Random Rants & News

I have been meaning to cover ThinkFree for quite some time now. Especially in light of the recent Google Apps Launch, which I have covered earlier, it appears to be about time I get around to writing about this.

ThinkFree is a South-Korean start-up that has created an Office clone for online use and made it available online. Today, ThinkFree announced that they have reached 250,000 registered users. These users are primarily made up of small and medium business owners and their staffs, university professors, teachers, entrepreneurs, parents, bloggers and students. These users come from all over the world and its base of loyal users continues to grow strong in an industry where Google’s recent move isn’t new news to many.

Here are some monthly statistics released by ThinkFree:

• Accounts for 228,000 unique page views
• Stores over 654,000 files totaling 189 GB of data
• Accounts for just under 100,000 unique visitors, of which over half stay longer than 10 minutes and roughly one quarter return day after day
• Shares 2,000 documents
• Uploads or creates 60,000-80,000 new files

Now, clearly 228,000 users isn’t anything compared to the over 450 million Microsoft Office customers world wide, but it proves that a small start-up can at least succeed in capturing a small slice of the huge office application business.

ThinkFree’s offering include three online applications: ThinkFree Write for word processing, ThinkFree Calc for spreadsheet management and ThinkFree Show for creating presentations. It offers 1GB of free storage as part of its service and the company has stressed many times its excellent compatibility with MS.

Clearly, all the hype about Google is very typical for anything Google does these days, but I think it is important to note that the “battle” for Office application market share will continue to be dominated by Microsoft. Also other players like ThinkFree will probably create a greater headache for Google Apps than anybody else.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs will, for the first time ever, appear onstage together for an unrehearsed conversation. As part of the fifth annual D conference (D5) to be held in May in San Diego. D is an all-executive technology and new media conference held by the Wall Street Journal. The conference is produced by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher who are both technology writers for the WSJ.

Interesting fact about the conference: It features all interviews, and doesn’t have scripted speeches that are common for most conferences.

Both Gates and Jobs have attended the conference in the past, but this will be first time they will appear together at D, a fairly rare occurrence. Steve Jobs will also be appearing in an individual session to discuss new Apple projects, while Steve Ballmer will be discussing Microsoft’s current ventures.

Also attending D5 are George Lucas, Steve and Chad from YouTube, AOL co-founder Steve Case, and Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google (speaking of Eric Schmidt, check out my post on his business-card typo here.)

The Browser (CNN.MONEY.com off-shot) has just published the following article – I thought it would be worth sharing with you, especially since both CNN and The Browser have confirmed the authenticity of the Business-card. So, here it goes:

The typo on Schmidt’s business card is perplexing. This is a $144-billion company, world headquarters for information management, and yet there, in just 21 words, is a typo. Strange. “Amphitheatre” and “Committee,” two spelling bee candidates, are written correctly, but “Chairman” is not. The card says “Chariman.”

A few possible explanations:

Or, paraphrasing Sigmund Freud, “Sometimes a typo is only a typo.”–MK

For a limited time, Microsoft is offering “Microsoft eLearning Courses” completely free. That’s thousands of dollars worth of classes free to anybody who signs up at Microsoft eLearning (here.) This is such an exceptionally great find, I had to share it with you on my blog.
Down below is a list of the various courses being offered. I highly suggest you take advantage of this great offering, especially if you are having trouble with the new user interface in Vista and Office 2007.

Office 2007:

Course 4697: Introduction to the New Microsoft Office User Interface
Course 4622: What’s New in Microsoft Office Access 2007
Course 4623: What’s New in Microsoft Office Excel 2007
Course 4624: What’s New in Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007
Course 4625: What’s New in Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
Course 4626: What’s New in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
Course 4627: What’s New in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
Course 4628: What’s New in Microsoft Office Word 2007
Course 4629: What’s New in Microsoft Office Visio 2007
Course 4698: What’s New in Microsoft Office Groove 2007

Windows Vista:

Course 3392: Working with Windows Vista™
Course 3404 – What’s New in Windows Vista™

Office Communications Server 2007:

Clinic 5126: Introducing Enterprise Instant Messaging Using Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 (Beta)
Clinic 5127: Introducing On-Premise Conferencing Using Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007
Clinic 5128: Introducing Enterprise Telephony Using Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007
Clinic 5129: Customizing Real-Time Communication with Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007

Windows Security Training:

Clinic 2801: Microsoft® Security Guidance Training I
Clinic 2802: Microsoft® Security Guidance Training II
Clinic 2803: Microsoft® Security Guidance Training III
Clinic 2804: Microsoft® Security Guidance Training IV
Clinic 2808: Microsoft® Security Guidance Training V
Clinic 2855: Managing Security Enhancements in Windows Server™ 2003 Service Pack 1
Clinic 2806: Microsoft® Security Guidance Training for Developers
Clinic 2807: Microsoft® Security Guidance Training for Developers II

Companies such as Nike and Apple have all re-branded their logos in our “recent” history, now, is Google next?

Nike and Apple both turned towards “single” logos, slogans, or letters to signify their company worldwide and by doing so have been able to create incredible brand equity – associated with a very simplistic logo.

Google, until now has used “Google.com” as its primary logo. This morning, however, there has been a change in how Google portrays itself in its Adsense advertisments.

If you look at the red-boxed area at the top of the screen shot you will realize that it says: Ads by ‘G’

So, it looks like Google too might be re-branding its logo to the simplistic “G.” Google already has a brand recognition around the world that far exceeds that of many older and more established multi-national Corporations. I am sure Google will release an official news release some time soon.

Today, Dell announced that it will soon debut and begin selling a new line of Linux-loaded desktop and laptop computers.

A week ago, Dell launched its IdeaStorm Web site, allowing customers to make recommendations for future Dell products and offerings. So far, IdeaStorm has collected over 1,800 new product and service ideas and the Linux-loaded systems will be the first customer generated product release.

IdeaStorm was initiated by Michael Dell, CEO, on February 16th in an attempt to re-energize and spur development at the firm. One of the generated ideas suggested the Dell bring back a reasonable priced computer system that comes pre-loaded with Linux. The idea drew a lot of attention and Dell has subsequently announced its decision to launch their new series of desktops and laptops.

If you think about it, it all makes sense. Vista is incredibly “hardware-hungry” and the system requirements needed to run Vista in all its beauty do exceed what many can afford. Offering this new line of Linux-loaded systems is certainly an interesting move, which may help-out the firm down the road. Dell is currently going through some rough patches in term of both a lack of sales and in terms of its financial performance.

I found the following comic strip in Robert Scoble’s Google-Reader shared items this morning. I though it was worth sharing: