Future of Comunication, Tools and Computing

I was just pondering on what would be future of productivity tools or day to day communication... May be down the line 10+ Years..

The growing bandwidth, processing and storage power enable us to deal everything either Video or Audio;

Text email: Would it be same as today? I doubt, it should be some thing on voice to text and text to voice... By that time there would be hands on technologies to enable it... There will be definitely people who will use it for simplicity purpose but not to the extent of today.

SMS: Most of the SMSes today are textual in nature and future will be Audio & Video and definitely images as well. By that time mobile technologies would mature to provide required bandwidth, processing and storage.

Browser: It would be talking toy I suppose. May be little AI built on top of it to enable users to talk and listen sensibly. Browser would be able listen to the user at the same time give the reply as normal people does. The current doc & pdf formats would support audio & video to deal. When we google now, we get many links with static or dynamic text.. Future would list only more of audio or video files..

Mobile communication is going to really pickup and there will be a day where nothing is attached to cables... The future is going to be mobility in all the aspects... There will be technologies to deal with TBs of data transfer per second with wireless connectivity.

Flash drives??? The improvements in Nano components would enable us to have small mini SD card to hold Tera bytes of data..

File systems? the current read/write/list files systems would get a boost by which we should be able to work with TBs of data within fraction of second.

Any thing wild further??? I guess there should be one more advancement in reading human mind, which can act on just by thinking on a command and/or search..

It should be more of a device that is worn by user and a component attached to PC...

Please dont curse by thinking in any other way... If you have any other wild guesses do share and I would be happy to listen.

Office and productivity tools should be classic stenos who listen and makes things ready.... Could be productivity robots to deal every communication items..

Without talking about cloud probably list is incomplete... What would happen to cloud? Nothing on user disk? Operating system? applications? In my understanding people would buy only hardware like earlier, the required so called software should come free or come with through away price. Customers would pay only for service than really anything.

Is Google at right path?

First let me apologize for coming back after long time...

Google Vs Apple
Until recently Apple & Google used to enjoy trust by complementing each other and working to see the end of Microsoft. The relationship was such an extent, where Google CEO Eric Schmidt
was on Google board and involved in overall strategy. There were many win-win instances between these to web & product giants and was really good to both the companies in pushing M$ limits and making it to run for the future.

Now what is happening?
Google tied up with HTC and came up with NexusOne and directly competing with iPhone out there.

Impact?
-Google CEO Eric Schmidt out of Apple board.
-No strategic talk between Apple & Google
-Apple is exploring options with M$ to make Bing as a default in iPhone
-Apple purchased Quattro a mobile Ad company and plan to take on Google in mobile ad search market


Google Vs Mozilla
Google & Mozilla foundation have been enjoying nice relationship and Mozilla foundation making money with partnership with Google. It was win-win for Google for making Firefox search default with Google Search.

Now what is happening?
Google came up with its own browser Chrome and suddenly partners become competitors in browser market too.

Impact?
-Unthinkable moment to Mozilla..
-Initially it was Mozilla who worried about the revenue stream that Google backing through FireFox's search default.
-Few hurry decisions to realign its relationship with Google
-Search for alternative revenue sources.

Overall, to create more shareholder's value Google executives are forgetting its core basics of "No Harm"....

The very downfall by starts;
-When long-term partnerships break
- Mistrust starts tickling

Given the situation;
-Mozilla really no need to worry about its fund flow; Now actually it can get competitive price between Bing/Google/Yahoo by making one of them as default search.
-Google could explore the possibilities to attach Chrome to nutral body. One possibility could be give it to Apache foundation or Mozilla drive from behind.

Big Heads In Technology

Yahoo!
Started in In March 1995, $2 million from Sequoia Capital.
Founders, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
CEO, Terry Semel
Market Value: $47Billion

Products
Yahoo Mail
Yahoo Search
Yahoo Messenger
Know More

Microsoft
Founders, Paul Allen and Bill Gates started in 1975, Microsoft Registered in 26th Nov,1976.
CEO, Steve Ballmer
Market Value: $270 Billion

Prodcts,
Widows Operating System
MS-Office
Internet Explorer(IE)
MS-SQL Database,
Outlook
MSN Search
MSN Messenger
Hotmail
Know More

Google
The place where it started was attached to the garage of a friend who sublet space to the new corporation's staff of three. On September 7, 1998, Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, California. Initial investment was $1 million.

Founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Stanford University graduate students.
CEO, Dr. Eric Schmidt
Market: $51Billion

Products
Largest Search Engine on Internet.
Deskbar
Gtalk
Gmail
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Oracle
CEO, Larry Ellison.
Market Value, $64 Billion.

Products
Oracle Database
CRM Products
Oracle Financials

Apple
Started in 1976, almost 30 years back in his parents garage by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
CEO, Steve Jobs.
Market Value, $44 billion.
Products
iMac
Apple Macintosh.
iPod
iPod nano

Good Info

Sun Microsystems (JAVA)

Founders Andy Bechtolsheim , Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy incorporated in February 1982. There were only 4 employees in the beginning.
CEO, Scott McNealy.
Market Value, $13.4 billion.
Products
Desktops
Servers
Java
Star Office and many more..
Know More

IBM (International Business Machines)
Founder, Thomas J. Watson Sr.. Operational since 1888, incorporated in June 15, 1911.
CEO, Samuel Palmisano.
Products
Desktops
Servers
Laptops
DB2 Database… too many to list.
Know More

How Open Office Can Make Difference?

I just saw OpenOffice1.1.5 release at www.openoffice.org . It’s really a great application to enjoy freely. I don’t see any reason in using MS-Office by paying money and processor power. It may be good alternative to small and medium business establishment and home users. It has everything what a normal user require from a office suit.

I agree MS-Office has lot of things. Can you do miracles? not much. Its a tool to share information. Openoffice supports all the formats and features, except too much fancy things. I expect as days goes, the juicy team which is working on Openoffice suit, will sprinkle juice on all.

I wonder why Oppen office active members not able to learn from Mozilla foundation. Instead bundling entire suit as one and making it too bulky. There can be separate applications for "Write (MicroSoft-Word)", "Calc (Spread Sheet)" and "Impress (Power Point )" for presentations etc.. .

I think many of office suit users typically use more either "Word" Or "Spread Sheet" and some times "Presentation". Why don’t these guys have independent applications for these? Like firefox and sunbird etc from Mozilla (www.mozilla.com).

Instead of packing everything as one application, there can be separate tar balls, where Only "Word" and / or "Presentation" and/or "Spread Sheet etc.,, can do good. I understand the problem of maintaining various builds. But it gives one more advantage of working specialized groups. Not sure, if already some activities are going on this front.

Can Google take further on Microsoft..?

Hey! As you guess I am not either pro or anti to any one. By looking at the tech place (kind of market place) got few things in to mind. As I perceive Google still has some kind of giving back nature than Microsoft, thought it can go on as below...

What is really Microsoft well known Strength? No doubt, either you agree or not it's Windows Operating System. Some how its supremacy has been tackled by Linux recent days and continues in future, earlier there were UNIX, Mach, Solaris and others...

Strengths(ofcource there are more than below):
-Operating System
-Desktop
-Server
-Web Browser
-Office Suit
-Database Server (MS - SQL)
-Visio

Operating System
As more than 90% of users use this operating system, always Microsoft enjoys its suprimacy in all the domains of computer.

Threats to Microsoft Desktop

• There is no out side competitor require Microsoft to slow down its revenues from the desktop sale market than its earlier versions (such as windows 9X and 2k versions).
• Nix based operating systems (Debian, Fedora, Redhat, Linspire, Suse etc..) are already in their way to slice max pile from corporate and individuals.
• The % of upgradations from older versions should be minimal, as new version of Windows operating systems never convinced users to spend what Microsoft expect.
• The ever changing attitude of typical users (business environment) and sys admins pose threat to Microsoft in selling new versions.

What Google can do here?
As there are already enough threats, no immediate need to Google pitch in and do some thing. But in long run, certainly it needs to do something in this sphere.

Threats to Microsoft Server
Its own browser which work as agent to hack, its web server which serves code where ever users want. Ofcource there are efforts going on to make this secure time should decide how hackers respond to it.

What Google can do here?
As already nix servers dominates this market, no need Google to pitch in.

Web Browser
Oh! la... This is interesting thing for now in the tech and non-tech domains. Firefox (www.mozilla.org) doing enough job to kick Microsoft. After recent kicks Microsoft started investing to make its well-known browser Internet Explorer. Its heaven to hackers and hell to users. If we go deep in to problems of Internet Explorer, we may come out with a book.

What Google can do here?
Support as much as it can to Mozilla foundation as its doing now. Beware no killing games like Microsoft.

Office Suit
Though I dont have exact figures how much this suit gives revenues to Microsoft, it should be good in numbers.

Threats to Microsoft Office Suit?
As similar to Operating sytem, already this suite facing problems with its own old versions such as office2k. Users are reluctant to upgrade to new versions. As they demand large memory and processing speeds and costs more $$$.

But one thing is sure; there is no other dominant player in this arena.

What Google can do here?
I come across a good open source office suit by name openoffice (www.openoffice.org), which works similar in windows machines and Unix/Linux machines. This can be a right choice to Google to either fund this project and take base from it, and enhance and give to people. Though Google may not benefit in direct revenues, by way of cutting its rival revenue it can benefit in many ways. Once Google office product available in system, then it knows how to use it for other revenue generation purposes.

Database Server (MS - SQL)
Why not Google buy or My-SQL or fund Pg-SQL and release its own version to developers. Since, tech place has enormous trust on Google brand, it certainly need to pitch in "Software Development Tools" arena, rest developers will take care.

Visio
There is a very primary tool by name Dia, it’s a open-source application. No where near to Visio. Google can think of it once.

Future:
Microsoft Expression (A web and application designing suite)
Google has an option to look-in decent open source creative tools Gimp www.gimp.org