Web Worker Daily

Mozilla Foundation today announced the formation of a new subsidiary group titled Mozilla Messaging.  The new group will be focused on taking Mozilla’s mail client Thunderbird to the next level of competitiveness against established mail clients, including Microsoft Outlook.  David Ascher will head the new subsidiary that is not only aimed at email, but Internet communications, as stated on in his blog post announcing the new group.

Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft has updated it’s Office Live service, now called Office Live Small Business.  Originally launched about two years ago, Office Live offered business an easy way to get set up with an online office suite, including a free domain name, a basic website, and hosted email service.  Since then it has garnered around 600,000 users.  The online suite was heavily marketed at small business who have a) little or no IT staff and b) little understanding of how to set these these types of services up.

Read the rest of this entry »

There has been a lot of buzz lately around the term data portability.  Recently web heavyweights such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Plaxo, and other online identity providers have been joining the Dataportability.org organization, but it’s unclear to most people what Data Portability is all about.  This video seeks to explain the concept in layman’s terms.  We encourage you to spread this video to your web working colleagues because of all the potential benefits data portability provides.

We’ve told you before about the pluses of having an online persona.  I’m sure many of you want to have online personas, but the time involved might be too daunting.  For example, who has time to keep Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo, and Twitter up to date; and have any time to actually get project work done?  To keep these services relevant to your professional life, they must be kept up to date.  This is where data portability comes in to the equation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: There’s no question that Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo is game-changing in the tech world. But how does it affect us? WWD writers Mike Gunderloy and Bob Walsh see different sides of the same coin, speculating on the potential impact on the individual web worker and independent developer.

Mike Gunderloy: So, you start it off: what’s the upside?

Bob Walsh: Well, I see three major benefits to web workers if this deal goes through: Google gets some real competition, Microsoft gets a big dose of Open Source culture and flickr and del.icio.us get some innovation. First off, as much as I like Google - both as a web user and a microISV - they’ve had it way too easy for way too long. Having a real competitor - not just Microsoft’s currently lame efforts - would bring some much needed focus to the company.

Mike: Competition for Google would be a good thing, I agree: the sheer domination of Google is starting to make people doubt their “don’t be evil” mantra. But can you combine two also-rans in the search market to make a serious competitor? And there’s more to competition than size: innovation is what we’ve been missing from #2 and #3 in this market. I see more search innovation in small companies than I do in either Microsoft or Yahoo.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a surprise move, Microsoft proposed today to buy Yahoo! for approximately $44.6 billion in cash and stock. “We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft in his open letter to the Yahoo!’s Board of Directors.
Read the rest of this entry »

Today web-based word processor Zoho Writer moves further into Microsoft Word’s territory with the announcement of offline editing capabilities. Zoho enabled offline read-only review of documents in August.

With features like this, Zoho’s office apps might someday entirely replace Microsoft Office in the toolbox of many web workers. But other online word processors take what looks like a complementary approach. For example, recently-announced Live Documents integrates web-based editing and collaboration with Microsoft Office using an “embrace and extend” strategy. And Google Docs, at least for now, serves mainly for real-time collaborative editing of lightweight online documents.

Read the rest of this entry »