Techno babble from an IT guy named Harry

I received an InfoWorld article called “Microsoft exec: Desktop application software is not dead.”  The short story is that Microsoft claims that Google and others cannot provide the same level of service and quality through web based apps as Microsoft can through installed apps.  While Microsoft is technically correct in the short term, this will change.  Let me predict what Microsoft is going to do right now.  Microsoft will develop a fully functioning version of Office.  Then they will market it as a brilliant idea that they thought of and perfected.  Microsoft will claim that they did it first and they did it best, when in reality neither will likely be true.  Until then, expect Microsoft to deride Google, IBM, Sun, and others.  What’s new?

I have been playing with the Google Apps.  They are super cool.  The two featured apps are Documents and Spreadsheets.  They are web based Word and Excel type applications.  They allow users to use the basic functionality of Word and Excel without the costly licenses or bloated software.  Also, they are available to all users because they are OS agnostic.  Another cool feature is that you can save to web.  That means that if you create a document at work, you can have it at home.  There is not the same need to worry about versioning. 

Other cool features include the ability to upload documents, save to Word/PDF/HTML/OpenOffice/Excel/CSV, export to Blog including WordPress, collaborate with other Google Apps users, and much more.  Check it out.

 Also check out an interesting article about Google Apps from IDG called Google Apps upgrade threaten Office.