microsoft
OpenID, Microsoft, and AOL - Are Yahoo and Google in tow?
Let's face it: Remembering all of our login and passwords for the countless websites we use everyday sucks. I've blogged about it before. . OpenID set out to change all that, and appears to be making strides with both Microsoft and AOL. Will Google and Yahoo be next?
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What is OpenID? "OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity." That's fancy talk for "OpenID allows you to login 'everywhere' with one login/password".
AOL = 63 Million More Open IDs
Is Google's Web-Based Presentation software ready for big business?
TechCrunch recently ran a story about an upcoming release from Google called 'Presently'. It will be a web based presentation software (think a Microsoft PowerPoint clone)
Online presentation software is nothing new to the web. There are already decent releases from Zoho.com (Zoho Show), Preezo, and Empressr in a race to become the first popular.
Zimbra: Open source makes 6 million moves on Microsoft
Zimbra, an open source server and client technology for next-generation enterprise messaging and collaboration, recently reached 6 million paid mailboxes. As a robust and affordable alternative to Microsoft's Exchange Server, Zimbra has continued to move upmarket and achieved tremendous growth over the past six months.
Two versions of Zimbra are available: a community-supported open-source version, and a commercially supported version ("Zimbra Network") with closed-source components. This foundation in open source, and the contribution back to the open source community has made Zimbra extremely popular.
What Microsoft *should* have done with Zune
When we all first heard about Microsoft's Zune -- it sounded like a decent contender for an Apple iPod competitor. Big screen, video, pictures, wireless sharing of music plus rewards for people sharing music. It sounded like it was to good to be true (or to good to be Microsoft). It sounded like a big fat powerful idea.
But reality and corporate trenches are a bitch. Here is only some of what went wrong.
Pay Per Sale to Universal
Despite what most thing, the decision to pay Universal for each unit sold was a relatively good strategic move. This will force iTunes to renegotiate with potentially different terms with the Major labels. ("If Microsoft did it, then so can you").
However, take special note that giving Universal a piece of the pie indicated that both sides are in agreement that there is a relatively large amount of piracy that happens on these devices. Therefore, the payment is basically a levy in MP3 players which goes right into the labels pocket.
Wireless
