Vembu Blog » Microsoft

Amazing Rant on the Future by ex Apple UI designer

N Sai — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:06:04 +0000

In our last post on “Why cloud the future of Dropbox and Evernote?”, our simple message was to dump on certain media bombast projecting the future as a mere extension of current trends. We chose to share a video on Microsoft Vision 2019 that impressed in “Minority Report” style as an evolutionary leap into the future, good enough to shame the extrapolating bots.

Alas, things have prompted a relook on our choice since then. Not the message but just the particular example.

We happened to stumble upon an absolutely BRILLIANT, enlightening curve ball of a post by an ex-Apple UI wiz Bret Victor. He too complained about trend extrapolation and then caricatured Microsoft Vision 2019 as an increment of the status quo! Talk about being on the same page and still reading different tea leaves.

But once we finished reading his compelling article, the volte-face ensued. You can check out this groovy post by clicking on his image link below.

As always, Remember Nothing ! Zukmo Everything !

Why Cloud the future of Dropbox and Evernote ?

N Sai — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:08:15 +0000

Here at Zukmo HQ, we are happily jumping through hoops each day trying to solve the problem of information overload which will be an exponential bother in the future. However, the thing bothering us today is the information overload about that supposed future.

Recently we have been noticing online media outlets of certain stripes going viral with their semi promotional trend castings. Overwhelming our embedded tubes are glorified mirages of their slanted visions and thunderous sound bites from their decaying wisdom teeth. So, we decided to pull the wool over the crystal ball and tell it like it might be otherwise. For the techies contemplating and crunching mythical accounts of the future, read on and peep.

Recently we came across these screamers in the headlines about how popular cloud based services will simply continue their windfall ad infinitum.

Evernote CEO Phil Libin’s Top Three Tips For Building A Hundred Year Old Company

Dropbox: (Founder Stories) Houston: “In 18 Months, You Are Going To See Little Dropbox Buttons Everywhere”

We have heard this story before. It seems like a concerted attempt in spot fixing the future as a linear magnification of the currently obvious. History has repeatedly cautioned us about the unknown yet lurking presence of potential spoilers. Far far away from those hogging the limelight today, some may have started revving their engines and will be racing ahead with the last laughs. Kindly spare your 2 cents for that unforeseen genius who will blow the cloud away with the winds of change and bequeath a radical future.

Perhaps its one laden with information galaxies storing and emitting content waves or hanging them real time in ether waiting to be transmitted to your content receiver. Do we really have to bide for a Hollywood thriller on information management to concoct the subtle ? Oh wait, there is a breathtaking trailer that is close enough. How about this sophisticated conception of the Future Vision 2019 by Microsoft ?

Now, that’s no small bang for the future Euro & Dollar (if they still exist) ! An absolute game changers delight, wont you say ?

Along these lines, our question to staid outlets extrapolating current trends – is it hard to conceive an entirely plausible alternative future where everybody is whispering vocal notes into the ears of SIRI’s grandchildren ? A future that might turn Evernote to Nevernote. A bright future without silly old fashioned carpal tunnel inducing buttons everywhere! Future grapevines may welcome Eavesdrop and say bye bye to Dropbox.

Rest assured, there will be clouds that hang over the Dropboxes and Evernotes of today. And regarding whatever is said of the future, Remember Nothing. Zukmo Everything!

Avoid Waiting for Automatic Updates – Update Your Zukmo Browser Button Instantly!

Kieran — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 07:07:32 +0000

Every new release opens an exciting new chapter for our users, improving their ability to store and manage information with Zukmo. With the rapid release of so many new features and improvements, however, we sometimes find ourselves in a bit of a conundrum with our constantly updated browser buttons.

Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Apple Safari go through a rigorous review process to ensure that each update we submit is clean, free of issues, and offers a streamlined, integrated experience with their browser. This, of course, takes time on their end, and until they complete the process and post our update to their site (also automatically notifying you/updating your browser button), our users can sometimes be left without the features that we’ve promised.

We’d like to let you know that any updates to our browser buttons are available immediately after each release. If you’re having trouble accessing any of Zukmo’s functions you can update your browser button from our direct download page

If a direct update doesn’t solve the issue in question please contact us directly at help@zukmo.com. Alternatively, if you have any suggestions about how we can make Zukmo more useful for you, shoot us an email at feedback at feedback@zukmo.com. We’d love to speak to you about them!

Kieran Kay is a Marketing and Business Development Associate for Vembu Technologies’s Zukmo product.

Zukmo is a cloud-based information and content management solution designed for the frequent information consumer. Zukmo indexes user-uploaded files, Web bookmarks, and streamed content, enabling easy organization, searching, and sharing via an integrated suite of tools. Start a free Zukmo account today!

Want free WiFi? Head to the G.Y.M.

lux — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:37:01 +0000

Apologies for the corny headline. This has nothing to do with working out.

But it is good news for all those laptops that are backing up online…

G.Y.M. is short for Google, Yahoo & Microsoft. The three companies seem to be in the midst of a flurry of FREE WiFi announcements. Here’s stuff that came through from G.Y.M. in the last 48 hours:

Google announced free WiFi at 47 airports – through the holiday season and into January 2010. They even have a FreeHolidayWifi web site on this. In what could easily be spun as a “limit the joy to Microsoft” tactic, Seattle airport joins the list of 47 a little later.

Yahoo announced free WiFi at Times Square, NYC – for a whole year.

Microsoft, not to be outdone, and in an effort to popularize Bing, has announced an interesting promotion going with JWire. Their “search for access” program offers a session of free Wi-Fi access in exchange for a search on Bing. Users are presented with their search results, and they can then enjoy free Internet service for a specified time period.

So there, you have it. Connectivity can’t be your excuse this season – for not backing up! I’m curious though – how did the free WiFi idea hit G.Y.M. – at almost the same time (all of the above announcements happened in the last 48 hours)

Crunchgear has an article on this too.

Prediction: Amazon will make a similar announcement – soon.

The above post was written by Lakshmanan (Lux) Narayan of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

All Clouds are not Equal

lux — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:59:05 +0000

Some time ago, we’d written about David Chappell’s talk on Windows Azure, and why it was different. I’d also mentioned that I’d share the slide deck once I got it from David. Here it is.

(the ppt is cued to slide 27 which is where the fun stuff begins – the comparisons with other platforms. As we said earlier, the ‘neutrality’ with which this was presented was refreshing)

Read on…

The Windows Azure Platform a Perspective Chappell

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

The last place you’d expect to see an Apple logo

lux — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:31:28 +0000

Check out the LiveMesh (a Microsoft service) site.

Guess who’s logo prominently features in the homepage?

Apple.

Yes, Apple!

And an Apple Mac, at that. Can’t see it clearly in the screenshot below?

Go ahead, check out the Live Mesh site.

I see this as another example of Microsoft’s new ‘approach’ that we spoke about earlier. Of course, they’re doing it to highlight the cross platform sync capabilities of their application – but a few years ago, you’d have expected Microsoft to pretend that a Mac didn’t even merit ‘consideration’ for their sync application.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

A bold initiative from Microsoft Azure

lux — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:36:08 +0000

Last week, I attended a Microsoft Azure event in Bangalore.

When I received the invitation to the event, I was surprised to see that Microsoft had arranged for a non Microsoft person, David Chappell, to speak at the event. I’d have thought that they would have arranged for someone from the Azure product team.

Now, David’s a well known speaker, and he’s really good at keeping things simple. And, he certainly helped make the event interesting.

But there was a larger reason behind getting someone from outside of Microsoft…

Neutrality!

More often than not, vendors ‘pretend’ to be neutral and clothe product propaganda in apparent neutrality (B is a great product BUT, guess what, our A is much better because…)

Not this time!

David was refreshingly honest in his assessment & comparisons. He even went so far as to say that competing cloud solutions would fit the bill very well for some of the use case scenarios described by the audience. And he was effusive in his praise for Amazon pioneering the whole ‘cloud thing’. Of course, in the process, he also gave us the whole nine yards on Azure.

I had a chat with David & Rajinish Menon (part of the Azure/DPE team at Microsoft India) and complimented them on what I saw was a pretty brave move. They said it was an extremely conscious decision to be absolutely honest with potential customers – and to ‘present’ Azure (and its competition) in a fair and unbiased manner.

Full marks to Microsoft on this one. The attendees also seemed to like this ‘no BS’ honesty, and were much more receptive to Azure than they’d have been otherwise! From an attendee perspective, they felt were served ‘information’ and not vendor kool-aid.

David & Rajnish have promised me some slides from the presentation; I’ll post them when I get them. You’ll then see what I mean by the fair comparisons.

UPDATE: On a (kinda) related note, check out our next post.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.