google apps...

google providing suite of business apps

from the article:

On Aug. 28, the Mountain View (Calif.) search-engine company unveiled Google Apps for Your Domain, a bundle of programs—e-mail, schedule management, instant messaging, Internet phone calling, and Web site creation—integrated for small businesses. The company could eventually add its hosted spreadsheet and word-processing applications to the bundle, though it has no formal plans to do so, says a Google spokesperson.

The Google programs are all available over the Web, so companies don't have to go through the process of installing them on office computers, unlike Microsoft Office.

InfoWorld: Weaning yourself off service providers: A 12-step approach

a tongue-in-cheek article from infoworld giving serious advice to organizations on avoiding dependance on outside consultants...

from the article:

Your department is in a bad way. You must roll out a major enterprise app on a tight deadline and you don’t have the bodies to pull it off. So you borrow some money from next year’s budget and hire a global services firm to help. “Relax,” the services folks say. “We got your back. Nothing to worry about. And, while we’re here, is there anything else we can do for you?”

Before you know it, a small army of consultants is bivouacked in your offices, “chilling and billing,” says Patrick Gray, president of the Prevoyance Group and a former Big Four consultant.

It gets worse. Pretty soon the consultants know more about your apps than you do, and you need their help to keep everything running. Meanwhile, they’ve identified six other critical faults in your IT infrastructure that must be addressed immediately if not sooner.

spotted on slashdot

the long tail...

back after an unintended hiatus over the summer...

a very intriguing book i read over the summer is The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More...

the book is interesting in at least a few ones - first of all, the way it was created. it stemmed from an article in wired magazine. the author then maintained a blog before finally writing the book.

from the original article:

...the emerging digital entertainment economy is going to be radically different from today's mass market. If the 20th- century entertainment industry was about hits, the 21st will be equally about misses.

and

Hit-driven economics is a creation of an age without enough room to carry everything for everybody. Not enough shelf space for all the CDs, DVDs, and games produced. Not enough screens to show all the available movies. Not enough channels to broadcast all the TV programs, not enough radio waves to play all the music created, and not enough hours in the day to squeeze everything out through either of those sets of slots.

This is the world of scarcity. Now, with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance. And the differences are profound.

in short, realizing much of what nicholas negroponte wrote about in being digital

anderson finds long tails everywhere: open source software, wikis, blogs, ebay, legos, google ads...which either means he's onto something or really stretcing - i think perhaps at least some of both...certainly, his long tail theory applies best to purely digital products, such as iTunes. however, he argues it is relevant to some degree in the world of atoms.

another issue discussed is the role of user created content - such as blogs, netflix recommendations, etc... largely as a way to guide individuals thru the myriad of choices... this is omewhat related to the phenomenom described as crowdsourcing
. amateurs around the world have access to relatively affordable digital tools of very high quality - which previously only professionals had access to... creating a whole new class of creative folks that some call professional amateurs or prosumer. on many levels, this is a very exciting and enpowering time...-


of course, such sweeping assertations is bound to invite criticism. it is clear to me, that at least in some areas - digital entertainment especially - that anderson's theory rings true. whether it holds up in a larger context remains to be seen