Have you seen Buzzword? What does it mean?

Collaboration has been an IT buzzword (pardon the pun) for at least a decade. If, like me, you struggle with those mark-up features in Microsoft Word, you will love Buzzword.

It is a word processing environment which allows online, live document collaboration. Have a look at www.virtub.com/ and let me know what you think.

The brilliance of online tools like Buzzword, brings into focus the future of personal productivity applications. We used to call them desktop applications, but that doesn’t quite work anymore.

When the world was DOS PCs and Apple IIe’s, the applications were VisiCalc, WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3. I think that Microsoft overtook these applications and took a dominant position based on 3 changes
1. the paradigm shift to Windows 3.1
2. Lotus and WordPerfect slow to move to Windows – continued development of DOS version, and development focus on IBM’s OS/2
3. the packaging of applications into Office suites offering much better value

Looking at Buzzword made me realise that we may be going through a similar set of changes
1. the paradigm shift to the Internet for application delivery
2. Microsoft focussed on Vista while the developers of Buzzword, Google and many others, create different options
3. the availability of open-source offerings (Open Office, Lotus Symphony)

I suggest we will see a large change of user base, but not necessarily a large change in revenue base. Corporate customers will continue to buy Microsoft Office, and many users who will switch to open source or online applications, where those not paying for Microsoft Office anyway. Plus, Microsoft will have a significant play in the online application market.

However, the big wildcard is Government and Education. Government is a big user and could make big savings moving to Open Office, and if they want “brand backing”, Lotus Symphony.

In a school or college environment, with some much great software around for learning, I would be very tempted to put my budget in that direction, and save by taking Open Office or online applications.

Time will tell.