Microsoft’s own suite of web based office type applications will be available to a public beta November 15 — much quicker than some analysts had predicted in the fight for office application supremacy (in the other corner, Google, naturally, with its recently promoted suite of products, including docs, spreadsheets, calendar etc etc).

In addition to the usual modules, of noticeable interest is that it will also be offering

• free hosting for web pages
• integration with Messenger for instant messaging
• as well as integration with their off-line offering Accounting 2007.

And in what may be the equivalent of a metal chair in this cage match, they’re also introducing the ability to purchase online ads to drive traffic, presumably, to that free hosted site. [Courtesy of InfoAge]

… Office Live adManager, which lets users purchase online advertising for Microsoft’s msn.com and Windows Live Search properties, said Baris Cetinok, director of product management for Office Live. And in the next six months, the company also plans to add the ability to let users purchase ads for search engines from Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, and Local.com, he said

It looks as though Microsoft is attempting to differentiate itself in at least one key way — enabling small businesses from the outset to gain an on-line presence through an integrated “office” solution. That is, it seems like its more than Google’s current attempt which currently targets the individual office worker. And, with all its forays outside of search, hosting is one chestnut that Google has yet to have a go at.
Will this help Microsoft get their mojo back? Well, check back after November 15th and we’ll let you know!

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So there’s a nice article at AdAge about how the “Dove Evolution” clip on YouTube has generated more page hits for campaignforrealbeauty.com than a SuperBowl ad. But more than that, has earned it time on Oprah, Ellen and even Geraldo on Fox — things that a mere Superbowl ad doesn’t do (that often).

Getting back to those pageviews, I think the broader question is … well, so what?

Of course, its great that the site is getting hits — traffic is always good. But, the broader question for Dove should be “did it translate into action?” And of course, what “action” are they measuring?

The AdAge article does a magnificent job hyping up the magnitude of a viral ‘hit’, but it does little to follow up on the real meat and potatoes of the issue lies. Of course “conversion” is not a very sexy topic; and of course, its also a function of the site itself. But, its also a function of how warm that traffic was to the topic at hand.

I guess what I’m saying is that — sure, it got a lot of traffic, and yes, we should all be shocked at the power of viral marketing, and wow, it cost next to nothing.

But, out of that traffic, are they able to answer the following questions:

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A great CNet article today about how a Chinese official at the UN denied the existence of internet censorship at the Internet Governance Forum in Greece:

Chinese official: How can I elaborate on it if we don’t have any restrictions?  Some people say that there are journalists in China that have been arrested. We have hundreds of journalists in China, and some of them have legal problems. It has nothing to do with freedom of expression.

Well, the Chinese government may have a different name or understanding of it, but deny the existence of a control mechanism that alters what its citizens can or can’t read is not just comical — its laughable.

Besides, if they’re not controlling what people read, then  they’re certainly looking at figuring exactly who’s behind the (potentially) dissenting voices – a few weeks ago, there was a meme going around that they would be asking bloggers to register their real names.

Amazing.

TechCrunch broke this morning that Reddit, the politico’s Digg clone — albeit the low-brow remarks and flagrant gaming — has recently been gobbled up by Wired’s parent company, Conde Nast.

Look for this acquisition to cause more rumours to swirl about Digg’s acquisition, which, quite frankly, has died down over the past few days — and possibly bump up any asking prices (since the competition for social network sites just fell by about 1/3).
Much like how Digg could be plugged into MySpace and used as a strange “oracle” device, Todd Zeigler from Bivings, has an excellent point about Reddit – and how it has uses for more than the traffic it brings.

The publisher could create a single destination site where all the articles from its various publications are aggregated and voted on using Reddit technologies. Alternatively, Condé Nast could add Reddit views to the websites of all the magazines they own in order to provide a “social” view of the magazine’s content in addition to an “editor” controlled view.

Time will tell what Conde Nast plans to do with Reddit.  Conde Nast already controls a gaggle of magazine interests; one wonders in pure and utter speculation, if is the first public attempt to bring its concerns into the electronic age the web2.0.  What with the hew and cry of the slow death of newspapers, it certainly would be quite apropos.

Mark Cuban has recently posted the entire “insider” opinion of the YouTube acquisition by Google. Its been summarized in by a few learned individuals here and there. The salient points seem that:

1. Google held back a significant sum in escrow as a war chest against future copyright suits

2. The investments by large music and media companies into YouTube prior to the Google purchase was just that — an investment, so that music companies don’t have to pay licensing fees to artists

and lastly:

3. Google and music companies have a backroom “understanding” that music companies would start pursuing legal action against YouTube competitors, buying time for YouTube to takedown offending videos, putting pressure on other companies to follow suit; moreover, it would slow VC capital to competitors.

Wait – colluding with music companies to sue competitors?

Helping music companies lock out artists out of a cut that’s likely theirs?

… well, some other learned indivduals feel that the story is probably a combination of truth and heresay, and that Google/ UMB lawyers are “too smart” to be involved in such shennigans, and there are probably very good reasons for what’s happened (suing YouTube’s competitors).

Of course, I think its important to treat these sorts of allegations with a heaping tow-truck of salt — but I would urge everyone to remember in this age of Enron and Edel-mart trickery the kind of arrogance which does seem to pervade corporate backroom dealings.

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I mean — there’s tighter integration for my on-line favourite RSS / news / email / widget aggregator!

With Firefox 2, there’s a way to add Netvibes, so that you can easily “subscribe” to it with a push of the button.

The netvibes blog explains it best:

The new version of the popular browser Firefox includes a fine Web feeds (RSS) reader and allows you to easily subscribe to online aggregators. If you are reading a blog or a site where feeds are available you’ll see an orange icon next to the location field with the URL.

Clicking on the icon opens the built-in reader with some default engines. Unfortunately, Netvibes is not in the default configuration which has been chosen by the Firefox developers (except in France and Poland).

Lots of you have already sent us emails to know if something can be done to fix this. Thanks to the nice people from Mozilla Links we found an easy solution for you. You’ll just have to click on the link below and voilà.

Head over to the netvibes blog if you’re interested … there are a few work arounds that seem to be necessary. I’m glad someone’s figured the whole thing out; because it was an on-line RSS reader, i was concerned support for this would never come!

According to at least a couple of observers, the 2 (or 2.5gig) limit is being pumped up to over 15gigs. Personally, I’m at around 15% of my usual 2.8gig limit; some might wonder what the deuce people are going to do with 15gigs of email space.

Well, it fits perfectly within GMail’s raison d’etre — which is “never delete email”, and dovetails perfectly with the rise and sharing of rich media … particularly since the acquisition of YouTube probably sends the “we’re a media company now” message has been sent out anyway. [courtesy of Googlesystem.blogspot.com]

Some users of Google Apps for Your Domain report that their Gmail accounts have 15 GB of storage space. There are at least two people who noticed it, so it’s hard to consider this a mistake.

In any case, Google probably has bandwidth and storage to spare. If / when it goes through its probably nothing but a good thing.