SoftGram Bi-Weekly for 02.05.2006, Vol. 2, No. 3 SoftGram Spotlight: ______________________________________ SoftGram is a Softletter Publication and is published on the first and third weeks of each month. To Subscribe to SoftGram, please visit us at http://www.softletter.com/aspx/Profile.aspx ========================================================= To unsubscribe from SoftGram, please use the opt-out link below: http://www.softletter.com/aspx/optout.aspx?u=[[user_id]]&un=[[UserName]] To change your profile and various user options, please use the link below: http://www.softletter.com/aspx/Profile.aspx Before you can use this option, please login into your account. If you have not changed your profile, your username is the first letter of your first name and the first seven letters of your last name. Your password is "softletter." 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" _________________________________________________________ The 2006 CODIEs (Excerpted from the 01/31/2006 issue of Softletter) By Rick Chapman, Managing Editor of Softletter This year I repeated my stint as a CODIEs judge and found it a worthwhile exercise. The CODIEs are the software industry’s closest thing to the Oscars and offers participants a unique snapshot view of the industry’s past and its future. Since I’ve taken over the editorship of Softletter, I’ve kept a careful eye on the SaaS (formerly ASP) market. Last year’s CODIEs saw SaaS applications move to the front of the line in many CODIEs categories but this year SaaS basically took over the CODIEs. In practically every category the most significant new applications were hosted applications that service an increasing number of vertical niches. One example that stuck in my mind was Hobson EMT’s Answer. The product is designed to develop databases of FAQs used by students attending colleges and universities. I can personally attest to the usefulness of such a product for its targeted audience; my daughter presently attends the University of Connecticut which lacks such a product; her transition to college life would have been made much smoother if UConn offered its attendees such a service. Another hosted application that stood out was E-commerce provider Volusion. For a starting price of $57 per month, Volusion offers firms an amazing panoply of features, including extensive promotional functions, as well as the ability to sell products digitally via download links you can time limit, generate uniquely, etc. We know of many smaller software companies who still insist on building their own home grown E-commerce backends; in light of the security and liability issues associated with taking money from customers online, never mind the time needed to develop your own E-commerce system, not using a system such as Volusion seems increasingly foolish. In the Best Business Productivity Solution category, the dearth of client/server and desktop applications was almost shocking and shows clearly the effects consolidation has had on these older, mainstream markets. Whereas in the past CODIEs’ judges received stacks of CDs, the 2006 CODIEs featured only three desktop companies competing in this category, Adobe with its Creative Suite, a bundle of their primary desktop applications, a very powerful OCR package from ABBY Software, and FileMaker’s database of the same name. Otherwise, SaaS offerings dominated. The CODIES gave me an opportunity to see how far web analytics have moved beyond simply log file parsing. Offermatica struck us with its ability to allow you to interactively test promotions on your website and quickly adjust offers based on response. SLI Systems Learning Search lets high-volume commerce sites continually refine their search engines in terms of responses to buyer queries. However, we thought the pricing of many of the systems we saw was increasingly unrealistic in terms of the inevitable pricing pressure Google’s purchase of analytics firm Urchin in March of 2005 is putting on this market sector. Speaking of Google, the search engine giant’s presence is clearly hovering over many of the SaaS firms we talked to. Microsoft’s “Live” initiative is not well understood or feared by the industry (at least, not yet) but Google is another matter; most publishers we spoke to believe Google “gets” SaaS and are wondering if Google plans to simply move into horizontal markets such as desktop search, E-mail, web analytics, and possibly even Microsoft’s Office space or whether the company will attempt to roll up vertical markets it’s targeted as strategic and/or particularly profitable. _________________________________________________________ INFO POPS are sponsored by: License Technologies Group Since 1996, License Technologies Group (LTG) has been the established leader in providing solutions specifically designed for software publishers to more efficiently manage their software licensing business. Our systems and services support software license management, renewals management, eCommerce, Digital Rights Management, Partner Relationship Management and global fulfillment. We understand all of the nuances and best practices necessary to harness the power and profitability volume license and compliance programs can provide. Our experience in providing these solutions helps softwa practices and gain a strategic advantage on their competition. Smart Tools. Big Savings. http://www.licensetech.com ******************************* INFO POPS As you may know, Google is close to making a deal with Dell in which the search giant will get to preinstall its software package on Dell PCs. What you may not know is that Google may be spending a billion dollars over three years for the privilege. Excerpted from: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1923402,00.asp?kc=ewnws020906dtx1k0000599 ******************************* Google's recent legal spat with the U.S. Department of Justice highlights not only what information search engines record about us but also the shortcomings in a federal law that's supposed to protect online privacy. It's only a matter of time before other attorneys realize that a person's entire search history is available for the asking, and the subpoenas begin to fly. This could happen in civil lawsuits or criminal prosecutions. That type of fishing expedition is not legally permitted for Web mail providers. But because search engines are not fully shielded by the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act--concocted back in the era of CompuServe and bulletin board systems--their users don't enjoy the same level of privacy. Excerpted from: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6034666.html?tag=nl.e539 ******************************* "The IDE business has been a dying breed for about 10 years," said Anne Thomas Manes, an analyst with the Burton Group Inc., in Boston. "It's really hard to compete with free—especially when the free stuff is really good." Excerpted from: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1923549,00.asp?kc=ewnws020906dtx1k0000599 ******************************* Little did the computer graphics expert know that his HousingMaps.com, which combines a Google map with house listings from the popular Craigslist community, would be the start of an Internet phenomenon. Although Rademacher created his site about two months before Google publicly released its application programming interface--the secret sauce that allows developers to create their own recipes with its maps--the company wasn't angry. In fact, Google hired him shortly thereafter. "Now we see that all along there has been a huge amount of interesting information tied around location," Rademacher said. "Before, they had no way of expressing that and doing anything useful with it." With such "mashups"--hybrid software that combines content from more than one source--digital maps are quickly becoming a centralized tool for countless uses ranging from local shopping and traffic reports to online dating and community organizing, all in real time and right down to specific addresses. Excerpted from: http://news.com.com/Mapping+a+revolution+with+mashups/2009-1025_3-5944608.html ________________________________________________________ CHANGE YOUR SOFTGRAM SUBSCRIPTION : To unsubscribe from SoftGram, please use the opt-out link below: http://www.softletter.com/aspx/optout.aspx?u=[[user_id]]&un=[[UserName]] To change your profile and various user options, please use the link below: http://www.softletter.com/aspx/Profile.aspx Before you can use this option, please login into your account. If you have not changed your profile, your username is the first letter of your first name and the first seven letters of your last name. Your password is "softletter." 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