I'm writing this review on Google Docs in Firefox while running gOS 1.0.1, the Ubuntu-based distribution that steers users toward Web-based applications whenever possible -- mostly those under the auspices of Google -- and which powers the Everex Linux PC being sold for $199 by the truckful at Wal-Mart.

I'm getting more comfortable with Google Docs all the time, but there are times when you need a traditional text editor. Yet there is no GUI text editor to be found in the gOS distro. There is the entire OpenOffice suite and the GIMP image editor, a smattering of games, Rhythmbox for music and Xine for video, but no stand-alone mail client (you're encouraged by the iconography on the gOS desktop to use Gmail ...). Luckily there is a terminal program, which is named UXterm but looks suspiciously like plain ol' xterm, and with that you can bring up Vim or Nano, but that's pretty much it. Come to think of it, without a terminal in the GUI, and a console text editor, gOS would be in a heap of trouble, so it's good that they included one. But every gOS user's life would be a whole lot easier with a GUI text editor. Since you can add anything in the Ubuntu repositories, holes in gOS are easily filled.

But the more I used the new, green OS, the more I wondered whether the Everex (and everybody else) would be be better off with Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Debian ... or just about anything. While the Everex, with its 1.5 GHz VIA processor and 512 MB of RAM is underpowered when compared to most modern desktops, I regularly run Debian and Ubuntu -- both with GNOME -- and even Slackware with GNOME and Xfce on a machine with similar power but half the memory. And as I found out, the speed and lightness on resources that the Enlightenment window manager promises are just not there.

One thing I do like about gOS -- and this may be a feature of Ubuntu 7.10 for all I know -- is that when you're in a terminal and try to run an application you don't have installed, the terminal outputs what you do need to do to get it.

For instance, I tried to run the Joe editor:

$ joe

and I got the following:

The program 'Joe' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install joe
bash: joe: command not found

Whenever that message comes from, it's a very nice touch and is more than enough to get even a novice user going with apt.

But sheesh, at least give me Leafpad, Mousepad, Gedit ... whatever. Normally I would just add the editor I want, but for this evaluation of gOS, I pledged to stay with Google Docs; that's what they want you to use, so I'll use it. In the past, I've even gone as far as automatically posting a Google Docs item to one of my Blogger blogs, but that feature, in my opinion, is pretty much useless. Why not just write directly in Blogger? And since you can only auto-post from Google Docs to a single blog, the write-to-blog feature won't work for me. However, the post-to-blog feature does work with WordPress and LiveJournal blogs, plus a few others I've never heard of. That makes it more useful, but what I need is for Google Docs to act as more of a "dashboard" app for my various blogs -- I'd like to be able to publish from here to more than one blog (actually about six, and therein lies my sickness).

Update: I was all set to complain about Google Docs' browser-printing problem, but I just printed a document from Docs on my Windows PC, and what Docs did was turn my document into a great-looking PDF, which opened in Adobe Reader and was easily printed on paper. I'm not sure how seamless this integration is in Linux systems, but I plan to find out soon. Printing on actual paper seemed like the weak link in the whole Google Docs scheme, but it looks like they have that problem solved very well -- I may never use a traditional word processor again (especially if the promised offline extension of Docs is ever released).

Google Docs is a whole lot better than many people let on. I never need to insert tables or pictures into my documents. I write stuff. Stuff with words, and if I need to insert photos, I'm generally already in a blog post or on a printed page that I'm dealing with in a publishing program that is a whole lot bigger and more complicated than Google Docs. But Docs CAN insert images, tables, links and more. And it's not a bad HTML generator either. You can look at the HTML source at any time and copy/paste it into your Web content.

For the everyday writer of articles for publication, Google Docs is pretty kick-ass. When not connected to the Internet, or for those who don't want Google to see their documents, there's always the option of using OpenOffice, though I think AbiWord and Gnumeric are more in keeping with the lightness touted by gOS.

Getting back to gOS ... almost: Even though this is supposed to be about gOS, the bare-bones Linux distro relies heavily on the Firefox browser and links to various Web tools like GMail, Google Docs, Wikipedia (see, they're not all Google), Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, Google Maps and Picasa. So any review of gOS must take heavily into account the browser experience.

Since I work on four or five separate computers a day, working with docs online and using Web-based (or IMAP-delivered) e-mail is a must for me. I could add a standalone mail client to gOS as easily as I can with any Ubuntu or Debian system, but for now I won't. Even so, a user with gOS can pretty much make it do anything they could do on Ubuntu. Or they could wipe gOS from the drive and replace it ... or perhaps dual-boot.

One of the most attractive things about gOS and the Everex PC is that the combination promises full power management, making for a more green PC than most anything else out there on the desktop, so if you have the Everex PC, making gOS work the way you want it becomes a more attractive option. Hopefully Linux, as it matures even further, will include better power management for all motherboards.

More mail: I'm divided about the use of mail clients anyway. Most of the time, a Web portal is fine for me, especially if the entire session takes place in a secure connection (thanks, DSL Extreme). And I suspect that the vast majority of computer users have never heard of a mail client -- they barely know what Outlook is -- and have been accessing e-mail through the browser as long as they've had e-mail access, so gOS is going in the right direction there.

Gmail tip: To keep your Gmail session secure throughout, start out in your browser with the following:

https://mail.google.com

Note the "s" for a secure connection. You can also type https://gmail.com. Unsecure e-mail, particularly over unencrypted wireless connections, is a real problem, and it makes me reluctant to use Yahoo Mail because only the password is sent over a secure connection. The rest of your e-mail is right out there for others to intercept and use for ill.

Speaking about the greenish gOS desktop, the Enlightenment window manager isn't that bad. I think gOS could've been done just as well with Xfce -- maybe even better -- but I know that some Enlightenment developers are behind the project, and I'm always happy to see any desktop environment taken to the next level. At least it sets gOS apart from the dozen or so Xfce-based distros out there. But speedy, it's not.

One of the first things I did in gOS was add some virtual desktops; it's one of the best features that Windows doesn't offer, and I think the gOS people should ship the OS with more than a single desktop showing. I like the traditional four, so I left-clicked on the mouse and went to Desktop -- Virtual -- Configure Virtual Desktops. I could've added more than four, but I didn't. Switching between desktops is done with the usual ctrl-alt-arrow keys. You can't tell in gOS which desktop you're on, but at least they're there.

One feature I turned on in Enlightenment that I've never seen before in any other window manager (although I'm pretty sure it's there in most window managers) is the ability to switch or "flip" screens by moving the mouse pointer to the left or right edge of the screen, effectively scrolling to the next desktop. It's kind of neat. I don't know if I need it (I discovered it by accident after forgetting that I set it), but it may just be something that gOS users will grow to like. I had to turn the feature off because I kept triggering it by accident -- I like my Firefox windows to fill up the screen, and more than once I found myself on the next desktop when I didn't want to be there just yet. Ctrl-alt-arrow is good enough for me. But if you like the "flip screen" feature, you can make it look even more groovy with "animated flip."

One successful install, one less so: Both my regular test box (the VIA C3 Samuel-based Maxspeed Maxterm converted thin client) and the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) are very Ubuntu friendly, meaning installs of Ubuntu-based distros generally go well on both. gOS installed like a champ on the thin client, but it won't install at all on the Gateway. On the latter, the live CD environment comes up fine (and the graphics are much snappier than on the Maxspeed), but when I do the install, I enter all the relevant information, and about six seconds into the actual install, the program crashes -- and that's it. Since I recently did an install of Ubuntu 7.10 on this very same laptop, it's curious, indeed, that gOS will not install. It's regretful, but at least I got gOS on one box. Hopefully the bug, whatever it is, will be squashed in future editions of gOS.

Potential problem: I'm running top in a terminal window on one of my four desktops, and it consistently shows Enlightenment using 9 percent to 12 percent of my CPU and 12 percent of my 256 MB of memory ... at idle. That's not exactly light. I'll have to go back to Ubuntu and Xubuntu and see how much CPU and memory GNOME and Xfce take up. I don't think it's this much. That said, gOS seems to be running as well as anything else, but not radically better. I'm able to switch windows in Firefox fairly quickly and do the same with my virtual desktops. Again, I'd have a better feel for how gOS compares if I could install it on my Gateway laptop.

So I decided to install the next distro I'm testing -- Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0. In case you haven't heard of Wolvix, it's a live CD based on Slackware that runs the Xfce and Fluxbox window managers. It can be used as a live CD, or put on the hard drive as a frugal install or traditional hard drive install. I opted for the traditional hard drive install.

The Wolvix installation process is excellent. I already had partitions set up, but the Wolvix installer offered to start up Gparted and make some or modify those I have. I also had the option of designating separate partitions for /home and other directories (I declined but would have configured a separate /home if I planned to use Wolvix long-term). The installer also gave me the option of booting Wolvix at the console or in a GUI (I chose the GUI), and it offered to put GRUB on the master boot record (I accepted). It also detected gOS, which allowed me to dual-boot. If whatever I install on the remaining partition messes up GRUB, I can easily reinstall it from Wolvix without having to geek out too much. (Note: Wolvix didn't do so well on GRUB, I instead used the gOS install disk to reinstall GRUB, and it recognized gOS perfectly).

I ran top in a terminal in Wolvix Hunter running Xfce, and at idle, with the Firefox window open on another screen (just like in gOS), the top running process was X at between 2 and 4.6 percent CPU and 7.6 percent memory. In short, a whole lot lighter than Enlightenment.

Maybe Wolvix isn't the best distro with which to compare gOS, but the Xfce vs. Enlightenment comparison is more than valid. Is it possible that the Everex PC could perform better with Xubuntu instead of gOS? (The answer is yes.)

Anyway, since Wolvix includes Fluxbox, I decided to go further and check top again. I opened Firefox, opened this document, switched to another window, opened a terminal and ran top. X was still the top running process and veered between 0.3 percent and 1.7 percent of CPU, and 6.1 percent of memory. Again, much better than Enlightenment in gOS.

To provide an even clearer picture of the performance of gOS and Enlightenment, I tested the load times of Firefox and OpenOffice Writer in a variety of Linux distributions and window managers. (Note: Slackware 12 doesn't include OpenOffice, and I haven't bothered to add it, so times are provided for KOffice's KWord -- which is generally quicker to load than OO). Load times were checked twice for each setup, since the second load of each of these two applications often happens much more quickly than the first.

Other variables that may have affected the times: Ubuntu 6.06 uses Firefox 1.5. All others used variants of Firefox 2.0. OpenOffice versions ranged from 2.0 in Ubuntu 6.06 to 2.3 in gOS.

The distros and window managers tested on the Maxspeed converted thin client (1 GHz VIA C3 processor, ECS eveM motherboard, 256 MB RAM) were:

gOS 1.0.1 (Enlightenment)
Ubuntu 6.0.6 LTS (GNOME)
Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (Xfce and Fluxbox)
Slackware 12 (KDE, Xfce and Fluxbox)
Ubuntu 7.04 (GNOME)
Xubuntu 7.04 (Xfce)
Debian 4.0 Etch (Xfce)

To sum up before the results are given, gOS was the slowest of the bunch -- even slower than Slackware under KDE -- and also slower than Ubuntu. It may be surprising, but Ubuntu with GNOME compares somewhat favorably to other distros running Xfce; you don't lose much speed by running GNOME as opposed to Xfce. Slackware and Debian with Xfce were another story; both were extremely fast when it came to loading applications. I didn't include Debian Etch with GNOME in the test because I didn't have it installed on one of the thin client's drives. But Debian compared very well to Slackware when both used the Xfce desktop environment. Curiously, Xubuntu -- Ubuntu's Xfce variant -- was slower than Debian with Xfce; in fact (as I already mentioned), Xubuntu didn't provide much of a speed advantage over regular Ubuntu.

I expected Wolvix to be the fastest, or at least as fast as Slackware. but it was buried by Slack. Not surprisingly, when Xfce was chosen for the window manager instead of KDE, Slackware was the undisputed winner, with a first-load time for Firefox of 8 seconds. That said, Ubuntu was slower, but not overly much, so if you prefer Ubuntu and GNOME to Slackware and Xfce, it's not like night and day in terms of application load time; it's more like noon and 2:30 p.m. -- a difference, but not so much as to make the slower of the two unusable.

The reason I even did this test was that from a "desktop feel" standpoint on my underpowered test box, gOS lacked the quickness of most of the other distros, including the Dapper and Feisty versions of Ubuntu.

And while Ubuntu has made some performance gains between 6.06 and 7.04, compatibility with hardware and desire for (or lack of interest in) more up-to-date apps should govern users' choice of the LTS vs. regular releases of the distro. For instance, on the converted thin client, hardware recognition is great in both versions, but on my Gateway laptop, ACPI and touchpad configuration work better in 7.10, and almost as well in 7.04. But ACPI management of the CPU fan only works with the kernel provided in 7.04.

Another aside: I saw practically no difference in application load times between Xfce and Fluxbox. So if you prefer Fluxbox, go ahead and use it, but you won't be gaining any performance over Xfce, at least in 256 MB of RAM. On the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), which only has 64 MB of RAM, I ran Debian with Fluxbox for months, and it runs just as well now that I have Xfce on it. And the superior tools included in Xfce put it ahead of Fluxbox when it comes to usability on the desktop.

The Slackware KDE vs. Slackware Xfce numbers are the most startling; using Slack with Xfce will save considerable load time on slower systems.

On "modern" PCs, however, much of this is moot. With a dual-core processor and 512 MB to 1 GB of RAM, everything loads so quickly that for desktop use, personal preference for one window manager or another holds more sway than load times, which will be acceptably short in just about any desktop environment. And for those who like all the bells and widgets of KDE, if you have enough power to enjoy them, it's probably worth it. Just Konqueror alone, with its ability to function as a Web browser, file manager, file viewer, FTP client and configuration portal, makes KDE very attractive. If only I could get X configured properly in Slackware on my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop.

Here are the test results:

gOS 1.0.1 (Enlightenment)
Firefox 2.0.0.10 1st load: 30 sec.
                 2nd load: 15 sec.
OpenOffice 2.3   1st load: 56 sec.
                 2nd load: 21 sec.  

Ubuntu 6.06 (GNOME)
Firefox 1.5.0.13 1st load: 21 sec.
                 2nd load: 10 sec.
Open Office 2.0  1st load: 44 sec.
                 2nd load: 26 sec.

Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (Xfce)
Firefox 2.0.0.6 1st load: 19 sec.
                2nd load: 12 sec.
OpenOffice 2.2  1st load: 37 sec.
                2nd load: 23 sec.

Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (Fluxbox)
Firefox 2.0.0.6 1st load: 22 sec.
                2nd load: 12 sec.
OpenOffice 2.2  1st load: 42 sec.
                2nd load: 23 sec.

Slackware 12 (KDE)
Firefox 2.0.0.8 1st load: 24 sec.
                2nd load: 14 sec.
KOffice         1st load: 19 sec.
                2nd load: 16 sec.

Slackware 12 (Xfce)
Firefox 2.0.0.8 1st load:  8 sec.
                2nd load:  8 sec.
KOffice         1st load: 15 sec.
                2nd load: 13 sec.

Slackware 12 (Fluxbox)
Firefox 2.0.0.8  1st load: 9 sec.
                 2nd load: 9 sec.
Koffice         1st load: 15 sec.
                2nd load: 13 sec.

Xubuntu 7.04 (Xfce)
Firefox 2.0.0.10 1st load: 18 sec.
                 2nd load:  9 sec.
OpenOffice 2.2   1st load: 36 sec.
                 2nd load: 22 sec.

Ubuntu 7.04 (GNOME)
Firefox 2.0.0.10 1st load: 17 sec.
                 2nd load: 10 sec.
OpenOffice 2.2   1st load: 40 sec.
                 2nd load: 18 sec.

Debian 4.0 Etch (Xfce)
Firefox 2.0.0.8  1st load: 10 sec.
                 2nd load: 10 sec.
Open Office 2.0  1st load: 17 sec.
                 2nd load: 17 sec.

As I say above the biggest thing to emerge is the speed advantage of Slackware and Debian, especially with Xfce. The relative slowness of Slackware 11-based Wolvix was puzzling. And while I didn't have OpenOffice installed in Slackware, and KOffice is pretty much a quicker program, I included its load numbers for comparison's sake. I did first and second loads of all apps because the second load is often -- but not always -- much quicker. Times for office suites were the number of seconds it took to open up a new OO Writer or KWord document.

While I didn't expect Debian to be slow, I also didn't expect it to be so comparable to Slackware. That's good news for Debian users.

But the biggest thing to come out of this test is that standard Ubuntu pretty much crushes gOS. The new, hot distro may be green in color, but it's incomplete and slow.

That said, the idea of doing most work in the browser and drawing on Web-based portals for not just e-mail and "social networking" purposes, but also document creation, photo editing and storage is becoming more attractive and viable all the time. In this realm, gOS is making a big "idea" contribution to the OS game, but in terms of sheer performance, polish and basic tools, it has a long way to go.

The average user -- even newbies -- would be better off with Ubuntu or Xubuntu on the Everex. And as these tests show, the Xfce desktop environment, in most instances, provides more bang for your MHz.

I wanted gOS to be great, but when it comes to Linux and BSD distros, greatness only comes with time and painstaking effort. After all the hype over the gOS-Everex-Wal-Mart effort -- some of it even generated by yours truly -- I didn't expect to see gOS beaten by every single established distro I threw at it. I don't usually do extensive time tests, but the sludginess of gOS drove me to it.

And while I expected Slackware and Debian to acquit themselves well, I wasn't prepared for out-of-the-box Ubuntu to best gOS. It wouldn't make as great a story -- "Wal-Mart chooses Ubuntu" -- but it would be way better for those buying the $199 box from the world's largest retailer.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

I've decided to go all in with Google Docs.

Since it's easy to upload files to Google Docs from the app itself or via a unique e-mail address provided to each user, I'm throwing everything up there I can find on my office hard drive. The only "problems," so far are that i have quite a few documents in AbiWord format that aren't recognized by Docs. I didn't expect it to work, but I tried anyway and got the error message, "Sorry, we do not currently support '.abw' files." Does that mean they might do so in the future?

Not a big deal either way, as I can re-save them in .doc format and upload if I need to. The "critical" files that I made in AbiWord are all in .doc format (since I tend to e-mail them to people who don't use AbiWord), and those went up fine.

It's a good feeling to a) have a backup of everything and b) have the ability to access the files from any Web-connected computer.

As I say every time I write about Google Docs, I've set my browser to NOT print the customary headers and footers so I could print a clean-looking file on paper if I wanted. But I haven't really been printing out anything lately, and that's probably one of the biggest non-secrets of Google Docs -- we so rarely print stuff, and the more accessibility we have to docs on the Web, the fewer reasons we have to commit them to paper in the first place.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think we're getting to that point. We all worry about accessing e-mail over Web portals (or via POP and IMAP servers) that are not encrypted and secure. Or we should be.

And using the Seamonkey browser in Puppy 3.01, I'm constantly being warned about information being exchanged that's not secure.

I appreciate the warning. I even started using my DSL Extreme mail account more often because not only is the Web-portal login secure, but the whole session is as well. And I also have encryption turned on when I access the mail server via IMAP.

And most people won't think of entering personal and financial information when banking or buying stuff online unless they see the "https://" before the address.

So why are we doing so much other stuff without the "s"?

I don't know what the particulars are, but I think we're at the point with the Internet where every single damn thing ought to be encrypted and secure.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I saw an ad for Google Apps, which links to this page containing a video of what Google Apps can do for the business world. Here you can compare the various versions, meaning why you should spend $50 per person per year rather than nothing.

I already solved my biggest problem with Google Apps by killing out the headers and footers in Firefox's printed pages: go to File -- Page Setup -- Margins & Header/Footer and set everything to "blank" under Header/Footer.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since the insidesocal.com domain on which this blog lives has had so many problems with DNS-type attacks, with the solution being blocking the whole of Europe, I've been spreading my technological cheer around some other blogs.

It gets confusing. And in an attempt to actually spend a little time on the entries before they're published, I've been writing in Google Docs. Actually, testing gOS, which relies heavily on using Google services through the Firefox browser, made me take another look at Google Docs, which I've used on and off for awhile.

The whole idea is to have all my writing stored in one place, accessible from any network-connected computer, so things aren't left to die in one /home directory or another on the six or so computers I use during any given week. And as I say, maybe writing and not immediately publishing will make for better entries overall. Later but better.

And while on the subject of Europe, there's a rumor floating around that the IP block for the continent has been removed. So if you see this entry and happen to be a European, please send me an e-mail and tell me the country from which you hail. Thanks.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I won't begin to say that I know what the hell cloud computing really is. It has something to do with huge, centralized data centers with virtualization software that enables virtual servers (notice how I used the word "virtual" pretty much twice -- and now three times? I'm at a loss) to exist in said "cloud," with their virtual (there's that word again) presence available for lease -- and for use -- by faraway customers.

Anyway, I've heard that Amazon -- yep, the books-and-everything-else-including-the-kitchen-sink seller -- is heavily involved. Google's also a player (that's a gimmie, I know).

Well, now IBM is getting into the cloud game. And according to ZDNet, that means it's going corporate, since IBM holds a lot of sway in big-business circles.

As I understand it, you rent CPU time from the cloud, and in many cases, you can specify your OS, say Red Hat, Solaris, or what have you. And you get a virtual server to do your bidding, with a bunch of techs far away to take care of everything from maintenance (and power requirements, cooling, security, etc.).

Time to get educated on cloud computing.

From ZDNet:
Google CEO’s new paradigm: ‘cloud computing and advertising go hand-in-hand’
IBM, Google fund cloud computing teaching techniques
Beware: Google cloud platform exposed
(Have I mentioned recently how great ZDNet is?)

But a better place to start (especially for all things tech) is Wikipedia:

Cloud computing is a popular phrase that is shorthand for applications that were developed to be rich Internet applications that run on the Internet (or "cloud"). In the cloud computing paradigm, software that is traditionally installed on personal computers is shifted or extended to be accessible via the Internet. These "cloud applications" or "cloud apps" utilize massive data centers and powerful servers that host web applications and web services. They can be accessed by anyone with a suitable Internet connection and a standard web browser.

The architecture behind cloud computing is a massive network of "cloud servers" interconnected as if in a grid running in parallel, sometimes using the technique of virtualization to maximize computing power per server.

Red Hat partners with Amazon on cloud computing:

Cloud computing with Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a web-scale virtual computing environment powered by Amazon Web Services. It provides everything needed to develop and host applications: compute capacity, bandwidth, storage, and the leading open source operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Cloud computing changes the economics of IT by enabling you to pay only for the capacity that you actually use. Compute capacity can be scaled up or down on demand to accommodate changing workloads and business requirements. Red Hat Enterprise Linux for cloud computing makes it easy to develop, deploy, and manage your new and existing applications in a virtual computing environment.

So how much does it cost? Here's the Red Hat/Amazon deal:

Available at a starting price of $19/month per customer plus $0.21 per hour for every deployed server, plus additional bandwidth and storage fees.

So how does this differ from renting a remote server, or space on said server? It's the virtualization. You, in effect, get your own server, even though it's not really there ... but in the cloud.

Prediction: This is gonna be HUGE.

More from Red Hat, and info on Amazon's cloud service.

Here's part of Amazon's pitch:

Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of Amazon's scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually consume. Compare this with the significant up-front expenditures traditionally required to purchase and maintain hardware, either in-house or hosted. This frees you from many of the complexities of capacity planning, transforms what are commonly large fixed costs into much smaller variable costs, and removes the need to over-buy "safety net" capacity to handle periodic traffic spikes.

For those who want to go deep, here's Amazon's documentation on the EC2 Cloud.

And since I write these entries as a stream of consciousness, here's Wired on cloud computing: The Information Factories (from Wired). Most of the article's focus is on power -- electrical power -- and how much a huge data center like Google's needs, and where to get it.

The New York Times (password required, but you should just bite the bullet and get one):

Google and I.B.M. Join in ‘Cloud Computing’ Research
I.B.M. to Push ‘Cloud Computing,’ Using Data From Afar

And last, not least, but wacky enough, the Times of London's everyman take on it.

The problem I'm having in figuring this all out, is that "cloud computing" can mean stuff like using Gmail and Google Docs, Hotmail and Xdrive. But I'm trying to focus on the clouds-for-rent on which a business can get its own virtual server.

But whether it's virtual servers or SAAS (software as a service) -- the latter with which I'm saddled for half my work already; it needs to be faster, dammit -- data and the apps that manipulate them are moving off the desktop and onto faraway server arrays. Besides saving you the trouble of archiving your own data, it means accessing your personal and business data from anywhere, with any computer or data-collecting gizmo you happen to have in front of you.

What's the state of privacy and reliability of these services? That's a question going forward. But eventually cost will win out. If it's cheaper, it'll happen.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's more intuitive, more eye-candyish than ever, writes Garett Rogers of ZDNet. You've tried Google Docs, haven't you? If they could come up with a way for me to print witthout the Web page title above and timestamp below, I'm sold. That's where a hopefully-in-development Google Gears helper app comes in. Hopefully.

I swear, I will dump offline text editing if I can get the elusive smart quotes and easy printing out of Google Docs. In other words, if Google Docs recognizes that all writing is not meant for Web pages and blogs, but for things like print articles and, heaven forbid, books, it'll be world-domination (or at least office software domination) time for big ol' Google.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

PC World magazine has released the results of its annual survey on Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

The survey, which tallied the responses of more than 6000 PC World and PCWorld.com readers, ranked several ISPs based on aspects such as connection reliability, download and upload speed and customer service.

Verizon fiber connection came on top of the list in overall satisfaction, while AOL and Charter ranked the lowest.

Here are the survey results

Posted by Armando Hernandez at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nicholas Carr knows the future. It's in his upcoming book, "The Big Switch:Our New Digital Destiny" (out Jan. 7 2008). These quotes come via Andrew Keen's The Great Seduction:

A hundred years ago, businesses began dismantling their waterwheels, steam engines, and generators. After producing their own mechanical power for centuries, they suddenly had an alternative. They could plug into the newly built electric grid and get all the electricity they needed from central stations. The cheap power pumped out by electric utilities didn’t just transform how businesses operate. It set off a chain reaction of economic, social, and cultural changes that brought the modern world into existence.

Today, a new technological revolution is under way, and it’s following a similar course. Companies are beginning to dismantle their private computer systems and tap into rich services delivered over the Internet. This time, it’s computing that’s turning into a utility. The shift is already remaking the computer industry, bringing new competitors like Google and Salesforce.com to the fore and threatening stalwarts like Microsoft, SAP, and Dell. But the effects will reach much further. Cheap, utility-supplied computing will ultimately change society as profoundly as cheap electricity did.

Not so incidentally, Andrew Keen is author of the currently hot "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture."

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't know if "Web operating systems" is the best name for what this post is about, but I continue to be intrigued with what might more accurately be called "desktop environments over IP," meaning full desktops of applications that work via a Web browser. While Google is slowly getting into this space with Google Docs and Spreadsheets (and is trying to offer offline functionality via Google Gears, there are plenty of others -- Microsoft included -- vying for what I think will be the future of business and personal computing.

Stan Schroeder of FranticIndustries offers a very detailed review of 10 such services.

One of the most intriguing is Desktop on Demand, which basically pipes a Linux X server over the Internet to your browser. Still, you need a helper app on your PC, so it doesn't exactly have the "use anywhere" functionality that I think makes this kind of service essential -- that and they're not accepting new users at present, so I couldn't try it.

Way down in the comments to Schroeder's article, somebody mentioned eyeOS.org, an open-source project -- and it looks pretty good. Signing up for an account was a little bit squirrely, but I was able to do it, and I'm pretty impressed with it. You can write documents, save them in folders, create a spreadsheet and even open a Web browser (yep, a browser within a browser -- not exactly the most useful thing in the world, but you can do it).

I'll definitely be keeping my eye on eyeOS. Schroeder did cover it in an earlier Web-OS roundup.

One of the most noted Web-app developers is 37signals, which was recently covered (and very positively at that) by Time magazine. When it comes to collaboration among many workers in different places (which is how 37signals itself is run), they've got quite a lead in the Web-application field. I don't quite understand what they're doing, but I do plan to check it out. The one thing they've done that most geek types have heard about is Ruby on Rails, a Web-app development platform. Alas, I'm not anywhere geeky enough for that ... yet.

Here's a bit of business-running wisdom from 37signals, via the Time article (emphasis mine):

37signals isn't shy about dispensing one thing without charge: advice to small-business owners. On the company blog, Signal vs. Noise, Fried shares what he's learned about the art of streamlined teamwork with more than 65,000 readers. First, kill all your meetings; they waste employees' time. "Interruption is the biggest enemy of productivity," he says. "We stay away from each other as much as we can to get more stuff done." Use asynchronous communication and software instead to exchange information, ideas and solutions. Next, dump half your projects to focus on the core of your business. Too much time and effort are wasted on second-tier objectives. Third, let your employees decide when and where to work so they can be both efficient and happy. As long as their fingers are near a keyboard, they could as easily be in Caldwell, Idaho, as in Chicago.

Yeah!

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In my geeky haze, I forgot to blog about my triumph last week: I set up the $15 Laptop, a Compaq Armada 7770dmt (233 MHZ Pentium II with a whopping 64 MB RAM) to triple-boot Windows 2000, Puppy Linux 2.14 and Damn Small Linux 3.3.

I managed to do them in order, so first Puppy (a traditional, not frugal install due to the low RAM) installed GRUB for me, and then when I added DSL (frugal install), a new GRUB bootloader was added, and that one did pick up Windows (and DSL, of course) but not Puppy. So I found /boot/grub/menu.lst in the Puppy install, copied the code over to DSL's GRUB, and I was able to boot Windows, Puppy and DSL from the GRUB screen.

It was a geek-in-training triumph.

So yesterday I figure I can perform the same magic on the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, the 1 GHz VIA C3 processor/256 MB RAM box that I use to test distros. I have three hard drives that I can switch in and out via a long IDE cable that allows the drives to sit on the desk next to the thin client box.

I had my Ubuntu 6.06 LTS/Windows 2000 drive hooked up. So first I add a frugal-istall of Puppy 2.14. I manage to get Ubuntu back into the new GRUB. And then I make yet another partition and try to add a frugal install of DSL. I figure that if I can do it WITHOUT a new GRUB, I can modify the Puppy Grub to account for DSL and have a quad-boot machine.

Long story short, DSL won't alllow an automated install without GRUIB, and pretty soon I can only boot DSL and Windows -- no Puppy, no Ubuntu.

I worked on if for a little while, but today I just decided to get rid of all the Linux partitions and start over.

For the first partition after Windows, I made a 512 MB Linux swap file. Then I made one big partition for Ubuntu and let the installer do its thing. The 140 updates I needed after the 6.06 install just finished.

I hadn't made that many mods to my old Ubuntu, so it won't take me too long to get this one where I want it. And I can start fresh with my Flash problem.

Bottom line: It'll take me awhile before I become a GRUB master.

What I took away: Puppy and DSL are fast, but they run even faster when installed to the hard drive. My previous installs of both have been "traditional," but the "frugal" install is better for both because it's simpler. You have maybe 3 or 4 large files on the partition, allowing for a very easy upgrade -- just drop in the new files to go to the next version.

You can even have a frugal install in a partition being used for something else, I think -- as long as you know how to boot it, it can coexist with another distro.

My triple boot did work -- Windows, Puppy and DSL. I should give up, but I probably won't. I think install order is important (in lieu of really mastering GRUB).

And I'm almost through with needing to put Windows on these boxes, so it'll be all Linux (and maybe some BSD) in the future. Next time I'll try DSL first, then Puppy, and then Ubuntu/Mepis/what have you. Or I could just try to really, really understand GRUB and all things about the master boot record.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It's been so long since my last Google Docs report. And here I am again, back in the world of Docs to see if anything's changed.

I still don't see automatic paragraph indents. And right now, when I printed, I had a little blip bringing back the text I just typed in.

But I can save this as HTML, .doc, .rtf, .odt, and even .pdf -- outputting the file formats the world needs now.

So is it love, sweet love, for Google Docs? I can pretty much produce any writing I need in this comfortable world and output it in whatever format I need, so that's a kind of love right there. But why is there no .txt output? That's a puzzler.

And why can't I print from Google Docs without the header and footer all my other browser pages have on them? I know I can modify the browser parameters, but there should be some kind of helper app (maybe Java based?) that would allow printable output without the header and footer. But the app is very slick, and the code works so quickly and so well. Google is on to something here. At this point it's a tool that works well for Web-based writing, less so for print. But if you want to write .doc files without Word or Open Office, keep them stored on Google's servers, access them anywhere and easily convert them to a format that can be read by those word processors. Google Docs is good enough for now.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m writing this from MepisLite — the ‘lite’ version of the well-regarded SimplyMepis Linux distribution, which though configured for older systems (just how old I’ve yet to determine) nevertheless uses the KDE desktop environment, which many prefer over the GNOME desktop that runs Ubuntu (although KDE is available for Ubuntu either in its Kubuntu incarnation or as an add-on package).

I was thinking, as I drove in today, how Abiword is such a nice program — fast loading, able to read and write Microsoft Word-format files (a must for the publishing world, even though the Daily News publishing system handles Word and text files with equal aplomb). But its one fatal flaw is a lack of smart quotes — or any ability to easily type directional quotes manually.

The argument against smart quotes (and directional quotes, for that matter) is that they’re not needed (meaning true geeks don’t use them) and that they’re the spawn of Microsoft, and therefore inherently evil. All I can say is that these people are not writers or editors, or at the very most not writers or editors outside the world of blogs, which by default don’t have smart quotes. But the print world does have directional quotation marks, and a word processor, by convention, is different than a plain text editor in that it inserts more formatting to make a printed document look good.

Yesterday, in frustration at not being able to acquire an older PC-compatible laptop (in the 300-500 MHz) range for a price that I consider sane (that price being $100 or less), I fired up This Old Mac, the 117 MHz PowerPC-based Powerbook 1400 that runs System 7.6.1. It does the Internet begrudgingly with Internet Explorer 5 (still the best browser for 7.6.1), a little less well with Netscape 4.x, which I also use as a very slow mail client and newsgroup reader. That said, Netscape is currently the ONLY mail client runs under 7.6.1 and works with today’s POP and IMAP e-mail systems. Not Eudora, Claris, or even Outlook 4.5 (you need at least version 5.something). I’ve tried them all.

But getting back to my point. I ran the supremely fast WriteNow — a program whose copywright is somewhere around 1990 — that’s 17 years ago, my friends, and IT HAS SMART QUOTES. Same for the writing portion of ClarisWorks. But neither can make an acceptable MS Word-compatible document. I don’t even know if they can do Rich Text Format. They’re fast as hell (especially WriteNow), but without file compatibility, not very useful. I do have Office 6.0 on the Powerbook, which, despite being written for PowerPC, isn’t very swift at all.

So if an 11-year-old Powerbook has THREE word processing programs with smart quotes, the Linux of today should offer that feature — and allow it to be turned on or off — on each and every word processor available for the platform. Open Office has it, but for older systems, it would be better to run Abiword or Ted. Abiword, as I said, is ideal, because it saves in Word format. But it doesn’t offer smart quotes. It did at one time. It was buggy, so I read, but instead of fixing it, the programmers decided to keep it geek friendly (and writer unfriendly) and offer straight quotes only.

This brings me to KOffice, with which I’m writing this entry. So far the program works great. It’s very Word-like — but very fast, with great auto correction. And under Settings---Configure Autocorrection there is the provision to turn on or off smart quotes and other various kinds of auto correction that are typically offered in Word and Open Office.

But KOffice doesn’t offer a direct, simple “save as” Word format. There’s Abiword, Open Office (for which even Word is getting an optional filter), HTML (actually freakin’ useful), even Palm (why? unless KOffice will sync my Palm, and it just might, but who knows?) Lotus Amipro (does ANYBODY use that?), Word Perfect, Microsoft Write (at least it’s close) and RTF, which is labeled as “Microsoft Word compatible.” No Word.

Well, maybe it’s time for me to get comfortable with Rich Text Format, since that’s offered in Ted as well, and since I like KOffice so well at this point, being in giddy smart-quote heaven, I just might learn to live with it.

(As an aside, I realize that blogs entries do not commonly use directional quotation marks, but would it kill you to see them? No worry, back to straight quotes in the blog after this.)

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Some are exasperated with smart quotes, others live and die by them. AbiWord at one point did smart quotes, but it didn't work so well, and its developers took out the feature for the time being. Microsoft Word, of course, is king of the smart quotes, and most full-features word processors offer the feature. Open Office does.

My obsession, for a couple of weeks, anyway, was figuring out how to enter smart quotes, em dashes and the like, in the Palm handheld. I figured it out.

But is it really that important? And why am I so concerned.

It's because I had an editor for a time of a smallish, home-produced magazine who never got them right unless I did. If I e-mailed in straight text in the body of the e-mail, I'd get all straight quotes, and I think it looks terrible. So I then sent in Word files only, with the smart quotes and spacing set just so. He'd still screw it up (such is the lament of a copy editor when it comes to his own writing being edited).

But as some correctly point out, any halfway decent publishing software (everything from Quark to InDesign) will apply smart quotes to any text file, and do a better job, probably, than Word alone.

It's certainly true for the Daily News' Unisys publishing system. It gets most of them right. Possible exceptions are when single-quotes follow doubles. Some are the wrong direction. Same for years, like '83. Those are usually backward. But the bottom line is that for the work I'm doing now (especially on the Web), smart quotes don't matter so much, and the effort to generate them is wasted.

So I've got to let go. I've got to know that I CAN make smart quotes if I need to, but it's not the end of the world if I don't.

What are/were you obsessed by that you decided to let go. And I mean this in the geekiest sense, by the way.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since Mozilla is derived from Netscape (no ...
Netscape didn't die ... it was just reborn as Mozilla
and then Firefox), SeaMonkey -- the browser in the small, CD-booting Puppy Linux -- wisely kept Netscape
Communicator's ability to read and send e-mail, read
and post to Usenet newsgroups AND ... my personal
favorite at this very moment ... create Web content
with Composer.

Man ... I've got nothing on my Windows machine to
write HTML, and now I've got the rudimentary but very
useful Composer (love it on This Old Mac) at my
service.

Again ... you may pet the Puppy.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was able to configure Gaim, Puppy's IM client, to
work with Yahoo's instant messenger service. It was
surprisingly easy.

I will say it now. If you tried Ubuntu or Knoppix and
thought them too resource heavy, give the Puppy a try.
It's working way better than Damn Small Linux.

Did you ever run a DOS-only PC with simple apps? Not
Word (even in the days of DOS 5, MS Word was a dog). I
can't remember the apps we used to run for word
processing and database in the old DOS days (Ilene
used them at work when computers were first coming
onto the desks of regular people), but you'd load and
run stuff really quick, since it was pre-Windows with
no GUIs to speak of.

In Puppy, there's a GUI, but it's blindingly fast. So
far I can browse the Web, create Word files, edit
photos, write IMs, get e-mail and newsgroups. And all
without accessing the hard drive. For laptop users,
this could be the key to running your portable PC fast
and keeping your battery running longer, too -- no HD
spinning means less power drain.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The SeaMonkey browser is a Mozilla derivative, just
like Firefox, but in this case leaner and ... you know
... meaner.

But back to Puppy. I was pleased to find mtPaint, an
image editor that both sizes photos and puts borders
on them. So I'm definitely good.

The great thing about Linux on a CD or USB drive, is
that if you can boot off of them, you can take the
Linux you know with you and work anywhere with a
familiar set of apps and, if the PC cooperates, a
place to store your data (either on a USB drive or the
open CD itself). It can really change the way you view
computing.

But while it's assumed that PCs can boot off of USB drives, this Dell Optiplex GX520 won't do it. I don't think Macs can boot off of USB (they do boot from Firewire). Does anybody have PCs that boot from USB? One workaround is a boot floppy. I think both Puppy and Damn Small Linux offer images for boot floppies. But by the time you have a boot floppy and a USB drive, isn't it just easier to carry a CD instead of a floppy? Just asking.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My tour through the world of Linux distributions
bootable from CD has taught me one thing. There are
about 100 different flavors of Linux that are bootable
from CD (I will give the link later to a list of just
about that many).

I tried Damn Small Linux yesterday (couldn't get
network services established) and was set to try
DSL-n, which is bigger and presumably has more
flexibility in drivers, but I stumbled across href="http://puppylinux.com/">Puppy, another
small, CD- and USB-drive-bootable version of Linux.
The best thing about it (and yes, I am using it right
now) is that once it boots from CD, the entire OS and
all apps load into RAM (assuming you have enough,
which is somewhere around 200 MB, I think).

That means no accessing the CD every time you load an
app (like Ubuntu
and Knoppix). I
wanted to try Abiword, the lighter (than Open Office)
word processor that produces Word-compatible files. I
wasn't prepared for it to start in under a second. But
it did. Running everything in RAM. It's like starting
every program you're going to use and having it in
your taskbar, or whatever it is they are calling that
thing at the bottom of the screen.

To keep Puppy small, it uses the SeaMonkey Web
browser, which is working great. I'm not sure what the
GUI is, but it looks great. And supposedly it's easier
to make a bootable USB drive out of Puppy than it is
from DSL (a task at which I didn't succeed yesterday).
I plan to try it.

Another thing about Puppy. You can burn an "open" CD
or DVD and save your work on the disc for as long as
you have free space. Or you can create space on your
system's hard drive, save to a plugged-in USB drive
... or to a ZIP drive (something that excites me since
I've got about a half-dozen of them in various states
of usability). You can even boot off of a ZIP disk.

But running everything in memory is brilliant. Now you
are giving up some things to do this. No GIMP, like in
Knoppix and Ubuntu. That might be hard to give up, as
I do a lot of photo editing for the Web. But maybe
there's something good enough in Puppy. This little
Linux can also be installed to the hard drive, and
then additional software can be added, so if I feel
like I need to use this Linux distribution, I can run
it like any regular HD-based OS.

I had to answer a few questions about my display
preferences while Puppy booted, but configuring the
network services was easy. I'm not quite sure how to
get a printer hooked up over the network. I think you
have to choose the model of printer and then select
from a list of available printers on the network.
Since there are about 200 or so printers hooked up
around here, I guess I'll have to do a walk-around and
see what's available. Ubuntu and Knoppix were very
smooth when it came to printer config.

And I am having one glitch in the SeaMonkey browser.
It does automatic Web links just fine, but when trying
to create a new category, a blank window opens, never
to be filled. Puppy also offers the Dillo browser, so
maybe that will work better. I'll try to upload a
photo and see how that goes.
But this running in RAM, apps available nearly
instantly. I could really get used to this. And while
the fatter Linuxes are sometimes billed as able to
resurrect older PCs, a distribution like this really
can do that. Breaking the chain to the hard drive and
running light apps is key to maximizing limited PC
resources.

Now pet the Puppy.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After running about four different kinds of Linux, and also having run OS X 10.3.9 and 10.4.6 (albeit sparingly for the latter), I've come to the conclusion that Windows and MS Office are a lot zippier than they get credit for.

If what you need to do is get work done, Windows (and I'm mainly talking about 2000 and XP here) is a workhorse. And there are free apps from today till tomorrow and into the next millennium. And so far, my screen looks better in Windows than it does in any flavor of Linux. Best I've seen so far is the Gnome GUI that comes with Ubuntu. KDE, available for Knoppix or Ubuntu is slower. Too slow, I think.

One thing I'm gonna tell you right now: The whole thing about Linux being able to "save" an old PC from obsolesence. I don't buy it at this point. But if you want to set up a PC to run modern browsers and working e-mail programs, along with Office-compatible free apps, and you don't have a Microsoft Windows OS disc, Linux can provide a very credible working environment. Is it a better one than Windows? No, just different.

What Linux does have going for it, especially the big distributions, is free upgrades forever. And the smug satisfaction that you're not running Windows or OS X. If that kind of smugness is your thing.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not that any of you have noticed, but I seem to be doing on geek project a month. First it was This Old PC, then This Old Mac. After that, it was the Palm handheld. And now I'm moving on to Knoppix, the Linux you can run from the CD-ROM drive.

I start with a problem/project, get to the level where it's working as well as it can, and then ... I move on.

For the moment, I'm geeking it up with Linux. I've always wanted to do it but never had a spare PC whose hard drive I could wipe or partition for the free, open-source OS. But Knoppix gets around that, since you boot from CD and continue running in that fashion. It's a great way to get your feet wet in Linux. And that CD also runs applications, including Open Office, Firefox (renamed Iceweasel, for reasons that elude me), the Gimp (which I'm already using on Windows to replace the Photoshop program I don't have) and much more. And there's even more available on the Knoppix DVD, should you have a DVD burner and the bandwidth to download a 4 GB file.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

DataViz's Documents to Go, the Office-friendly office suite that comes with all Palm handhelds, will soon be available for Windows Mobile devices, according to Brighthand. As Brighthand has already reported, Docs to Go already does a better job on Microsoft Office files than Microsoft's own applications, so its availability -- currently offered as a preview from DataViz -- should be of great help to those who have a Windows Mobile PDA or smartphone.

I've been using Documents to Go on the Palm for a few weeks now, and I'm very, very happy with the way it generates and modifies Word files (I really don't care about Excel and Powerpoint, but Docs to Go handles them, too). Now with the suite ported over to Windows devices, it can only mean better things down the road for this exceptional DataViz product.

It just goes to show that a non-MS company can enter the office-suite space and, if offering MS compatability, do a better job than MS itself.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been experimenting with Movable Type and Blogger, figuring out how the posting experience is over This Old Mac with its various browsers (IE 5, Netscape 4.78 and iCab 2.9.9).

Per Dan Palka of system7today.com, I turned off CSS style sheets in all browsers. Now everything loads in one big page, and all the stuff on the sides of the pages that looks funky at least comes out visible -- and much quicker. None of these browsers ... and that goes for IE 5 on the PC, too, allows for automatic links or bolding and such on either blogging software, and that is unfortunate. But at least they do work. That's in contrast to other sophisticated Web-accessed services, such as Google Docs, which doesn't work even in Safari, to say nothing of IE 5 or anthing of its ilk.

This takes on more urgency, as far as blogging is concerned, because my test today of Blogger's e-mail interface -- through which you create a unique, secret e-mail address through which you can post to your various blogs -- showed this feature to be dead. That means no writing blog posts offline as e-mails (with Netscape) and sending them later, when connected. I can only hope that the feature's death is temporary.

For more info, head over to This Old Mac, http://thisoldmac.blogspot.com.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So what if you either a) don't like Writely (oops, I mean Google Docs) or b) use Safari on the Mac?

Writeboard to the rescue. It's another collaborative online writing site, except that it works with Safari. And it works with the Backpack organizer system, both from 37Signals, whose free (or low cost for more services) business tools include Basecamp project collaboration, Campfire group chat for business, and Ta-Da sharable group to-do lists.

Hey, if I was Yahoo! I'd buy 37signals today:

We're a privately-held Chicago-based company committed to building the best web-based software products possible with the least number of features necessary. Our products do less than the competition — intentionally. We've been in business since 1999 and love what we do. Our Signal vs. Noise Weblog is read by over 30,000 people every day.

We believe software is too complex. Too many features, too many buttons, too much to learn. We build web-based products that do less, work smarter, feel better, and are easier to use. We pay enormous attention to the details, interface, and overall customer experience of our products.

While our products are mainly built for small businesses and individuals (we call this group the Fortune 5,000,000), companies of all sizes use them every day. From 1 person to teams of 3-5 people to companies of 5000. Everyone loves simple tools that help get the job done and then get out of your way. That’s what our products do.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)