I needed to simplify my parent’s PC. The primary tasks include email, reading blogs (not just mine), calendar, and banking. All of these are web applications – Gmail, Google Reader, Google Calendar, and on-line banking.

I was having them use a sidebar that served as a feed reader and had a notification service for Gmail. The problem was the interface was finicky and scrolling was not intuitive. These little behaviors would be annoying to a tech savvy user but were down right frustrating to everyone else. What I needed was to make each web application behave like its own program – with its own desktop icon and window and to remember its window size and place and any user name/password, etc.

Mozilla Lab’s Prism (formerly Webrunner) makes web applications has many of the behaviors of desktop applications. I created new launches for each of the web applications and then made the icons big (48×48) so they were easy to find and recognize.

I liked the results so much, I installed Prism on my own machine and now use it for Google Reader and Weather. The nice thing with using Prism with Google Reader is that you can have it remember your credencials for the reader but not have it carry over to Firefox for all your normal browsing and searching. Also, the fact that Prism remembers the window size and location for each newly defined launch means my weather (using a site design for the iPhone) has a tall narrow window at the edge of my screen and it always appears there.

The debate over “cloud computing”, “software as a service”, the “value of mashups”, and “free really isn’t free” will go on for a very long time but the reality is – sooner or later – it all comes down to money.

In a recent telephone interview with Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, a number of these topics were touched upon within the framework of what Microsoft may or may not be doing. There was one interesting point made in the interview “the margins will still be higher to people who build solutions”. A commenter explains this point .

… there are basically 3 tiers of service in the cloud:

1. one is the underlying server farm infrastructure of hardware and bandwidth
2. two is a middleware cloud utility software platform
3. three are the applications that reside on the cloud platform

I think MS will get vertically integrated in all 3, as they usually do. They will have higher margins at levels 2 and especially level 3.

The more interesting point – at least to the end users – was made in the comments …

… as [we] move toward services infrastructure development, how long until we see a new utility computing cost model and standard on par with KwH (electricity) for consumption and usage? mark my words, software is headed toward the electricity industry utilities standards model …

I am not sure where the balance is between our current “flat rate” consumer models and our “usage based” consumer models. For the first 100+ years of communications, people were happy to pay for telecommunications usage. However, now more and more people opt for flat rate packages. At the other end of the spectrum, people consume electricity, water, and heat with a usage model. One model promotes “use it as much and as often as you can” while the other promotes conservation. Some places have even switched models to change user behavior – towns which charge a “fee per bag of trash” is an example.

Companies who charge a flat rate are betting that the average user will not exploit the service beyond a profitable usage rate and when all users are aggregated the result is more profit.

Flat rates work best with application services (described as tier 3 above). While usage rates are accepted for commodities where the profit margins are low and there is no tolerance for gambling on how users will use the service. The internet is struggling with this problem now. It is really a tier 1 service and it is struggling with a tier 3 pricing model. The fact that all high speed internet service providers (Cable, DSL, and cellular data) monitor usage and have legal safeguards to shut off heavy users points to the fact that the “flat rate” model is a risky one and is likely to change soon.

The challenge is to find a price-point. In most of the utility cases, there is no competition so it is not realistic to say “whatever price the market will bare”. This inevitably means regulatory boards, government involvement, and legislation. It is already starting with internet access as customers complain about service “degradations” and the debate over net neutrality. The first step will be for service providers to determine the cost of their infrastructure (something they have already done). Next is for consumers to determine their usage. Most large corporations already do this but small companies and consumers likely have no idea how much or how little they use their internet connection. (I fall into this camp). 

It would be a very interesting study to find out the profitability price point. For obvious reasons, no internet provider will publish their data but its possible to get a good idea if the data of large companies- who have no vested interest in selling their network bandwidth but need to track usage in order to keep their business operational.

Could this information be gathered publicly today ? How would we go about doing it ? Who would be willing to share their cost vs usage ? What “usage model” price point would be acceptable to consumers ? businesses ? government ?

So far this has all focused on the bottom and the top of the internet food chain. There is still the middle. In some cases, it is exposed directly as in cloud computing offerings by Amazon’s AWS. In other cases it is buried within the application offering as in Gmail where users get storage as part of mail (with some restrictions). But the lines are not really as clear as all of this. For example, Amazon charges bandwidth costs for storage. However, if your applications runs in their cloud and you use their storage, then bandwidth between the application and the storage is free.

Cloud computing has a much narrower target audience than either raw internet connectivity or applications. As such, it is likely to get compressed into one or the other layers – at least as far as billing and service models. All of this predicts the “data center” will become an operating expense  and will be squeezed as much as possible, just like  brick and mortar businesses and office space. the more you can make that “someone else’s cost” the easier your business. And a small number of highly efficient companies will continually optimize the offering to maintain a profit margin.

Speculation: All of this could be moot. Internet connectivity has very little value. The value is in the applications, information, and services. Imagine that the internet had a usage fee but browsing Amazon.com or eBay.com were free because those companies covered the cost of internet access as an incentive to use their service. Alternately, the internet connection might be free but you pay for your email service (either directly or because you accept advertisements). This latter model is being considered for cellphone data service. There are many different business models that *might* work. In the end, I predict internet access will go the way of electricity and water but there are other ways.

There has been a lot of news and internet traffic on the topic of traditional “office suite” software installed on your PC vs on-line web applications. Put another way – Microsoft Office vs Google Apps. How about having your cake and eating it too !

If you subscribe to the 80/20 rule where 80% of what you need a wordprocessor, spreadsheet, or presentation application to do is handled my only 20% of the available features, then web applications are *good enough*. It will be a while before Google Docs has every bell, whistle, and wizbang that Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org Word Processor.

When I moved to Linux I switched to OpenOffice.org software for my “office suite”. Recently, I signed up for Google Apps as part of a not-for-profit initiative. Today I learned I can use them both together with OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs extension (which has the odd but usable short name of OOO2GD which I pronounce “OH Too Good” <grin>.

I’m looking forward to using with the rest of the team. It will let me write my drafts locally and then quickly export them to the website for review and group editing. This will be great as a few of the group are new to having their own computer and are using the simple gOS on their computers (a combination of one Walmart purchase and few recycled old machines.

One word or caution – the OOO extension is officially still “beta” so there may be some issue and need for polish before all is happy with the world.

Back in the early 1990′s companies like Sun, IBM, and Lotus were talking about and developing solutions for “the network PC revolution”. The idea behind the network PC – for those who managed to escape the hype and disappointment – is that all of your applications and data reside on a server somewhere an all you need is a lightweight PC connected to the network. Today that sounds obvious but 15 years ago it was a pipe dream born of the promise of one Java running everywhere like magic.

Today, the premise still holds only now, Java on the PC has finally be dumped as just not a good idea. Instead, the applications rely on a powerful local web browser to provide most of the compute power and some industry standard programmed methods – HTTP, AJAX, HTML, XML, JavaScript – to create the user experience and interface to the server. It all works pretty well.

So now that we have the “good apps” and the “fast network” where is the Network PC ? I mean, an $800 Windows Laptop or $1200 MacBook are loads of fun but with presumable everything running out on the Internet somewhere, what do we need these high end machines ? It’s a bit like driving to the Starbucks for a coffee in a Ford Excursion or Chevy Suburban or the not soon enough forsaken Hummer. All you need is a city car. The same is true for the network PC.

If they build it, will they come ? That is the real question. Can we get over the consumerist mentality of “more is better” ? McDonalds would cringe at the thought of people getting only what they actually need.

Fortunately, there are a few but growing number of computer manufacturers see the opportunity. Asus now has Eee PC, Everex has the “green PC” (at Walmart) ntel has the Classmate, Nokia has the 810 ultra portable tablet you will even be able to buy one of the OLPC computers (one of the One Laptop per Child) for your very own. These are all *new* computers below $400. If you don’t need a laptop, the price can go even lower.

So, if you use Gmail or Google Apps or spend most of your time on Facebook then one of these new breed of computers may be an option. They are not true network PC’s but they are getting close. If they make the screens more “normal sized” and made Linux flashed or use a hot-start mode for that “instant on” feeling, then we have the elusive network PC.

I plan to take a 10 year old computer and give it a try <recycling is green too you know>.

I’m old enough to remember when Microsoft was not the only player in the word-processing / spreadsheet / presentation market. I’ll admit that there are alternatives out there like OpenOffice.org but when you look at shear numbers, it’s Microsoft. The old time competition from Lotus and Borland and Harvard, is just a footnote in techno-based history books.

However, with the advent of Software-as-a-Service (SaS or SaaS) new players have made real progress.

In yet another attempt to compete with Google Docs, Adobe has acquired online word processor Buzzword, after today’s Microsoft Office Live Workplace announcement. Now who’s going to snap up Zoho?
Source: Lifehacker

I don’t know if Adobe can make a go of it or if’s just an attempt to cover all their basis. Personally, If I were starting a business, I would be seriously looking at what Google Apps has to offer. They have “good enough” offerings in nearly all categories to be a one-stop-shopping solution. What I don’t know is how I would leverage Google’s offerings if I am an existing business – SMB, mid-size, or full on corporation.

The one drawback with a SaS solution remains “connectivity”. I feel cut-off when I don’t have Internet connectivity but there are enough cases where that is my operational mode. Further, there are lots of people who are not “always connected”. dial-up is still prevalent even in the USA.

Anyone who hasn’t woken up to Google’s plans to take over the world, needs to start reading a bit more. The latest “launch” has happened with Google making simple slide presentations over the web a “no brainer”. 

The presentation can be shared with everyone and any viewer can follow the presenter or take control of the presentation. The preview includes a group chat feature based on Google Talk’s gadget that shows the active collaborators and viewers. If all the viewers click on “View presentation”, they can watch the presentation at the same time.

Source: Official Google blog

Google seems to have adopted Brain’s slogan …