Cannibalizing Office sales??Inevitable...

News about ad supported online version of MS Works has been making rounds on net today,though no official confirmation from Microsoft yet.Why MS Works??Why not Office itself??If it is ad supported,then MS should plan to roll out Word,Excel,Powerpoint online versions with basic functionalities.MS Works basically about home productivity that supports Word,Excel and first released for Mac as desktop application software back in 1985.I use Zoho,Google Docs actively.I use Ubuntu Linux and some times i depend on these online applications,though i use open office on desktop.

Microsoft's Office live service for SMBs doesn't provide online MS office service and the name is very much misleading.Recently MS management reaffirmed their support to Software plus service during company's annual financial analyst day.Ballmer promised click to run server based windows applications.Don't forget, MS earns $250M per week on MS office.So,i don't expect them to cannibalize it with online office suit soonly.

But the time has come now, 'coz Google docs adding 3500 SMB customers per day and the threat is growing for desktop based office.Zoho also adding customers left and right.I am sure that MS will jump into this online productivity market before its too late and recent initiative of online CRM to host business apps is a clear indication.If they roll out, it will be probably included as a part in live services pack.Its 250M windows live hot mail users can use those applications.MS also getting pressure from mainstream corporates to bring a click to run office service,which can be cost saving for corporates.I guess it takes at least one good year for MS before it settles down with its web strategy.Till then tweaks and betas.May be some acquisitions too.

Which company spending more on R&D

Today i was reading an article published by EDN about High-Tech R&D spenders Rankings.Here is the list compiled by Reed Business information (PDF).250 companies covered in the list which covers Semiconductors and Software fields.

Top 5 spenders

• Microsoft-$6.6B

• Siemens-$6.4B

• IBM-$6.1B

• Samsung Electronics-$6B

• Intel-$5.8B

Looks like of so much of money flowing to bring the next killer application to consumers.

They ignored,they laughed and then they followed

Well,I am talking about Microsoft.Six months back when iPhone was announced, Steve Ballmer laughed at its high price point and lack of physical key board.Can anybody remind the price of Office 2007 and Vista.Huh...

Ironically,Ballmer now promotes $900 iPhone clone from HTC.What a drastic change in six months!!Its not unusual in High-Technology industry to ignore,threaten and laugh at competition.Enjoy these two videos which are popular on YouTube.They ignored,they laughed and then they followed.

How to share internet connection

CNET has a video which shows how to share internet between laptops with XP,Vista and Mac.It's simple.It doesn't tell how to do the same in Linux.If you want to do it in Ubuntu, you can install firestarter by using which you can easily configure.Of course, it works for other Linux distributions too.

sudo apt-get install firestarter

Democracy Player rebranded as Miro

Democracy Player,the internet TV platform rebranded as Miro and you can upgrade to the new Miro 0.9.8 version.Though content support is not great,Miro(aka Democracy Player) can be best used as RSS video aggregator and downloader. These days video became a big thing on web and the 5-10 min video snacks became so popular.According to a Google manager, every day 95% of the YouTube library is watched at least once.That speaks the demand for online video.Mashable have a compiled list of online video sources.Don't forget to read the comments there,'coz readers also contributed good links.