The company introduced version 2.8 of AbiWord together with the AbiCollab Web-based collaboration platform, enabling real-time document editing, online document storage and document sharing. It also converts documents from major document formats like Word.

The organization notes on its Web site:

Our source code is carefully written so that AbiWord will run on virtually any operating system with a minimum of time spent on porting. This combined with our support for internationalization (the ability to run AbiWord in many languages) gives AbiWord a massive potential user-base… Currently we run on most UNIX systems, Windows 95 and later, QNX Neutrino 6.2. We also have a MacOS X native port available.

The application and collaboration suite will be increasingly attractive to large organizations (like the city of Los Angeles) looking to get away from the aggressively-priced Microsoft Office suite but uninspired by existing alternatives like Google Apps (which Los Angeles did pick). That said, the lack of spreadsheet and presentation software is a serious drawback.

NetSuite follows in the footsteps of Salesforce.com and CODA, which have also recently introduced cloud-based ERP suites for the burgeoning services sector.

NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson, who rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, explained that services companies needed a product tailored specifically to their needs, as opposed to customizing a product that had been originally created for manufacturing companies. “There are very different processes for companies that sell things, as opposed to companies that sell time,” he said.

Nelson said that the new SaaS service, NetSuite OneWorld SRP, gives global services businesses comprehensive real-time visibility, integrated financials, resource optimization and services management from corporate, to subsidiaries, down to the individual project level across geographies, currencies, and tax jurisdictions.

The product includes automated multi-currency management, built-in support for international tax and compliance, and revenue recognition management. The application also includes global dashboards and reports that combine financial and operational project drivers (such as utilization, profitability) for projects, subsidiaries, geographies and at the corporate level.

But as opposed to tracking a piece of inventory as a traditional ERP application would do, the SRP application can track employees, projects, time and other elements of a services-oriented business.

Nelson demonstrated the different views of the same order seen by a company’s CEO and by a sales representative, as well as an iPhone app with reports redesigned to make the best use of the iPhone’s rectangular form factor and flick technology for moving from one report to the next.

The new service is the result of a joint effort between NetSuite and Open Air, a project management software vendor that NetSuite acquired in 2008. Both existing Open Air and NetSuite customers can log on to the new service using a single sign-on, Nelson said.

But that was never in Google’s plans. Google looked at the wireless market from an objective distance and saw what is obvious to everyone: the carriers make money — and generate their highest margins — with services, not devices. And they charge ridiculous amounts for simple stuff like call forwarding, while being unable to provide truly useful services like speech-to-text. And no matter how much money consumers spend, they still can’t control the length of the messages they record or what the whole experience is as callers.

Now Google has gone and fixed all that with Google Voice. The most recent twist is that customers can keep their current phone number and still get many of the services provided by Google Voice, including:

•    Online, searchable voicemail
•    Free automated voicemail transcription
•    Custom voicemail greetings for different callers
•    Email and SMS notifications
•    Low-priced international calling

Customers who pick a new Google number get these features too:

•    One number that reaches you on all your phones
•    SMS via email
•    Call screening
•    Listen In
•    Call recording
•    Conference calling
•    Call blocking

Cost? It’s free.

And as Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, is fond of saying, “It’s tough to compete with free.”

Google Voice is still a tiny smear on the windshield of the carriers’ revenue dashboard, but as it spreads beyond enthusiasts to the public at large, the carriers will be hard-pressed to continue charging for basic services when they can’t even match what Google offers.

It’s no wonder AT&T asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Google — and while Google isn’t a carrier and thus shouldn’t be subject to the same regulations as the telcos are, Google is taking advantage of a loophole lawmakers never considered; that with the convergence of IP and traditional telephony, you don’t have to own pipes to provide telecommunications services.

The answer for the telcos isn’t regulatory relief, however. It’s thinking about their customers. If they’d been doing that to begin with, Google wouldn’t have been able to swoop in with a better service that’s free to boot.

And while it’s free, it’s still a huge win for Google. Why? Because while one side of Google is busy organizing all the world’s information, the other side is busy getting the whole world online as often as possible, for as long as possible. Google’s main business is and always will be paid search ads. It’s proven itself smart enough to not try to shove ads at customers every which way — the company really does think about customers first — so, to compensate for that restraint, has made it its mission to keep customers online as much as possible.

Google Voice is another way to do that. And it’s sucking the highest-margin business right out from under the carriers.

Android, iPhone Ad Update

My favorite new attack ad on TV these days is the one from Google’s Android featuring the catchy MoZella tune, “Magic (Oh Oh Oh),” as a background, and a wonky list of features that the ‘iDon’t” doesn’t.

There’s also the semi-deceptive “There’s a map for that” ad from Verizon Wireless that uses iPhone’s “there’s an app for that” marketing slogan to chide AT&T (the exclusive wireless carrier for the iPhone) for poor service in many parts of the country.

Not to mention the cringe-worthy Microsoft ads featuring self-styled “tech-savvy” consumers who pick a PC over a Mac because they want to pay for computing power rather than branding.

I’m all for being entertained, and I have to admit the iDroid ad gets me on a number of levels (especially the MoZella level), but I wonder how many iPhone users worry about the app store’s development platform. And that’s what ultimately worries me; that the tech vendors are more concerned with their rivals than their customers.

Since it’s the baseball playoffs, we not not only get the tech ads, we get the car ads (along with the Howie Long smirk): two industries seemingly headed in opposite directions. I say seemingly because I worry when all someone has to say is how much worse their rival is. When a company starts denigrating the competition, it usually means it’s run out of ways to beat its rivals with actual product or service improvements.

I do realize that attack ads are also a way of highlighting differences and informing consumers of the merits of one brand when compared to another. But what starts out as a good strategy inevitably gets distorted by clever ad agency nabobs, and you end up with ads that make fun of the manliness of Ford owners or the flightiness of Mac owners.

What you see in many cases is that attack ads become a substitute for actual innovation or attention to customer needs. Sometimes, like with the car industry and Microsoft, the attack ad is the last refuge of the lame; in other cases, however, the ads can create a false sense of superiority within the corporate culture. Android is just getting started, so I doubt the ad is a reflection of incipient lameness. But just so the folks at Google don’t start down the wrong path: consumers don’t fall for Magic, they fall in love with good products. In other words, don’t get high off your own snark.

And kudos to the dude who trashes Howie Long’s misogynist ad with this video:

Somewhere in June, however, Twitter stopped growing, at least according to Compete. The same thing happened to Facebook at the exact same time; at first we’ve attributed the traffic numbers to the summer slumber, but now that Compete’s numbers for September are out, there’s no doubt that both Facebook and Twitter are no longer growing, at least in the eyes of the (admittedly US-centric) Compete.

Big deal? Maybe not for Facebook, which, as Schroeder notes, is already pretty huge. Maturity happens.

Twitter, though, is another story. It has cracked the national consciousness in a big way, but  not yet in a good way, necessarily. You could even argue that the Twitter backlash today is stronger and more rooted in reality than the Twitter backlash of early 2009.

Twitter used to be fairly misunderstood as a way for people to tell their friends what they had for breakfast. Now they understand that it’s also a way for Miley Cyrus to get too much attention, Jim DeMint to destroy his mainstream credibility and Antonio Cromartie to complain about the food at Chargers’ training camp.

You’d think this is a good thing, but it’s not. People like to lurk and stalk their favorite celebrities at a safe distance, but it doesn’t mean they want to emulate their every pratfall and disgrace. And while Twitter allows zealots to echo the quips of their political heroes, most of us are simply more and more turned off and tuned out to the ravings of the lunatic fringe.

Companies are just now beginning to understand the value of social media (like Twitter) as a way of listening to and communicating with their customers, and that too is leading savvy consumers to keep away from yet another corporate listening post. The same may not hold true for Facebook, but maybe that’s because Facebook really is a way to communicate with friends meaningfully.

With Facebook, my status update hangs around a bit; I see comments to the comments I make to my friends’ status updates; I can play games, and chat. Twitter doesn’t have those features. Shouting may be getting old. Anyway let’s hope so.

[Image source: Photo by luc legay via Flickr]

Calling themselves the Enterprise Advocates, the self-styled software superheroes describe themselves as

a highly visible group of like minded people who ‘bat’ for the buyer side in the buyer-vendor relationship [and] draw on more than 100 years combined experience, backgrounds as diverse as Gartner, Forrester, PwC, Deloitte and Sony Playstation.

The self-styled defenders of the helpless include former Forrester analyst Ray Wang, former PwC and Gartner analyst Vinnie Mirchandani, as well as independent consultants Oliver Marks, Dennis Howlett and Frank Scavo, and plan to blog on behalf of beleaguered enterprise IT folks everywhere, hoping that their combined voices will have more power than if they go it alone.

Most of these guys have their eyes on traditional enterprise software vendors like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft – and, most notably, their onerous maintenance contracts – but Scavo also keeps an eagle eye on software-as-a-service vendors like Salesforce.com, which boasts that it offers more cost-effective services thanks to its multi-tenant architecture (which means the cost of developing a single instance of the application can be shared by all customers).

But even while SaaS vendors depend on keeping customers happy because they’re selling an ongoing subscription rather than a hunk of software for a lot of upfront cash, customers need to deal with occasional service outages, maintenance windows and complex integration issues. That’s where Scavo plays a role, as he says, “Just cuz you’re SaaS doesn’t mean you get a pass!”

In other words, denizens of the multi-tenant software world get their association lawyer.

[Image source: Photo by kevindooley via Flickr]

Salesforce.com and Cisco unveiled a partnership around call center technology that should help Cisco learn how to sell to smaller companies while providing Salesforce with a telephony application to complement its online software.

Salesforce, which last year introduced its customer service application, is now piling on new features, including the ability to embed comments on Facebook to an on-line knowledge base that can be used by customer service agents to respond to customer help requests, and a way to intercept and deal with customer queries on Google, Facebook and Twitter.

This new partnership with Cisco means customer service agents can also answer phone calls through their Salesforce.com application, which at the very least reduces the number of applications those agents have to juggle simultaneously.

The irony is that partnership represents a bigger step for Cisco than it does for Salesforce; it’s just a bell (not a whistle) for the Salesforce application, but representative of a big step forward for Cisco, a name more familiar to stock brokers and data center administrators than to line of business managers and call center agents. But as with its acquisition of video conferencing giant Tandberg last week, Cisco is desperately trying to make inroads into what it sees as an extremely lucrative communications market.

The Tandberg deal (and the acquisition of consumer video gadget Flip) helps Cisco fill holes in its product line-up, but the tie-up with Salesforce.com will give it more brand recognition among the general business public.

Customers will be buying the call center application from joint Salesforce-Cisco sales teams, who will split the $250 per user/per month revenue down the middle. The pairing of sales reps from the two companies is also sure to help the traditionally enterprise-focused Cisco learn a lot about selling to smaller businesses.

[Image source: Vlima.com via Flickr]

According to the survey, which was commissioned by eBay, “Three in four U.S. adults (75%) said they prefer to buy or sell items from a Web site that does not host erotic ads or adult services, and more than half (53%) of consumers said they would prefer that a family member use a site without such listings.”

Not surprisingly, the results are completely spurious, as they were ginned up by the way the questions were asked. Kijiji’s spokeswoman was kind enough to send me the questions, and I’m posting them so you can judge for yourself:

1.         Which of the following have ever kept you from using classified-ad websites like Craigslist?  Say “yes” to all those that apply.

1)       Classified ads that have adult content
2)       Someone might use my email address for spam
3)       Classified ads may be misleading or fraudulent
4)       Fear of getting a computer virus
5)       None of the above
6)       I don’t use these sites

2.         Are you more or less likely to use a classified-ad website to buy or sell something if you know this website also has erotic ads or adult services?

1)       Much more likely
2)       Somewhat more likely
3)       Somewhat less likely
4)       Much less likely
3.         Would you be concerned about a family member posting an ordinary item for sale on a classified-ad website that also has erotic ads or adult services?

1)       Yes – definitely
2)       Yes – probably
3)       No – probably not
4)       No – definitely not

Now here are my questions:

1) Which of the following would keep you from buying stuff on eBay?

1) The awful PayPal user experience.

2) The fact that eBay now treats buyers and sellers with equal contempt.

3) The fact that eBay gives increasing preference to the “Buy Now” option.

4) The fact that eBay engages in unethical behavior towards competitors by commissioning slanted polls.

The reality of Craigslist’s success belies those poll results. Nearly 50 million U.S. residents use Craigslist, which publishes more than 50 million new classified ads each month, spanning local sites for over 700 cities and 70 countries.

Kijiji claims to have local sites in more than a thousand cities, with over 220 in the U.S. alone, but gets just 7 million unique visitors per month and some 400,000 new ads. Compare the results of the two sites and you’ll see just how meager Kijiji’s marketplace really is — here is Kijiji’s marketplace for books in New York City (253 books for sale at the time of writing), and here’s the same for Craigslist (over 600 current listings).

And here’s the kicker: Craigslist saw a 12 percent increase in search queries from April to May of this year, while eBay experienced a 3 percent drop in search queries during the same period.

If you’re wondering why eBay is taking dead aim at Craigslist when it’s so clearly eating the market leader’s dust, it has to do with the history of acrimony between the two companies that began when eBay bought 28 percent of Craigslist in 2004, took a seat at Craigslist’s board of directors, and then launched a competing site.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster responded by reorganizing the company’s structure, leading to suits and counter-suits.

And if you’re wondering what Kijiji means, it’s “village” in Swahili. There’s another word in Swahili that the folks at eBay should learn, and it’s adabu. It means civility. As in, “those folks at eBay kijiji don’t got no adabu.”

[Image source: Photo by t-bet via Flickr]

• it has launched Data.gov as a one-stop shop for all federal data;
• testing authentication using OpenID that could allow greater interactivity for individuals on government sites;
• created a Web portal to be used by federal agencies when buying (or renting) applications; and
• created a Web site that allows citizens to see how tax dollars are spent.

That’s not an exclusive list by any means, but it gives you an idea of the kinds of initiatives undertaken by the Obama-led Feds in an effort to provide the governed with greater transparency into the actions of its elected leaders (and unelected bureaucrats).

Maybe more important than any of those single items is the fact that Obama has created the positions of chief technology officer and chief information officer so that the government begin to achieve the kind of efficiency and transparency characteristic of leading private sector companies.

As the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker noted:

Since entering office, Obama and his advisers have tried to use technology to help streamline bureaucracy and make government programs more consumer-friendly.

The administration is even encouraging the use of so-called cloud computing, which is less expensive to administer than software run in-house, and is often more efficient because the applications can be accessed from any computer.

Hutchinson, along with a cabal of other GOP senators, has introduced an amendment to an appropriations bill that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from enforcing regulations ensuring that AT&T, Verizon and others abide by net neutrality regulations that they’ve already said they would never violate (except when they really, really have to. Like here. And here).

Newly appointed FCC chairman Julius Genachowsi today announced, to the surprise of no one, that Internet service providers would not be allowed to discriminate on the basis of content or allow some content providers to pay for faster speeds.

Under the proposal… network operators would be prohibited from discriminating against the type of data traveling through their systems and would have to be clear about how they manage their networks.

AT&T, Verizon, and industry lobbies like the CTIA issued Chicken Little-like statements condemning the idea. It’s their pipes and they should be allowed to do exactly what they please. Innovation! Innovation! Innovation!

Never mind that AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are doing precious little innovating (unless creating special interest entities to offshore taxable income falls under the banner of innovation), and that most innovation is done by the likes of Skydeck, which the incumbent carriers are holding off with their unfair rules.

And never mind that American tax dollars were used to pay for the infrastructure to begin with, or that their pipes occupy public lands and ways. The proposed rules are an outrage!

This, my friends, is really great news. Competence has replaced privilege as the requirement for serving in government, public service has replaced greed as the prime motive for taking a government position, and Hutchinson and her ilk can’t do a thing about it.

Hurrah for business as unusual.

[Image source: Photo by jurvetson via Flickr]