19962013
Getting Microsoft to Support Blogware ...and LiveJournal ...and Flickr ...and...
DigitalDomain: "Do you remember spell checkers and gramma checkers and on and on of little add-ins and plug-ins? Where are they? Inside Office the Black Hole of productivity software."
If you've been following Random Bytes for a while, you already know where I'm going with this particular rant: Microsoft Office should support Blogware.
Lee makes "Office the Black Hole of productivity software" sound like a bad place for blogging to end up. I think its a great place to end up if its handled the right way.
Of course, there's only a slim chance that it will be. Microsoft will screw this up because they'll shoot for the wrong sort of lockin. I can't really blame them for being short-sighted. They've got a lot of products that could benefit from being the default destination for weblog bound content. Really, this is about building products for your shareholders. This could be called Microsoftlock.
Doesn't make it a smart move for them though. Its always better to create the kind of lockin that you get from keeping your customers so damn happy with your products that they never *want* to leave. Building products for your customers. This should be called AppleLock.
If Microsoft built Office for their *customers* instead of their shareholders, they could probably wrap up online publishing in a *big* way. They would simply need to accept that they are great at writing publishing tools and crappy at writing server tools - at least server tools that give people warm fuzzies like MovableType and Flickr do. No one wants to use Sharepoint as the destination for their blog content - they want to use Blogware or Livejournal or Audioblog et al. And they don't want to use the crappy online weblog editors that I'm using to write this. We want feature rich content publishing MACHINES like Microsoft Word, Apple's Garageband or even Adobe's Premier. I'm currently typing this post into Blogware using a tiny little window, no spell-checker and the very strong chance that I'm going to click the wrong button and accidentally lose my post before I save it. This isn't a problem with Blogware, this is a problem with The Browser.
Wouldn't it be cool if you didn't have to use The Browser to post stuff to your weblog? Wouldn't it be better if your existing applications just talked to Blogware?
I'm very much looking forward to seeing blog support in the Office Productivity Black Hole (or whatever Lee calls it!). I just hope Microsoft does the right thing for once.
If you've been following Random Bytes for a while, you already know where I'm going with this particular rant: Microsoft Office should support Blogware.
Lee makes "Office the Black Hole of productivity software" sound like a bad place for blogging to end up. I think its a great place to end up if its handled the right way.
Of course, there's only a slim chance that it will be. Microsoft will screw this up because they'll shoot for the wrong sort of lockin. I can't really blame them for being short-sighted. They've got a lot of products that could benefit from being the default destination for weblog bound content. Really, this is about building products for your shareholders. This could be called Microsoftlock.
Doesn't make it a smart move for them though. Its always better to create the kind of lockin that you get from keeping your customers so damn happy with your products that they never *want* to leave. Building products for your customers. This should be called AppleLock.
If Microsoft built Office for their *customers* instead of their shareholders, they could probably wrap up online publishing in a *big* way. They would simply need to accept that they are great at writing publishing tools and crappy at writing server tools - at least server tools that give people warm fuzzies like MovableType and Flickr do. No one wants to use Sharepoint as the destination for their blog content - they want to use Blogware or Livejournal or Audioblog et al. And they don't want to use the crappy online weblog editors that I'm using to write this. We want feature rich content publishing MACHINES like Microsoft Word, Apple's Garageband or even Adobe's Premier. I'm currently typing this post into Blogware using a tiny little window, no spell-checker and the very strong chance that I'm going to click the wrong button and accidentally lose my post before I save it. This isn't a problem with Blogware, this is a problem with The Browser.
Wouldn't it be cool if you didn't have to use The Browser to post stuff to your weblog? Wouldn't it be better if your existing applications just talked to Blogware?
I'm very much looking forward to seeing blog support in the Office Productivity Black Hole (or whatever Lee calls it!). I just hope Microsoft does the right thing for once.
See this post as it first appeared on Blogware.
4 comments
Comments are closed - these are kept exactly as they were left.
Tris Hussey, February 9, 2005
Psst....Qumana (even the LE version) has spell check and you can save your posts for later. ;-).
I agree, though, blogs need to be part of the whole publishing schema. I don't think, though, that our "friends" in Redmond are going to be quick to support all the APIs out there. They might pick one or two and, essentially, tell everyone adapt or die.
Yeah, this might be cynical, but they have that track record already.
VRTourist, February 10, 2005
Hey, I am here to defend my comments. Took a while before I noticed the track back, Ross ;-) I am flattered. But let's get REAL. Do you even think for one nano second that Microsoft would support Blogware or any other similar service? My bet is that if they support blogging it would be the Microsoft way and they will add their unholy extensions to everything in the blogging world. It is the Microsoft way becasue they can and because they have at least 600 million installed base to work from.
You have done a great job with Blogware. But, it has taken too long for new features to be added. You need a bigger team and I am pushing for that. BTW, here is another idea - templates for vertical markets. Blogware needs more templates that are specific for say the education market, the government markets and the enterprise market. Work with someone in these areas and develop some cool templates here.
I am working with a teacher from Philly who was impressed with my blog. I sent her over to Blogharbor to get going. I will first get het started on her personal blog and than educate her on how it could be use for her as a teacher. Blogware needs to work with potential users and tailor the service accordingly.
When you have a 100 million users, maybe than, Microsoft would pay attention. Sorry to pop your bubble, buddy.
Cheers.
Ross, February 10, 2005
Here's the reality Lee -
There are somewhere between 10 and 24 million bloggers (maybe a few more, maybe a few less - who cares, the numbers are substantial).
All but the tiniest minority of these weblogs provide 3rd party tools the capability to hook into them and publish content remotely to the blog from the desktop, handheld or other publishing tool.
This capability is possible because of a standards based API that most weblog tools, including Blogware, have adopted - the metaWeblogAPI. Its sole function is to provide third party tools the capability to post and manage weblog entries remotely.
The code necessary to support this function inside Microsoft Office is trivial. The code necessary to support this function inside *any* desktop publishing tool - text, audio, video, it doesn't matter - is equally trivial. The point is, Microsoft could easily embrace the entire range of weblog publishing tools, Blogware included, if it adopted this tiny little standard inside Office.
And there would be much rejoicing.
As far as the feature and template observations you make, I'd tend to agree. I've forwarded a link to your remarks over to the product management team to make sure they they have a sense of the picture as you see it.
Thanks for the feedback!
-rwr
Ross, February 10, 2005
This could change. They adopted RSS over their own CDF format for instance...