IT support news from Conosco

Apple's MobileMe email down again

Ben Gladstone — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:05:52 +0000

As we've pointed out before, running an online service is very different to building great computers and software, as Apple continue to prove with their disastrous MobileMe launch: down again for a whole European working day, apparently because they don't have 24x7 support on it. US-centric or plain dumb?

Apple and Microsoft (with Live Office) are bidding to join Google in the online services arena but don't have Google's experience in running web-based tools that almost never go down.

This could be a critical factor in who wins the next phase of computing's evolution.

Google Apps claims 10 million users

Ben Gladstone — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:22:58 +0000

... and growing at 3,000 a day. Microsoft's year-away competition is looking very late.

iPod inventor steps down

Ben Gladstone — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:17:37 +0000

Apple's resurgence owes much to Tony Fadell's vision and determination and his departure is a pointer to the future.

In the late '90s he came up with the idea of combining a handheld music player with an online music store and started his own company to promote it. Failing to get funding, he took it to RealNetworks - but left after six weeks. So he took it to Apple and just ten months later the iPod was launched.

Fadell rose to lead the iPod division, but his departure is unlikely to hurt Apple - the company is famous for not relying on individuals talents and he will stay as an advisor to CEO Jobs.

As a sign of the future, he's being replaced by an chip expert not a design or consumer person: there's little more scope to improve the iPod / iPhone form factor so progress is likely to focus on the internals - hardware and software.

Handheld devices have reached the 'wristwatch' moment - as they in the 1880s reached their current size and shape, and then improved only in functionality.

MS Office in the clouds

Ben Gladstone — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:21:07 +0000

Following Microsoft's announcement of Azure, they've finally responded to Google and others' threat to eat their highly profitable Office franchise with a web-based suite of office appications. It promises to bring MS's deep skills with these apps to the web browser with close integration with their desktop counterparts - the best of both worlds.

But we won't see this offering for a year - this is the old Microsoft game of lagging the innovators and hobbling them by telling the market to wait for the 'real' thing.

Except in this case the main innovator is Google Docs ('Google Apps' in its business guise) which is rapidly maturing into a great product. Yes, the features of the word processor, spreadsheet and presentation apps are basic and a bit buggy, but they're all that most people use anyway.

Beyond that, the collaboration side of GDocs is superb - you can see other people editing a spreadsheet as you work on adjacent cells - multi-player network gaming reaches the accounts dept! Add in that anything from Google is fast and works across platforms and you have a compelling leader. Then remember that Google knows how to run large-scale online services and that Microsoft is a beginner (Hotmail doesn't really count - they bought it in and have never made much progress with it) and Microsoft are looking low and slow...

Conosco's IT Support service looks forwards to these developments reaching our customers - we can advise you when they are mature enough for you to adopt.

Windows in the 'cloud'

Ben Gladstone — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:17:44 +0000

Microsoft have joined Amazon and Google in providing 'cloud computing' - infrastructure that lets companies rent storage space and application hosting. With HP, Dell and IBM also due to join in, is this the beginning of the end for companies running their own servers in datacentres?

Probably not - the inertia of a world of technicians who understand how to get a database or fileserver running on a local server will restrain the cloud's growth, but it's certainly going to be growth. This is one of those major shifts in an industrial revolution - just as when factories stopped generating their own electricity and took it from a national grid.

'Azure', as it's called, doesn't actually do anything out-of-the-box for small and mid-sized companies - they'll have to wait for developers to build applications on it. For 'tangible' cloud computing, look at Google Docs (in beta) or Microsoft Online Services (coming soon) which offer the standard suite of office applications through a web site.

If you're interested in trying these as part of your IT services, contact Conosco.

Half of 2009 cars will have iPod support

Ben Gladstone — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:56:11 +0000

Engadget reports that over half of new vehicles sold next year in the USA will have iPod support - not just a cable but proper integration into the dashboard display and controls.

Sequoia's doom & gloom

Ben Gladstone — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:03:04 +0000

A fascinating and sobering view of the coming recession is doing the rounds of Silicon Valley. It's a leaked presentation that a leading VC, Sequoia, gave to the CEOs of their portfolio companies, explaining how we got here, dispelling any optimism and explaining how to survive.

Read it here - http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/10/the-sequoia-rip-good-times-presentatio...

Conosco's IT support services are profitable, so we pass their tests - but it's good advice for all of us.

VoIP quadruples in Europe

Ben Gladstone — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:16:13 +0000

VoIP has started to explode in Europe, with four times as many users as two years ago and consumer penetration over 10% in many countries, according to Telegeography. (These data exclude Skype, which is more successful than the leading VoIP operator, France Telecom.)

Customers on Conosco's MPLS private network can easily take advantage of VoIP - our network is designed to provide high-quality voice communications over the same lines as your data.

iPhone upgrade brings necessary speed

Ben Gladstone — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:34:50 +0000

Last week's iPhone software upgrade to version 2.1 has brought back the speed lost in v2.0 - particularly in accessing the contact list. The text messaging screen is still too slow to load, but the phone feels snappy again.

Full details of what's in the free 2.1 upgrade.

Conosco now offer fixed-price support for iPhones.

Google's real threat to Microsoft

Ben Gladstone — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:09:48 +0000

John Gapper (FT: Google launches Microsoft's big fear) misses the underlying reason that Google's threat to Microsoft - to make Windows unnecessary - comes from them making applications run on the web browser rather than the operating system.

He credits the new Google Chrome browser's appearance, but their key move is to make web applications work fast and allow you to use them offline.

In fact Firefox, Safari and even MS's Internet Explorer are cohorts in this move, as they all run Google's Gears. (Chrome also has the fastest javascript engine, which will improve the performance of web apps, but that is an incremental benefit.)

Gears lets a web site store application code and data on your local computer. This deals with the big complaints about web applications - they're slower than desktop software and don't work without a net connection.

Chrome's main impact is that it gives Google proper control enabling its web-based philosophy - but Google doesn't need Chrome to succeed.

As a parallel threat to Microsoft, Google are far more expert in running hosted web applications - a very different skill to making locally-installed software apps (witness Apple's launch fiasco for MobileMe). The trend to hosted apps is distinct from the trend to web-based apps (e.g. you can now rent MS Exchange as a hosted service instead of running it on your own server, and still access it with the Outlook desktop app) but hosted apps and web-based interfaces go hand in glove.

Is MS doomed? Their last bastion in business is MS Exchange - even if MS lost their Windows franchise tomorrow, Exchange would still be the market leader - and Exchange's desktop client, Outlook, compels us to use Windows. But the competition is warming up - Yahoo's Zimbra is looking good and supports Outlook, Blackberries and iPhones...