Google Apps team Edition is out ..

Google has come out with another of its 'bundled' suites. This time they have bound Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google talk and a Start Search page for the members of teams - and they have called it Google Apps Team Edition. All the users have to do is to sign up with a domain (like abcd.gef@creekwood.com where creekwood.com becomes your domain) and you will get a mail sent to this address. After clicking the confirmation link you are all set and ready to access these apps. You could invite other members of the same domain and then the collaborative effort kicks off with messaging, document sharing and Calendar scheduling. We even saw the collaborative effort in the case of Google Docs when they introduced the Forms in Spreadsheets. The Google Docs have been revamped and the UI looks great !

Anyway this seems to be a great way of collaboration but still it is under Google. Major organizations may consider this as threat full ( I feel so). Small companies with a distributed workforce may consider this as a blessing in disguise. Anyway Google Rocks yet again. Heres the Video.

Micro yahoo ?

The largest offer after the PayPal deal is on paper now. Has 'Bill's Hard Drive' (courtesy NY Post) done the trick here ? Steven Ballmer's letter offers $44.6 billion to Yahoo! for its acquisition. And its widely said that Yahoo! will give in to the deal. Google's Eric Schimdt has openly protested against this deal. He has even called up good friend Jerry Yang to offer help to retaliate the progress from Microsoft. Yahoo! has even said it needed time to think about this deal. The Yahoo! shares have leaped after this announcement.

Now the war between Google and Microsoft is evident. But the point that I look upon is after the merger, if it happens, how will Yahoo! be treated my Microsoft. Will MS actually make the web a better place by encouraging Open Source initiative or will it shadow the web in the same way that it has with the PC ? With the vast array of products that Yahoo! has, it may be well possible that MS will dominate these areas with a dominating notion. Instant messaging, Mail and want not (For all I know Hotmail and Yahoo Mail may become Hot Yahoo! Mail ).

I sent a mail regarding this to a community of mine and the reactions were quite astounding. Some of them reacted to the offer as a good thing. That MS would try to make Yahoo! a better firm and promote Open Source Software and try not to ruin the Internet. They will take the 'consumers' as entities and not dumb terminals. I was skeptical about that comment anyway. One of my friends in Yahoo! said that he was praying for the merger to dissolve.

Here are some related material :-
Yahoo, Google, Microsft Acquisitions Timeline
Yahoo Acquisitions
Microsoft Acquisitions
Yahoo Finance
BBC News on the subject
BBC News ShotGun Marriage

Social Graph API

This is a new one from Google. This Open Api tries to gather information from a website and tries to link to other sites. This is a great idea as such because then even if you have your content distributed, a person could actually search and connect those contents. It gives the person more visibility and opens up more details about his personality, likes and dislikes, his friends and other social details. Though there are speculations about the negative effect that this will have on the community, crackers may use this information for malicious activities, I feel that the idea is great. The lesson that the content that must be protected should be protected and must be maitained by the needed takes charge here.

The Api requires that the data be formatted in a way so that the crawler (which only takes data which is visible in the Google search) may understand this and interpret. Say the 'rel' attribute is searched for terms like 'me' and 'friends' to actually connect to those other sites. The point here is that a single site which has all those links nicely tagged will serve as a starting point for all your distributed content and any person could correlate to your activities using that single site.

I tried this with blogger and it seems that the taggings are not done as yet for blogger. I hope this will soon come into picture. TechCrunch has an article about this. References are given below.

Social Graph Api From Google
Social Graph Api Docs From Google

The Plight of a Valiant

'Robert Frost:Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me'

Ever since I have been scribbling these notes, I have been wanting to write some thing about the 'family'. Some facts, fun and hurting. This post is purely about a person who I have tried to understand but failed to do so. A person who come into the daily life routine, disrupt the normal way but leave his mark by a smile or a glance that talks louder that any words he spoke. My late uncle, Ajith, whom I lost for more than a year now.

My family is not particularly a small one. Dad has six brothers, all of them are married and most of them have kids of their own. Some of them even live near by and some far. Grandma (mom's mom) has 4 children of which my Mom was the eldest. Uncle Ajith the second child followed by aunt Sujatha and Pradeep Uncle.

Every time I used to come to Kerala from Dubai for those summer vacations, I used to see Uncle Ajith in the house. I did not think much of him and to be perfectly frank was scared of the guy. He was some what an arrogant fella who used to show his command over me. But over the years, even though we had less number of visits from him, I came to know what kind of a personality he was. The sufferings he had undergone.

Having had a primary education from a navy school ( grandma and grandpa were working there ) he had great command over the English language. He used to study very well according to Mom and came up first in the class. The ill fortunes started when grandpa, as I hear, hit Uncle every time he came home. The tortures along with the transfer to a bad government school changed his life forever. I still do not know to term courage he showed at the age of 8 -10 when he took grandpa's scooter and drove off to see the festival called Thrissur Pooram from Cochin as praise worthy or genuinely stupid.

His friends did not help him either. Having friends is a great thing. It's sort of a soother and a morale booster. But having friends how stick with you because of your money is a misfortune. He trusted who so ever came to him and nothing stopped in helping them in what ever ways possible. Even if that meant he get into a fight, he would do it. The boozing also did not help.

Mom helped him in getting to Dubai and procuring a job there. With his excellent communication skills he had no issues with the job. But his ill fate followed him there too in the form of friends. After leaving Dubai, he even went to Bahrain but it did not help him either. After settling where my Aunt lived he had a quiet life. The roaming was reduced to the minimum, no boozing of any sort. He was trying to get his life together. He was over 50 and did not marry (no one could predict he was that aged just looking at his face). A self made man, even used to cut his own hair with such patience and accuracy.

My locality was the place where he would lose himself. There are guys who actually would do anything to get a pint and my Uncle knew many. Seeing him come home all drunk would be scary for me as I did not know how to react. He used to play Bookworm in my PC for hours only to come for the meals. I thought he liked isolation, being all by himself. Made him speak less, act more. Only if he could convert those skills into something that his loved ones could look upon. He could have got grandpa's job in the navy (after his death) but could not do so because of the family problems he had.

When I was older we shared a healthier relationship. Talked about stuff. I tried to be close, understand his point of view. Uncle was intent in being fit all the time and those gym talks would be fruitful as well as informative.

It was a dark day when we realized that he was no more. Ending his life by his will, like a message to everyone who hurt him in one form or the other. Rest In Peace ...