Category: SaaS

RSS, SaaS, Web 2.0

Google Reader updates

Overnight Google added search functionality to Google Reader.

What is amazing is that it took so long for an ostensibly search-related company to add this to the Reader.

Having said that, the search functionality rolled out is extensive allowing searching of individual feeds, all feeds, or by folder lavel.

Google Reader Search

If you don’t see this functionality in your reader account, try logging out and logging back in again.

Another bit of previously available functionality I missed is the ability to collapse the left-hand sidebar with just the keyclick u (as in the image above) and the ability to call up a list of keyboard shortcuts just by clicking ?

Goolge Reader Help

Google Reader is getting better and better. It is now my main reader and has helped me enormously in being more efficient in my feed reading. Google Reader’s only serious competition, Bloglines needs to do something drastic or it will lose out completely to Google.

Microsoft, office 2.0, SaaS

Google's Office 2.0 steps up a gear

Sam Schillace (didn’t he play for Italy in the 1990 world cup?) over at Google has just posted that Google are going to roll out the long predicted Google presentation software application this summer.

This is technology which they bought in via their purchase of Tonic Systems (a San Francisco-based company that provides Java presentation software).

This will be integrated into their Google Docs and Spreadsheets which will now (hopefully not) be renamed Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Presentations!

Google are still playing down the obvious Microsoft Office comparison and to a large extent they are correct, these applications are light on functionality yet. The operative word here, though is ‘yet’.

The massive advantage of applications delivered over the web is that they can be updated centrally on the server and everyone using them, automatically benefits from the new functionality. No missing driver issues, no installation woes, it just works.

To the guys at Microsoft. I have been telling you for a long time now that this was going to happen. You need to release a lightweight version of Microsoft Office on the web, for free, with an easy upgrade path to a downloadable paid-for full featured version.

Ignore this much longer and Google are going to start eating in to your Office market share.

SaaS, Web 2.0

BT get a clue?

Dennis Howlett has two interesting articles today on BT! Think about that for a sec. If you are Irish and you saw someone say that there were two interesting articles on Eircom you’d have to sit down for a while you’d be laughing so hard.

Dennis’ two articles are about a new SaaS offering from BT called BT Workspace. No, seriously!

As Dennis said:

BT Workspace is an all-in-one-eat-all-you-like offering that provides a number of the tools SMBs need to collaborate with others in their business ecosystems. It is a first of a kind service from a major telco in the UK and represents an important milestone in the creation of business infrastructure services.

Now there are qualifications – it is not hugely innovative, it is missing large swathes of functionality, but with someone like BT pushing this they can make SaaS mainstream in the UK in no time flat.

Dennis tells me there is more in the pipeline, watch this space.