We are jumping into the non-Exchange IMAP world to see how a non MSFT enterprise works. We have been using Exchange for mail, calendar and contacts. However we would like to quit hosting our own email and we are also very intrigued by what is possible by integrating IMAP standards with PositiveWare.

Yesterday we started down the road by moving to an IMAP server for mail, and using Apple Mail as a client. Great, except that importing the Entourage mailboxes didn’t really happen.

We need to share calendars (no problem with iCal), but also write to each other’s calendars (big problem with iCal.) Today we will try Spanning Sync and see if that solves the problem.

Tomorrow’s challenge is Address Book.

Things I wish the iPhone could do…

1. Send/Receive photos via SMS like the Treo
2. Update calendar automagically
3. Support Flash on the Safari browser
4. Work elegantly with PositiveWare for time tracking and project management

In what must be an example of a slow news day Computerworld UK published an article headed “Software as a Service Draws Interest”.

The question is not that SaaS is the dominant paradigm in software now, but perhaps two other questions:

1. How and why is the pendulum swinging back away from SaaS?
2. How do conventional software publishers with a way more expensive cost structure compete?

Stay tuned.

Friday’s WSJ (August 17, 2007) features an interesting story about an ad agency called Ethos JWT pursuing a business plan of helping companies develop social responsibility programs.

While this may be like trying to put lipstick on a pig for some companies, I believe that there is a responsible element within most companies. Their plan reflects a larger mega trend towards, green, efficient, responsible.

Twenty years ago the Cato Institute and Laissez Faire books were writing about free market environmentalism. It is now coming to pass.

Apple has released Numbers to expand its productivity offering, iWork. The addition of a spreadsheet app may be enough to drive Mac-centric shops away from Office for the Mac.

A MacWorld article suggests that this initiative by Apple reflects MSFT’s apathy for the Mac platform.

Microsoft Corp. will delay the release of Office 2008 for Apple Inc.’s Macintosh computers until the middle of January 2008, in order to fix lingering bugs in the software.

The software maker previously said the new suite, which is to include Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the Entourage e-mail program, would go on sale sometime in the second half of 2007.

(From AP)