The Gliffy Plugin for Confluence is the first product that we charge for. We had what we thought was a pretty good month in December, so we thought we’d celebrate with a round of Golf at the Half Moon Bay Ocean Course. The weather was great. Not bad for January, eh?

Clint enjoying a fine day on the course

Clint is a golfing fanatic. There is a reason why a few of our examples involve golf. Me….. I’ve golfed 3-4 times in the last…. um…. 5 years, but with some good tips from my Dad when we golfed last month, and some more help from Clint, I managed to get through 18 holes without loosing too many balls.

Clint has some excellent commentary as I do my (ahem) best putting of the day:

In the mean time, we’ve been working hard wrapping up some new features for hosted Gliffy. We’re really excited about the new features, and you should expect to hear more about these in the next few days.

I read two blog posts recently, both from VC’s, which show folks are starting to grok the reality that collaborative internet based applications will soon be the tools of choice, replacing traditional desktop applications.

Fred Wilson writes:

“…my experience and my bet is that wikis will take the enterprise by storm. Because they are simpler, easier, and better.”

Peter Rip predicts:

“The AJAX version of Office is coming. But the key isn’t AJAX. The key is the apps will naturally collaborate the way we have all learned to work - via the Web.”

“…I bet in five years more people use AJAX Office than Microsoft Office.”

We couldn’t agree more! And Gliffy fits right in there…

Writely is a web based word processor which is similar in concept to what we’re doing in many ways with Gliffy (our product), except we’re not building a word processor. I can’t believe how similar the names are…. too funny! Office for the web is on its way…

This was truly a team effort. Lyla did a fantastic job with the design of our logo and web site. Also, Henry did some great work getting the HTML in order. Props to Dana for most of the content. Thanks everyone!

Get ready folks, Rich Internet Applications (RIA’s) will soon have you doing things on the web which you thought were only possible with desktop applications. These new web based applications will soon have you collaborating in ways you never thought possible, increasing the overall efficiency of companies in many ways. Here are a few interesting reads which all point in this general direction:

• Jason Fried of 37Signals predicts that most innovative software in the next 10 years will be web based
• Robert X. Cringly suggests “After a decade of messing around, thin client computing is almost inevitable for businesses. “
• Evan Williams of Odeo posted a while back about running your company on web apps.
• Michael Sica of Ataraxis Software will be developing his Project Management software using OpenLaszlo. I think you’re on the right track Michael, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

What could this all mean? I have a few predictions:

• As RIA alternatives begin to arrive on the scene in the next 1-2 years, progressive folks will stop using traditional desktop applications, including ALL Microsoft Office products.
• Lighter weight RIA alternatives to traditional desktop applications will offer collaboration opportunities far beyond those which are available in their desktop counterparts.
• Microsoft knows this trend is in the works, and will be mostly helpless to stop it until Windows Vista has greater market share.
• Many of Microsoft’s big money making software titles will be threatened. Microsoft stock will take a big hit when this trend becomes clear to the masses.
• Microsoft will find a way to create problems for RIA’s. A few possible scenarios:
  • The new version of IE will break existing AJAX RIA’s in subtle ways
  • The new version of IE wont play well with Flash, causing trouble for Flash based RIA’s like OpenLaszlo and Flex applications
  • Microsoft will create and bundle it’s own Flash player, breaking Flash based RIA’s which threaten their desktop application dominance.
• SocialText and JotSpot will be leading the charge (if they don’t get acquired by Yahoo or Google first)

What do you think?