Does Google Docs care about your privacy?
I had a wonderful discussion this morning regarding yesterday’s post. In the post, Microsoft Office vs. Open Office vs. Google Docs, section 11.1 and 11.2 of the Google Docs Terms of Service states:
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
In reading through this as a director responsible for corporate knowledge governance, this sent chills up my spine. I counsel people on security every day, and in reading this I had some questions. Well, so did one of my co-workers. He dug in and found this in Google Docs Help section:
We’ve received questions over time about the meaning of section 11.1 of our Terms of Service. We realize that for those not familiar with legal agreements for services that use the Internet, these terms can look confusing, or even frightening.
The first thing to understand is that this language doesn’t give Google ownership rights to your data. You, and you alone, own your content. Whether you wish to keep your content totally private, or share it with the world, that’s your choice.
However, in order to honor this choice, Google Docs needs permission to display your content as you see fit. This is what we mean by a “license to reproduce.” We need to ensure that when you click the “Publish document” button, or use the “Invite collaborators” option, we have the license to carry out your wishes. It is this agreement, between Google Docs and you, the user, that section 11.1 of our Terms of Service reflects.
Now, I’m no lawyer, but I do have to work with lawyers in writing many of our contracts. In my humble opinion could the lawyers at Google not write some language of this type into the Terms of Service? Why have the end-users have to dig through help files in the first place? This really makes me wonder whether Google really cares about my privacy.
Why do you still use Microsoft? (Office vs. Open Office vs. Google Docs)
Why do you still use Microsoft Office? As you read this aloud, you may ask yourself why I’m asking such a silly question… Is it - really - a simple question?
My company currently uses Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 Professional editions, and overall, there are some wonderful tools at our disposal. Never before the invention of spreadsheets, word processors, presentation and database tools did the computer ever do so much for the “normal user”. Computers, for the longest time, were the domain of geeks and propeller heads alike - those that understood computer speak.
Along came graphical user interfaces and office productivity software. Then over time technology came to resemble a usable form, a form that could empower end-users to be more efficient, do more with less, and generally help make information easier to obtain.
Today, we live in a world where the enterprise is dominated by Microsoft. In stepping back to review, they have some of the very features IT shops of any size like to see: integration from the front office to the back office, standardized roll-out toolsets, control and security options, and a well-adopted base of subscribers ensuring overall platform stability.
Specifically, Microsoft really has three core offerings to the enterprise: Desktop software, Office software, and backoffice software (e.g. servers, e-mail, database, etc.). Microsoft’s Office division is arguably one of the most profitable divisions within the company, and this is because they produce very powerful, if not overly-bloated, productivity tools like Word, Excel, etc. However, the cost to maintain this for an organization of any size can become a little harsh after you start seeing on-going costs, especially during major version upgrades.
For this reason, and many others revolving around Microsoft’s monopolistic profile in this segement, other somewhat strong players have begun to emerge slowly such as, OpenOffice and Google Docs. These are free to download and use (as of this writing), and offer very similar functions for many users.
However, the one big gotcha that always remains is the self-feeding loop Microsoft has established whereby I, as a user, must have Office to disseminate documents to my customers as they are using Office. If I were to switch away, I might not be able to see the document I receive from my customer very well or they may not be able to render my own document.
Transfering a document from one application format to another requires some very intricated filters that make it a 1-touch process for you and I. To be fair, these types of converstion filters just were not powerful enough to handle the transition - that is until lately.
OpenOffice was founded by a division of Sun Microsystems, and has been support through many generations of development. We are presently beginning field trials with the latest OpenOffice suite of software to facilitate expense reports, vacation requests and various other minor processes where we have found MS Office cost prohibitive in our standard configuration.
The benefits to us are it’s free and it can render Office documents fairly well (almost looking like their original fromat), and it can be used online and offline.
We also decided to begin beta testing the Google Docs software as well. Google Docs offers an online platform to manage your documents, but did not have a way to bring those documents to you when you couldn’t connect up to a wi-fi spot, that is until recently.
The Google Docs application has only undergone limited testing with our technology department itself. We found the integration quite easy, but a down side for us was that the import and re-export process for existing documnets has been plagued with formatting issues. Another thing you might want to be aware of is a clause not present in other productivity software suites:
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
In an nutshell, this states your documents are now the property of Google. Going back, what was one of the major components enterprise clients require? Oh, that’s right control and security options! I wonder sometimes why we think Google is so much better than Microsoft with language like this floating through almost every one of their EULA’s.
In conclusion, for now Microsoft Office solutions wil continue to be our main stay because our clients require it, and because some of the back office integration with SharePoint, and just about every other program on the planet supports the Office products directly or indirectly. We cannot say the same for OpenOffice, but it is a compelling argument to load this on those users who do not need the advanced features provided in Office.
Google Docs, on the other hand, not only requires each person to have a login, separate from their network login, provides for the mass consumption of your information at their discretion. That is a huge problem for me as the intellectual property possessed within our corporate documents outlines very key information to our on-going business.
Why are you still using Microsoft Office? Hopefully you have thought about it and know why. Chances are you are resigned to think that is your only recourse, but offerings such as OpenOffice are becoming much better aligned to the needs of the enterprise users and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. It is most definitely worth a look as it can save you some dollars on your bottom line.
Topless meetings: the concept of unplugging to stay connected
I just ran across this post shared by [tag]Veronica Belmont[/tag], posted by [tag]Merlin Mann[/tag], via [tag]Dan Saffer[/tag], and originally written by the Mercury News… (what a trail of breadcrumbs). It suggests going topless to meetings to be more productive…
Frustrated by distracted workers so plugged in that they tune out in the middle of business meetings, a growing number of companies are going “topless,” as in no [tag]laptops[/tag] allowed. Also banned from some conference rooms: [tag]BlackBerrys[/tag], [/tag]iPhones[tag] and other personal devices on which so many have come to depend…
What a concept - unplug to really get connected to the people you interact with.
Am I insane to put Apple in the enterprise?
Do you ever just call up a customer and ask them questions about what would make them happy? Well, I did. I had been toying with the idea of beta testing a [tag]Mac[/tag] in our business to see where it would fit, but I couldn’t really decide where to put it.
I called one of our account managers about some problems with his [tag]mobile device[/tag] and the fact that he hated the [tag]BlackBerry[/tag]. One thing led to another, and he asked if we might ever consider putting a Mac in our environment. The light bulb went off.
I am a little on the tortured side, I admit. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the kind of guy who is never satisfied with status quo. Don’t get me wrong, I like stability (because the keeps me in a job), but I really like looking towards the horizon and bringing innovations to the business to make my customers happy.
I wouldn’t classify my style of innovation ‘bleeding edge’, but it might be characterized as ‘the bludgeoned edge’. I have had my fair share of beatings on selecting a products that were in the growth phase, but I have also found that it is often the best way to be influential over the development of a product as well.
A whole slew of questions sprinted through my head, but a technically savvy sales rep might be just the personality disposition I actually need to give honest feedback and a real-world test - not some IT lab.
So, am I insane? Apple isn’t fully ready yet for the [tag]enterprise[/tag], and third party line of business applications are quite sparse… So BootCamp with Vista becomes a fall back, but is that really an Apple solution? Now I’m just hosting different types of hardware that might not fall under my standard maintenance plan creating exceptions that could cause additional helpdesk calls.
On the other hand, is there any validity to the fact that Macs need less support? I still find that hard to believe, but that’s what I hear at least.
I’m still struggling on the answer to this question, and I would really love some help from [tag]Apple[/tag] on enterprise standardization tools. In this case, my choice seems to be between innovation or stability…
That’s a tough choice for me, and one that might likely drive me insane…
Do your document solutions save trees?
Over at Office Product News, they just posted an press release from Laserfiche® stating the company helped some 25,000 organizations save 117 million trees? The release reads as follows:
Conservatively, Laserfiche estimates that the installation of its enterprise software has resulted in the elimination of 500,000 pages of paper documents, on average, in each organization—or some 1 trillion pages total. Some organizations save much more—for example, the Department of Immigration in Mexico has used Laserfiche to digitize more than 200 million documents.
Really? Conservatively speaking if the the company helped the Department of Immigration in Mexico digitize more than 200 million documents, wouldn’t that indicate they “scanned” 200 million documents? Help me out here, but just because you help “digitize” pages doesn’t indicate you are actually saving any paper - does it?
Sure, a sane person thinking of copying technology might argue that they saved on someone not making copies. I would concede this small point. But what about printing?
According to Gartner (see my article: ‘Are you still trying to sell hardware?’), printing volumes are on the rise while copying volumes are on the decline.
The printed page is increasing at an estimated 11% per year with 2006 volumes at somewhere close to 3500 billion pages (courtesy of Gartner via Jim Salzer over at DocuAudit International).
So if printing volumes are increasing, where is that coming from? I did some digging and came across a Laserfiche® authorized reseller Bits and Bytes Document Solutions who had this to say:
How many times is a document printed? The average document is printed almost 20 times*… When you think of paper output you usually think of printing. Printing is one of the most undocumented expenses in an organization.
BBDS didn’t have any sources listed, but overall they seem to be employing a very similar consultative strategy that I have used as well, and it is not ‘evil’ in the least. In fact, it seeks to help the customers gain control of their document life cycle - from inception to destruction. But let me tune you into a little secret here folks, why do you think ‘copier dealers’ are so tuned into wanting to sell EDMS solutions?
If you put the information from Gartner together with the information posted on BBDS’s website, where does this lead you?
Let me tell you printing is going up as more documents are being captured in information portal solutions simply because people don’t need to “keep the copy” in the file cabinet; they can find the ‘original’ in e-mail, on Google, and in their EDMS solution. Some images are simply viewed of course, but many people print their documents on-demand from their information portal of choice and throw them away. Better yet, they can recycle it, and feel better about themselves for saving a tree too.
* For those familiar with CDIA+ certifications, the training material for this certifcation states a document is reproduced up to 16 times.Favorite quote of the day (April 3, 2008)
I’ve decided to start a little something to share other writers comments; I’m going to begin posting favorite quotes I find, snip-its of articles I have enjoyed, or just fanciful wordings that cause me to take pause. I’m not going to put time limits on it, because I may find more than 1 in a day - or I may not find any I like for a week… so I will just commit to share the wealth as I find little pearls that strike my fancy.
So here’s a favorite quote for today:
Loyalty can allow you to be forgiven when you make a mistake. It can give you a second chance when you don’t deserve it. - Corey Smith
Is FriendFeed the feed for me?
Do you find yourself wondering if you have too many sites to go to in order to keep up with what’s going on? RSS readers, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, FaceBook, and the list goes on and on (and on)…
As a continuation of yesterday’s post Are we too connected to social media? I asked some fairly open ended questions. This all started when I read a post over at Dan’s blog (BizTechTalk) regarding meta-meta-aggregators. For those of you just tuning in, that’s a tool that crawls all of your social media sites and pulls them back together in a single portal or allows you to atleast create vectors of usable information rather than trying to sift through the static of the Internet.
As fate would have it, Scoble strikes again… and talks on FriendFeed.com. As it turns out, someone already had this bright idea (and they evidently use to work at Google - why am I not surprised?).
I have subscribed to FriendFeed (http://friendfeed.com/changeforge), and I’ll keep you all posted on how it goes. With all of these social media channels in this land grab for subscribers there has to be some players in the space to help orchestrate the static. Let’s see if FriendFeed can do it.
Are we too connected to social media?
Do you ever feel like you are too wired in? Do you find yourself using a password manager to keep up with your passwords to your other password managers? Dan Keldsen just posted a very interesting piece that really got me thinking on linking all of these various social media types together to form multi-dimensional and very personal POP’s (point-of-presences) for every individual.
They are a meta-meta-aggregator in the sense that they are aggregating (collecting) information from multiple sources, and that their underlying data sources can also be aggregating information from multiple sources (such as ZoomInfo). This extends the reach and richness of the information that they are able to pull back on behalf of users of their system, in a similar fashion to the functionality of federated search or universal search in more traditional enterprise search.
In an ideal world, or at least with the smarter salespeople and marketers, such information will help to weed out who the appropriate people are to engage in more targeted discussions, and to engage in informed conversations of the “2.0 age” rather than in continuing to hammer out cold-calls and blanket, un-personalized (or badly personalized) mass-marketing.
Though Dan’s article is referring specifically to a product called SalesView by InsideView, I can’t help but notice we are drowning in a sea of social media outlets. For instance, Twitter is interesting, and a social medium to which many people subscribe. It begs a question though, in the context of its underlying purpose,
What is the end-game for this type of social experiment?
[Dan contends] social networking is not purely about person-to-person connections, or in providing a virtual watercooler (or virtual voyeur perhaps) view into your “friends” (peers, co-workers, etc.) but also for the ability of participants IN the network to use the data within that network to become smarter in the ways that they interact with the people in that network.
Bluntly put, information about people abounds through many different channels, all of which were never before captured outside of family photo albums or epitaphs. Now that all of this information exists in a connected world, it is becoming a very relevant question to ask,
What can be done with all of this information about you? Is your information usable in its new formats?
All of this latent “social information” is buried in the heap of individual silos both inside and outside of the control of any one [corporation], even deeper … than “normal” electronic information is.
InsideView has a few ideas, according to Dan, albeit a bit Minority Report-ish. However, let’s assume we all have the best intentions of using this information to the benefit of mankind; it makes me wonder whether this medium will connect us in ways never before dreamed or allow us to conduct plastic surgery at-will to our public persona? And just who decides someone, or some organization, should be granted access to a given network of POP’s?
For now, everyone is having fun, and rightly so. By all accounts, this is a golden age of connectedness not seen in centuries past. Even as we marvel at our own magnificence, I can’t help but step back, take a breath and ask if we are all too connected?
Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?
When you think of IT, MIS, or any other acronymn used to describe the technology department of a company, what is the image that comes to mind? Does it resemble a Saturday Night Live skit Nick Burns, Your Company’s Computer Guy?
Many IT-types have bemoaned the fact that technologists have gotten a bad wrap. I wonder why that is?
Simply put, the stereotypical computer tech was always long on computer wisdom but terribly short on the softer skills in life, such as tact and social grace. I am not totally sure whether most computer guys had watched too much Gordon Gekko and fancied themselves all powerful, or if they just didn’t notice they were alienating their customers. Either way, the end result was the creation of our famous stereotype, Nick Burns…
As a manager, culture is one of the most delicate things to balance. Do you choose the talented player that can put points on the board and overlook some ‘minor’ team-fit issues? Do you sacrifice and choose a mediocre player that can get along with everyone and take direction?
That’s a trick question, to a certain extent. You choose neither. It is possible to choose talented players, but you can’t forsake the overall team concept. Combined, individuals can accomplish wonderful and extraordinary things. So don’t sell yourself short and let your ‘IT rooster” rule the roost. It won’t be as easy as pounding your fist, and you have to decide for yourself if your IT guy is your go-to-guy.
If you are an IT guy or gal, make sure you put yourself in a position to be the go-to-guy (or gal). By keeping customer service in the forefront of your mind and engaging in your culture you may not win employee of the year, but you could get a reputation for solving problems rather than being one.
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ChangeForge... a catalyst to affect the paradigm by Ken Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.changeforge.com. -
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