IB

This seems to be a big step for me: Microsoft and SAP announcing a joint development of an integrated software (a mix of SAP and office) called Mendocino – and this makes perfectly sense for the usability for the users. using office products to organize your work an communication, using SAP for the controlling workflows. I just wonder what this might mean for open source concurrents e.g. in the government sector which were coming – SAP was able to run on Linux machines, too. Now, with integrated office, this is a further step for the coverage of windows. A slap for IBM? via AlwaysOn

Off to paris:

Friends on Les Blogs:

The French senat is full

How to know that you are on a blogging conference 🙂

BMW has a series of high-class short films, which you can watch here. They are directed by great directors like John Woo – that´s amazing, though it was surely NO low budget production. Go, watch it!

Tonight we are all Bielefelder!

Hell he´s pope now…..

As today announced, Adobe took over Macromedia for about 3,4 bil.$. I`m not quite sure if this is a good step. There are pro´s and con´s I´d like to lay out: Pro´s: There could be a better integration between the two dominating webapplications PDF and Flash. I´m seeing a big potential there for on- and offline applications. Flash and PDF are both vector based, and there could be a seemingless co-working in apps like on- and offline-publishing. Imagine actionscript be able to generate PDF´s dynamically. use Indesign to layout your magazine, put it online in Flash-format, integrate online applications like „polls“, and on the other hand send your PDF to the press. Con´s: it was never good when big rivals made a fusion – and Adobe and Macromedia have competing products like Illustrator and Freehand. Ironically the integration-processes and the colour-management of Photoshop and freehand mostly worked better than Photoshop and Illustrator. Lot´s to learn there for the Adobe guys. But a questionable future I see for Flash. Adobe has it´s fomat svg, which is open standard based, but less, less powerful than flash. Adobe would be clever not to try to push svg instead of flash, but push flash-technology especially in the mobile sector. Macromedia has just made huge efforts to license its mobile Flash Lite to several manufactors, carriers, etc… So, I`m curios about Macromedias future

…get searchresults from goyellow.de , gelbeseiten.de, …. as XML-string? I need this for marketing purposes, making newsletters, …

…in front of St.Peter?
(Picture powered by terraserver.com)

Found an article on webpronews.com about pricing strategies for small companies. One big point I want to lay out:

Yes, business is slow for many entrepreneurs right now; however, be cautious with your pricing methods. Don’t simply slash prices; instead incorporate long-term and short-term strategies that are always complementary to each other. If you offer a product for $15 today, then again at $35 six months from now, you must have your reasons in place, otherwise you’ll aggravate your customers.

It´s really important even in such hard times at the moment, not to mess with your prices. Keep them up! For the Servicesector it´s just too easy to say, „hey, I´ll build your homepage for 100 EUR“. One has to offer more: passion, strategie and the long term view. That is the only possibility to keep your customers, and build sustainable growth.