Monat: März 2005

I have been looking around for such a system for quite a long time, and finally I found it: an Online Word Editor. many people are complaining of MS Word – it´s Function-Overkill kills user´s motivation and productivity. Now there´s FCKeditor, a web.based „Word“ editor with just all the functionallities you need (Basic formatting, saving, inserting pictures, etc.) This is opensource, and in BETA stade – so there´s a lot to do(especially templates and group-collaboration), but I`ll give it a try and will post a review in some weeks.

I had to smile: I was following the „small war“ of SAP and Oracle around RETEK the last months and had to smile yesterday, when SAP´s CEO Kagernmann announced, „we don´t need Retek, we´ve got our own solutions“. Oracle, SAP´s biggest opponent in Enterprise Software and world´s No2 behind SAP, had just bought Retek (a niche Software developer for a small business-market but with excellent customers) vor 11,25$ per share after SAP announced their offer of 11$ per share in the last week. One has to know, that SAP once offered just 8$ per share some weeks ago and Oracle reacted with some cents more. So, why did SAP make this big step: offering first just 8$ and then 11$ per share. This seems for me a just too big step. If they´ve offered 8,75$ or 9 $ ok, but 11$? One additionally has to know, that Oracle had a good 2004 in it´s core business (solid growth in databases) but enterprise software didn´t grow too much, so that their only positive announcement for the shareholders was the acquiring of peoplesoft. So, was it tactics of SAP to raise their offer for RETEK, knowing that Oracle would go just higher? Oracle had to pay 640 million $, though Retek might be just 500 mio. $ worth (with a tot. revenue of about 170 mio. $ in 2004). I think so. SAP is able to build it´s own software, and might not be dependend on Retek. The winner are the RETEKS SHAREHOLDERS.

Bjoern has a very funny movie about Advertiser´s work, and oh boy: it´s so damn true 😉

Jot is going out of BETA by end of march, and they´ve published their pricings. I loved to wok with Jot during the last month, though haveing problems with MAC browser incompabilities. Now I´ve to say I find their pricings quite ok. What you can do with JOT goes much further than one might know from usual WIKIS. They´ve got „off the box“ ready applications: you can install (blogs [though without RSS feeds yet], taskmanagers, databases, etc…) and additionally you can write your own apps (in a „Jot-scripting“). So Jot is not directly comparable with projectservers like Basecamp (monthly subscription for a „Basic Plan“ inlcudes 15 manageable projects for 24$) or CRM´s like salesforce (995$/year for 5 users, + salesforce developer training experts service), but is a bit of everything and highly configurable. So if you are looking for a good knowledge-management, project documentation and team collaboration tool for small – midrange businesses your choice should be a 5 or 10 users license from Jot, which is 275$ and 550$ per year, with unlimited access to all of Jot´s features. Ths seems to be a really fair price, though I hope that we (and especially Ewa) might get an endless „free BETA“ for designing Jot´s demo tours 😉

What can we do? In some weeks there will be the french public voting about a „oui“ or a „non“ to the European constitution. If french public votes „non“ this could be a catastrophy. Years of work would be destroyed, France would be isolated within the EU. But when you follow the polls at the moment about 52% of the French would give a clear „non“. So, what could we do? Can we help? Is there a possibillity to help our french friends with their decision? Maybe the 52% „non“ are a clear statement against chirac, but they have to get the bigger view: „oui“ is important for our all future! Please link it…

As I´ve just read in the FTD this morning, Symbian has licensed a new module to Microsoft, with which one now is able to simply use symbian Smartphones (market share appr. 50%) for syncing with Microsofts´s Exchange, the world´s most used E-Mail system. A small victory for symbian, or clever tactics from microsoft?

I found this vision of how the internet will be in 2014 on ourmedia.org – and I´m not quite sure, if I´m allowed to share it – but I simple do 😉

Ehm, no: I don´t think Nokia would actually buy Microsoft, but somehow I have the feeling their product- and company philosophy are merging. Why? Read on: I got my 6630 some weeks ago – a nice, quite powerful mobile. But suddenly it went off – mmh, battery isn´t that powerful (mine last appr. 3 days) but guess what? After recharging it didn´t boot anymore. Actually it tried to boot, but came in a kind of „loop“ – showing the Nokia logo, going off again, showing the Nokia logo turning off again. I but mine at T-mobile germany, so I went into the next shop and asked the friendly salesman if he might help me. He looked quite busy, took my phone and said: „No, It´s a software mistake, and I have to send it back to Nokia. It might take some time until you´ll get a new one.“ Mh, time is something I haven´t got too much of, so I went home looking for options. Some minutes ago I was succesful: Making a hardware reset solved the problem, and it´s so easy: just get off the sim and memory card, press the green button, * and „3“ at once, and turn your mobile back on. All settings are gone, but it works again fine. this somehow remembered me of the good old strg+alt+del times…history is repeating 😉

I´ve used jot.com as my personal wiki for quite a long time, and working on it with firefox on my mac never seemed to be a problem – until two weeks ago I updated to the new version, and suddenly I couldnt´t use the WYSIWYG features of jot anymore – strange thing. Now, when I use my dirty old OSX-mozilla browser, jot still works perfect. never change a winning team….