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Linux Pipeline Newsletter www.LinuxPipeline.com WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29, 2006 In This Issue: - New Web Service Looks To Push Office Off The Desktop - As Microsoft Preps IE Fix, "Drive-By" Exploit Sites Multiply - Ruby On Rails Framework Adds AJAX Tools In Major Update - More News... - Microsoft And Eclipse: A Showdown For Ajax Leadership - Office 2007 Delay Sets Stage For ODF Showdown - First Look: Jabber XCP 5.0 - More Picks... Focus on... Information Risk and Automated Controls Want to learn more about Information Risk and Automated Controls? Check out these sponsored links from Infogix. Information Supply Chains - What are they and Why are they Critical to Your Business: "http://www.infogix.com/categories/Press%20Room/White_Papers.html" Understanding Information Risk: "http://www.infogix.com/categories/Press%20Room/White_Papers.html" ----------------------------------------- Editor's Note: Three's A Crowd It's one of those days: More to say than time to say it. So here's a quick pointer to the one story I think it's worth your while to read, if you only have time to read one this week. First, be sure to check out this week's lead news story: Linspire founder Michael Robertson's push to turn a set of AJAX-based Web applications into a real challenge to Microsoft Office. Over the past 18 months, I've run approximately 12,000 stories about this product or that company setting its sights on Redmond's sacred cash-cow. The jury is still out on many of them -- including some, such as the outstanding OpenOffice.org suite, which seem likely to build small but respectable market shares as more people discover them. For a number of months now, I have used OpenOffice.org as my only formatted-text editing tool, and this product is the real deal: I have yet to experience any problems sending and receiving Office-formatted documents, and the OOo user interface works just fine for me. Still, the barriers a desktop application must overcome -- even one that costs nothing, and even one competing against an Office 2007 user interface that I'm guessing Microsoft ripped off from one of the flying saucers parked at Area 51 -- are plentiful and extremely daunting. Microsoft could (and in some cases already did) screw up the Office 2007 succession in any number of ways, and that most basic of all human instincts -- laziness -- would still save the company from the indignities of a truly competitive marketplace. And yet, even if the desktop competition gets nowhere against Office, there might be another way to fire up the meat grinder and get this party started. Now that AJAX, the new darling of the Web app-dev world, is proving what's possible using a lightweight Web interface, could the "Office killer" arrive not on the desktop, but over a network connection? That, of course, is Michael Robertson's aim with AjaxWrite. While he says the product is aimed mostly at casual users who need to put together the occasional document but don't own a copy of Office, AjaxWrite will also be well-positioned to embrace Office users who get a look at what Microsoft has planned for them, hear what this perpetual headache is going to cost them, and decide it can't hurt to take a quick peek, and maybe a spin around the block, in this free, Web-based thingamajig they've been reading about. If you've used a Web-based tool such as the mind-boggling Google Earth, you already know what online apps can do nowadays: pretty much anything their developers want them to do. Microsoft was behind the times with its AJAX strategy, just as it has been behind on what seems like a growing number of innovations (many of them with Google's pawprints all over them). Redmond has an ability to stop, pivot on a dime, and move in a new direction that no company its size has ever demonstrated; Bill Gates' decision to turn the company towards the Internet back in 1997 remains, in my opinion, one of the greatest feats in the history of American business. And yet, times do change; in many ways, corporate ossification finally seems to be slowing Microsoft's step just enough to make these types of challenges truly dangerous, rather than merely curious. Michael Robertson is a smart guy; when opportunity knocks, he plans to be there waiting, with a bottle of wine and dinner on the table. And if Robertson has his way, Microsoft will be too slow and too late to nab a seat at this table for two. Enjoy the rest of your week, and stay in touch.
Matt McKenzie
Don't let future editions of Linux Pipeline Newsletter go missing. Take a moment to add the newsletter's address to your anti-spam whitelist: linuxed@techwire.com If you're not sure how to do that, ask your administrator or ISP. Or check your anti-spam utility's documentation. Thanks. Top Linux News New Web Service Looks To Push Office Off The Desktop Linux entrepreneur Michael Robertson is launching a Web-based business-productivity software suite, built using open-source AJAX technologies, that could be a formidable weapon in the market battle to unseat Microsoft's ultimate money-making machine.
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