Google Sync, Killing MS Exchange One Beta At a Time
Today Google launched their new Google Sync Product that allows you to sync your Google Calendar and Gmail Contacts to your Windows Mobile and iPhone devices. To do this they have licensed Microsoft’s Activesync protocol, just as Apple did to allow the iPhone to sync to a Microsoft Exchange server.
This is significant because it immediately opens up the majority of existing smart phone owners to functionality previously only offered to corporate users of Exchange servers, at no cost. Which makes the service ideal for smaller companies and Independent Consultant/Freelancer types. What is even more ideal about the service for these types of people is that it also works with Google Apps for your Domain. Can you say free Exchange Server?
The second reason that this is significant is that it virtually negates the need for Apple’s MobileMe service, as it provides virtually the same functionality at no cost. I am sure Apple is not pleased about this.
As great as this service is, there are some downsides:
-The Activesync protocol only allows you to setup one Activesync account per mobile device. So if you have a Smartphone that is already syncing to your corporate Exchange server, you cannot setup another to sync to Google. This is not Google’s fault, nor is it the device manufacturer’s fault, this is the way Microsoft designed Activesync. In many of the comments on Google’s blog posting about this new service people are laying blame at Google and Apple’s door, when it does not belong there.
-It does not use Activesync to deliver email. At this time Google is still using IMAP or POP to deliver mail to devices. This is a downside because it makes the process of getting all of your data to your device more convoluted, possibly more problem prone and bandwidth intensive.
-By using Activesync there is no way to sync Google Docs. While this may not sound significant it would be helpful to be able to sync documents and files over to your mobile device. This is functionality that Microsoft will be making available shortly through their Live Mesh service that is currently in beta.
-It does not sync Tasks. One of the core functions of any personal information management system is the ability to create and organize tasks. Activesync already has functionality to sync tasks from an Exchange-based account natively, but Google has not implemented functionality to sync your Gmail tasks as of yet.
-It does not work on Google’s own G1 Android phone. While it appears that Google has licensed Activesync for pushing data to mobile devices from its services, it has not implemented Activesync on the Android platform, which means that Android users are out in the cold on this one.
None of the downsides listed are deal breakers in my mind for the average user, and following in the grand Google tradition of release then iterate, I am sure that they will be able to work through many of these issues in short order.
UPDATE: Microsoft to Get Yahoo Afterall?
In an earlier post I talked about a new Yahoo/Microsoft/3rd party deal rumor. Well, it is looking like it may just be that, a rumor. According to Bloomberg, an unidentified Microsoft spokesperson is denying the rumor. We will have to wait to see if this is a real denial or a fake denial.
Easy come, easy go.
Microsoft to Get Yahoo Afterall?
Well, it looks like there is another rumor going around that Yahoo has another suitor. This time according to Micheal Arrington over at Techcrunch it is a group of high-powered Silicon Valley Execs that will be making a run at Yahoo, using Microsoft as their bank. As Arrington points out, the credit markets are running dry so traditional financing is not a viable option for the deal, but Microsoft has $23 Billion in the bank doing nothing.
The details of the rumored deal is that the investor group will buy Yahoo for around $20 Billion, apparently taking it private, and sell the search and search marketing business to Microsoft for an unknown sum. The group would most likely replace all of the Yahoo Execs, and try to lure some talent back to the company to continue operations of its other businesses.
In the end this may be the best thing for Yahoo. Last year, I may not have been convinced of this, but now I think that Yahoo should dump their search business and focus on their other valuable web properties that have huge potential. For the record I am a Yahoo shareholder.
It is important to note a couple things in this whole story, first, Yahoo, while weakened is still a viable, profitable company, that just seems to have lost it’s way as of late, mostly due to Microsoft’s unsolicited deal nearly a year ago. Second, this is all as of right now purely a rumor, and may not ever happen.
Cloud Computing for Novices
This is a presentation I recently gave to a Freshman Computer Science class at UAT on Cloud Computing. I was actually very surprised at the lack of knowledge, or even awareness in this area. After talking to some Instructors at other schools this seems to be the case at other schools as well. It seems that colleges are pushing so hard on the Microsoft curriculum and are still trying to play catch up to teach basic Linux that they are not even touching on Cloud Computing. What a shame since this will be part of the future of IT.
Internet 101
This is a presentation I gave earlier this year to some of the staff at Off Madison Ave on how the Internet works. It covers the History and basics of the Internet.
Maximize Productivity Through Tech Spending
Many companies spend money on IT projects to fufill their need to have the latest and greatest toys and systems. However most do not evaluate how these projects impact their productivity. Often there is a direct relationship between Tech Spending and Productivity enhancements, however it is not the only thing that can enhance productivity.
The below presentation I have given on this very topic. It is somewhat incomplete, as it is meant to be narrated, but you will get the idea.
Migrate Windows User Profiles to a new computer
One of the common problems that IT Staff run into is transferring Windows users’ desktop profiles from one computer to another while mainataining all of their customizations, files, settings, favorites, emails, and whatever else. One would think that Microsoft would give IT Pros the tools to transfer this kind of data since they made it so critical with the advent of Windows NT & 2000.
Fortunately there is a tool put out by ForensIT that makes this a relatively trivial task. You can download it here. After you download it, follow these directions to use it to transfer your profiles seamlessly.
- Load the computer fully with the appropriate software, including MS Office if needed.
- Login and create the account of the user that you wish to transfer.
- Either remove and hook up the hard drive from the old computer to the new computer or connect to the computer’s default share (i.e. \\computername\C$)
- After hooking up the drive or connecting to the default share open launch a Windows Explorer window and navigate to “C:\Documents and Settings” folder.
- Copy the Folder for the user that you wish transfer to the new computer.
- On the new computer paste the folder to that same respective folder.
- After copying the folder to the new computer, open up the Windows Control Panel, double-click the System icon, and go to the Advanced tab. Click on the “Settings” button under the User Profiles section.
- Check the “Show Unassigned Profiles” checkbox.
- Choose the folder relating to the folder that you wish to assign, and click assign.
- Type in the username of the user that you wish to transfer.
- Log out and log back in as the migrated user
After following those steps you should have a fully migrated user profile. Keep in mind this dows not migrate programs, Windows is still incapable of doing this.
Enjoy!
Did Sirius XM Fire All of Their DJ’s?
Today, Sirius XM consumated their marriage by changing up their channel lineups, eliminating some stations, bringing stations from XM to Sirius, and vice versa. That much seems to have made the news, but what I am not hearing about, and have noticed while listening to my standard Sirius stations (Alt Nation, Lithium, Pulse, & Classic Vinyl) is there seem to be no DJs anymore. After listening for a couple hours today on these stations and others is there do not seem to be any DJs anymore.
If it is true that they laid off all of the DJs, this leaves me feeling a little torn. While I prefer that radio stations inturrupt the music as little as possible, but the DJ were sometimes a nice break, but I can see that they provided very little value for what they were making, which seems to justify their termination if they were laid off. Regardless, I guess it is better than having commercials.
Microsoft to Yahoo: “Get Lost”
Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft CEO, responded to the latest plea for an acquisition from Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s CEO, by essentially telling them to get lost. After successfully fending off a hostile Microsoft acquisition, a near shareholder revolt, a mass exodus of high level staff, and their stock subsequently tanking Yahoo is grasping at straws for their future. I would argue that this is unneeded, Yahoo still has a lot of talent, but they need to reinvent themselves, and stop thinking of themselves as a search engine, a portal, or an ad server; they need to embrace the web properties and other companies that they own (Zimbra) and build upon that to find their niches. Furthermore, they need to dump the properties and companies that are not inline with that niche or are not going to be profitable over the long term.
So in my opinion, if Microsoft’s is true to their word that they are not interested, Yahoo needs to take this as the final word in this ugly chapter in their history and use it to spur them to build a new exciting company.
Don’t bet on a WebKit-based Microsoft Browser
The Tech blogs are all a buzz this morning with a revelation that Microsoft may be considering adopting WebKit to use as the rendering engine in Internet Explorer. While I hate to rain on their parade, this will not happen, at least any time soon. Considering that Microsoft is in the process of preparing to release IE 8 within the next year or so, and the release cycle of Internet Explorer has been far and few between it will likely be years off before we see another release of IE.
In addition to the long release cycle, Microsoft has invest significant amounts of money and time into .NET and its tight integration with IE, which is notorious for not working with or rendering well with other browser rendering engines. Even if Microsoft went entirely AJAX for all of their web-based products, there is massive amounts of code from other developers out there that are tailored to run on IE. Microsoft would even have to rework many of their core products to use another rendering engine, an example is Outlook Web Access. OWA is puedo AJAX-based, but it still maintains separate versions for IE and other browsers, not to mention that many of the MMC snapins rely on IE for rendering key components. Would they have to rework these too? Finally, could you imagine Microsoft working on an open source code base that they share with not only the general public, but Apple, and Google?
What I could see Microsoft doing in the short term to test the waters is releasing an unofficial addon that allows you to manually choose to render a page in WebKit. This is much like the IE 8 betas have for rendering as if it were IE7. This would allow them to gauge the demand, as well as test functionality with a new engine, without having to rework, much of their core products. If this were to happen I could see it being released much like the PowerTools have always been released, without official support.
