There was a time when I thought the Linux desktop was going to take a market share at least equal to Apple’s. Maybe even 5% or 10% of the total desktop market. I had high hopes that the One Laptop Per Child Initiative would put Linux laptops in the hands of impressionable young minds who would never have the chance to become dependent on Windows. Though that plan has fallen through the cracks. I don’t hate Microsoft Windows I just don’t have a desire to see any operating system dominate the market in such a way that the lack of competition stifles innovation and forces users into an endless upgrade cycle, offering progressively smaller incremental value.

That’s why I like Linux as a desktop platform. For many years I was an advocate for using the Linux desktop, I even wrote a Windows to Linux migration book for business users. Though the time has yet to come for the widespread Linux desktop adoption. I have speculated in the past that Novell’s SUSE Linux Desktop or Ubuntu would see traction but as of late I think that even that prediction is off base. I think the companies that will break our addiction to Windows will not be neither of them. It will be Google and Amazon. Here’s why.

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Technorati Tags: amazon, Google, Microsoft Windows, Novell, OLPC, SUSE, Ubuntu

When you optimize your website for the Google search it’s helpful to see things the way Google does. That we you can measure results and identify other sites that are being successful in your niche. The following commands can be entered into a Google search to return information useful for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specific to Google.

related:http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/index

Technorati Tags: analytics, commands, Google, SEO

Mandrake Linux Founder now Ulteo Chairman and CTO Gaël Duval today announced a new beta release of the Ulteo Online Desktop a hosted desktop solution built from open source technology. The Ulteo product suite includes the following:

• Ulteo Online Desktop (Ulteo OD, version 1): UOD lets users store their documents online, and open them with a choice of applications that run within their web-browser (Firefox, IE and others).
• Ulteo Application System (Ulteo AS, beta1): is an installable version of Ulteo, for a PC
• Storage: Ulteo offers up to one gigabyte of storage for Ulteo desktop users

There is a free access beta and Ulteo will supply additional service levels for a price.  There isn’t a lot of information on the Ulteo website but I took the online version for a spin. I thought this was interesting because back in 2000 I was an executive at a firm that did the exact same thing. My experience at the time was that the applications available at the time didn’t have good enough interoperability with Windows standard applications to be practical. With Microsoft and other moving toward supporting an XML document standard 

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Technorati Tags: Google, Google Docs, KDE, Meebo, mobile applications, NoMachine, office, online desktop, Open Office, Open Source, OpenOffice.org, rich internet applciations, Thin client computing, utleo, VNC

I have a lunch meeting today and I was mapping directions on Google when I realized there was a link to Street View. So I clicked on it and imagine my surprise when I saw a picture of my house.  I was a little shocked. I live in a suburb of Raleigh,NC it’s not what I consider to be a major city but Google took it upon itself to photograph and integrate my little neighborhood into their Google Street View. Then I mapped the restaurant and was able to see the building I was going to. It’s such a helpful feature because I couldn’t picture where I was going but I have been down the street many times. What will Google think of next?

Technorati Tags: Google, Street View

Is 2008 going to be the Year of the Acquisition? Activity in 2007 was on the rise but now things seem to be at full speed.

• I remember when Alta Vista and Excite! were the hot search engines, my how the world has changed.  It looks like it’s narrowing down to a two horse race with Microsoft putting the moves on Yahoo! for about $44.6 billion (Notes from SearchEngineLand). I guess it’s really on now, Google versus Microsoft in a search engine death match.
• Yahoo! acquired Zimbra last year. I wonder what that means for the "Exchange killer"?
• Amazon is acquiring Audible.com the leading provider of digital spoken word content establishing itself even further as the web’s biggest superstore.
• There were already three open source transactions in January:
• MySQL bought by Sun
• Nokia Buys Trolltech
• Covalent was Acquired by SpringSource
• In preparation Andrew Aiken and the boys from the Olliance Group are ready to help along the deals with their newly formed M&A practice. 

The question now is,"Who’s next and how much?"

Technorati Tags: , acquisition, amazon, Audible, Google, Mergers, Microsoft, MySQL, Nokia, Olliance, Sun, Trolltech, Yahoo!, Zimbra