt other competitors.

Source: InfoWorld

Cloudo: Technology that will change your digital life

Cloudo is taking a step further than gOS by putting an entire operating system in your web browser!! In other words, Cloudo is an Internet Operating System - bringing the whole desktop experience to web browser.

Imagine that you have signed up on Cloudo, all your applications or files are actually hosted on the web. Hence, you can access your data from anywhere as long as you are connected, eliminate the need to bring your laptop along. You can access you same files using your home PC, from your school / office PC, and your mobile phone too! Maybe even Xbox 360. So, no more copying files using USB drives (more importantly, no more 'Oops..I forgot to copy the files'), no more complains on this PC does not have the program I need or I can't open the file in this PC etc....In addition, you can even sign up a joint accounts to facilitate information sharing / collaboration within a group.

I think the implication for general consumers is that, since the system is actually web-hosted, majority of the processing should be done at server side, i.e done by Cloudo servers, we as users, only running small Javascripts. Hence, the hardware requirements to run Cloudo should be very low - you can easy invest in cheap machine to run it - good for students and non-profit organisations.

For enterprises or IT staffs, managing the systems are simplified hence the maintenance is centralized now - data backups, updates and security are managed at one place and easily rolled out to user accounts. As for me, I am eager to know what kind of opportunities Cloudo will make available to developers. I think this technology is great and will have positive and important impacts to all of us.

Cloudo is still under development, and should be launched publicly later this year. For more information, you can visit Cloudo website. Unfortunately, the streaming of the Guided Tour video at the website is very poor, but, luckily, someone has uploaded the videos to YouTube a few days ago. So enjoy...

Part 1...

Mozilla Weave

Check this out, Firefox will soon have online services too. Basically, you can store your Firefox bookmarks and history on the web then you can easily synchronize your data with other devices, e.g. laptops, cell phones, or share data with friends - which is useful to me as I ocassionally work on different computers. Certainly, Mozilla has a greater plan than just what I mentioned.

The desktop-web integration trend is more and more obvious by now. I can't imagined how the future life will be when we try to disconnect from the web and cell phone.

360 Desktop

Some other Operating Systems have multiple desktops, but the desktop of Windows just doesn't evolve much since Windows 95.

Later last year, gOS caught my attention for a while because of the innovative web-OS style. Although interesting in concept, I didn't download and give gOS a try in the end. (Sometimes I wonder why they called it gOS but not the the full name greenOS, maybe Google wants to be flexible - you can call gOS green OS or Google OS - gOS can be used interchangeably).


However, I will definitely give 360 Desktop a try. It is innovative, and moreover you can put web gadgets on the desktop, it is more like Windows Desktop + gOS Desktop + Enhancements. Currently, it is still in invite-only beta program. Can't wait for the release version.

Software Development in the Future

Brad Abrams made his software development predictions for 2008. However, the content isn't sound too realistic according to my experience. Maybe, I should call it predictions for the future, some times beyond 2008. Here is a response to the Brad's predictions which I believe is more practical in many ways.

Working Offline on Google Documents

For Open Office fans, a new extension named OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs is published recently. This extension allows you to take Google Documents (GDocs)offline and work on them locally and then synchronize your offline copies with the online copies. This sort of desktop-web integration opens new possibilities like backup documents to web, sharing documents, work with the documents everywhere regardless of whether you are online or offline. For MS Office users (like me), there is a similar service (DocSyncer) available as well.

As Internet becomes ubiquitous, it is obvious that Desktop-Web integration and synchronization technology become more and more important. I am planning to include synchronization functionality in the future version of my software to facilitate data flowing between user computers and between offices (HQ and branches) too.