Scott McMullan

The Integrated Web is Coming — Are You Ready?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 20:56:00 +0000

I wrote this guest post for Talkin' Cloud this week: http://www.talkincloud.com/the-integrated-web-is-coming-are-you-ready/. Cross-posting here.

The web is the platform. Consuming and sharing information with a browser and standard protocols has fundamentally changed the way work gets done in both large and small businesses. Today smaller businesses are growing up without servers, and larger businesses are using more browser applications — both SaaS and custom — than ever before.

One thing hasn’t changed however: business customers want their apps to work together. They want to streamline processes and improve data sharing and integrity.

But just because web apps run in tabs in a single browser doesn’t mean they work together. So customers continue to bear the burden of integrating their apps. And cost and complexity associated with integration can be a real challenge, particularly for smaller businesses.

Fortunately that’s changing.

Notes to Move

It’s happening slowly, but a growing number of vendors and organizations are working together to reduce the need for customers to do their own integration. Vendors are taking advantage of the web’s principles of open data APIs and open protocols like OpenID and OAuth to deliver integration as a product feature. For example:

The Small Business Web is a group of 170+ SaaS vendors working together to leverage open APIs and the web platform to deliver pre-built integrations.
Web application marketplaces like the Intuit App Center, Salesforce App Exchange or the Google Apps Marketplace provide both distribution and integration platforms used by thousands of apps reaching millions of businesses.
Web integration vendors like Snaplogic and OneSaas are enabling the creation and distribution of pre-built integrations as a service.

Partner Opportunities

Where does this leave MSPs and VARs, who have traditionally delivered and managed complete IT solutions for customers?
In a great position to help customers take advantage of the web platform. Here are four ways MSPs can take advantage of the coming integrated web:

With many of the “obvious” integrations handled by vendors, MSPs can take advantage of that same web platform and those same open APIs and protocols to build out even higher-value integrations, and do it more quickly than previously possible.
Pull together pre-built integrations of web apps from multiple vendors to deliver and manage custom solutions. For example, by delivering integrated email, CRM, and project management, your customers can move more of their business to the web and you can provide the necessary vendor management and business process consulting to ensure their success.
Deliver powerful customization with ease by taking advantage of modern web development tools like Javascript, Python, and Ruby, PaaS hosting environments like Heroku, Google App Engine and Azure, and rich application-level APIs.
Distribute and monetize apps and integrations in Web application marketplaces, taking advantage of the lower cost of sales and marketing and the lower operational costs that PaaS and IaaS offers.

The shift to the web as the platform is not without challenges for MSPs and VARs, but this major shift also brings major opportunities.

Just noticed...am now at 2000 Twitter Followers. Thx folks for listening/tolerating!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 20:27:00 +0000

Back from Typepad...

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 08:24:00 +0000

Back in 2004 -- when I used to actually blog -- I moved my writing from this Blogger blog to http://scottmcmullan.typepad.com.

Well, after many years of not posting anything on Typepad, I'm back on Blogger.

I'll try a mixture of mobile photo blogging and other barely > 140 character posts. Let's see how this goes...

On a walk

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 01:16:00 +0000

links for 2010-03-09

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:07:00 +0000

Official Google Enterprise Blog: More great apps for Google Apps

The Google Apps Marketplace is an online storefront where Google Apps customers can discover, purchase and deploy integrated business applications and related professional services.

links for 2008-04-11

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:36:00 +0000

Official Google Enterprise Blog: A Little Help for our Friends

New Marketplace for 3rd party products and services that work with Google products and APIs

(tags: isv marketing community microisv)

links for 2008-01-04

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:24:00 +0000

Eight reasons SaaS will surge in 2008

Interesting take of what's driving ISVs to SaaS

(tags: saas isv)
DataPortability.org - Share and remix data using open standards

Site promoting standardized data portability. "As users, our identity, photos, videos and other forms of personal data should be discoverable by, and shared between our chosen tools or vendors."

(tags: xml socialsoftware microformats opensource opendata)

links for 2007-12-30

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 16:20:00 +0000

Good "notes to self and team" for startups or bottom-up style teams

(tags: startup entrepreneurship)

Yay! I'm a structured procrastinator

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:12:00 +0000

The fact that I just ran across John Perry's essay on Structured Procrastination (via pmarca), 12 years after it was first posted, proves there are still big opportunities ahead in search, collaborative filtering, and recommendation systems.

John's essay explains my daily existence, and how to turn a "bad habit" into an effective strategy:

"This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an
amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into
effective human beings... The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing
absolutely nothing...the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and
important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing
something more important. Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact."

It's short and concise -- definitely worth a read if you're not 100% satisfied with your ability to get things done.

links for 2006-12-15

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:49:00 +0000

Patty Seybold - Google: The Camel's Nose in Business Software?

PREDICTION #1: Fast Adoption of “Google Apps for Your Domain” by Small Businesses

PREDICTION #2: Google Apps for Your Domain Becomes a Defacto Collaborative Platform for Cross-Organizational Teams

PREDICTION #3: Google Becomes the Winning Platform for customer-Led Innovation in Business Application Development

(tags: google googleapps gmail gadgets portals collaboration)

links for 2006-11-17

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:38:00 +0000

Amazon Rolls Out its Visionary WebOS Strategy

"WebOS services are going to be utilized by thousands of companies - and will power the next generation of web applications."

(tags: webapps2.0 webos)

links for 2006-11-04

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 16:43:00 +0000

Zopa (UK) - The first lending and borrowing exchange

Zopa is the first marketplace for lending and borrowing. Trustworthy people lend money directly to other trustworthy people – and by dealing with each other, rather than banks, they've formed a community of savvy, like-minded individuals.

(tags: microfinance)

links for 2006-11-03

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:41:00 +0000

Web office is about collaboration

"So, where don't Word and Excel compete well today? The very place that online tools shine: collaboration. Microsoft would like you to believe that that's why your enterprise needs SharePoint, but that's just another form of lock in and ignores that fact

(tags: office2.0 collaboration)
6 Technical Barriers for Office 2.0

Offline Usage, Single Sign-On, Data Ownership and Privacy, Data Synchronization, Ease of Migration, Fragility of Aggregated Services

(tags: office2.0 collaboration saas)

links for 2006-11-01

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 16:38:00 +0000

Google has acquired JotSpot

We announced some big news today...!

(tags: jotspot wiki google)

I'm Now a Googler

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 07:15:00 +0000

We announced some awesome news today: JotSpot has been acquired by Google!!

I can't think of a better way to accelerate our mission here at Jot than to join the amazing resources and people at Google, particularly for JotSpot developers.

links for 2006-10-18

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 17:46:00 +0000

Office 2.0 Not About The Online Spreadsheets -- But The Next Attempt At Situated Software

"One of these days, a company will figure out what that secret killer app is for this space, that makes it so just about anyone can easily understand and appreciate the value of being able to plug together an instant, useful, specialized app."

(tags: situatedsoftware office2.0 webapps2.0)
Homophily in Social Software

"Social software designers first need to decide whether homophily (hang out with people who are like you) is a a feature or a bug... To break homophily, recommend something for reasons other than 'this meshes very tightly with your profile'... Doing th

(tags: socialsoftware)
Flapjax

"Flapjax is a new programming language designed around the demands of modern, client-based Web applications."

(tags: webdev javascript opensource)

links for 2006-10-14

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:30:00 +0000

Office 2.0 Conference Wiki

(tags: office2.0 wiki)
Will Google Office’s solution to the “offline” problem mean trouble for MS-Office?

It's interesting to think about a desktop service, maybe open source, that could be used by ALL web app vendors to solve the offline problem.

(tags: saas office2.0 writely)

links for 2006-10-13

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 17:44:00 +0000

Blog Juice Calculator - Text Link Ads

(tags: blogging)
» Office 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and other numerological mysteries | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

(tags: office2.0)
» Teqlo to let users assemble Web applications | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

(tags: webapps2.0)
Coghead

(tags: webapps2.0)
Zoho Creator - Create Online Database Application in minutes. Build Forms, Collect Data and Manage.

(tags: webapps2.0)
Is salesforce.com’s Apex just another procedural language?

(tags: webapps2.0 apex)
Stowe Boyd - Social Versus Collaborative Tools

(tags: collaboration socialsoftware)
A micro-wiki for micro-ISV’s

(tags: wiki)
Incremental adoption sells SaaS to the enterprise

(tags: saas)
Signal Without Noise--by Guy Kawasaki: Ten Questions with Polly LaBarre

(tags: books)
GigaOM » The Future of Social Networks - Communication

(tags: socialsoftware socialnetworking community)
JungleDisk - Reliable online storage powered by Amazon S3™ - Jungle Disk

(tags: productivity homeoffice backup)
S3, Online Storage & BingoDisk

(tags: productivity backup)
THINK IT Services: Debating the Significance of Dreamforce 2006 on the SaaS Movement

(tags: saas)
Soundflavor

Music mixes from your own collection. Looks great, exept I don't use iTunes...

(tags: music)

Slideshare.net -- YouTube for PowerPoint

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:10:00 +0000

How many times have you heard, "will your slides be made available after the presentation?"

To the rescue comes Slideshare.net, a very slick presentation sharing service that helps folks get their preso word out quickly and easily. It's got tagging, most popular, recently added, and the rest of the stuff we expect in a sharing service. Think YouTube for Powerpoint.

To test it out I uploaded the PPT file I used to create a recent JotSpot developer tutorial. It worked flawlessly -- check it out.

While the original full tutorial includes voice-overs and animation thanks to Articulate presenter (would LOVE to see this capability added to slideshare.net btw), the ease of use and instant gratification of slideshare is very compelling.

BarBar at Zeitgeist

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 14:45:00 +0000

I'm sorry to say we've decided to shut down the Collaboration SIG, barely a year after we kicked it off. While we had some amazing speakers, truly interactive sessions, and healthy turnouts, in the end producing and promoting a monthly event proved more than our collective schedules could handle.

So what to do now? When do we get to go out and shoot the shirt about collaboration?

Eugene and I were talking and and couldn't come up with the answer. But we did decide there was only one way to come up with something: go drinking and figure it out. So we're heading to Zeitgeist this Tuesday (10/3, 7:30p) to enjoy the outdoor patio, various refreshments, and maybe even ... talk about collaboration.

Come join us if you want to hang out and talk shop -- we'll be in the back at a picnic table.

Oh yeah, since we're fans of barcamps and the like, and we will be having an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment that involves drinking, we've decided to call our little activity a BarBar. (And no, we won't be playing the web 2.0 drinking game...)

Hope to see you there.

Fun Times with JotSpot's Solution Partner Program

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 23:07:00 +0000

I'm typically a heads-down, OCDish kind of guy, particularly when it comes to work. Not prone to too much distraction, I often get lost in what I'm doing.

That said, the last handful of months have actually been more heads-down than most. I've resorted to shutting off my aggregator, not going out much if it doesn't involve my family or close friends, and staying up way too late way too often.

So what's up you ask?

I've actually been working heads down with a bunch of awesome folks conceiving an growing the JotSpot Solution Partner program, and man has it been fun. It's been a deep dive in collaboration on all levels, and has me firing on just about every cylinder work-wise. Here's what I mean.

Having Your Cake and Eating it Too

The fun starts with the basic mission of the program:

Partner with 3rd party developers to create custom collaborative software that 1) fits the customer like a glove and 2) can proceed from concept to launch in handfuls of weeks.

The basic actors in this movie are:

JotSpot, an amazing on-demand app platform based on the power of wiki. Jot lets you have your cake (a wiki) and eat it too (extensible dev platform).
JotSpot customers of every variety. They bring their unique vision along w/enough need to justify paying honest dollars to make it happen.
A growing set of JotSpot partners who enjoy the challenge and profit of rapidly turning these customer visions into production software.

Concentric Circles of Entrepreneurism

At my ripe old age I've figured out a few basic ingredients that get me going at work. I'm basically equal parts technology, business, and people, all wrapped up in a tendency to over commit and an unreasonable attraction to challenge.

What's so cool about growing this program is that all three are rocking and rolling full tilt. Everywhere I turn there are little cycles of entrepreneurism happening, and as the program grows they're reproducing and enveoping each other at a rapid rate.

Tech: Jot's kick-booty technology feeds the inner geek by letting us create custom collaborative products from top to bottom, no IT plumbing required.
Business: Every new partner and customer discussion is grounded in the bottom line. We're conceiving, justifying, building, and launching a new product within a 3-way partnerships (Jot + partner + customer), multiple times a month.
People: It's awesome to work with so many different teams at such a fast pace. We go from initial meeting to deployed solution in handfuls of weeks. This dictates a fluid and high communication approach, which of course allows us to eat our own dog food coordinating each project in Jot (more feeding of the geek factor).

So I have to say that overall, the last 6 months have provided a major dose of inspiration, and I feel it growing. Touchy-feely sentiment aside, success is happening for all involved, which bodes well for the future. I really look forward to letting more and more folks in on our little secret.

Collaboration SIG Tonight: Johannes Ernst on Digital Identity

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:31:00 +0000

Johannes Ernst, founder and CEO of NetMesh, is speaking tonight at the Collaboration SIG on user-centric digital identity.

What's that you ask? Well join us tonight (Monday 7/24, 6:30p) at Pillsbury Winthrop in Palo Alto and find out. I've been hearing about digital identity for years but dont really have a clue about the details or implications beyond the headlines. Tonight's our opportunity to get all the goods:

"What is user-centric digital identity, and why does it matter? How will
it affect our ability to collaborate more effectively in better, and
more dynamic environments? What services and features does it provide
that bear on collaboration within and outside of the enterprise?

Johannes Ernst will lead an interactive session describing the overall architecture,
the different technologies and projects, and the different players in
the space. He will describe the problems these technologies are
solving, their current status, and why and how you can get involved. He
will also lead a brainstorming session on the impact of these new
technologies on collaboration."

Hope to see you there.

collaborationsig

April and May and June, Oh My!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 10:13:00 +0000

I lived in San Diego from ‘88 through ‘02 — enduring 15 years of what San Diegans call, “June Gloom.” You know, that depressing month when the sun shines for only 75% of each day’s daylight hours… Sheesh, I never was so spoiled.

SF saw lots of sun and backyard beer drinking for me in June, so no gloom or any such complaints. I pretty much forget what was going on in April and May, but here are a few things I recollect…

Launched JotSpot’s Services and Solution Partner Program. JotSpot is an application wiki, which means it’s a wiki platform meant to be easily extended, customized, and tweaked. Jot customers are increasingly interested in taking advantage of this capability, but some would rather hire than doing it themselves. From this demand and 12 months of under the radar engagements, the professional services and solution partner programs were born.

Saw Sigur Ros. One of my all time favorite bands, Sigur Ros, played in Marin (why Marin?). Another lovely and inspiring show.

Went Camping in Big Basin. We spent a weekend amongst the redwoods with the other sf2020kids group families. Gotta love camping with a small army of kids 3 and under.

Mashpit II. Spent an afternoon at Mashpit II, brainstorming and working on a mockup of Walkapedia, a proposed community site for “user-contributed walking tours.”. My favorite idea from that day was actually the Lovendar project, which is a calendar specifically designed for helping families jive together.

Got acquired by Yahoo. Well, that was the rumor anyway.

JotSpot powers eBay’s wiki. It’s very gratifying to see your product chosen to help eBay help their 193 million strong community say more on the web. Congrats to Scott Johnston and team for a job well done bringing the eBay wiki to life.

BlogHer Collaboration SIG night. Attendees of June’s Collaboration SIG were treated to a great night of learning, open discussion and debate with BlogHer co-founders Elisa, Jory, and Lisa. These three are doing something wonderful with BlogHer, and I thank them for sharing their stories about building a business around a grassroots community of women bloggers. Eugene sums up the evening nicely, and the podcast is here.

Officiated a Wedding. My awesome friends Bart and Claudine had a beautiful wedding day in Big Sur. I was honored to be the officiant.

Planted a tree w/FUF. Who doesn’t love trees? We joined our neighbors and other Friends of the Urban Forest in the mission to bring more greenery to San Francisco. We planted a tree in front of our house and 4 others, contributing to a single day of 79 new street trees. FUF rocks!

Watched Anaconda. These people watched this movie at Jot’s movie night #2. I now see why people say Anaconda was one of the most underrated movies of 1997 — the pairing of a 50 foot snake with an aging Midnight Cowboy was a real winner

Welcomed New Competitors. Competition notched up a bit as WetPaint launched their wiki service and DabbleDB launched their db-apps-on-the-web service. Both look like very nice products — JotSpot welcomes new competition and the visibility and innovation they bring.

Updated JotSpot Spreadsheet. Tracker, Jot’s collaborative spreadsheet app, saw version 2 ship with some killer new features, including improved forumla support and a slicker UI. Lots of spreadsheet on the web and spreadsheet-as-platform conversation lately.

Yep, time flies when you’re having fun. Speaking of San Diego, i’m looking forward to some R&R next week down south for our annual 4th of July family festivities.

Next Collaboration SIG: BlogHer -- From Hierarchy to Community

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:31:00 +0000

The next Collaboration SIG features BlogHer co-founders Elisa Camhort, Jory DesJardins, and Lisa Stone discussing BlogHer community and collaboration practices. In other words, "exploring ways that
organizations can collaborate with and set their organizations on fire,
building engagement and personal investment without descending into
anarchy or creating a pretense of democracy."

Should be a great night, props to my co-chair Patti Wilson for putting this together. Hope to see you next Monday night at 6:30 (June 26th) at Pillsbury Winthrop in Palo Alto.

Tags: collaborationsig, blogher, collaboration

March Madness of the Non-Hoops Variety

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 21:59:00 +0000

March 2006, a month that flashed faster than most weeks used to. Wow. Some random thoughts and happenings from the month that rained.

Windows Live. I’m watching with great interest as Microsoft’s Web 2.0 strategy unfolds. With Bill Gates pimping microformats and prepping Windows Live to expose its massive-scale services as a rich developer platform, things continue to get more interesting.

Sharing Calendars. The never-ending quest for a calendar solution for our family has a temporary home at 30boxes.com. Our main goal is to coordinate my events, as tracked in Upcoming.org, with our family events, as kept by Rebecca on her personal calendar. She’s agreed to use 30boxes because the interface is really intuitive and joyful. I like it because it sucks events directly from my Upcoming page. Our two calendars merged using their nifty overlay feature and the deal is sealed. (At least until I can eval Google’s calendar.)

Webtop Kudos. Speaking of 30boxes, it was nice to see JotSpot in good company on the Business 2.0 “Next 25” list in the Webtop category. Other category picks 30boxes, 37Signals, Writely, and Zimbra all kick booty.

Coworking. The search for a permanent coworking space is making progress here in San Francisco as well as in other cities. What’s coworking? I think of it as your favorite wifi coffeehouse, but with paid membership, more explicit community, and focus on project work and collaboration. I’m really impressed with the efforts of the crew pushing this forward. Check out the Coworking wiki for more info.

JotSpot. I’ve been blogging about tagging and email lists for wikis over at the JotSpot Developer Connection. The combo of tag, email, and event APIs in Jot are incredibly powerful. We’ve barely begun to put these to work. And when Comet goes core — oh man!

microISVs. I’ve been reading some microISV blogs, including microISV and ToDoOrElse. Software companies run by a handful of people fascinate me.

Gmail Archive. All the cool kids are doing it. Now I am too. I push and pull all my email through Gmail for a permanent archive of all Jot, Yahoo, and Gmail correspondance. Thanks for the step-by-step overview Abe.

Snow and Sisters. We went to Tahoe for a long, white weekend, and my sister Jackie came out to visit Vanessa and me in SF. Cool!

Music. Timing was finally right — got to see Arab Strap play at Cafe Du Nord. They’re one of my favorites of the past few years for sure. However I didn’t realize I listened to them so much until I started paying more attention to my long tail of music. Thanks a lot Last.fm, I’m now obsessed with tracking my own listening habits.

windowslive, 30boxes, jotspot, comet, wiki, coworking, microisv, arabstrap, mylongtail