Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing

The end of the mouse...and keyboard

The end of the mouse is near says MG Siegler of Techcrunch...and I say the keyboard too. Computer interfaces change every 20 years or so. First there were toggle switches to "program" computers, then IBM innovated with punchcards. Keyboards came along later. Then Xerox PARC invented the mouse, which Apple commercialized. The mouse and keyboard have been the state of the art for about 30 years. That is changing before our eyes.

Laptops with touchpads have eliminated the mouse for many computer users. I haven't used a desktop computer since 1999. Most laptops today come with a touchpad or tracking ball or nipple. The mouse is already a thing of the past for the current generation of computer users.

 Swype is making the keyboard go away too. Most phones, tablet computers, and even some laptops now come with touch sensitive screens with virtual on screen keyboards. Swype allows you to "swype" or trace words on the screen rather than peck at each letter to form a word. In the graphic at left a user is spelling "quick". Note how you just trace over the letters without lifting your finger to spell q-u-i-c-k. When you lift your finger at the end Swype knows that is the end of a word. It is revolutionary...and spells the end to old style keyboards.

Will the desktop computer die too? - In the not too distant future I believe your phone will be your primary computer. For many people it already is. My Android phone has a 1 Ghz processor, 32G of storage, a touch screen, an 8 Megapixel camera, GPS with voice directions, and access to all the applications I use everyday. I can get by for days without my laptop.

In the future you will walk into your office, home, hotel, or public building and simply dock your phone to a large touch sensitive screen. All your applications and data will be accessible from your phone, and displayed on the large screen. You can decide to keep some applications and data resident on the phone and others will be in the cloud. The cloud will keep an up to date copy of all your apps and data synced so if you lose your phone or it crashes...no problem. Your data on the phone will have security and encryption so that data loss is not a problem.

The laptop signaled the end of the mouse. The iPhone and Android signal the end of the desktop. Swype signals the end of the keyboard. Just to prove the point, I wrote this post on my Android phone using Swype. No mouse or keyboard. The future is here. 

PS. I did need to go back to my laptop to insert the picture of the Swype virtual keyboard. There is probably a way to do that from my phone but I haven't bothered to figure it out. I also needed to use my laptop to change the color of the font on the "Subscribe" text below. Other than that...all done on my Android based HTC Incredible phone with Swype.

UPDATE: Just to show you that I am hopelessly out of touch with the mainstream...I did a search for "mouse wikipedia" to get the link for background info on the mouse. I was astonished that the first link went to a page with a rodent...a real mouse. The second link was to the wikipedia page for the "computer" mouse. OK, I feel normal now :-)

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MSFT earnings up, stock down. What do investors want?

Microsoft reported record revenues and profits for the quarter and fiscal year. Yet, the stock (MSFT) is down again. What does Wall Street want from Microsoft? I think the problem is that Microsoft still considers itself a growth company, while Wall Street considers it a Blue Chip stock that should pay a higher dividend. Take a look at this 5 year graph of MSFT. The stock price is just about exactly where it was 5 years ago.

Now look at Microsoft financial results five years ago. They had revenues of $39.8 Billion, Net Income of $12.2B, and Earnings Per Share of $1.12. They had $37.7B in cash. For 2010 Microsoft reported revenues of $62.5B, Net Income of $18.8B, and EPS of $2.10, with $36.8B in the bank. Revenues and earnings are up about 50%, and earnings per share are up nearly 100% due to stock buy-backs. Those are impressive increases across the board, yet the stock price hasn’t moved. Why?

Wall Street prices stocks based on future potential, not past results. High growth stocks typically sell for 25 to 35 times earnings. Microsoft has a price to earnings ratio (P/E) of just 13.7, very low for a leading technology stock. By comparison, Apple (AAPL) sells for 22 times earnings. Therein lies the problem. Comparisons.

Investors have many choices in where to put their money. Comparing Apple to Microsoft in terms of future growth prospects, product pipeline, and most importantly, pricing power, Apple wins. Microsoft is a consistent power house, growing revenues and earnings every quarter, but not enough to satisfy the growth needs of investors.

Wall Street views Microsoft more like IBM, a stable Blue Chip stock with a nice dividend. IBM’s P/E is 12 versus MSFT’s 13.7. IBM’s dividend yield is 2.0% identical to MSFT’s 2.0% yield. Wall Street came to the conclusion that Microsoft is a Blue Chip ten years ago. This chart of the past 24 years tells the story. Microsoft was a growth stock from 1986 to 2000. But, the past 10 years it has flat lined.

Maybe Microsoft should accept Wall Street’s conclusion that it is really a Blue Chip stock and stop acting like it is a growth stock. Maybe they should listen to Mini-Microsoft and cut expenses significantly, focus their product development efforts, and increase their dividend.

Blunders like the Microsoft Kin phone that cost them $500M, and billions more poured into Bing search efforts, don’t contribute to growth or profits. Billions more spent on acquisitions that didn’t work out are another big drain on cash and profits. Microsoft doesn’t need to do anything fancy. Imagine what the financial results would be if they stripped away all the needless spending in pursuit of elusive growth. Imagine how much cash they would have available to pay dividends to investors if they didn’t keep spending billions on questionable acquisitions. Microsoft spends billions every year on pure research in labs all over the world. It is hard to trace any of that spending to commensurate revenue increases.

Microsoft must continue to invest for the future, and they will. R&D spending was $8.7 Billion last year. That is more than every startup in the world combined, and most software companies of any kind too. The questions are, what is the right amount to spend on R&D, and where to spend it.

Wall Street gives Microsoft no respect. Investors don't seem to agree with MSFT's spending decisions. You would think that sooner or later strong consistent earnings performance would win them over...and be rewarded. But, the stock has flat lined for 10 years. Very frustrating.

Wall Street has concluded that MSFT is a Blue Chip, and hasn’t changed its mind in 10 years. Microsoft is still investing and acting like it is a growth company. Something has got to change. Don’t bet on Wall Street changing. Your move Microsoft.

Disclosure: I don’t own any Microsoft stock. I sold it all last year. However, I do wish the best for all Microsoft employees and shareholders.

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Put your business infrastructure in the Cloud with Google Apps Marketplace

Moving to the Cloud is a multi-step process. Gmail is the easy first step.  Email is the core communication mode for every business and school.  Tens of millions of users at more than two million businesses and thousands of schools rely on Gmail and Google Apps.  These organizations have taken the first step to Gmail and Calendar, and have moved to next step, using Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations and Google Sites.  Now they always have the latest version of the software because it is automatically upgraded on the server. No more need to email copies of documents, worry about version control, or struggle with reconciling edits and updates from coworkers.

Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sites and all Google Apps were designed as cloud-based services from day one.  Google’s web-centric approach allows any application to work seamlessly on any device with a browser, allowing users to work when, where, and how they want. No more need for constant upgrades, security patches and bug fixes required by client based software.

Many software companies agree the web-centric approach is the way to go and are building their new applications on modern web-based architectures and open standards. Google uses open, standards-based APIs like OpenID for Single Sign-On and OAuth for data access.  Many of the protocols used by the APIs in Google’s stack have been designed by the open community.  This means many developers already have the necessary skills to integrate with Google Apps, and customers have more choice, and seamless integration with Google Apps.

Developers can build their applications using any technologies and hosting platform of their choice.  Want to build using Java?  Great.  Ruby or PHP?  Fine with us.  .NET?  Sure, we do that too.  We're also agnostic as to where developers host their applications – they can be hosted on developers’ own servers, on Amazon EC2, on Google’s App Engine, or on another cloud hosting service.  No need to worry about proprietary tools, vendor lock-in, or proprietary cloud architecture lock-in.

Today businesses and educational institutions can build their entire business infrastructure on cloud-based apps from hundreds of software companies available on Google Apps Marketplace. We are an open marketplace so you can even find apps that compete directly with Google products such as SlideRocket presentations and Zoho CRM, giving customers more choice.

Cloud-Based Business Apps - The next step in moving to the Cloud is adopting business infrastructure apps. Hundreds of independent software vendors (ISVs) have built cloud-based business applications that integrate with Gmail and Google Apps. Now you can run your whole business on modern cloud-based applications, and enjoy seamless integration with Google Apps.

Here is a small sample of business applications available on Google Apps Marketplace.

Accounting / CRM
FreshBooks is the leader in online billing and bookkeeping.  Send, track and collect payments quickly. Great for teams, freelancers, and subscription services.

Intuit Online Payroll  Run payroll anywhere you can sign in to Google Apps.  Access payroll or paychecks from Google calenders.  Print checks, pay taxes, E-File, and get free help.

MyERP  An online business suite that includes CRM, Sales, Accounting, Projects, Purchasing and Inventory.  Fully integrated with Google Apps, Gmail and Calendar.

Concur Breeze is designed specifically to help small businesses take the hassle out of expense reporting, allowing your employees to spend more time making your business successful.

Project Management
Smartsheet - online project management tool takes an easy-to-use spreadsheet to the next level with features such as a Gantt chart, collapsible sub-tasks, and attachments and discussions on any row.

Manymoon  Team collaboration application for Google Apps.  Attach Google Docs to tasks, projects and events.  Add project information to shared Google Calendars.

Insightly  Track leads, proposals, opportunities, projects and manage files, all through an easy to use interface.

Scheduling / Booking
Tungle.me  A scheduling application which lets business people publish availability, accept appointment requests, and plan meetings – making scheduling meetings easy.

Checkfront  A powerful booking platform that allows businesses to manage their inventories online, centralize reservations, and process payments.

Timebridge Meeting Manager  TimeBridge helps you quickly find a time to meet, conduct a phone or web conference, and more.

Sales & Marketing
MailChimp  Make it easy to send email newsletters to your customers, manage your subscriber lists, and track campaign performance.

SurveyMonkey  Powerful, yet simple survey creation.  Fast & flexible response gathering.  Intelligent reporting and analysis.

ExpressPlanner  Robust event and registration management solutions for organizations that hold many events per year.

Workflow
RunMyProcess  State of the art work-flow, business process and integration capabilities to Google Apps.  Design, connect, deploy and measure day-to-day or complex work-flows within days.

Cordys Process Factory  Create work-flows, automate business processes, build situational and mash-up applications – all in a rapid and cost effective way with zero coding.

Everything You Need To Run Your Business – There are hundreds more business applications available on the Google Apps Marketplace.  Find Admin Tools, Document Management apps, Business ProductivitySecurity & Compliance apps, and many more.

Every week more business apps are added to the Google Apps Marketplace.  If you can’t find an app you want please send us a suggestion.

My group at Google created this B2B business apps marketplace a few months ago. We think many business applications are moving to the Cloud, and we want to connect our users to these business app developers. If you would like to add your business application to the Marketplace, see this site for more information. Leave a comment or send me an email if you need some help.

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How did your name get on a Facebook ad?

. How did your name get on a Facebook advertisement? When you click on the Facebook "Like" button you could be agreeing to have your name associated with an ad from that company. The Wall Street Journal reportsthat Facebook is using the "selling power of friendship" in its ads. Unless you specifically opt out in Facebook's complicated privacy settings you could be seeing your name appear in ads seen by your friends.

The screenshot on the right is an advertisement that appeared on the right side bar of my Facebook page. I don't normally look at those things but the WSJ story prompted me to check it our. Sure enough, there is the name of one of my friends embedded in one of the Facebook ads. Click on that innocent looking "Like" button and your name could appear on the ad too.

Check your Facebook privacy settings - Hmmm...now I am curious about my privacy settings, especially with respect to advertising. I don't recall ever specifically making selections on these settings so perhaps the default setting is to share with "only my friends". The other option is share with "no one"...which is my new setting.

What is a platform ad? - The Facebook privacy settings get confusing pretty quickly. You need to navigate through several layers of menus and tabs to get to the right place. For advertising related privacy click on "Account" in the upper right hand corner of your Facebook Home Page. Then click on "Account Settings". Then click on the last tab "Facebook Ads". This takes you to a page that looks like this;

I had never seen the privacy settings for Facebook ads, and I'm not sure how it was set to allow my name to be used in ads seen by "only my friends", but that got fixed today...I think. I changed it to "no one". But then I scrolled further down the page and ran into another setting for "my social actions in Facebook ads". Huh? Wait a minute. What is the difference between showing my name on "ads on platform pages" and showing my "social actions"? I assume clicking on a "Like" button is a social action? Here is the privacy dialog for that setting

Once again, I changed this setting to "no one". It never occurred to me that by clicking on a Facebook "Like" button that I was implicitly agreeing to have my name associated with an advertisement for that organization.

Privacy is complicated - Privacy means different things to different people. In establishing privacy policies companies make assumptions about what people know and the behavior they expect. These assumptions can be perfectly reasonable for some people, and a total surprise to others. Finding that balance and clearly communicating the implications of a policy is very difficult.

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