Both at work and at home i've been studying our current toolkit for sharing knowledge. At work I'm supporting our software development, at home I'm looking at a ways to share knowledge to support lifelong education of persons with cognitive disabilities, including formal public education and home schooling. Naturally I'm looking at similar technologies in both environments.
I've summarized a few of the components I'm thinking about in a table. I compared best of breed solutions to the best (not free!) suite I know of and to Google's offerings.
Function
Best of breed
Atlassian Confluence
Google
commentary, notices
Wordpress
yes
Blogger
Q&A
StackExchange
no
no
collaborative hypertext document
TWiki?
yes
Sites
PDF, other
FTP/HTTP server
yes
Docs, Share
Calendar/event
Google Calendar
no
Google Calendar
Social, networking
Facebook
no
G+
Subscribe/notify
RSS
RSS
?
Looking at this solution set it's clear that each has its advantages and weaknesses.
Atlassian Confluence is the best integrated knowledge sharing and collaboration solution I know of. It's not at all free, but it's inexpensive for 10 or fewer users and anonymous users can have read only access. I give Atlassian extra marks for actually publishing an easily discoverable price list. Unfortunately I don't think I can get Confluence running at Dreamhost, my net hosting provider.
Google, like Atlassian, is free for a small number of users and provides high performance anonymous access. Sadly, Sites is a great disappointment. On the other hand, I'm not impressed with any of the currently available open source wiki solutions. In many ways FrontPage 98 was better.
Lastly the best of breed solutions have advantages in terms of data freedom and ease of switching providers or changing knowledge base ownership. An integrated approach can also leverage StackExchange -- the net's best technology for question/answer based information sharing. Likewise a Facebook Page can engage customers and provide a secondary notification solution in addition to RSS/Twitter.
Any thoughts? Comments are most welcome.
PS. I've been looking at collaboration technologies for about 20 years -- starting with BBS software and a long string of innovative solutions. The functional list would have had answers 20 years ago. What's different is that the audience today is vastly larger.

Ok. Ok!I'll talk.It's true. I killed her. Oh god, I swear ... it was an accident.I didn't mean to do it. None of us did.Of course I wasn't alone! You think I could have killed her all by myself? She was huge. Powerful! Millions of users. We all loved her. We loved her to death.How? How did we do it?It's obvious buddy. Staring you in the face. Just look. Look!Ok, do I need to spell it out? I mean, how did you read this?Yeah, I thought so.  Google Reader user eh? Yeah, the hard stuff. Jacking the info stream right to the cortex. RSS junkie you are.You killed her too.I mean, did you pay for this? No, you didn't. There's no way to pay. Free beer.Did you read the ads? Yeah, trick question. There are no ads. At most you added a cookie. Worth a nano-dollar to someone.You got the full feed ad free. You spent your time here instead of making someone money. You used Google Reader to steal money from Google.Google doesn't like that. That's why G+ doesn't have an RSS feed.Facebook doesn't like that. They turned personal page RSS feeds off a year or so ago.Twitter ... Yeah, you get it. I see it in your face.RSS was too good for this world.That's why she had to die.We loved her to death.

Congratulations to Baidu ($BIDU) on an excellent quarter and good guidance. From the earnings release:

Third Quarter 2011 Highlights

Total revenues in the third quarter of 2011 were RMB4.175 billion ($654.7 million), an 85.1% increase from the corresponding period in 2010.

Operating profit in the third quarter of 2011 was RMB2.226 billion ($349.1 million), an 88.5% increase from the corresponding period in 2010.

Net income attributable to Baidu in the third quarter of 2011 was RMB1.882 billion ($295.0 million), a 79.8% increase from the corresponding period in 2010. Diluted earnings attributable to Baidu per ADS(2)(EPADS) for the third quarter of 2011 were RMB5.38($0.84); diluted earnings attributable to Baidu per ADS excluding share-based compensation expenses (non-GAAP) for the third quarter of 2011 were RMB5.49($0.86).

From a Bloomberg report on the earnings:

“Baidu reported strong results in 3Q and offered robust 4Q guidance,” Eric Wen, a Hong Kong-based analyst with Mirae Asset Securities, wrote in a note today. The fourth quarter “is traditionally the high season for online retailers” so heavy advertising spending likely will continue, wrote Wen, who rates the stock “buy.”

Third-quarter sales jumped to 4.18 billion yuan, from 2.26 billion yuan a year earlier, the company said. That exceeded the 3.93 billion average of 16 analysts’ estimates…

Revenue is expected to rise to between 4.41 billion yuan and 4.54 billion yuan in the fourth quarter, Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Li said on a conference call today. That compares with the 4.1 billion yuan average of 13 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Clearly the August CCTV attacks and the difficulties many Chinese SMEs are facing has had no material impact on Baidu’s business.

According to iResearch Baidu now has 78% share of the search market in China while Google ($GOOG) has a paltry 12%. I hope Robin Li sends Sergey Brin a very expensive gift every year.

It’s good to be a monopoly.

You can follow me @Niubi on Twitter and @Billbishop on Sina Weibo.

Related posts:China’s Internet: The Invisible Birdcage
Chinese Groupon Clone Lashou Files For US IPO
The Chinese Internet As Seen By GroupM

In a show of good faith today, Google touted the fact that it has refused to cooperate with local law enforcement agencies in the U.S. who requested the removal of YouTube videos of police brutality and criticisms of law enforcement officials. Google cited its transparency report from the first half of this year, but to mention it today is telling. With violent crackdowns at Occupy Oakland this week, citizen media like YouTube have been a vital channel. From Google's mid-year transparency report:

"We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests."

"The whole world is watching," as protesters around the country have reminded officials since they first began to occupy Wall Street. With this week's escalations, now would not be a good time for Google to engage in censorship. The wording of its notice about denying the removal requests is encouraging, but it's carefully chosen to suit a particular situation.

Google complies with 93% of U.S. removal requests. It has decided that the best course of action is to maintain transparency and respond on a case-by-case basis. That transparency has upset governments, and the refusal to censor police brutality videos surely made some city officials unhappy.

But Google's record is spotty. Just this month, it handed over a WikiLeaks volunteer's Gmail data to the U.S. government, which used an old and controversial law to request it without a warrant from a judge. Google is pushing for updated laws that better reflect the media of today, but in the meantime, its record on upholding free speech is touch-and-go. Google has done the right thing with these police takedown requests, but the world should keep watching.

What do you think Google's responsibilities are regarding government requests?

Discuss

Any lingering fantasies of the web as a no-man’s land where content is free from the restraints of geographical boundaries probably should be put to rest. Google Tuesday morning released a treasure trove of data relating to content-takedown requests, and the numbers speak for themselves: requests are up worldwide and Google complies with the majority of them.

For the six-month period ending June 30, 2011, Google received approximately 1,000 requests to remove approximately 8,400 pieces of content (it doesn’t give exact numbers for some countries), and it complied with 64 percent of them. In the United States, Google received 92 requests requesting the removal of 757 items total, and it complied with 63 percent of them. According to Google, the number of U.S. requests increased 70 percent over the previous six-month period, while U.K. requests increased by 71 percent.

Worldwide, the majority of requests were based on claims of defamation, privacy and security, or “other.” YouTube content was targeted by more requests than that of any other Google service, followed by Blogger and web search. AdWords, however, was the largest target in terms the sheer volume of content requested to be removed.

Powered by Tableau

Google doesn’t break down the percentage of requests in each specific category that were granted or denied, although it does highlight a number of specific requests that it denied, including a U.S. request regarding police brutality videos on YouTube. Based on the data provided, takedown requests by executive and police agencies outnumbered court orders by about 38 percent.

Requests for user data also were up worldwide over the previous six months, including by 29 percent in the United States and 38 percent in Germany. Worldwide, Google reported 15,640 requests for data on 25,440 users, and it partially or fully complied with 54.4 percent of those requests. The United States led the way on users requests with 5,950 requests targeting 11,057 users, and Google partially or fully complied with 93 percent of them.

Powered by Tableau

What does it all mean?
Google has given quite a bit of raw data and qualitative explanation, and it all points toward a world where governments and courts are increasingly seeing the web as within their realms of jurisdiction. That’s probably fine when the content involved clearly violates existing laws, but it gets questionable when we’re talking about subjective laws around the limits of free speech, such as this example from India:

We received requests from state and local law enforcement agencies to remove YouTube videos that displayed protests against social leaders or used offensive language in reference to religious leaders. We declined the majority of these requests and only locally restricted videos that appeared to violate local laws prohibiting speech that could incite enmity between communities.

I’ve always found this particular issue problematic when it comes to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act in the United States, too. Content-removal requests come in before there has been any real legal proceeding, and platform providers such as Google are forced to play judge and jury. They must balance legal risks against free speech in deciding whether content should stay up or be removed.

When it comes to requests for user data, all that Google and companies of its ilk really can do is ensure that requests are within the bounds of the law and notify users of requests for their data. But in the United States, at least, the laws regarding web-user data are still fairly lax and don’t require a search warrant in many instances. It’s yet another example of the web and the law not being anywhere near on the same page.

It’s easy to poke them for being too willing to bend to the wills of government officials and authorities, but web companies can’t flaunt the laws of the countries in which they want to operate, either. Otherwise, as separate Google data illustrates, the lights might go out on their services in those countries.

Image courtesy of Flickr user alancleaver_2000.

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The mobile web version of Nokia Maps now looks and behaves more like a standard native application on Google Android and Apple iOS devices, thanks to HTML5: The navigation service now provides offline downloading of maps. This ability can reduce mobile broadband data charges or allow map usage in areas that have limited or no wireless data service.

Enthusiast site Android Community noted the updates on Monday by way of the HandHeld Blog. In addition to the downloadable maps, the service — found at http://m.maps.nokia.com — also adds public transit directions to supplement the existing walking and driving navigation as well as points of interest (POI) and guides to the local area.

Nokia’s mapping service is arguably one of the best software products to come from the Finland-based handset maker, and this update makes it even better. Why else would Microsoft decide to integrate Nokia Maps in the Windows Phone platform going forward? I used the web version of Nokia Maps earlier on Monday, finding it to be so full-featured that it was almost difficult to believe it to be a web application.

 LoadingNextPreviousPicture 1 of 6 nokia-maps-1-save-local

The offline mapping mode is welcome, especially when many smartphone owners pay for set amounts of wireless data. Google, too, recently introduced downloadable maps, partially for this reason. Nokia’s implementation is somewhat limiting, though, at least in my short tests. The initial geographic area I wanted to map was too large, so Nokia Maps wouldn’t save it. I had to keep zooming and cropping before saving.

The end result was a reasonable size — about 15 square blocks of Philadelphia — and I had to boost the storage limits allocated to the service to get the 19 MB area map downloaded. Nokia calls these “neighborhood maps,” so if you’re planning to visit several areas, each neighborhood will have to be downloaded separately. That differs from Google’s solution, where I was able to grab a map of 10 square miles. Once you have a local map from Nokia stored on the device, you don’t have access to the guides and POIs, but you can zoom in for greater detail, just like Google’s version.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
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I wrote a pretty sober piece about the death or near-death of Google Reader yesterday, but after reading Sarah Perez and Austin Frakt and after thinking about just how much I use Google Reader every day, I’m beginning to revise my initial forecast. Stay calm is quickly shifting toward full-bore Panic Mode.

First of all, how do you think I found Sarah’s piece? From a share in Google Reader. How did I easily and quickly archive both Austin’s and Sarah’s posts so that I could access them in the future for a post like this one? Again, Google Reader. How can I quickly search a variety of excellent sources, or dig back through my own writing in a quick and efficient manner? Yeah, you guessed it. As Sarah notes, Reader is a “carefully constructed “human curated” list of shares. It is, and will be up until the day it disappears, one of the most regular and enjoyable news consumption behaviors I engage in every day.” And it’s a tool for writers like myself as well.

When Google killed Buzz, everyone in Reader started to worry. Keep your hands off my Reader! we all said. But Google didn’t listen. This may be because nobody has worked on Google Reader in years – the service has been alone with its loyal users for a long time without updates or changes. We like it this way.

For one thing, Reader is only sort of a social network. In many senses it’s an anti-social network. Not in the sense that people in Reader are anti-social so much as the point is to harbor a small enclave of carefully selected people and create a safe-haven of sorts where that “carefully constructed human curated” list of shares and insights can flourish. In Reader, you don’t go after as many friends as possible. You certainly don’t see anyone from high school. Nobody shares photos of their kids. The discussions that do blossom are almost always very smart and focused. It’s the internet if the world were a more prefect place.

The microcosm that is Google Reader is a valuable and important piece of social media. It’s a shame that Google doesn’t recognize this. Why not create a Google Reader Plus for everyone on Plus and just leave Reader itself alone? This seems like a simple solution to a non-problem. Google would reward its most loyal users, while expanding its RSS service to everyone else.

So what about it, Google? Preserve this piece of technological genius for those of us who’ve been sticking with you for so long.

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Read my Forbes blog here.

Google+ SVP Vic Gundotra and Google Co-founder Sergey Brin took to the stage today at The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco to talk about their new social network and what exactly they’re up to these days.

Among other things, Gundotra touched on the success Google+ has seen since its launch, most notably that users have uploaded 3.4 billion photos over the last 90 days — a statistic which “blew his mind”. Because of this early success, much of which was unexpected, Gundotra said, Google has been focusing on scaling the social network to make sure that it works for all of its users.

As a result, Google+ has so far lacked integration with Google Apps, a feature many users have been clamoring to see. According to the Google SVP, the company “thought it would have more time” before it hit a scale and popularity in which these kinds of additions would become necessary.

With 40 million users, Google+ is already there. Gundotra said that Google Apps support on Google+ would be arriving “imminently”, which he later clarified by saying “within a few days”.

At the same time, developers have also been waiting for Google+ to make its APIs available for use, and many have wondered why the company hasn’t released them as of yet. The SVP said that the Google+ team has been taking a “cautious approach” to APIs and, though it might annoy some, they would not be rushing their APIs to the public’s hands.

“When we release an API we want developers to have high confidence that they can depend on Google”, he said.

Also of note: A la Twitter, Google+ will (in the next few months) be rolling out support for pseudonyms and other forms of identity, Gundotra said today. Google+ initially only allowed users to sign up using their real names, but it will be adding features in the near future that support other forms of identity, specifically pseudonyms and nicknames.

While Google+ had early on resisted the appeal for support for alternative identities, it seems to have changed course, understanding that some people do, in fact, have legitimate reasons to choose not to use their real name. In my case, it’s to avoid revealing my superpower. I’m sure many others feel the same way.

For more on Gundotra and Brin’s Q&A with Jon Batelle, check out Erick’s coverage here.






Crunchbase





GOOGLE
VIC GUNDOTRA






Company:
Google


Website:
google.com


Launch Date:
July 9, 1998


IPO:

NASDAQ:GOOG



Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....






Learn more





Person:
Vic Gundotra


Website:


Companies:
Google, Microsoft


Vic Gundotra is senior vice president of Social at Google, responsible for its social products such as +1. Previously he was a Vice President of Engineering responsible for developer evangelism and open source programs. He also manages applications development. Prior to Google, Vic worked 15 years at Microsoft as General Manager of Microsoft’s developer outreach efforts. At Microsoft, he was responsible for a variety of products and operating systems, including Windows 3.0, NT, Windows XP, and...






Learn more

Say goodbye to Android as you know it. Ice Cream Sandwich (otherwise known as Android 4.0) is coming, and it’s the biggest upgrade Android has seen to date.

But fancy new software isn’t the only thing Google’s been working on: they’ve also just announced their new flagship Android device, the Samsung-made Galaxy Nexus. I got to spend a solid chunk of time with both the new hardware and the new software, and have returned with a venerable mountain of first impressions, insight, and the best damned demo video you’ll find anywhere.

The Demo Video:

The Hardware

As an army of now-unemployed webOS employees could tell you: without good hardware, good software is nothing.

Fortunately, the Galaxy Nexus is — at least from what we’ve seen so far — good hardware. Really good. As in, quite possibly the best looking piece Samsung has ever built. Take the resoundingly solid design of the Galaxy S II, add the subtle curve of the Nexus S’ display, throw in some svelte curves for good measure — Ta-da! You have the Galaxy Nexus.

Appearing from the side as something not unlike a teardrop, the Galaxy Nexus tapers from above down into an ever-so-slightly thicker base. Unlike the “hump” found on the rump of the Motorola Droid X (or even the just announced Droid RAZR), however, Google tells me that the deeper base is designed as such for sake of ergonomics, rather than as a store-all for the device’s thickest components. Also unlike the Droid X, the Galaxy Nexus’ wider bit doesn’t detract from the device’s overall look.

There was one bit of the body that I wasn’t a fan of, though: the battery cover. Like many a Samsung before it, the Galaxy Nexus’ battery cover is made up of a chintzy-feeling plastic. You wouldn’t notice until you pulled the cover off… but once you do, it just sort of sticks with you. My opinion may be swayed a bit after having seen the exceedingly slick Kevlar rear of the Droid RAZR this morning — though arguably, the RAZR’s rear panel isn’t removable.

Samsung has been improving their Super AMOLED series of displays at a breakneck pace, and they didn’t ease off the gas for this one. With an HD resolution of 1280×720 (a first in the mobile world) and coming in at a mindblogging 4.65″, I couldn’t help but wonder: would the screen be too big?

The answer is no. In most cases, it felt no larger than the now relatively commonplace 4.5″ screen. Why? It’s all about the buttons. Where previous devices might’ve put their capacitive hardware keys, the Galaxy Nexus puts more display. The buttons become a part of the screen itself, allowing the screen to appear to be a more comfortable 4.5″-or-so during regular use, expanding out to 4.65″ (by hiding the onscreen buttons) only when it’s most beneficial to the experience (like during video playback.) This on-screen button trickery is an optional offering of Ice Cream Sandwich, so expect other manufacturers to pick it up stat.

Though I didn’t manage to finagle a sample shot to offer up as evidence, the quality of the device’s front and rear camera seemed about average. I tested the device in a relatively low-light room, and I was neither harshly disappointed nor overwhelmingly impressed.

The Software (Android 4.0/Ice Cream Sandwich)

Ice Cream Sandwich is Android as it should be.

It’s the first time I’ve used Android and felt that Google has stepped anywhere near that truly fine balance between power, flexibility, usability, and good ol’ fashion beauty. Android has always been powerful — it just never really looked all that good doing it. Ice Cream Sandwich looks good. Really good.

Oddly, I never liked Honeycomb, the tablet-only predecessor from which Ice Cream Sandwich takes so many visual cues. Both Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich share a generally dark motif. Stretched out across a tablet’s display, that darkness can come across as a depressing, empty void. On the smaller display (as weird as it is to classify a 4.65″ display as “smaller”) of a smartphone, however, it’s sharp. I’m also a sucker for symmetry, and the center-aligned icons of ICS on a phone (as opposed to the side-aligned icons on a Honeycomb tablet) just look better.

Ice Cream Sandwich’s Finer Features:

The widgets system has been overhauled, with the primary new trick being resizability. The Gmail widget, for example, can be scaled to show just two recent e-mails at a time, or, with a brief hold of the widget and a quick drag of the edge markers, up to three or four.
You can, at long last, take screenshots right on the device. Outside of a few phones which had screenshot functionality hacked in by the manufacturers, nabbing a screen grab on Android generally entailed installing a massive SDK onto your computer and learning your way around the tools.
The browser has been thoroughly improved. It’s got the usual bug fixes and performance enhancements, but also now allows you to save pages for offline reading and to request the non-mobile version of any page with just one click (presumably through a bit of user-agent trickery).
The new camera is really, really fast. Shutter lag is non-existant, and it’s ready to take another picture in well under a second. I’m itching to do a quick-draw shoot out between the camera on the Galaxy Nexus and that of the iPhone 4S.
The speech-to-text engine has been completely overhauled, and is remarkably fast. You speak naturally, and the streaming speech-to-text conversion should only lag behind your words by a few syllables. You’ve gotta see it to believe it (check it out in the video above at the 2:31 mark).
Also well worth seeing (9:25 in the video above): the Face Recognition Lock. Android takes a few seconds to analyze the structure of your face — once configured, your mug is the only one that the device will unlock for. In low light situations (wherein the camera might not be able to see you well enough) you can fall back to a swipe pattern (which ICS requires you set up while configuring the face detection).
To create a folder, you now simply drag one app on-top of another. Apps can also now be dragged in and out of the static dock area without trudging through settings.
They’ve tucked in a rather talented photo editing tool, with everything from scaling/cropping to basic photo filters. It’s no Photoshop, but it’ll probably hold you over until Instagram makes its way to Android.
To geek out for a moment, there was one small bit that was perhaps my favorite of all: the data usage monitor. With the quick drag of a few sliders across a graph, you can quickly peruse a timeline of your data usage, and narrow down which apps are the data-gobbling culprits. One more bar lets you set up automatic warning triggers for your data usage, while a final bar lets you set a point (say, half a meg shy of your monthly cap) at which your data connectivity automatically offs itself. As someone who gets nailed for data overages pretty much each and every month, I love it.

Ice Cream Sandwich is pretty. It’s polished. It’s animated, and shiny, and jam-friggin’-packed with gradients and alpha translucencies.

What it’s not — at least not yet — is flawless. There was a crash here and there, and a tense moment or two when a slider just… wouldn’t.. work. Google was quick to note that the build I was seeing was a relatively old one — but even if it weren’t, they still have weeks to stomp out the lingering bugs for the initial release, and months before anyone really expects Ice Cream Sandwich to trickle out onto a wide array of devices. They’ll fix it up right.

This is the first time in a while I’ve been genuinely excited about Android from a software standpoint, and I look forward to seeing more of ICS in the future. We will, of course, give it a full review as the launch approaches, so be on the lookout for that






Crunchbase





GOOGLE






Company:
Google


Website:
google.com


Launch Date:
July 9, 1998


IPO:

NASDAQ:GOOG



Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....






Learn more

I wrote a while back about the eventual necessity for the internet to become beautiful. The trouble is that the things in the world we consider beautiful in an informational context — magazine and book layouts, typography, etc. — are necessarily limited in the information they have to present. It’s this limitation, the known quantity aspect, that lets designers work effectively.

How should you design something, then, that presents effectively limitless information (say, all the world’s books) through a fairly limited medium (say, a web browser)? Google has one idea. Put them on a gigantic helix.

As you can see, they’ve got this WebGL-based demo up and running with about 10,000 titles that have been indexed by Google Books. It’s separated by genre, and you can zoom between genres with a thrilling effect. Makes me think of the Tower of Babel:

But is this really something people will want to navigate? Probably not. People like analogs in their digital catalogs, and this one seems a little bit too off the wall. Sure, there are books in rows. But it’s also a corkscrew extending to the sky. And people are used to seeing their books arranged spine out — which isn’t necessarily the best thing in the world, but it is a superior information density. And I wonder if it might be better to put people inside instead of outside?

Anyway, it’s a fun little experiment you can try out here. Note to Mac Laptop users: be careful how you swipe or you may accidentally navigate off the page or invoke some arcane gesture.

Google Docs takes another bite out of expensive Microsoft Office software today with a complete do-over of Presentations. Google Docs slideshows can now be edited live and simultaneously with a team. It enables viewing of revision history, so any team member can go back and see changes made by others. The update also features live chat alongside the editing tools.

In addition to the collaboration features, Docs has added new transitions, animations and themes, with which PowerPoint users have been fluffing up their posts for years. The new features are only supported on modern browsers.

It's the latest Docs product to enable live collaboration in a rollout of updates that began over a year ago with basic co-editing. Google Plus has opened all kinds of new potential ways to collaborate. Hangouts, the group video chat feature on Plus, got live Docs integration in September.

The integration of all these Google services into one seamless collaboration platform is a ways away, but it's coming together. The Docs team keeps on adding features like Presentations that make Microsoft Office less and less interesting.

Read more on the Google Docs blog.

Discuss

A colleague of mine bought a $200 unlocked Android phone made by Acer. He's pairing it with an AT&T paygo plan using an automated purchase option that effectively costs him about $200-300 a year total for some voice and a modest amount of 3G data. Of course in many locations he's using WiFi.So his total two year smartphone cost is on the order of $700.A minimal iPhone plan, assuming purchase of the 4G without jailbreaking, would be perhaps $1,800 with all the fees and taxes of non-paygo plans.That's an $1,100 gap.The iPhone 4 (much less the 4S) is much better than his Acer phone - and iOS is mostly better than Android [1]. I'll count that as a $300 offset against that $1,100 gap.That leaves an $800 value gap and an $1,100 gross gap. This is not sustainable. Apple's brand isn't worth a value gap that large.I'm awfully glad Android is out there. As Android captures more of the geek market, and as the cost of Android data falls, there will be enormous pressure on the cost of iPhone plans.[1] However Calendar/Contact/document functionality with iOS 5/iCloud is much worse than Android/Google Apps.Update: Lots of great comments on this post. I hope I get to do a f/u post, but in the meantime ...Apple missed analyst expectations today... "Net income in the fiscal fourth quarter was $6.62 billion, or $7.05 per share ... Analysts ... were expecting $7.28 per share... iPhone sales were up 21 percent from last year at 17.1 million ... Analysts, however, were hoping for 20 million". There are lots of good reasons for this expectations gap, but it is consistent with price pressure.I'm only writing about the US. The US Apple Store doesn't yet sell an unlocked iPhone 4S, but it sells an unlocked iPhone 4 for $650. Unfortunately, it's not clear that US users can use it with a PayGo data plan, or even that AT&T officially allows it to be used as a voice-only phone. So using an unlocked iPhone might increase the price gap (unless you can live with T-mobile's limited service area.)It's easy to forget that in the US the purchase price of a phone is a fraction of the cost. The real basis is the costs of ownership over two years. That's why I don't compare unlocked phone purchase costs but compare phone and service. There are a lot of odd and disturbing rules about how and where iPhones can be used.I think the Acer phone is probably more like an bizarro 3GS than a 4, so I'm overstating the value gap by comparing it to a 4.Apple can obviously close the price gap significantly, but that will impact their margins and, eventually, their share price. The good news for families like mine (five iPhone devices) is that our costs are likely to fall. (It's good for us if Apple's stock price falls!)

Samsung and Google jointly delayed a U.S. press event last week that was expected to see both the next version of Android as well as the first phone to run it, dubbed the Nexus Prime. The actual name may vary based on which network operator carries it, but the Prime is anticipated to raise the bar as a flagship Android handset.

I received direct word of the event postponement and now have an invite for the rescheduled event. As it’s slated for Oct. 19 in Hong Kong, I’ll have to pass on attending, but will have an update after the news hits thanks to a live video feed.

The Nexus Prime has already appeared in a video demonstration that loosely validates some of the rumored specifications, such as a 4.65-inch display with 1280×720 resolution, on-screen software buttons in place of capacitive or hardware buttons, and the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Google Android.

Google’s quarterly investor call took place this week, with CEO Larry Page saying Ice Cream Sandwich was “soon to be released.” Other interesting Android data shared by Page indicates Google’s growing momentum in the mobile market:

190 million total Google Android devices have been activated.
Mobile revenues for Google have grown 2.5 times in the last 12 months with an annual run-rate now topping $2.5 billion
Google Maps has expanded in August by 40 countries, now supporting 130 nations.

Of course, the populations across that many countries often speak different languages. Google Translate for Android gained broader support for an experimental feature that allows two people to converse in real-time, with both speaking in their native language.

 
Conversation mode already supported English and Spanish, but this week gained a dozen new languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian and Turkish. The software requires a button press before each person speaks, but can greatly assist when visiting a foreign country.

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Google Voice Pulled Amid iOS 5 Massive Fail: I have hundreds of apps. The only one that I’ve seen that’s affected by the move to iOS 5 is Google Voice. It crashes every - single - time. 

I know I bitch about this a lot, but I really can’t understand for the life of me why Google doesn’t take more pride in their work on iOS. Yes, I know the focus is on Android. But it’s still their own name they’re sullying. Always better to release nothing than to release shit. 

The Googleplex, Google’s corporate headquarters in Mountain View California, is legendary for its perks. Employees have access to unlimited free meals, haircuts, dry cleaning, massages, and even onsite medical care.

Yet earlier this year, when Google interviewed its employees about what they valued most at work, none of these extravagant benefits made the top of the list. Neither did salary. Instead, employees cited access to “even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.”

Tangibles like salary and benefits aren’t enough to guarantee that your best and brightest creatives will remain engaged. Indeed, a recent landmark study by Arnold Worldwide of 3,000 employees and 500 executive leaders across a range of communication and advertising firms found that 30 percent of the advertising workforce say they’ll be gone from their job within 12 months.

Take Jill, an outstanding, experienced copy editor whom Agency X recently recruited at considerable expense from one of its chief rivals. Despite her outward success, she’s unsure how she’s performing, where she stands in the company, and how she fits into the overall goals of the agency. Her pay is great, she loves the Friday office happy hour, but over time, she finds herself feeling demotivated by the lack of communication, and checks out.

The loss of star performers like Jill doesn’t just leave a talent vacuum to fill; it also leaves a gaping hole in the bottom line. Indeed, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal calculated that it typically costs a company about half a position’s annual salary to recruit for that job ¾ and several times that if the position requires rare skills.

So how can your company keep its stars engaged? It comes down to creating a culture of communication — one in which employees know where the organization is headed, how they fit into these plans, and what’s expected of them. Here are a few key strategies your agency can employ to make this happen.

1. Create a culture of education
The average Starbucks barista gets more training in a year than the average employee in a communications company, according to the Arnold Worldwide study.

For employees, the single most important motivational factor was the ability to learn. Yet the study found a huge disconnect when it comes to perceptions about company training. While 90 percent of employees say they learn by figuring things out on their own, only 25 percent of executives think that employees learn independently.

To keep employees motivated, agencies need to build a culture of learning, where employees leave more enriched at the end of each day.

2. Provide regular, consistent feedback
Employee feedback is a critical part of the education process, and shouldn’t just be relegated to the annual review. To be effective, feedback needs to be specific and actionable. But that’s not always how it works.

In a study by Leadership IQ, 53 percent of employees said that when their boss praises excellent performance, the feedback does not provide enough useful information to help them repeat it. And 65 percent responded that when their boss criticizes poor performance, it doesn’t provide enough useful information to help them correct the issue.

Feedback, both positive and constructive, is most effective when given right away. Negative feedback given a month after the fact can lead to a passive-aggressive environment in which an employee feels powerless to act on the advice.

Think of it this way: no one wants to go a full day knowing their price tag was hanging from the back of their shirt, or the remnants of the salad they had for lunch were still stuck in their teeth. If an employee does something well, that activity should be encouraged. And if there’s room for improvement, they should be given the opportunity to learn for their next task.

3. Set time aside for weekly 1:1 meetings
At first, most employees and managers will cringe at the idea of yet another meeting. But instituting weekly 1:1 meetings can be the most important step you take to retaining your top performers.

In its quest to build a better boss, Google discovered that its worst managers weren’t consistent in their 1:1 meetings; some focused on meeting with people who were underperforming, while others met primarily with the top performers.

Consequently, Google implemented the best practice of 1:1 meetings with all team members.

These meetings can cover anything and everything ¾ from upcoming projects to the latest client news. With each week, discussions about goals, feedback, and concerns become a lot more natural ¾ unlike the awkward, starchy conversations during annual reviews. Over time, it becomes easier for both sides to raise potential problems and deal with them early on, before they fester into something destructive.

4. Manage the grunt work properly
Not every project is going to be awesome. That’s just the way business works. And chances are your employees understand this.

However, managers need to handle such projects responsibly and that means a few things. Boring projects should always be balanced with more stimulating work. Employees should always be told how any grunt works fits into the overall needs of the company (“If we do a good job on x, we’re hoping the client will give us their cool launch next year”). And specific parameters should always be set for the boring stuff ¾ meaning employees should always see light at the end of the tunnel.

5. Publicly acknowledge good work
All too often, managers see motivation in terms of financial compensation, but money is far from the only way to effectively reward talented employees. A 2009 survey by McKinsey Quarterly asked which incentives were the most effective in motivating employees. The top two responses were: “Praise and commendation from immediate manager” (67 percent), and “Attention from leaders” (62 percent).

Praise and commendation go a long way in making employees feel noticed and valued. And the impact of a pat on the back is multiplied when it’s done publicly. Through public commendations, employees not only feel the support and respect of their manager, but the entire organization as well (including top-level executives). Creating a framework for “social recognition” will encourage a culture of appreciation throughout your firm.

Keeping your rockstar employees on board has always been important, and don’t think that economic uncertainty will keep your employees around. Your company has worked hard to recruit some bright people and great talent; make sure an opaque work environment doesn’t drive them into the arms of your competition.

Daniel Debow is co-founder and co-CEO of Rypple, a social performance management platform.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Esparta. 

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The day after its Q3 earnings report, Google announced a "fall sweep" of old products into the dustbin of Internet history. In the most telling move - albeit one which we knew would come - Google Buzz and its API are finished, and Google Plus will absorb the old content. The open data standards that made Buzz interesting will be replaced with the haltingly slow rollout of APIs for Google Plus. Google Labs is also gone for good. The site will shut down effective today.

In addition to Buzz and Labs, a slew of mis-remembered little projects are going away, too. Google Code Search and the Code Search API will be shut down on January 15, 2012. Jaiku, a 2007 acquisition of a Twitter-like nature, is no more. The social features for the iGoogle homepage will be replaced by Google Plus. The University Research Program for Google Search will close its API for academics.

Even though Google Buzz wasn't terribly good at anything, from a user standpoint, we at least enjoyed its developer-centric nature. It was all about open data. That may have been all it had going for it, but that meant something. Its replacement, Google Plus, is awfully slick and smooth and secretive. The few APIs released so far barely enable developers to make anything, much less anything interesting.

Google sure is a busy place. Its whole business is undergoing rapid transformations, even if its quarterly earnings are reported so generally that they seem stable.

Google is spending money and changing shape. It's launching social networks and buying handset manufacturers. It's hiring new people, buying new infrastructure, and now it's shedding old products. When will Google start to break a sweat?

What's next for Google? Sound off in the comments.

Discuss

There are many impressive facets to Apple’s business: Its sheer size, its growth over the past decade, its international growth, its profitability, and how much of it comes from the iOS platform, which only came into existence four years ago.
But the thing that amazes me the most is how fast Apple’s revenue is still growing, even at its current size. Even the pathetically wimpy Street analysts that cover Apple expect its sales to grow 44% this past quarter, on a year-over-year basis. (Apple reports Sept. quarter earnings next Tuesday.)
That rate far exceeds its peers in the tech industry, even those that are significantly smaller. Google, which reports earnings tonight, is expected to post 32% growth. Microsoft, just 7% this past quarter. Amazon (not pictured in chart) is expected to report 45% growth this past quarter, but its sales are less than half of Apple’s.

In an informal flip through the Fortune 500 companies, the only industry that seems to come close to Apple’s current growth — at its size or larger — is the oil business. Chevron, for instance, is twice Apple’s size and is growing at the same rate. Exxon Mobil would break this chart: $121 billion in expected revenue, at a 27% growth clip.
So, how long can Apple keep this up? Will it continue the good fight against the law of large numbers?
The biggest factor is the iPhone, which represents about half of Apple’s sales. Will its new features and pricing help it eat away further at RIM’s market share, and take some from Android? Can it continue to outpace the smartphone market growth as a whole? And will the iPad become the next generation of personal computers, and a really, really big business?
And then, beyond those two, does Apple have a new growth driver in the works, as the iPod business declines and Mac growth slows? That’s what to look for in the next year or two.
Related: The amazing Steve Jobs effect: Apple’s performance before and after Steve’s comeback

According to a post from a Google engineer, intended to be private to the search giant’s employees, the Google+ API was not ready at launch. Google’s Steve Yegge also badmouthed the read-only, public API. When the company’s new service was only two weeks old, I wondered whether the Google+ API was intentionally late. Maybe it was just truly late.

SiliconFilter has a breakout of the important bits and there’s a mirror of the full post.

Here’s the portion where Yegge focuses on the API:

Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call.

Yegge also has a follow-up post that warns not to take the post as a representative of Google. “I know astoundingly little about Google,” Yegge wrote. “I wouldn’t read too much into anything I said.”

The Hacker News thread has some good discussion, including this counter-argument:

Nobody cares you are a platform until they use your product, and if you spend all your time building a platform, there will be no product to use.

A year ago we asked can a platform succeed without a popular service? Though we didn’t answer the question, I think it’s unlikely. However, Google+ is already popular. And a read-only API with only public content will not suffice when the platform is so focused on the circles, which are essentially private messages.

The Google+ team is likely working hard to create a complete, OAuth-enabled API. In the meantime, developers and users are itching to incorporate the service into their current workflows.

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Related ProgrammableWeb Resources Google Plus API Profile, 1 mashup

This worked well! I thought it would only share publicly, but it allowed use of my circles to constrain sharing ...
How To Share Google Reader Stories to Google Plus
... These are the steps to add Google Plus as a service on your Google Reader. Once you've set this up, all you have to do to share an article is the bit in the last step...
Now if Reeder would support G+ sharing ...
My Google Reader shares also turn into a twitter stream, albeit a poorly formatted stream.

Martin Steiger says a lot of smart things (at least I think so).
Problem is he says them in German and English (probably French too. Darn eurolinguists.)
Google Reader does a decent job with his Mac blog, but that doesn't work with search or traversing older links.
For that I use Google's translation bookmarklet English button. Works with any browser. Unsurprisingly German/English translation works reasonably well. Sadly Chinese/English translation is useless.