Hey there I'm Robert MacEwan the author of Ideal Absolutes. If you're new to macewan.org, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.

As seen in this video Google is expanding Google Apps to include the Team Edition. A quick review of the offering shows the ability to share documents and calendars quickly.

Now, I’ve been a beta tester of Google Docs from the time before their Writely acquisition. Only now, in Jan., they have added the ability to insert a header and footer on the word processor. This news came to me this morning as I opened Google Docs and an instance of OpenOffice.org 2.3. Why OpenOffice.org when GDocs was available? Well, I need headers and footers so you can just image my excitement with this mornings news.

Especially after the disappointing testing of IBM Lotus Symphony (later uninstalled). The IE integration is seriously flawed or perhaps it experience the typical problems found in Microsoft’s halfassed attempt at Internet standards in the form of the ubiquitous default install of Internet Explorer version whatever. These upgrades to IE, which only usually take place when they feel their browser market share is threatened, do not necessarily improve any of the short falls found lacking in the browsers standards compliance. No, this obvious expectation is ignored in favor of features consumer enjoy in Firefox. By copying this Mozilla derivative adding favorites like the tabbing to the platform limited IE instead of placing more focus on the needed features requirements of a modern browser they only further delay overall adoption of current W3C recommendation. Could it be their inability to follow basic suggestions only because they can’t leverage their PC dominant position to sway W3C votes on future direction?

Regardless of the foot dragging found here they’re now ready to take on the responsibility of directing the future of Yahoo! (at the tune of 43′ish Billion dollars). I’m no raving fan of Yahoo! but I can acknowledge the work in the area API usability compared to Google’s. I have no doubt this will cease if and when Microsoft gains control for in every instance a company is fully absorbed into Borg of Redmond the back-end technology is moved to the sloppy unsuccessful Microsoft attempt at the same industry. Their failure to win the hearts of users leads to the need to them needing to buy and absorb rather than innovate and organically acquire.

This will lead to what I call the great Yahoo! mass exodus wherein hords of fearful users will grab their docs, email, pictures and whatever else from Yahoo! properties that were rightly left in original company format. So where do they go? Well, for starters Zoho has a much better word processor than that of Google’s from the Writely.com company. I place a bullseye on Zoho as a Microsoft target just as I did last year with Yahoo!.

Is this yet another conspiracy to move the minds of all users back to only trusting harddrive devices yet again killing our hopes of a networked work environment? In any event you mind consider a visit to http://www.openoffice.org and grabbing a copy (free of charge).

As for me? Well, after mildly disappointing short lived test of the header feature in Google Docs I kept the copy of OpenOffice.org open and continued with my work. As for my views on their “Team Edition” - pft. Nothing to see here everyone just keep moving. Nothing to see.

update: Google along with Yahoo!, Microsoft and other heavy hitters have joined the OpenID Corporate board of the OpenID Foundation. Why is this important? Well, it was thought that if Yahoo! was absorbed by Microsoft their signon process might be handled by the unpopular Passport system that currently infects the ms online offerings.  *yeah, that was a jab. = )