By Victoria Ho ZDNet Asia – Posted on ZDNet News: Nov 13, 2009 6:06:14 AM
SINGAPORE–In a year, most enterprises will have the choice to “get rid of [Microsoft] Office if they chose to”, suggests Dave Girouard, president of Google’s enterprise division.
Girouard, one of the company’s four presidents including founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, said in an interview with ZDNet Asia that he expects Google’s online document application, Google Docs, to reach a “point of capability” next year that will serve the “vast majority’s needs.”
He acknowledged that Docs is currently “much less mature” than Google Mail or Calendar. “We know it. We wouldn’t ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet,” he said.
But, this is expected to change in a year, when the company’s introduces some “thirty to fifty” updates to Docs to beef up the SaaS (software-as-a-service) office suite. These will include updates to features and performance, Girouard said.
“That having been said, I don’t think Office will entirely disappear,” he added. Instead, Microsoft’s offering will become a specialized offering for office workers who need its additional functions, akin to Adobe Photoshop, which is targeted at skilled workers, said Girouard. Microsoft Office is “an overkill tool for most people”, he noted.
11/16/2009 02:07:00 AM
Today, we’ve launched three new features as well as a new look and feel for Google Translate — a service that helps people access information throughout the world by enabling them to automatically translate text and and web pages into their own language. Google Translate offers 51 languages, representing over 98% of Internet users today.
Along with our shiny new layout, these new features should make it faster and easier for you to translate text between our 2550 language pairs:
Translate instantly: Say goodbye to the old “Translate” button. Google Translate now translates your text right as you type.
Read and write any language: Want to say “Today is a good day” in Chinese, but can’t read Han characters? Click “Show romanization” to read the text written phonetically in English. Right now, this works for all non-Roman languages except for Hebrew, Arabic and Persian.
We also have a new input transliteration feature for Arabic, Persian or Hindi. If you want to translate from one of these languages, but can’t type the script on your keyboard, our input transliteration feature will allow you to type words as they sound and convert them to native script.
—>
Text-to-speech: When translating into English, you can now also hear translations in spoken form by clicking the Speaker Icon.
Watch Josh, an engineer on our team, give a quick demo of the new Google Translate:
We hope these improvements will make reading, learning and communicating in foreign languages easier and more fun. As we continue to improve the precision of our automatic translation system, we’re also always looking for ways to evolve and improve our interface. Let us know if you have any feedback on these changes in our discussion group.
(originally posted by Awaneesh Verma, Product Manager)
I’ve been using Windows 7 on my home PC for several weeks now, and recently installed the 64-bit release version. I must say that Microsoft has done a very good job with Windows 7. From major changes to minor changes, I can confidently say that installing Windows 7 on your XP or Vista computer will give you a strong feeling of rejuvenation. Booting is fast, apps are managed better, and the overall OS is very slick.
But before you upgrade to Windows 7, take a look into a utility called Ninite. The little tool lets you customize all your favorite apps into one monolithic installer. You then download the package, and run the install. Ninite will install all the apps you picked without fuss. Walk away. Enjoy some coffee, and when you come back, all your apps are ready to go. There’s no need to manually hunt for them again.
Ninite currently supports all the popular browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc., and includes utility apps such as VLC, Skype, Thunderbird, Adobe PDF Reader, Flash, bit-torrent tools, RealVNC, WinRAR, PuTTY, and other common apps. You can suggest your own.
Hit up the Ninite website. Pick your apps, download the installer, copy to a USB-stick so that you’ll have it ready to go before moving to a fresh Windows 7 install. Best of all, it’s free and grabs you the latest version of the apps!
You’re free to suggest apps that should be included too. One utility that I did find missing is Daemon Tools.
Could Google become a serious rival to AT&T and Verizon?
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Google is set to become your new phone company, perhaps reducing your phone bill to zilch in the process.
Google has bought Gizmo5, an online phone company that is akin to Skype
Users could make and receive calls that bypass the per-minute billing on smartphones
Consultant: “If AT&T is Coca-Cola, Google is now 7-UP”
(Wired) — Google is set to become your new phone company, perhaps reducing your phone bill to zilch in the process.
Seriously.
Google has bought Gizmo5, an online phone company that is akin to Skype but based on open protocols and with a lot fewer users. TechCrunch, which broke the news on Monday, reported that Google spent $30 million on the company.
Google announced the Gizmo acquisition on Thursday afternoon Pacific Time. Gizmo5′s founder Michael Robertson, a brash serial entrepreneur, will become an Adviser to Google Voice.
It’s a potent recipe — take Gizmo5′s open standards-based online calling system. Add to it the new ability to route calls on Google’s massive network of cheap fiber. Toss in Google Voice’s free phone number, which will ring your mobile phone, your home phone and your Gizmo5 client on your laptop.
Meanwhile you can use Gizmo5 to make ultracheap outgoing calls to domestic and international phone numbers, and free calls to Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo and AIM users. You could make and receive calls that bypass the per-minute billing on your smartphone.
Then layer on deluxe phone services like free SMS, voicemail transcription, customized call routing, free conference calls and voicemails sent as recordings to your e-mail account, and you have a phone service that competes with Skype, landlines and the Internet telephone offerings from Vonage and cable companies.
That’s not just pie in-the-sky dreaming.
Ask longtime VOIP watcher and consultant Andy Abramson, who introduced the idea of integrating Gizmo5 and Grand Central (now Google Voice), long before Google bought either.
“Google is now the the uncommon carrier,” Abramson said, punning on the iconic 7-UP commercials and the phrase “common carrier.” That refers to phone companies that operate on the traditional publicly switched network — a status that gives them benefits and obligations.
“If AT&T is Coca-Cola, Google is now 7-UP,” Abramson added.
“All of a sudden you have something that offers more than Skype,” Abramson said, saying the combo could now put Google in competition with phone and cable companies, IP “telephony” (VOIP) companies and Vonage. “But now you can do everything with Google and pay nothing and have a platform where engineers can build new things.”
Today we’re pleased to announce we’ve acquired Gizmo5, a company that provides Internet-based calling software for mobile phones and computers. While we don’t have any specific features to announce right now, Gizmo5′s engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience. Current Gizmo5 users will still be able to use the service, though we will be suspending new signups for the time being, and existing users will no longer be able to sign up for a call-in number.
We’ve acquired a number of small companies over the past five years, and the people and technology that have come to Google from other places have contributed in many ways, large and small, to all kinds of Google products. Since the GrandCentral team joined Google in 2007, they’ve done incredible things with Google’s technology and resources to launch and improve Google Voice.
We welcome the Gizmo5 team to Google and look forward to working together to bringing more useful features to Google Voice.
When you’re searching on Google, we think you should have the choice to keep adult content out of your search results. That’s why we developed SafeSearch, a feature that lets you filter sexually explicit web sites and images from your search results. While no filter is 100% accurate, SafeSearch helps you avoid content you may prefer not to see or would rather your children did not stumble across. We think it works pretty well, but we’re always looking for ways to improve the feature.
Today we’re launching a feature that lets you lock your SafeSearch setting to the Strict level of filtering. When you lock SafeSearch, two things will change. First, you’ll need to enter your password to change the setting. Second, the Google search results page will be visibly different to indicate that SafeSearch is locked:
Even from across the room, the colored balls give parents and teachers a clear visual cue that SafeSearch is still locked. And if you don’t see them, it’s quick and easy to verify and re-lock SafeSearch.
To use SafeSearch lock, go to the “Search Settings” page on Google. For detailed instructions, check out this video.
We hope you and your family find exactly what you’re looking for in Google search results — and nothing more.
Posted by Pete Lidwell, Product Manager and Aaron Arcos, Engineer
This makes great financial sense for personal / family use, if you don’t need some of the extras from Premier. Case in point personally, as a family who uses Standard :
You have one person who may go significantly over their 7+ gig allotment : easy, add 20 gigs of space to that (for 27+g total; it’s in addition to the current level of “free” storage) for USD $5 per year (currently), for that user only. Problem solved, pretty cheaply
This is significantly different cost-wise than moving the entire family / organization to 25 gig total space per year at a cost of $50 per user, and with the requirement of moving all users to this Premier plan. The math is fairly compelling, if you don’t need the service level agreement of 99.9% guaranteed uptime, and the Postini services, etc.
VISTA, California — For those who think the iPhone can’t meet all important human needs, Directed Electronics begs to differ. The car security and audio company has released an iPhone app that allows owners to control their vehicle from the comfort of a phone or an iPod Touch.
As long have you have one of the aforementioned devices and a Viper SmartStart-equipped vehicle, you will never have a need for a key fob again. The app will control the locking mechanism of your car, open the trunk and even activate the alarm. A “Smart Start” button right in the middle of the screen also acts as a remote starter.
The coolest feature of this application is the fact that, as long as you have a signal on AT&T’s 3G network (or are connected to WiFi, for Touch users), you have control of these functions. You will no longer have to worry about not being in range to activate the alarm or even remotely start your car during the wintertime.
The deal between Cisco, EMC and VMware announced last week may look familiar enough on paper. Technology companies join forces all the time, and in the vast majority of cases it never amounts to anything except a press release and a “free” lunch for anyone brave enough to sit through the initial presentation.
This one may be different, though, and it’s not just because of the players involved. It’s the technology itself–the maturity of enough pieces to make everything work together–coupled with a real business need for change within data centers. Timing is everything, and this one looks like a bulls-eye. Good timing is what made the deal between Intel ( INTC - news - people ) andMicrosoft ( MSFT - news - people ) so significant for the PC. It’s also what made the combination of AT&T ( T - news -people ) and Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) work so well for the iPhone.
The business case is simple enough. Many IT departments have been stockpiling technology for decades. Some of it is incompatible, some of it is unnecessary, and rarely does any CIO know exactly what everything does or how it interacts. Even worse, most of it is incredibly inefficient, which has raised the operating expenses to the point where even the CFO has to take notice.
This is why almost every CIO on the planet is looking at virtualization, cloud computing (private or public) and anything else that will simplify the internal mess, reduce redundancy and improve security. And after nearly a decade, all of these technologies have been banged around enough to attain a reasonable level of confidence.
What’s new in this whole scheme is flexible utilization, and it’s been a piece that has been sorely lacking. Amazon’s cloud approach is a great example of this. A customer can provision servers or turn them off within minutes, rather than the usual weeks or months it takes for an internal IT department. Cisco‘s( CSCO - news - people ) approach is to do just that with its Vblock technology, which can add virtual machines as needed and lop them off when they’re not needed.
“Storage is underutilized 40% to 60%,” said Gary Moore, senior vice president for services at Cisco. “And when you go to provision new applications, it takes four to six months. We can do 250 applications in a weekend.”
On Monday, Cisco ( CSCO - news - people ) plans to announce a broad set of new collaboration software tools for instant messaging, e-mail, social networking, videoconferencing, document and video sharing, many of which go head to head with similar offerings from Microsoft‘s (MSFT - news - people ) Live Meeting and Exchange messaging products, as well as enterprise collaboration tools from IBM (IBM - news - people ).
Most threatening to Microsoft among those announcements, according to Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala, may be a new online e-mail offering that Cisco calls Webex Email, an integration of the Postpath e-mail service it acquired last year with the Webex online conferencing platform it bought in 2007. The goal: to catch Microsoft customers in the middle of their move from the on-premises to cloud-based e-mail offerings and woo them to Cisco’s platform. “If Cisco can catch users in the middle of this transition, it gives them a real shot at this market,” Kerravala says.
Google ( GOOG - news - people ) and IBM have both launched their own attempts to own the Web-based mail box of the future with Gmail and IBM’s iNotes (See: “IBM Aims To Undercut Gmail“). But Cisco has a new trick: Its software-as-a-service e-mail uses the same protocol as Microsoft Outlook, allowing users to read their e-mail through the same interface that they’re accustomed to, despite the fact that their e-mail will now be hosted on the Web and also viewable through Cisco’s online software from any location. “Users can rip out their exchange server and retain the same experience,” says Murali Sitaram, a Cisco vice president for collaboration products. Cisco declined to reveal the pricing for any of its products ahead of their official launch.
Cisco’s wide-ranging launch extends well beyond e-mail. The company is planning to offer what it calls internally an Enterprise Collaboration Platform, a shared workspace that can be hosted online or within a company’s firewalls for security purposes. The platform will function as a sort of hybrid of Google Apps and Facebook, allowing users to blog or share documents, instant message and video conference.
Like Facebook or other social platforms, the real value of the Enterprise Collaboration Platform will come when third-party developers create more applications for the service, says Burton Group ( BURUY.PK - news - people ) analyst Mike Gotta. Cisco is offering an application programming interface to programmers who want to sell their apps through the platform. “Right now it’s really just a plate,” says Gotta. “We’re waiting for the food.”
. Hmmm.
