Google Apps Team Edition – the SharePoint killer?

Feb 09 2008

Google has just released their newest collaboration application. This time is different. Google put four of their exist applications together and named it “Google Apps Team Edition“. And the target market is “groups at work or school“.

Here is the PR press: Team Up With Google Apps

Here is the insruction video from Google:

Here are the applications have been included:

  • Google Docs™ to create and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations
  • Google Calendar™ to arrange meetings, set schedules, and publish event information
  • Google Talk™ for instant messaging and free PC-to-PC voice calls
  • Start Page where users can access their Google Apps services and customized content

Google claims that the purpose of Team Edition is to allow users to “share documents and calendars securely without burdening IT for support,” are more likely to be greeted by raised eyebrows from the IT department.

So, what is our IT department busy doing now? Manage network, Exchange or even Sharepoint?

Base on the M$ recent Quarter Results, Microsoft Business Division (MBD) made $4.8 Billion in total, up 37% than last quarter. Those money is coming from selling office suite and selling, consulting SharePoint. Cmswire said only SharePoint itself made $1 Billion for M$. Big deal, really.

Let’s see what SharePoint can do?

What’s missing in Google Apps Team Edition? Maybe not that much.

  • Collaboration

Google already has GDoc, GCal and GTalk. And if you subscribe Premier Edition, you will have 25GB GMail too.

  • Portals

Google Start Page allows you put all kinds of widgets on it so you can easily access inbox, calendar, docs and all the others in your widgets.

  • Enterprise search

Google Search + Google Desktop Search isn’t enough?

  • Enterprise content Management

GDoc?

  • Business process and form

GDoc again?

  • Business intelligence

Still GDoc?

What Google Apps Team Edition has but not in SharePoint?

  • Free for Team Edition and cheap for Premier Edition
  • Easy to use, easy to manage

What’s next?

  • Put Google Apps Team Edition onto your desktop by Prism
  • Invite your colleague to use it
  • Convince IT Department to use it
  • Create some serious widgets work with exist systems in your company? You could sell them to other companies too.

Powered by ScribeFire.

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links for 2008-02-09

Feb 09 2008

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links for 2008-02-08

Feb 08 2008

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Three columns layout without table

Feb 08 2008

Computer monitors are getting bigger and bigger, so do the html pages. People start to add more columns into the layout.
To create a three columns layout, in a very traditional way you can do it in a table, like this:

<table>
  <tr><td>Left</td><td>Main</td><td>Right</td><tr>
</table>

There are some obvious downside on this:

  • Mix data and presentation
  • Not browser friendly, try to browser this use a mobile phone? I am not saying iPhone or iPod Touch.

So how to fix it? You can use css with “position: absolute;” or “Float”:

<div id="wrapper">
  <div id="main">
    <div id="sideleft">Left column</div>
    <div id="sideright">Right column</div>
    <div id="content">Content</div>
  </div>
</div>

#wrapper {width: 800px;}
#main {margin-top: 10px;}
#sideleft {float: left; width: 200px; border: 1px solid black; background-color: #dddddd;}
#sideright {float: right; width: 200px; border: 1px solid green; background-color: #99ff99;}
#content {border: 1px solid blue; background-color: #9999ff; margin: 0 20px 0 10px;}

Want to know more?

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Find your ideal Career

Feb 08 2008

An ideal career is a sweet dream for most of us, well, maybe all of us.

Changethis.com posted a very interesting manifesto from Jessica Hagy: Indexing a Career: A Career Path in Pictures. You can download the free e-book from Changethis.com and can buy a print version too.

Jessica Hagy has a very unique blog called  Indexed. She posts a picture of her draw on a 3” by 5” index card pretty much everyday. Those pictures are all very simple but inspirational.

Some cards from her manifesto:

Always. Everyone. Everywhere.

Time to what?

I remember I collected a interesting one for ideal career too, so I find it out and put it here:

(Click on it to get the full size version)

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links for 2008-02-07

Feb 07 2008

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Fizz, buzz, fizzbuzz

Feb 06 2008

I was hit by a simple question today: write a fizzbuzz in ruby. Pretty fun anyway.

What’s Fizzbuzz?

Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”.

I started from this:

class Fixnum
...
end

I think it was a little overkill and slow the coding speed a lot. Here is the result:

def fizzbuzz
(1..100).each { |item|
puts print_value(item)
}
end

def print_value(item)
print_value = ''
print_value += 'Fizz' if item.div_by_3?
print_value += 'Buzz' if item.div_by_5?
print_value.empty? ? item : print_value
end

class Fixnum
def div_by_3?
self % 3 == 0
end

def div_by_5?
self % 5 == 0
end
end

fizzbuzz

Here are some simple samples from internet:
One liner:

1.upto(100) { |n| puts n % 3 == 0 ? n % 5 == 0 ? "fizzbuzz" : "buzz" : n % 5 == 0 ? "fizz" : n }

Another one liner:

puts (1..100).to_a.collect { |i| i % 15 == 0 ? ‘fizzbuzz’ : (i % 5 == 0 ? ‘fizz’ : (i % 3 == 0 ? ‘buzz’ : i)) }.join(’ ‘)

One more one liner

puts (1..100).map{|i|i%15==0?’FizzBuzz’:i%5==0?’Buzz’:i%3==0?’Fizz’:i}

Regular one, pretty close to mine:

(1..100).each{|i|
x = ''
x += 'Fizz' if i%3==0
x += 'Buzz' if i%5==0
puts(x.empty? ? i : x);
}

Want to know more?

  1. Coding Horror:  Why Can’t Programmers.. Program?
  2. Imran On Tech: Using FizzBuzz to Find Developers who Grok Coding
  3. Wikipedia: Bizz buzz
  4. RubyQuiz: FizzBuzz (#126)

Go back to practice more, and more…

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links for 2008-02-06

Feb 06 2008

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恭祝新年快乐！2008万事如意！

Feb 06 2008

过年了！新春快乐！恭喜发财！

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DemoCamp Toronto 17 is open to register

Feb 05 2008

DemoCamp Toronto 17 will be hosted in Toronto Board of Trade, 1 First Canadian Place again on Monday, February 25th, 2008.

It is open to register now. Please hurry up to get your ticket from http://democamp.eventbrite.com/

If you can’t make it this time, please come back here later. I will cover this event for sure.

What’s Democamp Toronto?

DemoCamp is a variation of the un-conference style of event, started by the TorCamp group as an excuse to have more regular meetings where community members share what they’ve been working on, demo their products, meet others (and share a drink or 3).

What’s TorCamp?

TorCamp is a remarkable community of people in the Toronto area – a community of designers, developers, marketers, PR people, executives, testers, quality assurance specialists, consultants, recruiters, network administrators, business developers, venture capitalists, angel investors, policy analysts, etc. Since the first TorCamp event in November 2005, TorCampers have congregated at least once and often five or ten times a month in conference centers, cafes and parks to share ideas and look for unexpected aha! connections of people and ideas. And it’s not just about BarCamp events: if you look at the hottest things going on in the Toronto Tech community, you’ll usually find a TorCamper among the instigators.

What’s the rule? We have a rule? Yes.

The rules are pretty simple. Demos are 5 minutes. There is generally no Powerpoint for Demos, if there is to be Powerpoint it must be approved by the stewards. Ignite presentations are 5 minutes. They are 20 slides x 15 seconds/slide and the presenter does not have control over the slide advancement. All Ignite decks must be submitted to the stewards before the event.

Should I attend?

  • If you want to know what are the hottest things happening in Toronto Tech community
  • If you want to show some super cool things you are working on

See you there! :)

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