From Macworld:

Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia is placing his bets on an online office productivity suite that aims to compete with similar offerings from Microsoft and Google.

Instant Collaboration Software Technologies (InstaColl), a Bangalore company co-founded by Bhatia, unveiled Live Documents on Wednesday, an online service that allows users to access and edit documents using a Web browser, and collaborate and share documents with others.

Based on the review, this service looks promising. While, as of this writing, it’s not available yet (but will be offered for free for individuals and fee-based for corporate users when launched), it is poised to offer Google more competition, as well as challenge Microsoft’s off-the-shelf Office Suite (although the article says that “Even power-users of Microsoft Office can use our service”). Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I watched one of the more interesting DVDs I own: Pi, a bleak film about brilliance, madness and obsession. The outside plot centers on the endeavors of Max Cohen, a mathematician who is haunted by what he believes is a pattern to be found in the numbers of the stock market. In his pursuit he stumbles upon a 216-digit number; this number, while initially discounted by Max, becomes coveted by both a Wall Street firm as well as Hasidic Jews, both of whom see great value in this number but seek it for different ends.

As with most well-written movies with a misunderstood and complex protagonist, there is a mentor character who acts as a both challenge to the protagonist’s motivating action as well a vessel for offering an exposition to us, the audience, in an attempt to help us understand the backstory as well as the reason for the need for resolution following the build up of “Act 1″.

In this movie, Sol (Max’s mentor) comments that the 216-digit number is really meaningless because,

“You’re connecting a computer bug I had with a computer bug you might have had and some religious hogwash. You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere.”

And for me, 216 is Google. Read the rest of this entry »

I was thinking about all the blogs out there — all 106 million of them — and how there seems to be an in-crowd of powerful “A-listers” and hordes of second- or third-tier authors who, while they may write great content and have even, perhaps, attracted a respectably-sized audience and number of backlinks, they just can’t get admission to this exclusive club of people who are the titans of the blogosphere.

Sometimes blogging can feel like waiting in line, hoping to get into the coolest new nightspot: a limo pulls up, the bouncer opens the ropes to admit the dapper passengers to the club — and everyone else goes back to trying to catch the bouncer’s eye.

Read the rest of this entry »