September 24, 2003

Search:NG

Fredrick Marckini talks to advertising pioneer Jack Trout about exactly how Microsoft can trump Google…

Jack Trout, “says Google is dangerously close to becoming the generic in the space. Should that happen, the company would be open to brand and product positioning attacks on multiple fronts.”

[Fredrick Marckini] “…asked Jack Trout about the possibility of Microsoft gaining search market share by adding a search interface to its new OS as many expect it will — effectively creating a structural barrier to all other search engines by saving steps, eliminating the need to even launch a browser: “You’ve just defined a ‘next generation’ idea,” he said. “This way you make search an operating system component. That’s tough to unseat.”

September 24, 2003

Microsoft Bets on New Search Technology

Not much new in this AP article on Yahoo, but worth a read anyway…

…many analysts are most closely watching Microsoft’s project to develop its own indexing and searching system for the Internet Â— and how the technology might later be deployed throughout the company.”

September 22, 2003

Shareware MP3 Music

I’d love to see this catch on…

Magnatune: “try before you buy.” It’s the shareware model applied to music.

September 17, 2003

VeriSign Still Sucks

Is there anything else VeriSign can do to demonstrate its hatred of customers? Oh yeah, it certainly can!

However, the BIND community’s emergency response is definitely a gem!

September 16, 2003

Intraspect sold to Vignette

Via Due Diligence

“Enterprise collaboration and groupware company Intraspect Software has been sold to public company Vignette for $20m in cash and stock.”

Tim Oren has a nice quote about the space Introspect served too…

“This one’s a cautionary tale not only on the late-90’s investing boom/bust (Intraspect’s history covers nearly the whole saga), but on the long selling cycles and difficulty of extracting revenue from businesses for software of this type. Social Software advocates and investors take note.”

September 12, 2003

Collaboration Culture

Joe Wilcox of Jupiter’s Microsoft Monitor Research Service talks about MSFT’s collaboration culture within business groups and relates it to what former Apple executive Michael Mace wrote in his rant about Who Killed Apple Computer?:

From Collaboration: The Microsoft Way:
“Microsoft’s collaborative culture makes the company very responsive to competitive threats. The character also means Microsoft can quickly focus resources from multiple product divisions when executives see there is a need. These could be seen during the so-called browser wars with Netscape, when Microsoft rapidly churned out new Internet Explorer features and caught up with Netscape in about 18 months and three product versions…”

September 10, 2003

Reinventing Products

John sent me this article in Business 2.0, which seems to be demonstrating the application of Business Process Re-engineering in the Consumer Product Development area:

James Dyson says, “It is much easier to reinvent the wheel because the faults of the existing system are fairly obvious,” he contends. “The hard part is to find a solution that everyone who has come before you has not found.”

“Dyson has found ways to improve on such basic appliances as the vacuum cleaner, the washing machine, and the wheelbarrow.” [more here]

September 8, 2003

Personal Search Tool

I just tested X1 for a few minutes and I’m truly impressed with its ability to quickly index and search my local repository of files and email messages.

“X1 is free PC software that uses an advanced indexing process that lets you find any word in any email or file on your computer, in under a second.”

The Pro version of X1 is just under $50 (US) and adds the ability to search network shares and native file preview options as well.

September 5, 2003

Web Recall

The Internet Archive has release a new tool that allows you to search for relevant pages from 1996 until today.

“You can search and find things the way they used to be.”

I guess the web almost never forgets…

September 4, 2003

My Yahoo Supports RSS

Very cool! I just read on Library Stuff that you can now use My Yahoo as an RSS news aggregator.

If you’re already a member, click on the following link to add the “blog” module.

Add the Blog Module

Next, click on the [edit] button to add some RSS feeds.

Consume and enjoy.