Will Google Chrome OS Be Any Different than LINUX, BEOS, Network Computer, etc.?

It was widely announced that Google will be releasing a new operating system called the Chrome OS that will be initially deployed to NetBooks but will hopefully compete with Windows on the desktop.

Yawn…shades of 1995 when Java OS, Oracle OS, Network Computer etc. tried to do the same thing.

If you want a OS replacement for Windows on your NetBook, you can get it today – its called LINUX!  Acer, Dell, etc. all have Net Books that will come with LINUX today.  And if you want to run Google’s browser, you can download it for free.

Can you even call Chrome OS a new operating system when you’re just repackaging LINUX?  KDE and GNOME aren’t operating systems, so why is Chrome? 

"The operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no Web," the blog post said. "So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome--the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to rethink what operating systems should be."

Huh?  Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS, and LINUX were all designed with the web in mind. 

COREL had the same vision in mind when they created COREL LINUX.  They had WordPerfect, CorelDraw, etc. (even at the time much more sophisticated applications than Google Spreadsheet is today) and they couldn’t sell any more office licenses because Microsoft had a lock on the desktop and was killing them in the office market.  So they made a big splash (and almost killed the company) investing heavily in desktop LINUX, the supposedly Windows killer. 

BE Operating System was an entirely new OS developed in 1991.  Unlike the Chrome OS or Corel, it wasn’t a rehash of LINUX with a new set of apps thrown on top of it.  It was an entirely brand new operating system from the kernel upwards.  It had the same ambitious target – replace Windows with a better operating system.  It had a niche following originally as a replacement to the Apple Operating System (since the BE OS initially only ran on Power PC Chips and not Intel) and then as a Windows replacement.   The company could not gain enough market share and eventually was bought out by Palm.

The same reasons why these operating systems didn’t survive will cause major challenges for Google.  I found this table from Microsoft to challenge the proposition of the Network Computer:

	PC	Network Computer
Operating System	Windows	Proprietary / Incompatible
Mobile Support	Excellent	None
Applications	> 100,000	Limited / Incompatible
Development Tools	Choice	Limited to Java
Device Support	Thousands	Proprietary / Incompatible
Device Model	Windows	None / Incompatible
Manufacturers	2,500	Few
Networking	Choice	Requires high speed net
Availability	Now	Limited
Printer Support	Thousands	None
Scalability	Excellent	Poor

With using LINUX, Google can solve some of these issues (scalability for example).  But even OS X for example has less third party support than Windows and far less partners and applications and it is fairly mature.  Google will have none of these advantages.

Challenges with Sharing Excel Workbooks in SharePoint

In Excel 2007 (and 2003), you can share a workbook.  This allows users to simultaneously update the same file:

This feature is used in many enterprises for collaboration, especially in departments such as Finance or Planning where there are lots of shared figures, budgets, plans, etc.

There are some interesting features that allow for some rich collaboration scenarios simply within a single Excel file:

• Each time that you save the shared workbook, you are prompted with the changes that other users have saved since the last time that you saved the shared workbook. If you want to keep the shared workbook open to monitor progress, Excel can update you with the changes automatically, at timed intervals that you specify, with or without saving the workbook yourself.
• When you save changes to a shared workbook, another person who is editing the workbook might have saved changes to the same cells. In this case, the changes conflict, and you are prompted with a conflict resolution dialog box so that you can choose which changes to keep

When moving to SharePoint as a document management platform, this feature is no longer supported:

More than one user cannot simultaneously make changes to a shared workbook that is stored on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site. If you want to store your workbook on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site, you should do so only after the collaboration effort through sharing is complete.

Document libraries by design only allow one person to edit a document at the same time.  In addition, they support check-in and out to provide locks on documents during the editing process.  When a user grabs a file for editing from SharePoint, they edit a file on their local machine and then when done it is saved back to the central document repository. 

Excel Services allows for running of Excel files within the SharePoint server, but only in read only fashion.  Excel Services is great for read only dashboards, charts and graphs but isn’t a collaboration service.

For more information on the different options for Excel collaboration, see Microsoft’s article on the subject.

Bad Search Synonyms

I was on TheServerSide.NET which is one of the leading Microsoft .NET community sites and typed in “SharePoint”.  The result I got was this:

I thought that was kind of amusing, so I tried a few other Microsoft product names:

What We Know About SharePoint 2010

Based on the various blog posts and articles, here is what we know from the publically available information on SharePoint 2010:

• SharePoint Server 2010 will be 64 bit only.
• Windows SharePoint Services will still continue and there will be a new release of WSS along with SharePoint.
• Browser clients being targeted are XHTML 1.0 Browsers such as IE 7, IE 8 and Firefox 3.0.
• IE 6.0 will not be supported.
• Visual Studio 2010 will be the targeted developer platform.
• Groove (the offline/online synchronization tool Microsoft bought when it acquired Groove Networks) is being renamed and repositioned with the upcoming release as “SharePoint Workspace Manager.”
• SharePoint 2010 will feature a “Web-enabled Ribbon control” and support greater use of Silverlight controls
• Migration should be smoother from 2007 to 2010 than 2003 to 2007.
• Microsoft’s new search engine FAST will be integrated into SharePoint as the enterprise search offering.
• Lists will now be able to map to database tables, improving performance.
• Improved developer support such as debugging from Visual Studio, easier development of Web Parts, and exploring of SharePoint objects through Server Explorer.
• Visual Studio 2010 will come with a broad set of project and items templates. You’ll be able to use these to quickly create or update SharePoint elements such as list definitions, list instances, site definitions, workflows, event receivers, Business Data Catalog models, and content types.
• In Visual Studio 2008, the supported workflow projects could be created only for lists and document libraries. In Visual Studio 2010, you’ll be able to create list and site level workflows as well as create aspx association and initiation forms. And, as you would expect, the new Visual Studio 2010 designers can be used to create Web Parts, application pages, and user controls for a SharePoint site.
• Visual Studio 2010 will provide a feature and package designer for defining deployment packages. 
• Faceted search will be supported that allows for filtering of search results based on SharePoint meta-data.
• SharePoint will support CMIS standards.

This is just a preliminary list – Microsoft will be publishing more information when the public beta is released this summer.   Stay tuned as more details about the next release comes out.

How to Use Microsoft Project: Fixed Cost

One of my colleagues ran into a major Project usability problem when he started filling in the cost column manually.  He actually did it by right clicking on a cell in the cost column and selecting “fill down” which he thought might like in excel just copy the formula.  In Project, this copies values and overrides the calculations normally done, e.g. cost = rate * number of hours.

Here is what Project assumes when you type in a cost into the Cost Column:

1. Normally, the cost column is calculated based on the rate (in this example $100 / hr) * the number of hours.

2. If I type in a number into the cost column, I can replace the calculated cost with a new cost – in this case, I have specified it to be $1200.

3. Project takes the cost I typed in and calculates the DIFFERENCE between takes the original calculated cost and what I typed in as a FIXED cost, e.g. in this case $400.  If you insert the Fixed Cost Column, you will see this value.

4. If you do not understand what Project has done, it becomes really confusing as to how to get rid of the fixed cost.  Simply changing the duration or hours doesn’t remove the cost.  For example, if I change the duration to 2 days it doesn’t recalculate the cost to be $1600 – it keeps the $400 in fixed cost and makes the total cost $2000.

5. If you have added a fixed cost my mistake, the simple way to fix the problem is to set the fix cost to $0.00 manually.  This resets to the default behaviour and now your cost is calculated normally.  See below – now that I have changed the fixed cost to $0 I can easily change the duration and the cost is calculated correctly.

  

I have been using Microsoft Project for ages and didn’t know this behaviour existed.   I found this problem because one of my colleagues was not an experience Project user and started filling in values like in Excel.  However, this is nothing in Project that warns you or points you to the solution – it took me digging through help and google to figure it out.

If you are new to Project, keep this simple lesson learned in mind – do not manually change the cost column.  Let Project always calculate it for you.  If you have a specific fixed cost for a task, then insert the Fixed Cost column and type it in there.  This will avoid a lot of confusion.

Yet Another Facebook Bug

I have posted previously on bugs in Facebook, and I ran into another one just this morning.

Facebook has a friend suggestion feature that lists people who you might know based on how close they are to your existing friends.  It’s a great way to find people but I found a bug in it.  It presents you a list of potential friends and for each one there is a little X that you can click to take the person off the list (e.g. it was a bad suggestion and you don’t know them).  Here is the bug: if Facebook runs out of further suggestion, only the text disappears and the picture stays behind. 

If you go back to the home and come back in, the whole lists resets and the problem goes away.

SharePoint vs. Confluence Comparison

I was at a client site this week and they currently have Confluence and are moving to SharePoint 2007 and wanted to understand the differences between the two products.  I have personally implemented both products in different environments and like both of them.  Each as its strengths and weaknesses.

Here is a side by side comparison:

	Confluence	SharePoint 2007
Company	Made by Atlassian in Australia.   In my experience, Atlassian has wicked customer service, a great support network, etc.	Made by Microsoft.  SharePoint is one of Microsoft’s most successful products and Microsoft has made a major commitment to the product.  Support in my experience is standard product support but doesn’t have the tender love and care you get from Atlassian staff.
Consulting Support	Limited, but in some markets quite good.  Look for open-source experts as Atlassian has strong ties to the open source community.  The software itself is Java based.	Huge consulting market from small shops to major consulting companies such as Accenture.  One of the major pluses of the platform is the talent pool to help implement and configure it.
Price	Free if you are a non-profit company and you ask them nicely.  Server license is available ranging from $800-12000 depending on number of users.	Pricing starts at about $5000 but for intranet cost is per named user at about $75-94 a user.  200 users would cost about $20,000 vs. about $4,000 for confluence.
Search	Good with confluence content and Microsoft documents.  No federated search model included.  Did you mean feature allows for synonym searches.	Enterprise level search engine with relevance ranking, synonyms, large scale searches (up to 500,000 documents easily and up to 50 million in theory), and federation model.  Out of the box search can index other web sites, file servers, etc. and plugins through third party products can index other systems such as OpenText, Oracle, SAP, etc.
Look and feel customization	If you’re changing the logo or basic colours you’re fine.  If you want to create a whole new interface, you will find it a challenge.  Confluence uses SiteMesh templates which are a set of XML/HTML files that need to be customized directly.   In my direct experience (and I have done lots of HTML editing), wading through the library of templates is not a trivial undertaking.	SharePoint supports customization at multiple levels through separation of layout, look and feel, and master pages.  SharePoint Designer is provided as a GUI based tool for creating new themes as well.  Template system is significantly simpler than Confluence in my experience to customize.
WIKI	Stronger than SharePoint in supporting WIKI mark-up.  Rich text editor is not bad but not as strong as SharePoint.	WIKI template provided as a site template.  WIKI mark-up is limited to embedding links in text, but rich text editor make WIKI mark-up less needed in most cases.
Security	LDAP based.  Authorization model is 100% stored in Confluence, so groups need to managed within the product.  Single Sign On is not provided.	SharePoint is Active Directory based by default.    Single Sign On is provided with Windows using Internet Explorer – users already logged into Windows are automatically logged into SharePoint.  Groups in SharePoint can map to Active Directory groups which makes management somewhat easier than Confluence.
Web Parts	Confluence supports a plugin model and there are some available.  Product availability is small in comparison to the third party web part market for SharePoint.	Long list of web parts are supplied out of the box for SharePoint.  Massive third party market for Web Parts including integration with major vendors such Oracle, SAP, OpenText, etc.  Web Parts can be easily built in .NET if custom parts are required.
Document Management	Version control, linking and embeddable.  However, there is no check-in/out, content types, workflow, etc.	Much stronger in SharePoint including features such as check-in/out, content types, meta-data, integration with Office 2007, workflow, authorization models, etc. that are typical of an enterprise document management system.
Integration with Office	No support.	Very strong integration as long as you’re on Office 2007.
Other Features	Blogs, discussion forums, etc. are provided.	Too many features to name, but SharePoint is an enterprise portal with dozens of additional features including: reporting integration, dashboards, dozens of web parts, workflow, forms server,  etc.  See this link for a complete list of features.

Comparing the two products is a bit of an apples to orange comparison because the markets for each are quite different.  Confluence is primarily a collaboration tool for small to medium size enterprises.  SharePoint is an enterprise portal that includes collaboration but also dozens of other portal features.  

In my direct experience, SharePoint is more user friendly for end-users – creating pages, changing content, managing documents seems to be more intuitive than in Confluence.  If you’re a power WIKI user then its less of an issue but I handed it to an HR department and found they struggled with it.  SharePoint requires a lot of pre-configuration to get it right but if its set up right I find the adoption tends to be easier.

If you really want a strong WIKI collaboration tool and don’t have much money then Confluence is a very good product.  The support you will get from Atlassian is awesome and they are constantly improving it.  However, if you’re looking at enterprise collaboration, document management, search, etc. then in my experience you may be looking at an upgrade to SharePoint in the long run as your user base becomes more sophisticated.