I was doing a back link check to see if anyone links to me. This blog is quite difficult to deal with sometimes as I never really migrated off my original scheme of using server side includes of a text file to publish it. So even though I have a copy of Movable Type lying around, I have never migrated the blog anything better. I am using Blogger.com to publish the blog. It works fine, although I wouldn't mind having the comments feature of Movable Type. I often wonder what people think about my half composed rants sometimes.
In the course of checking links I found this site. Blog Ratings where I found that my blog had a rating of 9.42 out of 10. More importantly this was based on the votes of 109 people! Wow! With my blog I have tried to stay away from just a simple post with a link to another site. I have really tried to focus on what I think are interesting issues and try to generate at least 750 words on the subject. So to get that nice high score with that many voters makes me feel much better. It also puts the pressure on me to produce quality opinion columns. This is a Potpurri Column so it's a mixture of stuff.
My friend Mike Rooney is in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions. It's a tournament where the top 145 Jeopardy winners of all time (minus Ken Jennings) via for the chance to defeat Ken in a three game battle royale. Mike won his first round, defeating two other 5 time Jeopardy champions. His next game is going to be broadcast on April 15. I encourage you to watch it. I have been helping him study by flying back to Pasadena and staying at my father-in-law's house. Thank you Priceline.com!
The final two winners of the tournament will face Ken Jennings for the title of Greatest Jeopardy Player of All Time! Who will float like a butterfly and sting like a bee? Who knows? It will settle a long term debate about who is the best player. Ken was able to continue his streak for so long because the rules of Jeopardy changed. They no longer stopped you after 5 games, enabling him to rip his 74 game streak.
Finally the most critical part of my post, talking about something I should have talked about a loong time ago, the Microsoft acquisition of Groove Networks. Clearly I think Bill Gates understands the critical threat that collaboration presents to the current Office Suite and is attempting head off the stealthy small mammals of web based collaboration software. As I alluded to in one of my previous posts Evolutionary Momenum and software design. Appointing Ray Ozzie shows that once again Bill G. is a very savvy businessman and is addressing a key problem with the Office franchise. Bill realizes that Office and Windows are the ONLY things that make money at Microsoft. (Yes it's true everything else including MSN, search, Sharepoint etc loses money). By integrating Groove into the Office Suite, MS does two things simultaneously.
First they create compelling reason to upgrade MS Office. I recently purchased MS Office 2003 and other than a relatively cleaner interface, it didn't seem to too much different than MS Office 97. That's six years of stagnated development. This is a real problem as MS cannot seem to get as many companies to upgrade to the latest version. Of course the problem is that there aren't any really compelling reasons to upgrade. So MS has resorted to giving away certain versions of Office, hoping that a "cascade upgrade" will occur. (The CEO is given a new copy of Office. He/She boldy starts writing memos in the new format. This results everyone getting a new copy Office in order to read his/her memos.)
By adding more compelling collaboration features which Office clearly lacks, MS now creates a pretty good damn reason to upgrade. Additionally Groove is a peer to peer based application. This will also help drive the sale of Windows OS licenses. One of things I have people critize Groove is that it uses non standard proprietary protocols instead of web protocols. That's fine as when it's wrapped into Office it will become the standard. Making Ray Ozzie the third CTO, MS recognizes what Ray can bring to the Office franchise. Of course turning MS is like moving an huge huge ocean liner but I suspect that Bill G is committed to bring the next generation collaboration features to MS Office.
