thechromesource – Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Forum

thechromesource Daily: Links for 6/6/10

Posted on 06. Jun, 2010 by Greg Farnum. 0 Comments

Google axes Windows, saves millions.

Extension tips: Syncing notes across multiple computers with Chrome Notepad.

iPad rivals at Computex favor Android. 

Chrome extension opens PDFs and PowerPoint with Google Docs.

What It’s Like to be a Successful Google Apps Software Company

Posted on 08. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments

MindMeister is a company that provides a special tool for organizations called “mind mapping”. Being a software as a service company, it was logical for them to be included when the Google enterprise Apps Marketplace when it was launched last March. In this interview, I talk with MindMeister COO Michael Hollauf and CTO Till Vollmer about their software, the recent changes Google has made to Apps as well as what it’s like working with the search engine giant.

Can you tell me a little bit about MindMeister?

Michael: We’ve been online for about 3 years now.  About a month ago, finally, we launched on Google Apps Marketplace.  This came out of a relationship with Google.  It started pretty early on, almost three years ago now.  We realized the product we have fits nicely with what Google has.

It’s a nice add-on for their Apps.  I’m explaining more our relationship with Google.  Since our integration, we are doing more things integrated with the Docs.  We have a regular relationship with them.  It seems they’re really pushing Apps now with the introduction of the Marketplace and the enhancements to Google Docs.

Would you say your product is similar to something you would do in Visio or is it something out on its own?

Michael: Yes, it’s certainly something that’s on its own.  Visio is something that can draw everything. You can draw pictures, flow charts. I think we’re a subset. We focus on a subset of what Visio does.  We are very good at that.  Our software basically gives it all, focuses very quickly and doesn’t worry about the drawings, it just brings in all of your structures.

So, I think someone that uses our mind mapping product wouldn’t be very happy with Visio.  More similar to drawing in a PowerPoint presentation, something like that. It’s a similar space though. We often get requests for things like flow charts and so on. It’s all graphical, visual presentation. They have something in Docs which is now called Google Drawings with a separate bar.

Is this just something that is part of the Apps marketplace? I assume that your pricing model is set up so it’s a monthly user fee or something? Anything of that nature?

Michael:  Yes, it’s a monthly user fee. It’s a monthly fee per user or teams of users so you can have two people up to however many you want. You can pay by the month or can pay by the year. The way it works in Google Apps is they don’t have a billing infrastructure. So the way we do it, we let users sign up for free without even entering their credit cards. They just go to MindMeister in Apps and get a 30 day free trial.

If you want to upgrade, you can pay and purchase. That’s going to be the way it works until we launch billing. According to Google, it should be in a couple of months when  the users will only use their credit card once – when they sign up to Google Apps. Then they will be able to do everything at the Apps Marketplace: just add the app.

Better for us and better for users. They don’t want to enter their credit cards more than they have to.

I think that’s a fantastic idea. What are they getting out of setting up all of this entire infrastructure? Is it just that they’re getting the value of added features to Apps?

Michael: Yes, now that’s the only thing they are getting, but with the billing, they are going to take twenty percent I think it is.

Twenty percent of everything then?

Michael: Yes.

I ask these things because Eric Schmidt keeps talking about how a lot of revenue is going to start to come from this. There really hasn’t been an explanation, but that right there, when you’re dealing with percentage of fees per month that really adds up.  What they’re trying to do is get away from just advertising because you really have to diversify when you’re a company that large.

Michael: They still do 97% (something like that) or 95% just with advertising. So, they are searching for other ways for (revenue).

A few weeks ago there was an announcement that went out relating to some changes they’re doing (which included no longer supporting Gears).Is it just Docs? Maybe you guys could talk a little about that.

Michael:  It was just Docs with their announcement. We’ve had to find all sorts of explanations and guidelines for our users (about Gears). It works fine for older ones; it’s just not supporting the new ones. Now I think of all of the programs and suppliers will have to do the same thing. A lot of people use it and I think if everyone is persistent, it will send out messages that it (will not be) working anymore.

It seems a little strange to me because you’d think they’d have a solution ready to go.

Michael: Our users I think, it used to work better (same with all browsers, even Firefox). It doesn’t support it anymore and you can’t even install it anymore. There are other features as well.

Till: Obviously the drawing is one of the things that are new. There are a couple of changes to things, and the API as well. The big thing was the drawing actually.

Michael: I think there is one thing talked about that real time is not being liberated enough. With this EtherPad, a document could be worked on (with others) at the same time. You could do things in real time. Like when you typed in the character, it would show up on the other person’s screen like in the same second. The real time collaboration, I think that’s what’s built into Docs now.

Well, that’s great.  Could you tell me the name of that company again? I’ve never heard of this before.

Michael: Etherpad. I think it was two or three Google employees a year ago when they started that company.

It sounds like they’re trying to make collaboration better but at the same time, the offline access (via Gears) thing is a little distressing especially when you’re thinking about moving everything to the cloud, it seems there’s going to be some sort of solution through HTML5, right?

Michael: There’s an issue, yeah. I mean real time, I didn’t see anything about that in HTML5.  Is it http or something? Or some offline mode supported in HTML5?

So, they’re going to use HTML5 for that? I don’t think they have a choice, if you lose that functionality it just seems like a really bad idea. I think the cloud is a great thing but, what happens when you make these kind of changes?  And I just don’t know what kind of solution it’s going to be that all these companies now have to make all of these changes?

Michael:  That’s because all of us use these, really out of necessity. This is something that could happen with Flash, I don’t know.  Now we have to wait. It’s not a great situation but the market shows it’s a young market and technology is new. Otherwise, this is “growing pains”, I would say.

It’s just to be so disruptive in so many areas that they’re starting to do these types of things, to be honest with you. It’s just I hear a lot about all of the benefits but I think what most people are concerned about where this is going. The idea I think, when they started this was to compete with Microsoft but now it doesn’t seem like that what they want to do. Instead, it’s to be a compliment to that. Although I do think their solution is better.

Michael: I think in our discussions they never admit Microsoft is an issue for them. They’re more like “we’re trying to offer the best experiences and solutions to our users and if that hurts our competition, so be it”. I think it’s more not having to really talk about their competitors and so on. At least I think with Google Apps, that they’re trying to be the “next generation Office Suite”.

I think they’ll have a lot more to offer than Microsoft because of what they’re doing with you guys and all the other developers out there, that they have good ideas to make products better.

Michael: Great people are on it and (there is) a lot of enthusiasm. I haven’t really looked into Microsoft recently and what the rumors are about an online version of this. And because, sooner or later, they’ll have to go this way. All I’ve seen so far is some online office thing that allows you to share some uploaded documents with others but that’s all there is, right?

What about the people who are concerned about making the jump to the cloud?

Till: There are certain levels of security of course in (our) product. One thing is the channel hosting of the solutions in the computer to the data center and everything has access controls, cameras, access cards and all these kinds of things. Everything is redundant, their internet access of course, and the server part and all these kinds of things. So that’s the secure environment.

On the other hand of course, we offer for our premium customers encryption, so that the communication that is between the server and client is encrypted because a lot of people are working are just going there and connecting to their services and are often transmitting their plain passwords and this is not clear to all of them. That’s why we use SSL for the premium customers to not show their passwords somewhere or their passwords don’t get sniffed.

And on the application level, we have certain guard mechanisms where we protect certain actions people can do like password resetting, map access and personal data access.  Just two hours ago a customer called me up and said, “I want to use your product,  I was thinking about an in-house destination.”  I said, “we have a service solution, there is no in-house solution”.  They asked, “what about security?”

I think that it’s a good point that they ask this question.  The answer is very simple. I say, “Do you have a laptop?”  They usually say, ” Yes I have a laptop.”  I ask, “Do you have all of your personal data and all that stuff on your laptop?” They say, “Yes.”  So I ask, “What happens if someone just grabs it and runs?”  They say, “Yes you’re right.”  This isn’t going to happen with software as a solution because it’s much harder to hack into a T3 data center or get physical access into a data center than just grabbing your laptop.

Could give me an idea of who are your demographics when you’re talking about customers and who are the people that come to talk to you about these types of things?  If you could just give me an idea of what type of people we’re talking about – who are becoming your customers?

Till: When we started off, we were a European company and we had just implemented the English language and we always wanted to address the whole world market. It was always our goal when we started. We had about 30% US customers and, actually it’s the same number I think today and maybe even more.

Actually, now we support nine languages, including Japanese and Russian and with customers from about 140 countries working on MindMiester now, about a half million or so of them. We have five hundred thousand users and we have individuals and freelancers as well as a very large base of real business customers like SAP for example or Symantec. We even have Microsoft as a customer. Microsoft China, actually at an innovation center there.

It’s basically around the world from individuals to businesses. We have a lot of universities and schools.  This is in a lot of countries in terms of schools and universities in Shanghai or in Hong Kong or (even) in the US. So, that’s also the interesting thing. If you’re starting a business on the Internet there really is no real border anymore. It’s all about localizing the content and the user interface.

MindMeister is a software as a service. So we’re talking about something that runs in the browser. What tools have you used to create this, what technology are you running this on?

Till: So, basically we are using Ruby on Rails. We are using MySQL right now. We are using Apache for example, Linux as our platform. I think that’s it from the technology web we are using.

So do you recommend that your users have Chrome or Firefox? Or what is it about the browser that’s changing that? That’s going to help you guys? We touched on HTML5 and how you guys are working on it. Could talk a little bit about that?

Till: We made recommendations, we put out these for our users only. If they have to, we’ll continue to support IE6 for a little longer.  Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, these are all great and open really fast.

How many people are you in total?

Michael: Ten to twelve right now, with a couple of freelancers, not a huge company.

Is the plan then to just focus on this is another thing. Other companies I’ve talked with are working on several different apps.  Are you just going to focus on this?

Michael: For the time being, yes. We have discussions all the time. To the extent that they could go further? No concrete plans as of yet. The market is good for that. We’re in a really good position. I have so many ideas for this. I do want to start something else with that small group of people.

I have just one more question. Since the Marketplace has gone live, has it been a good tool in getting new customers? Has it been a marketing vehicle for you guys?  Have you seen a good influx of customers who’ve come through Google to connect with you guys?

Michael: Definitely, yes. So, I think it’s worth the effort to integrate to get a lot of exposure. Of course, you get new customers out of it, for us I think it’s a good thing. And, so, Google hasn’t really started to promote the whole thing. I had a call yesterday with them and they told us they would start promoting apps more aggressively.

Even so, they haven’t really started marketing. We already see the results.  We’ll see what happens if they really start pushing (Apps) through their distribution channels and through the marketing, etc.

Thanks to Michael and Till for taking the time to talk to me. You can sign up for a free basic membership of MindMeister to check out their mind mapping product.

Google Apps Marketplace Now Has YouTube Channel

Posted on 26. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments

The Google Apps Marketplace was announced a few weeks ago, with fifty partners offering applications that further extend the base Google Apps functionality beyond key features such as Gmail and Docs. While this was a major announcement, the YouTube channel that has been announced today is a tool for which many of these companies that are working with Apps can get their message across.

That means communicating to users that the Google software suite can go above and beyond what Microsoft or IBM can offer in a business suite. For example, check out MindMeister, which looks to challenge the expensive Microsoft Visio:

All of the applications in the partner YouTube Channel can be thought of as “extensions” to what Google Apps already offers. Many companies have found that they can save money in software licensing and IT administration by switching over to Google. That’s because a per user license for Apps is $50 per year. The partner applications in the Apps Marketplace vary in terms of cost structure.

But when you compare Microsoft Visio to MindMeister for example, Visio costs over $500 for a license. MindMiester? It’s only $9/month per user. Meaning that if a certain user doesn’t like it or stops working with the software you can cancel that license if you want.

Compared to some of the costs in the enterprise market for software, some of these Apps Marketplace partners are offering companies a pretty good deal.

Facebook Overtakes Google in Traffic

Posted on 17. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments

For as long as Google has been around, it has been a very popular site and as long as I can remember it has been the top ranking site in the world. That’s no surprise seeing as how they offer the best search functionality of any engine out there. Most people need a starting point when they are on the web, and search is the way to go for that.

But Facebook has been coming up in Google’s rearview mirror, and according to Hitwise, has overtaken Google as the most heavily trafficked site on the web (albeit slightly). Take a look at the following graph:

You can see that Facebook a year ago was not even close to comparing to Google’s share of traffic. Now the two together combine for over 14% of total web traffic.

But the search engine giant has been eclipsed before. According to Google Blogoscoped, MySpace passed by Google for a time in 2007. I know that’s hard to believe now seeing as how MySpace has been on a path of decline, but this tidbit is interesting to note because many MySpace users have migrated to Facebook, resulting in a slow exodus that has resulted in the traffic trend that we are seeing today.

Keep in mind that this is Facebook versus Google’s main search page, not the plethora of other services that Google offers like Gmail, Maps and Docs. I also wonder how much of a factor the recent introduction of Google’s real time search feature has contributed to the inflow of internet users to Facebook – many of them signing up and becoming regular users of the site.

Using Online Storage to Collaborate in Google Docs

Posted on 15. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments

In my previous post, I showed an example of a company that decided to make the switch to Google Apps as an enterprise solution. I find this interesting, since for as many years as I can remember there have only been a few companies that have dominated this segment of the technology industry with Microsoft being the bellwether and IBM pulling a distant second.

It’s never a bad thing in an industry to have some competition, but the reality is that we don’t hear too often about companies that have switched over to Google as an enterprise solution. At least, not yet. Fortunately, those of us who just want to use the regular version for now can have some of the benefits of the souped-up business version.

So, all in an effort to help people further understand some of the functionality that exists in the non-enterprise version of Google Docs which is free, here is a way to use online storage to share files with others. You are able to share out 2GB at no cost, and there are some cheap options available for an upgrade. For example, you can get an additional 20GB for just $5.00 a year to share between Picasa, Gmail and Docs.

This is really a good option to use for large files that may not get to a recipient if emailed or if the file in question is one that would be picked up by a spam filter as dangerous such as an archive or a configuration file. To do so, it’s really easy, so here is how:

While in Gmail, click on the Documents link up at the top:

From here, you’ll see Google Docs open up in a new tab. Go ahead and click on “Upload” at the top left:

From here you will be in a window that allows you to upload several files at once:

Once you have chosen your files click and your files will be stored on the servers. This may take some time depending on file size. You will then be able to see the file(s) in you main Docs window. You can select a document you want to share, hit the “Share” button:

Then you can invite someone to be able to use your file from their Docs account:

Again, this is very useful for when you need a way to send files that are too big to email or read by Postini as dangerous. Plus, it’s free, integrates with existing Google Applications like Gmail and is easy to use. The business purpose of this would be valuable, and I know in the enterprise edition the feature set is even richer in terms of options available.

Avago Technologies Switched to Google Apps for Storage

Posted on 14. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments

In the wake of last week’s announcement of Google’s Apps Marketplace, which is focused on adding functionality for Google Apps in the entgerprise space, I’ve been trying to track down more examples of companies that have switched over to Google Apps from some other corporate solution. Then I found this video that was shot about Avago Technologies, which is a privately held semiconductor company with over four thousand employees that made the  switch to Apps:

The reasoning for switching to Apps is clear for Avago: they needed to have more space in their inboxes.

Not only can a regular user have 7 GB of Gmail space, Google Docs now allows for an additional 2GB of storage space for everyone as well. That includes files of any type that you can share out to others.

Ubuntu Now Calls Google Docs the Standard

Posted on 07. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 5 Comments

Ever used OpenOffice? I remember submitting a document once using the open format, only to find that the person I sent it to could not open it in Microsoft Word. That pretty much killed the deal for me, but a surprising development for users of Ubuntu Netbook Edition (formerly known as Ubuntu Netbook Remix) is that no longer is OpenOffice their defacto productivity suite, as the powers-that be for the Linux OS built with netbooks in mind is replacing it with Google Docs.

There’s no question about Google Docs’ importance in the software scene. They have captured a pretty big audience, even getting play as not only Google’s own corporate standard for a Microsoft Office replacement, but they have also gotten Genetech on board and almost all of the 16,000 people who work there use the Premium Edition of Google Docs for all of their work. This is interesting to note since for the Premium Edition Google charges a $50 licensing fee for each user.

Microsoft must be feeling a little weak in the knees over this. There was once a time where if you used one Microsoft solution, the common thinking was that you would use many other offerings that they had. Now that Google plans on releasing their own operating system, further promoted by Google Chrome’s emergence in the browser market, anything that they can offer in terms of applications has the potential to be successful. Just as long as they offer a solution that is just as good as their competitors, mind you.

You can check out Google Docs right here.

Maybe Google Knows Too Much, GoogleSharing Can Help

Posted on 20. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 4 Comments

I’ve previously written about the security implications that come with using Google’s services. However, this is especially problematic when you consider that if the trend of cloud computing and thin application technology is to continue, eventually a good portion of information about you will be stored on Google’s own servers. There are a wide array of issues associated with that – from Google using your tendencies to make more money, or possible ramifications that could occur if Google’s data were to be comprised in a more serious manner than the recent Chinese attacks that targeted activists from that country.

That’s why when I came across GoogleSharing, I was intrigued. To be honest, at first I thought that this was something that came from Google. The look of the site would certainly indicate that, complete with privacy quotes on the left hand side from CEO Eric Schmidt. But the reality is that it’s an independently developed experimental (for now) plugin for Firefox that allows users to search with Google independently. I say search because this plugin currently does not anonymize for use of Google’s Mail, Checkout, Health, Sites, Docs, and Reader applications.

Installation of GoogleSharing was done in a snap. Within Firefox you will see some text in the lower right hand side that indicates whether or not GoogleSharing is enabled. Right clicking on this area will also allow you to open an options menu to change the anonymous proxy settings if you wanted to. The add-in basically uses a proxy that is located at proxy.googlesharing.net that does a number of things to essentially confuse the engine that captures Google queries for search, as well as analytics.

One of the ways, among others that are detailed on the GoogleSharing site is that this works to submit to Google cookies that are “fresh”. This means that they are blank slates that don’t contain any of the usual information that would normally be saved during a browsing session that Google is then able to parse through its intricate data collection architecture. However, there is no way to avoid using some of these service such as Gmail and Google Checkout in a manner that is anonymous, and therefore everything that you do on these services is saved and could potentially be used as a profile that could sell you things such as ads in the future.

Not to say that is what Google using our search information, but who really knows other than those who are insiders? And do you think there would be a plugin like this available for Chrome browser?

Google Docs to Offer Expanded Storage

Posted on 16. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments

Google Docs, which has had a tumultuous history, now appears to be on a roll – the software is used by people who refuse to pay for Microsoft Office and also has spread to larger enterprises such as Genentech. That means Google has a company that is 15,000 strong testing and improving their software – with updates happening in real time. Now it appears that additional storage for Docs – what many thought would be known as the mysterious GDrive is becoming a reality. As of this writing, Google Docs has strict limitations on what you can store: 500KB for text files, PowerPoint Presentations of 10MB, spreadsheets 1MB and PDF files at 10MB.

The new rules are apparently going to be much looser. The ability to store files of any size and in any format are expected and the cap will be raised from the current 250MB to 1GB. That’s still small when compared to Gmail which offers over 6GB of online storage, but it is a good start and I think that Google wants to slowly raise these levels as time goes on and more devices start requiring online storage.

From Docs:

“Over the next couple of weeks, we’re rolling out the ability to upload, store, and share any file in Google Docs. Your files will be stored in their original format and downloadable from anywhere. Uploading files to the cloud allows them to be safely stored and accessible at all times.”

These files will be able to be shared with others in a special shared folder that you can create. And just like Gmail, Google Docs also offers offline storage now as well. You can see this evidenced by the red Offline link that is in the upper right hand corner of Google Docs.

Why all these changes? Expect to see more as Google rolls out the ability for users to operate in a cloud environment. They are preparing the HTML 5 infrastructure for devices that will run Chrome OS and Android that keep most files stored in a network environment.