Saturday, August 29, 2015
Does Netflix think we are Stupid or just Nearsighted?
When I first started using Netflix years ago, I got a nice list of programs with the title written as in text. There was a link so that if I clicked on it, I could receive more details about the show. Perhaps I could read more summary or see various episodes.
But as with all things the site was updated. Now, instead of easy searchable text, all videos are in a graphic logo with the name written into the logo. The change meant that we could see fewer titles on the screen without having to scroll. It also meant we could not easily do a word search for the title we want.
More annoying is the fact that clicking on the graphic simply starts playing an episode. Which episode plays depends on what Netflix remembers you having watched. Often, is is a convenience as you can start up where you left off. But say you want a different episode. Perhaps you watched a few episodes years ago, but now want to start over at the beginning. Or perhaps you watched a couple of episodes on another account and want to skip ahead. That becomes a much more complicated process now.
Even more annoying is when I accidentally let my cursor drift over some point of the screen, which causes it to enlarge and cover over other things. Do website designers really think I am too lazy to push the click button on whatever I am hovering over? There is no reason to change the screen unless I click on something.
Today, when I first bring up the Netflix screen, I don't get to see my list of selected movies. Almost the entire screen is filled with a picture of some suggested movie that Neflix thinks may interest me. It rarely does, but if something does catch my attention and I begin reading it, the screen spontaneously decides to move on to another video after a few seconds, so that I have to go an flip back to what I was reading before being interrupted.
Below that are rows of pictures of videos. Sometimes my list appears near the top. Sometimes a "continue watching" list is at the top, showing me series that I have begun watching,. Some are series that I have completed watching but which continue to linger there filling up my screen with shows that I have already seen. Some are series where I watched one episode, hated, and have no desire to see again. Yet it is still there bothering me to continue watching. I can dig deep into the settings to remove items from the "continue watching" list, but I find having to do that annoying. Why can't I just see the list I created and edit to show me what I want? Then there are many more rows of suggested topics that Netlix thinks I might enjoy. Most of them are shows I have already watched on TV and have no desire to see again. Most others are really not anything I ever wanted to see.
Even when I go through the trouble to click on "my list" and get back to a good old text list of shows I have selected, there is still so much junk added to the page. I usually have about 40 shows on my list at once. Yet, Neflix cannot seem to squeeze the name of more than about 15 titles on a single page without having to scroll. First, only one title can appear per line, with a good deal of space between lines. I don't need to see the ratings for shows I have already selected. I don't need to see the category of "TV Shows" for every show on my list. There is also a column for "notes" which is always blank. I'm not sure if I can add my own notes there or something, but it certainly is not obvious how one would do so.
The other big problem is using "artificial intelligence" or "AI" to choose for me what you think I might like based on prior viewing. Yes, you may occasionally have a good suggestion, but mostly you are just advertising shows to me that I never want to see. You are filling the screen with crap rather than allowing me to design my own page of things I may want to see at some point. In other words, you think you know better than I do what I want to see. There is no way I can find to click on a movie and tell it to "stop showing me this, I never want to see it." If you want to show me a small list of suggestions, or better yet have a link to suggestions on another page aside from the home page, that would be fine. Shoving shows at me that I have no interest in seeing only clutters my page.
I pick on Netflix, but this is really part of a larger trend by many web site makers. Text has been deemed too difficult for viewers and must be replaced by larger pictures. One big reason for this is to make the page easier to view on smaller screens, such as a tablet or phone. But in reality, if you are using a tablet or phone, you are likely not accessing the page through a web browser. You are using an app that is designed for your device. So there really is no good excuse for the changes. You don't need to show me an image that is the size of about 10 Windows icons, filling up my page.
I also appreciate the use of AI to direct me toward information I may find useful. But the reality is that while the site is making educated guesses about what I want, it is still just guessing. Give me the option of showing me suggestions, but also make it easy to set up things the way I want them to be.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Terms and Conditions
The Guardian recently ran an article discussing how impossible it is to read the terms and conditions for everything we use. The reality is that all of us agree to various terms and conditions for online usage or software every day.
I understand that companies want to protect themselves and provide themselves with the maximum advantage under these terms. The real fault lies with legislators who fail to provide us with appropriate protections, and courts who enforce terms that don't comport with some of the most basic precepts of normal contract law.
When parties agree to a normal contact, a court will ensure that four basic factors are included:
In other words, the exact terms of an adhesion contract cannot always be enforced if it is reasonable for the weaker party to expect parts of the terms not to be enforced.
However, when to enforce a clause or not enforce a clause is often left up to the discretion of the judge. This can make both parties unsure of what rights they will have if terms are truly enforced. Many terms go even further, requiring parties to use private arbitration rather than courts to resolve any such disputes, meaning a judge may never get to hear the case. Arbitration also means both parties have to pay for the services, thus making it virtually impossible for many even to afford any sort of challenge.
Software and website owners often go out of their way to make terms and conditions incomprehensible, even if someone is interested in reading them. Some go on for dozens, even hundreds of pages of small type fine print. Many of the pages are often completely irrelevant to what you are doing and involve terms for other services you are not using, but combined into a single document. Other times, the terms may refer to other documents that you need to access and read separately. So even if you are patient and understand legalese, getting through the documents can be virtually impossible
As a result, most people don't even bother trying. They click OK and assume that the terms are not unreasonable, won't affect them, or that violations won't get noticed. They further assume that the web site will not bother to enforce its claims in court and that the worst that will happen is that they get kicked off the site. For the most part, these assumptions are correct.
So essentially, terms and conditions give software makers or web site owners the right to kick people off their site arbitrarily since almost everyone is in violation of some of the terms. It essentially gives cover to do whatever they want. They can violate your privacy, steal any information you may have used in conjunction with their product, sue you for additional licensing fees, avoid liability if your information is lost, destroyed or stolen by hackers. This PC World article describes some of the real world restrictions you may have unknowingly "accepted."
Sadly, however, many courts are enforcing such terms and conditions as binding contact. Judges are former lawyers. They don't mind the complexity and blame the victims for not having had a legal team read every term and condition before proceeding. They like have a nice set of written terms to parse when making a decision rather than trying to resolve disputes on the vague notion of what is really fair.
But such enforcement raises a great many problems. Normally businesses have special procedures in place so that only key corporate officers can sign contracts, and only after legal departments have reviewed them. By contrast, terms and conditions can be "agreed to" by any low level employee or even an independent contractor visiting a site or installing a piece of software that no one has reviewed. Even if a company goes through the expensive and time consuming process of reviewing and approving terms and conditions, many such terms allow the site owner to change the term at any time without notifying it users other than by posting such changes to the web site. This means that a company must not only review the terms and conditions once, but continue to review them every day that the site is used by any of its employees. This is, of course, a practical impossibility. No company could do this, let alone private individuals.
There must, of course, be rules on usage to prevent anarchy. But the current system of terms in simply unworkable. Something needs to change. Holding users hostage to unread and unreasonable terms and conditions in not a viable solution.
I understand that companies want to protect themselves and provide themselves with the maximum advantage under these terms. The real fault lies with legislators who fail to provide us with appropriate protections, and courts who enforce terms that don't comport with some of the most basic precepts of normal contract law.
When parties agree to a normal contact, a court will ensure that four basic factors are included:
- mutual assent (both parties agree to the contract)
- consideration (both parties provide something of value)
- capacity (both parties have mental ability to understand the contract)
- legality (the contract's purpose must not be against the law).
It is hard to see how terms and conditions can meet these four elements. For the person "agreeing" to the terms there is often very little evidence that they even understand the terms. Sure, they have to click a button saying they have read the terms, but we already know that almost no one does that. It seems a terrible fiction for any court to assume the party really understood what was happening.
Typically, it is hard to come up with how the person accepting the terms is providing much in the way of consideration, unless the terms relate to an agreement to view the advertising or something similar.
Capacity is never known until later. Many web site viewers are under age. Many terms and conditions bar children under age 13 from using the site, but there is no way to prevent a younger child from llying about his or her age. Additionally, the law typically does not recognize capacity until age 18.
Legality is typically not an issue as most sites are engage in legal activities. Those that are not would probably not expect to have their rights upheld in court.
If terms and conditions are to be considered contracts at all, they are Contracts of Adhesion. A contract of adhesion is one where one party must simply adhere to the contact on a "take it" or "leave it" basis without any ability to negotiate the terms. According to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University:
"Courts carefully scrutinize adhesion contracts and sometimes void certain provisions because of the possibility of unequal bargaining power, unfairness, and unconscionability. Factoring into such decisions include the nature of the assent, the possibility of unfair surprise, lack of notice, unequal bargaining power, and substantive unfairness. Courts often use the “doctrine of reasonable expectations” as a justification for invalidating parts or all of an adhesion contract: the weaker party will not be held to adhere to contract terms that are beyond what the weaker party would have reasonably expected from the contract, even if what he or she reasonably expected was outside the strict letter of agreement."
In other words, the exact terms of an adhesion contract cannot always be enforced if it is reasonable for the weaker party to expect parts of the terms not to be enforced.
However, when to enforce a clause or not enforce a clause is often left up to the discretion of the judge. This can make both parties unsure of what rights they will have if terms are truly enforced. Many terms go even further, requiring parties to use private arbitration rather than courts to resolve any such disputes, meaning a judge may never get to hear the case. Arbitration also means both parties have to pay for the services, thus making it virtually impossible for many even to afford any sort of challenge.
Software and website owners often go out of their way to make terms and conditions incomprehensible, even if someone is interested in reading them. Some go on for dozens, even hundreds of pages of small type fine print. Many of the pages are often completely irrelevant to what you are doing and involve terms for other services you are not using, but combined into a single document. Other times, the terms may refer to other documents that you need to access and read separately. So even if you are patient and understand legalese, getting through the documents can be virtually impossible
As a result, most people don't even bother trying. They click OK and assume that the terms are not unreasonable, won't affect them, or that violations won't get noticed. They further assume that the web site will not bother to enforce its claims in court and that the worst that will happen is that they get kicked off the site. For the most part, these assumptions are correct.
So essentially, terms and conditions give software makers or web site owners the right to kick people off their site arbitrarily since almost everyone is in violation of some of the terms. It essentially gives cover to do whatever they want. They can violate your privacy, steal any information you may have used in conjunction with their product, sue you for additional licensing fees, avoid liability if your information is lost, destroyed or stolen by hackers. This PC World article describes some of the real world restrictions you may have unknowingly "accepted."
Sadly, however, many courts are enforcing such terms and conditions as binding contact. Judges are former lawyers. They don't mind the complexity and blame the victims for not having had a legal team read every term and condition before proceeding. They like have a nice set of written terms to parse when making a decision rather than trying to resolve disputes on the vague notion of what is really fair.
But such enforcement raises a great many problems. Normally businesses have special procedures in place so that only key corporate officers can sign contracts, and only after legal departments have reviewed them. By contrast, terms and conditions can be "agreed to" by any low level employee or even an independent contractor visiting a site or installing a piece of software that no one has reviewed. Even if a company goes through the expensive and time consuming process of reviewing and approving terms and conditions, many such terms allow the site owner to change the term at any time without notifying it users other than by posting such changes to the web site. This means that a company must not only review the terms and conditions once, but continue to review them every day that the site is used by any of its employees. This is, of course, a practical impossibility. No company could do this, let alone private individuals.
There must, of course, be rules on usage to prevent anarchy. But the current system of terms in simply unworkable. Something needs to change. Holding users hostage to unread and unreasonable terms and conditions in not a viable solution.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Why Flash died
For many years, Flash has been the way to enjoy video on the Internet. It's low data usage (for video anyway) make it ideal. One could also create interactive Flash Apps that could be used for games or other functions.
But the fate of the Flash technology was probably sealed back in 2005 when Adobe acquired Macromedia. Adobe, in my opinion, is one of the greediest and least cooperative companies in the IT world (and that is saying something). One of the biggest uses of Flash technology came to be intrusive video advertising that would disrupt a web site reader who was simply trying to read an article quietly. Further, Adobe failed to maintain security and stability standards that created problems for the computer user.
Steve Jobs refused to incorporate flash into IOS, meaning flash could not run on iPhones or iPads. Apple also stopped bundling Flash with new Macs in 2010, meaning users would have to download it separately. Apple claimed to be doing this for performance, stability, and security reasons. You can read Jobs' 2010 memo here.
Technical issues may have been part of the reason, but Jobs had no love for Adobe. He felt they had screwed him several times in the past. One was over postscript fonts. In the 1980's early Apple computers use Adobe's PostScript Fonts. This gave Apple computers a huge advantage over PCs for anyone who wanted to do desktop publishing. But Adobe refused to lower licensing fees as the market grew. This essentially forced it to become a niche product and greatly limited the growth of Apple.
Many years later in the late 1990's Jobs returned to a dying Apple, with a mission to resurrect the company. To do this, he needed to make sure software would be available for all sorts of functions on the new Macs. Jobs believed he had received an assurance from Adobe that it would develop a Mac version of its video editing software. Then, suddenly, Adobe changed its mind after deciding that the Apple market would never grow big enough. This greatly upset Jobs who then had to spend a few years developing a decent video editing program in-house.
So by 2010 when Adobe was facing tougher competition and Apple was ascendant again, Jobs was more than happy to find a reason to stick it to Adobe. Flash made up 75% of all online animation at the time. People thought Jobs was crazy. But with HTML5 taking a more prominent role, more animation, video, and interactivity could be done without Flash. More and more companies have been dumping Flash, as it continues to slump toward irrelevance. Youtube has stopped using it. Even the browser Firefox has been trying to eliminate it.
Oddly enough, I will miss Flash. Don't get me wrong, I have found it quite annoying over the years. But the big benefit of flash over HTML5 over the past few years was that Flash was a separate plug-in. That meant that I could choose not to plug it in, or could use a simply flash blocker program to prevent being attacked by flash based ads or other nuisance video. The move to HTML5 makes it much harder to block these annoying intrusions as they are much more tightly woven into the fabric of the page itself. As such, I find myself subject to much more annoying ads, videos, and noise when I simply want to read a text article. I'm sure I will find a way to block this nonsense eventually. But with the end of Flash, I feel like I am starting my battle against advertisers all over again from scratch.
But the fate of the Flash technology was probably sealed back in 2005 when Adobe acquired Macromedia. Adobe, in my opinion, is one of the greediest and least cooperative companies in the IT world (and that is saying something). One of the biggest uses of Flash technology came to be intrusive video advertising that would disrupt a web site reader who was simply trying to read an article quietly. Further, Adobe failed to maintain security and stability standards that created problems for the computer user.
Steve Jobs refused to incorporate flash into IOS, meaning flash could not run on iPhones or iPads. Apple also stopped bundling Flash with new Macs in 2010, meaning users would have to download it separately. Apple claimed to be doing this for performance, stability, and security reasons. You can read Jobs' 2010 memo here.
Technical issues may have been part of the reason, but Jobs had no love for Adobe. He felt they had screwed him several times in the past. One was over postscript fonts. In the 1980's early Apple computers use Adobe's PostScript Fonts. This gave Apple computers a huge advantage over PCs for anyone who wanted to do desktop publishing. But Adobe refused to lower licensing fees as the market grew. This essentially forced it to become a niche product and greatly limited the growth of Apple.
Many years later in the late 1990's Jobs returned to a dying Apple, with a mission to resurrect the company. To do this, he needed to make sure software would be available for all sorts of functions on the new Macs. Jobs believed he had received an assurance from Adobe that it would develop a Mac version of its video editing software. Then, suddenly, Adobe changed its mind after deciding that the Apple market would never grow big enough. This greatly upset Jobs who then had to spend a few years developing a decent video editing program in-house.
So by 2010 when Adobe was facing tougher competition and Apple was ascendant again, Jobs was more than happy to find a reason to stick it to Adobe. Flash made up 75% of all online animation at the time. People thought Jobs was crazy. But with HTML5 taking a more prominent role, more animation, video, and interactivity could be done without Flash. More and more companies have been dumping Flash, as it continues to slump toward irrelevance. Youtube has stopped using it. Even the browser Firefox has been trying to eliminate it.
Oddly enough, I will miss Flash. Don't get me wrong, I have found it quite annoying over the years. But the big benefit of flash over HTML5 over the past few years was that Flash was a separate plug-in. That meant that I could choose not to plug it in, or could use a simply flash blocker program to prevent being attacked by flash based ads or other nuisance video. The move to HTML5 makes it much harder to block these annoying intrusions as they are much more tightly woven into the fabric of the page itself. As such, I find myself subject to much more annoying ads, videos, and noise when I simply want to read a text article. I'm sure I will find a way to block this nonsense eventually. But with the end of Flash, I feel like I am starting my battle against advertisers all over again from scratch.
Friday, July 10, 2015
Samsung Galaxy is Flying off a cliff.
Back in March, I published an earlier post explaining why the Galaxy S6 would be a failure for Samsung. Three months after the phone's release, it appears that I was right. Phone sales are down. profits are down. Some reports are saying Samsung target sales are off by 40%. Samsung is desperate to push its acceptance and does not seem to understand why it is failing.
Don't get me wrong, the Galaxy S6 is not a bad phone. It is not bug ridden or defective in any serious way. But as I wrote in my earlier post, the S6 is essentially trying to be an iPhone clone. Nothing terribly wrong with trying to be more like the best selling phone on the market. But if your phone is more expensive than the iPhone, who is going to spend more for an iPhone clone when they can just buy an iPhone?
For many years, the Galaxy line surpassed iPhone because it offered features that the iPhone did not. The most prominent was that the Galaxy offered a much bigger screen. Apple got the message on that. It came out with a much bigger screen for the iPhone 6 and an even bigger screen with the 6 plus. As a result, iPhone sales have soared and Galaxy sales plummeted. And no, Samsung cannot respond with an even bigger screen. At some point, screens get too big. Both phones seem to be at right about the size most people want.
I recently attended a Samsung event for IT professionals designed to tell us why the Galaxy S6 was a great choice. They even gave me a free S6 for attending. That phone has sat on my desk it its box unused. I have no desire to upgrade from my S5. In doing so, I will lose my ability to swap out my battery (the S6 battery actually holds a smaller charge than the one that came with the S5). I lose the ability to add memory using an external chip. I would also have to upgrade my expensive Mophie Juice Pack cover.
To make the upgrade, what benefit do I get? The most celebrated new feature of the S6 seems to be the metal case over the S5 plastic case. But I don't care about the case since I put my phone in an external protective case anyway. I don't even see the Samsung case. I'm also told the S6 screen has higher quality graphics. But I haven't had a complaint about graphics on my last three phones. 4k graphics are great on a 100" TV, but no one cares about it on a 5" phone screen. Samsung is improving something that does not need improvement.
Samsung was also pushing special Samsung only features to encourage IT professionals to use Samsung in the enterprise environment. Device management, encryption, and other security features are all well and good, but I cannot force everyone in my company to use a Galaxy. There would be a revolt. We have hard core iPhone users. We have BYOD policies for people who do not have company provided devices. Going to an all Galaxy environment is not an option. That is the kind of thing that Blackberry demanded and it is why it failed. Security and device management has to be cross platform. Samsung is just wasting time and money with this. Unless they plan in the future to offer a way of adding non-Samsung devices to the system almost no one will use these features, ever.
With its "big screen" advantage over the iPhone gone, Samsung needs to find a new must-have benefit. Some people seem to like the unique benefits of the curved screen Samsung Edge, although I don't really see the appeal. Finding that unique killer app is admittedly very difficult. Because Samsung does not control its OS, there are dozens of other phone manufacturers who can copy pretty much anything that Samsung develops.
Absent some new "must have" feature, consumer preference will likely focus on price and performance. Companies that find a way to reduce price and maintain top performing features will win this competition. Prices for most premium smart phones are hidden in the monthly fees charged by the cell phone companies. If I bought an S6 with a two year contract, I would pay only $200, but would be obligated to pay $50-60 per month for two years. Without a contract, the full retail price of the phone is a whopping $700. Compare that to my 7" Asus MemoPad tablet which also runs Android and can do all the same basic things but costs only about $80. You cannot tell me that adding 4G and phone capability adds $620 to the cost of a device.
As phone companies move closer to ending the subsidization of phones through monthly charges, phone makers will only feel more price pressure. People will always pay a premium for the unique iPhone, but not so much for the Samsung Galaxy. Samsung needs to begin thinking about a lower cost phone. Making a high priced iPhone clone simply is not sustainable as it is not attractive to consumers. Samsung cannot beat the iPhone on its own terms. Samsung must consider changing the terms of the competition before it loses its reputation as an industry leader.
Don't get me wrong, the Galaxy S6 is not a bad phone. It is not bug ridden or defective in any serious way. But as I wrote in my earlier post, the S6 is essentially trying to be an iPhone clone. Nothing terribly wrong with trying to be more like the best selling phone on the market. But if your phone is more expensive than the iPhone, who is going to spend more for an iPhone clone when they can just buy an iPhone?
For many years, the Galaxy line surpassed iPhone because it offered features that the iPhone did not. The most prominent was that the Galaxy offered a much bigger screen. Apple got the message on that. It came out with a much bigger screen for the iPhone 6 and an even bigger screen with the 6 plus. As a result, iPhone sales have soared and Galaxy sales plummeted. And no, Samsung cannot respond with an even bigger screen. At some point, screens get too big. Both phones seem to be at right about the size most people want.
I recently attended a Samsung event for IT professionals designed to tell us why the Galaxy S6 was a great choice. They even gave me a free S6 for attending. That phone has sat on my desk it its box unused. I have no desire to upgrade from my S5. In doing so, I will lose my ability to swap out my battery (the S6 battery actually holds a smaller charge than the one that came with the S5). I lose the ability to add memory using an external chip. I would also have to upgrade my expensive Mophie Juice Pack cover.
To make the upgrade, what benefit do I get? The most celebrated new feature of the S6 seems to be the metal case over the S5 plastic case. But I don't care about the case since I put my phone in an external protective case anyway. I don't even see the Samsung case. I'm also told the S6 screen has higher quality graphics. But I haven't had a complaint about graphics on my last three phones. 4k graphics are great on a 100" TV, but no one cares about it on a 5" phone screen. Samsung is improving something that does not need improvement.
Samsung was also pushing special Samsung only features to encourage IT professionals to use Samsung in the enterprise environment. Device management, encryption, and other security features are all well and good, but I cannot force everyone in my company to use a Galaxy. There would be a revolt. We have hard core iPhone users. We have BYOD policies for people who do not have company provided devices. Going to an all Galaxy environment is not an option. That is the kind of thing that Blackberry demanded and it is why it failed. Security and device management has to be cross platform. Samsung is just wasting time and money with this. Unless they plan in the future to offer a way of adding non-Samsung devices to the system almost no one will use these features, ever.
With its "big screen" advantage over the iPhone gone, Samsung needs to find a new must-have benefit. Some people seem to like the unique benefits of the curved screen Samsung Edge, although I don't really see the appeal. Finding that unique killer app is admittedly very difficult. Because Samsung does not control its OS, there are dozens of other phone manufacturers who can copy pretty much anything that Samsung develops.
Absent some new "must have" feature, consumer preference will likely focus on price and performance. Companies that find a way to reduce price and maintain top performing features will win this competition. Prices for most premium smart phones are hidden in the monthly fees charged by the cell phone companies. If I bought an S6 with a two year contract, I would pay only $200, but would be obligated to pay $50-60 per month for two years. Without a contract, the full retail price of the phone is a whopping $700. Compare that to my 7" Asus MemoPad tablet which also runs Android and can do all the same basic things but costs only about $80. You cannot tell me that adding 4G and phone capability adds $620 to the cost of a device.
As phone companies move closer to ending the subsidization of phones through monthly charges, phone makers will only feel more price pressure. People will always pay a premium for the unique iPhone, but not so much for the Samsung Galaxy. Samsung needs to begin thinking about a lower cost phone. Making a high priced iPhone clone simply is not sustainable as it is not attractive to consumers. Samsung cannot beat the iPhone on its own terms. Samsung must consider changing the terms of the competition before it loses its reputation as an industry leader.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Microsoft is Finally Serious About its Cloud Services
Like many nerds of a certain age, I began my technology world with Microsoft back in the 1980's. Microsoft so dominated the PC world that Bill Gates even had to buy a bunch of Apple Stock just to keep it alive so it could convince the Government it still had competition.
But for more than a decade, Microsoft has been mostly stagnant. Perhaps it was like Alexander the Great who cried when he saw he had no more lands to conquer. Microsoft dominated many areas of technology and could not be too aggressive in others without incurring the wrath of anti-trust regulators. Microsoft survived just fine on minor updates to its existing cash cows, Windows, Office, Xbox, but was not really considered a cutting edge technology company. Even worse, it had a reputation for being second only to Apple in its attempt to extract money from its customers.
Gmail vs. Oulook.com
Microsoft is getting back in the game now. Having realized they lost the phone and tablet wars, Microsoft is focusing more on getting iPhone and Android users to use Microsoft Apps on those devices. Outlook.com is the free email available that is in competition with Gmail. Gmail, once the leader in giving away space for mail, limits you to 15 GB on a free account, and you have to share that space with your Google Drive documents. Outlook offers "unlimited" space for mail. I put unlimited in quotes because MS says it is possible to hit a limit if your Outlook grows to quickly. I think this is to prevent people from dumping massive amounts of files in Outlook. But if it grows slowly over time, there appears to be no limit. Outlook.com also supports Activesync (in addition to IMAP and POP3) for your offline readers. Gmail only supports Activesync for users that pay for business accounts.
Google Drive vs. OneDrive
Online storage is where Microsoft really beats Google though. With a free OneDrive account, you get 15 GB of online storage. This quickly doubles to 30 GB if you install an App on your phone to upload photos. You can get another 5 GB by recommending other users to sign up, at 1/2 GB per user that signs up under your recommendation. With Google, free account users are stuck with a mere 15 GB, and again that limit is shared with Gmail. To be fair, Google does not count documents created on Google Drive towards that limit. Your limit only counts to files you upload in other formats. Also, Google recently announced that you can store unlimited amounts of pictures in Google Pictures which, as long as they are not terribly large. But if you are looking for space to upload lots of documents, Microsoft has the definite advantage. Both companies offer occasional time limited deals that give free users a chance to increase their limits. But you have to act fast and usually jump through some hoops to get the space.
If you are willing to spend a few bucks, the Microsoft advantage grows even more. With Office 365 Personal, you get a full copy of MS Office on your computer plus a full 1 TB (~1000 GB) of storage space on your hard drive for $70/yr. With Google, paying $50/yr gets you only up to 30 GB of storage space (again still shared with Gmail) and no extra software. To get to 1 TB, you have to pay Google a whopping $120/yr - advantage Microsoft.
Another reason I am being drawn over to OneDrive is the ability to map a drive letter on your computer to your OneDrive account. If you are interested in doing this, follow this link. I find this to be a great convenience for many programs and utilities that required a drive letter, as opposed to some network connection without a letter. It makes it easy to use LibreOffice or WordPerfect as well. There is also a way to add a drive letter to Google Drive, which you can find here, but it really is a little convoluted. First, you have to have the Google Drive program running on your Windows computer, not just a web link to your drive. That program cache's a copy of your drive to a temporary folder on your computer. You can map a drive to that using a DOS command or another third party tool, and then those changes are synched back to your Google Drive. So, for example, if you have bought a bunch of extra space on your Google Drive to store things, you would need to have an equal or greater amount of space on your computer to cache all those documents. As I often have near full hard drives, I find this inconvenient.
This Rivalry will benefit users for years
I have been a huge fan of Google for years, and will continue to be. But the advantages of Microsoft's new cloud services are too good to ignore. I will start using OneDrive more, and perhaps consider using my Outlook.com email account for some things. In any event, the competition will likely spur both companies to continue offering better services, and keep many of these benefits available on free accounts.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Why Text?
I've had a smart phone for nearly 15 years now. Before iPhone and Android, I had a Blackberry, and before that a Palm Treo. In all that time, I've never had much a desire to text.
I guess part of the reason I never saw the point of text messaging was that I've always had my email on my phone. Since anyone could always get a message to me on my phone via email, the notion of texting seemed pointless. In fact, worse than pointless since texts are much more limited in size than an email, could not contain attachments, for many years could not contain pictures, and could not be stored in some other location for later reference. On top of all that, my phone company charged a hefty fee of $20/month on top of my data charges in order to send and receive texts.
Text messaging always seemed inferior to email, so why would anyone want to use to it? I suppose it caught on because many people did not have smart phones with email for many years, but were able to text. I can certainly see why it would be attractive to send text message if email was not available on the phone. But in the near decade since the iPhone was released, virtually everyone has email on their phones. So why does text messaging still thrive? Is it really just a matter of habit, from the days when cell phones could not support email?
My phone vendor finally decided to provide free text messaging included in my plan. I used it for a few weeks, but found there really was no point to it. In fact, I increasingly find it annoying for many reasons.
For starters, my phone is not my only device. I use a tablet, as well as several laptops and desktops during the course of the day. If someone sends me an email, I can get it on any one of those devices. If someone sends me a text, I have to check my phone. That's just one extra step I need to do all the time.
I was also encouraged by my phone vendor to upgrade to business grade messaging for my work phone. Why, I asked? How was this any different? I was told that because there is no centralized server for personal texts, some texts can get lost if the recipient does not have their phone turned on for a long enough time? So regular text messaging is therefore untrustworthy for important communications.
Another problem, when I get a new phone, I have to migrate my existing data or I lose all of my texts. If I switch vendors and phone types, my chances of losing all my old data are much higher. I did find an app for my Android that lets me back up my texts to a separate file, but that was a pain. By contrast, email is simply stored in my Gmail account, and local copies are easy enough to create, simply by using a mail reader like Outlook or Thunderbird to download all of my messages.
Text messages are limited in how many characters you can send at once. I suppose there is also some theoretical limit to the length of emails, but I've never had a problem there. Since emails work find for both short and long messages, why should I adopt a second medium that will only work for short messages?
Text messaging is tied to phone numbers. If someone gets a new phone number, they won't get my message. While the same could be said for email addresses, I at least usually get back an error message if I email a non-working address. With texts there is no such warning. For the years when I was required to pay for texts, I had text messaging turned off by my vendor. People would try to text me and get upset when I did not respond, not knowing that I never received their message. If someone gives me their number, how do I know if I can text to it? It could be a land line, or someone who simply cannot receive texts.
Email is more universal. I know that practically everyone has a phone, but my children, for example do not. They are too young for a phone. At least that is what I say since I don't want to pay for one. They do have free email accounts though. My mother, and much of her generation does not either. They don't like reading on small screens and don't see the point. I also know a number of poor people who simply cannot afford $50 or $60 a month for smart phone service, but can easily check their free email accounts at the library.
International messages are another issue. If I text someone in another country, there is an extra fee for that with many plans. With email, there is never any charge sent to anyone ever.
People say that text messaging is faster than email. That may be true if you have a POP3 account or something that only check for mail once a minute or every two minutes. A minute or two may not seem like a lot, but in texting back and forth with someone, you don't want that delay. But with my Gmail App or using ActiveSync, my emails come in just as fast as a text message. There are no delays.
I read all sorts of articles about how email is old technology and is probably on its way out as a means of communication. I don't think that is the case given how universal it is. I also cannot think of one way that text messaging is superior to email.
I guess part of the reason I never saw the point of text messaging was that I've always had my email on my phone. Since anyone could always get a message to me on my phone via email, the notion of texting seemed pointless. In fact, worse than pointless since texts are much more limited in size than an email, could not contain attachments, for many years could not contain pictures, and could not be stored in some other location for later reference. On top of all that, my phone company charged a hefty fee of $20/month on top of my data charges in order to send and receive texts.
Text messaging always seemed inferior to email, so why would anyone want to use to it? I suppose it caught on because many people did not have smart phones with email for many years, but were able to text. I can certainly see why it would be attractive to send text message if email was not available on the phone. But in the near decade since the iPhone was released, virtually everyone has email on their phones. So why does text messaging still thrive? Is it really just a matter of habit, from the days when cell phones could not support email?
My phone vendor finally decided to provide free text messaging included in my plan. I used it for a few weeks, but found there really was no point to it. In fact, I increasingly find it annoying for many reasons.
For starters, my phone is not my only device. I use a tablet, as well as several laptops and desktops during the course of the day. If someone sends me an email, I can get it on any one of those devices. If someone sends me a text, I have to check my phone. That's just one extra step I need to do all the time.
I was also encouraged by my phone vendor to upgrade to business grade messaging for my work phone. Why, I asked? How was this any different? I was told that because there is no centralized server for personal texts, some texts can get lost if the recipient does not have their phone turned on for a long enough time? So regular text messaging is therefore untrustworthy for important communications.
Another problem, when I get a new phone, I have to migrate my existing data or I lose all of my texts. If I switch vendors and phone types, my chances of losing all my old data are much higher. I did find an app for my Android that lets me back up my texts to a separate file, but that was a pain. By contrast, email is simply stored in my Gmail account, and local copies are easy enough to create, simply by using a mail reader like Outlook or Thunderbird to download all of my messages.
Text messages are limited in how many characters you can send at once. I suppose there is also some theoretical limit to the length of emails, but I've never had a problem there. Since emails work find for both short and long messages, why should I adopt a second medium that will only work for short messages?
Text messaging is tied to phone numbers. If someone gets a new phone number, they won't get my message. While the same could be said for email addresses, I at least usually get back an error message if I email a non-working address. With texts there is no such warning. For the years when I was required to pay for texts, I had text messaging turned off by my vendor. People would try to text me and get upset when I did not respond, not knowing that I never received their message. If someone gives me their number, how do I know if I can text to it? It could be a land line, or someone who simply cannot receive texts.
Email is more universal. I know that practically everyone has a phone, but my children, for example do not. They are too young for a phone. At least that is what I say since I don't want to pay for one. They do have free email accounts though. My mother, and much of her generation does not either. They don't like reading on small screens and don't see the point. I also know a number of poor people who simply cannot afford $50 or $60 a month for smart phone service, but can easily check their free email accounts at the library.
International messages are another issue. If I text someone in another country, there is an extra fee for that with many plans. With email, there is never any charge sent to anyone ever.
People say that text messaging is faster than email. That may be true if you have a POP3 account or something that only check for mail once a minute or every two minutes. A minute or two may not seem like a lot, but in texting back and forth with someone, you don't want that delay. But with my Gmail App or using ActiveSync, my emails come in just as fast as a text message. There are no delays.
I read all sorts of articles about how email is old technology and is probably on its way out as a means of communication. I don't think that is the case given how universal it is. I also cannot think of one way that text messaging is superior to email.
Saturday, March 21, 2015
What Google Needs to Defeat Microsoft
Google and Microsoft are now going head to head in cloud based services. Each company has its own strengths. Microsoft dominates the PC and laptop OS arena. Android, has a more powerful presence with its Android OS on laptops and phones. Google also has a powerful lead in free email.
For this post, I'm ignoring third big competitor in the arena, Apple, since they do not seem to be pushing for dominant control of cloud services beyond users of their own phones, tablets, and laptops.
Google is seeking to expand its presence by pushing Google Drive, a host of applications that allow document creation and collaboration, among other things. This puts them more and more into competition with Microsoft Office. Microsoft has been moving its Office Suite to the cloud with MS Office 365. While you can still download MS Office onto your hard drive, more and more work can be done directly in the cloud. The subscription model further makes Microsoft look more like a service provider than a software seller.
Microsoft's strategy seems clear. It wants to use its market dominance in the Office market, to move individuals and businesses into its cloud services. It makes sense. Businesses especially are so tied into the MS Office world that it is nearly impossible to collaborate with other businesses without having MS Office yourself. If they can leverage that, as well as dominance in Outlook to draw users into its cloud storage and online email services, it becomes a major player in that field, and moves away from the collapsing market of selling software to PC users.
Google's strategy similarly reflects its desire to leverage its strengths in search and email to move people into its other cloud services. Google encourages its Gmail users to use Google Drive, where they can create and share documents, spreadsheets, and other works.
Microsoft's greatest weakness is probably its recent reputation for overpriced buggy bloatware, for falling behind in the race to keep up fast paced technology trends, and for its tendency to gouge customers for maximum short term profit. The fact that its solution is much more expensive than Google's only contributes to this preconception.
Google's greatest weakness is its lack of any reputation in the enterprise arena. While businesses use its search services or other online free services such as Google Maps, they have been reluctant to move to Google's enterprise email offerings or use of Drive as the only way to create documents. At best, businesses use them as a supplement for online collaboration, while still relying on MS Windows computers running MS Office for office work and MS Outlook connected to MS Exchange for email.
Microsoft has every incentive to tie Windows, Office, and Outlook into its cloud services and offer a smooth transition for businesses. Microsoft has zero incentive to make it easier to access your Google Drive documents from MS Office or to integrate Windows into your Google cloud storage, or improve Outlook interoperability with Gmail. If history is any guide, you will see MS create deliberate bugs that make interoperabliity with Google a real headache.
This makes Google's fight much harder. Google will not capture the OS market any time soon. Google Chrome will not replace Windows in the foreseeable future. Android does not seem to be able to leap from tablets to laptops. Therefore, Google has to focus on making its cloud services so much better and less expensive that people will go out of their way to use them.
To do this, Google must come up with a more powerful office suite. Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides are ok for simple documents. But they simply do not have the tools that professionals need to create more complex documents. One great option would be a partnership with an open source Office suite like LibreOffice. Another option would be to buy a dying competitor like WordPerfect Office.
Either way, Google could integrate the office application into Google. It could allow subscribers to download the office suite, or make the suite itself cloud based. Either way, users would have a much more powerful office suite with which to use Google's online document system.
Google has done well with individuals who want convenient free apps. But if it wants to get the more profitable enterprises to get on board with Google, it needs to have a serious Office suite for business users.
For this post, I'm ignoring third big competitor in the arena, Apple, since they do not seem to be pushing for dominant control of cloud services beyond users of their own phones, tablets, and laptops.
Google is seeking to expand its presence by pushing Google Drive, a host of applications that allow document creation and collaboration, among other things. This puts them more and more into competition with Microsoft Office. Microsoft has been moving its Office Suite to the cloud with MS Office 365. While you can still download MS Office onto your hard drive, more and more work can be done directly in the cloud. The subscription model further makes Microsoft look more like a service provider than a software seller.
Microsoft's strategy seems clear. It wants to use its market dominance in the Office market, to move individuals and businesses into its cloud services. It makes sense. Businesses especially are so tied into the MS Office world that it is nearly impossible to collaborate with other businesses without having MS Office yourself. If they can leverage that, as well as dominance in Outlook to draw users into its cloud storage and online email services, it becomes a major player in that field, and moves away from the collapsing market of selling software to PC users.
Google's strategy similarly reflects its desire to leverage its strengths in search and email to move people into its other cloud services. Google encourages its Gmail users to use Google Drive, where they can create and share documents, spreadsheets, and other works.
Microsoft's greatest weakness is probably its recent reputation for overpriced buggy bloatware, for falling behind in the race to keep up fast paced technology trends, and for its tendency to gouge customers for maximum short term profit. The fact that its solution is much more expensive than Google's only contributes to this preconception.
Google's greatest weakness is its lack of any reputation in the enterprise arena. While businesses use its search services or other online free services such as Google Maps, they have been reluctant to move to Google's enterprise email offerings or use of Drive as the only way to create documents. At best, businesses use them as a supplement for online collaboration, while still relying on MS Windows computers running MS Office for office work and MS Outlook connected to MS Exchange for email.
Microsoft has every incentive to tie Windows, Office, and Outlook into its cloud services and offer a smooth transition for businesses. Microsoft has zero incentive to make it easier to access your Google Drive documents from MS Office or to integrate Windows into your Google cloud storage, or improve Outlook interoperability with Gmail. If history is any guide, you will see MS create deliberate bugs that make interoperabliity with Google a real headache.
This makes Google's fight much harder. Google will not capture the OS market any time soon. Google Chrome will not replace Windows in the foreseeable future. Android does not seem to be able to leap from tablets to laptops. Therefore, Google has to focus on making its cloud services so much better and less expensive that people will go out of their way to use them.
To do this, Google must come up with a more powerful office suite. Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides are ok for simple documents. But they simply do not have the tools that professionals need to create more complex documents. One great option would be a partnership with an open source Office suite like LibreOffice. Another option would be to buy a dying competitor like WordPerfect Office.
Either way, Google could integrate the office application into Google. It could allow subscribers to download the office suite, or make the suite itself cloud based. Either way, users would have a much more powerful office suite with which to use Google's online document system.
Google has done well with individuals who want convenient free apps. But if it wants to get the more profitable enterprises to get on board with Google, it needs to have a serious Office suite for business users.
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