Denis’ Blog

On one hand, HTML and browsing have (positively) changed the world. On the other hand, HTML and the browser have killed productivity. People spend hours using poor HTML designed business applications or browsing dozens of pages than could be one.

Ajax and RIA techniques are one step to bring back productivity to the browser. We’ve seen in the last years many interesting innovations in that field, and we are gaining back, slowly, every minute lost.
In that battle, the Mozilla Labs, the R&D team of the Mozilla Foundation, has released Ubiquity, a software demonstrating one way they explore to bring back productivity while communicating & browsing. Ubiquity tries to connect the Web with language in an attempt in order for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily. With natural languages queries (well, almost…) and the help of public API of Web 2.0, Ubiquity helps users win back the minute they lost.

Have a look at it, it’s worth it.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Google just launched Lively.com , a virtual world like Second Life.

Since it is vacation time for me , I will spend a few hours on it. It is far away from enterprise information technology (is it?), but since that’s a major move, let’s go for it. And it will give me the opportunity to blog faster that my beloved virtual worlds expert, Fred Cavazza.

First, the download. After a first 469 Ko download, the installer looks for additional packages over the net.After 2 minutes installation is over. And guess what? No need to restart Firefox. Google way of seeing software engineering. The system propose several “rooms” to me. Let’s go to create one, let’s say for Capgemini. Beloved colleagues, we will have one more virtual place to share our soul.

First impression: The room is created. Ouch. Easy navigation, zoom in, zoom out. All web based. Not even in Flash.

It is like a blank apartment. What? The system is given me an avatar. A female. Let’s fix that.

It’s done. I am now more in line with my karmas.

A few arrangements in the room. Two plants. Two white boards. A few cubes. Let’s start an Accelerated Solution Environment :-). The a few screens, with embedded YouTube videos. Wow. 4 videos integrated in 30 seconds. Performance is there. Great work.

Well… I do not see yet the social part. We can chat in rooms. But what else? Well.. time (and Fred) will say.

And no ads. yet

Well, first impression is that Google has a done it the righ way. Very easy to use, all  web based, strong community focus. Not sure the Yahoo/Microsoft thing is the real stuff. Lively is.

Google today announced that Google Docs, the Web based word processor of Google, will go off line in the coming weeks

This is a long awaited news. Security and off line usage are two things that prevent Google Apps to go mainstream in business. Security is now managed with Google APIs that enable full integration with corporation Identity Management solution (especially SAML based). In a few weeks, you will be able to use Google word processor in the train, in the plane…well..anywhere…

Add on top of that that Firefox 3, the next release of Firefox due to June, will integrate off line mode, probably compatible with Google Gears, the Google off line engine (based on open source database SQlite), and you have a great view of what is coming. The great war.