Microsoft has really come to the party with a higher performance and truly worthwhile business productivity suite.

For quite some time now, I have not been using MS office at all and have been an advocate for Open Office and all things open source, but I have recently grown closer to my proprietary roots and have developed much appreciation for the work and effort that goes into bringing out products like Office 2010.

The new version of the well know business productivity suite, is simply impressive. Office 2010, loads faster, can handle more diverse file types and offers a host of functions and embedded applications, for tasks that one would previously need to perform in external programs.

I have still not managed to pull myself away from using Gmail as my mail management system and I can’t see myself moving back to Outlook anytime soon, unless Gmail and Exchange can communicate with each other directly. Gmail simply offers me the flexibility and scalability I need to manage multiple profiles and access my info instantly from multiple locations on the go.

For business use and from a corporate perspective, I think the new MS Outlook is definitely becoming a player and integrated with MS Exchange 2010, it makes for efficient management of internal work flow and cost effective email.

I am looking forward to playing around with the latest versions of Project and Visio as planning and monitoring seems to take up most of my time these days.

All in all, the new Office 2010, is most definitely worth the spend.

Buzz is new and will probably take a while to stabilise but already it feels as if it will be adopted very quickly and I presume that it will draw more people to the Gmail platform.

I am glad to see the integration with Google Profiles, this is going to make Profiles more relevant and content rich.

If you’re not on Gmail yet the now is the time to open an account. I recommend Gmail to all of my clients as a system to keep track of all of your various mail identities and manage your digital life. Once you’ve got a Gmail account check out all of the other services offered by Google, most of them are also available directly on your mobile phone which is great.

IMHO I feel that as a development community we should simply not support IE, but according to W3Schools stats on browsers http://w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp we’re still looking at about 39.3 % of all internet users running IE, so as a Businessman I need to look at things from a WHO IS PAYING perspective and from a ROI perspective, also the purpose of the website or application in question makes a huge difference on which browsers to support. A corporate venture could not afford for 39.3 % of their potential clients simply not being able to navigate and view their site.

Chrome frame will be great if people actually install it, but in reality, end users who have not upgraded from IE6 and who are not using Fire Fox, Opera, Chrome or Safari yet are not likely to install Chrome Frame as they would probably not know how to install flash or Java Runtime either.

I guess at the end of the day to support Chrome Frame, one needs only support Chrome and then add the additional line of code to your pages initialising the Frame if it is installed.

But we will still need to support IE, at least 7 and 8 for those users who are on corporate networks or work for narrow minded organisations that don’t allow Open Source standards based products on their IT infrastructure or who are simply not interested in allowing users to control their own web experience.

Browser support boils down to your web site’s target market, which I see as follows:

1. Corporate Informational/Portfolio/E-commerce Site – Open User Group – Want to sell something, product or service.
   Generally you will need to support more browsers as you are not sure what your potential customer may be using and your site should look good no matter what they are using. For example a shop selling flowers online, is not in control of who visits the site and the end users environment, if a visitor working at a commercial institution browses to the site or finds it in a seach and wants to buy flowers for someone and the site does not support IE then the flower shop will no doubt lose the sale to another site that does support IE. Also anyone searching for information on a product or service, from work where the environment is restricted and are forced to use IE, would not get benefit from a site that does not support IE and would be forced to look for services/information from someone who can provide them access to the information while they are looking for it in the format that they are able to view it.
2. Web Application – Closed User Group
   If you are developing your application for a closed user group or for a company who is going to use it internally and you are able to control what environment they will be using to access the application, then I would say opt to run Chrome or FF, if you are using a lot of JavaScript then go straight for Chrome as V8 is SOOOO fast. We have done some tests on JS interfaces that we use on some of our web apps and Chrome performs extremely better than other browsers. The other option of course is to develop only for IE if the company or client you are developing for would like to use it, on their network, but I would recommend choosing an Open and more regularly updated browsers and basically motivate from a web standards perspective that they should opt to use FF or Chrome.

   Once you have agreed on a browser, focus 100% on making your app work in it and don’t’ worry about other browsers at all. Learn all the browser specific optimisation tricks and features that you can leverage from in the development language that you are using, so that when you do launch the app it will be really fast and look good.

   If you choose, FF or Chrome, I would recommend you consider building an extension/plugin, that runs in the browser, this way you can leverage more client side processing and have faster access to features, by running the some of the features natively from within the browser. Also building plugins for an Open Browser can usually be done using XML or JS so you’re probably already fluent in either of these languages if you are building a web app for a commercial venture.

3. Personal Blog – the world
   Depending on whether you are one to make a stand or not and whether you care if users can see your site in different browsers, I think support the open ones and then redirect IE users to http://abetterbrowser.org/ automatically.

   I haven’t got to that point yet for my own site, but will probably implement that soon, as I think it is good to let people know that their are more browsers out there and you can do so much more with an Open Source one.

As a country we are suffering from less and less people qualifying with University degrees, as costs are increasing and entry criteria is hindering access to even distance learning institutions.

I feel that we need to review our education system as a whole and rewrite it from scratch.

Pre Primary

In the begging stages of schooling we need to focus on the development of efficient reading and mathematical skills. Classes should be smaller and more intimate. Younger learners need closer attention and more assistance. The curriculum should be based on language skills and mathematics only, other subject matter such as history and geography should be introduced to learners, via reading exercises, comprehension tests and group discussions

Primary

As the learner progresses, we need to gradually increase the number of learners in a class and focus more on additional content matter. Introduce computer and typing skills and electronic based learning as well as assessment.

Secondary

By the time a learner enters Secondary School, the learner should have developed good reading, interpersonal and learning skills. This combined with good computer and research skills will allow classes to be even bigger and the learner will be able to take more responsibility for what they are learning.

From this stage a learner should be preparing to either enter into a Academic University programme or into a Technical programme.

Tertiary

Access to Tertiary Education needs to be opened up. Universities, should be accepting learners even if they did not do the best during their Secondary Schooling.

The Tertiary Education system is currently only catering for people who are already doing well and it is very difficult for someone who did not to well at a schooling level to get into.

Even distance learning institutions restrict access to courses based on school results, even when they are not providing any form of support or interaction with the learner that could possibly justify this rejection.

The learners would still need to pay for their subjects even if they don’t pass, so what do the Universities have to lose.

Government should set up incentive schemes to encourage learners to progress and subsidise those who achieve good results. State owned institutions also need to offer far more competitive and accessible rates as they are being subsidised by tax payers money any way.

Legislation

As with most things in life it starts at the top. Our Government is not actively encouraging or should I say enforcing green legislation. In my humble opinion I feel that the government should be doing more to get greener energy systems in place.

Government housing schemes, should all be fitted with Solar or Wind Powered energy units. All new building plans should not be approved unless they are implementing green energy systems as well as Grey Water management systems to harness both energy and usable water from household waste.

All products that would cause damage to our food chain need to be outlawed, this way our food chain and the environment at large are protected.

Eskom

The Government, who were dumb enough to keep Eskom as a state owned entity, need to reposition Eskom. I feel that our energy market needs to be opened up and Eskom is perfectly positioned to become a national network provider for energy transfer.

The Government should be encouraging private sector investment into energy generation using green technologies. All homes and businesses, should be given the opportunity to participate in the energy harnessing network.

Homes with green energy units, should supply excess energy back to the national grid which can then in turn be used by businesses during the work day. In the evenings when industry closes down, excess energy should be returned to the grid and made available to homes.

Eskom should be placing themselves not as energy generator, but as energy distributor. All users of the network should be able to earn based on a usage in usage out system coordinated by Eskom, so that those who need to draw extra energy from the grid will pay for it and those who provide excess will earn an income and or rebate from this.
Eskom should place itself as an Energy Network and Systems Provider.

Transport

Our country is blessed with a large workforce of welders, electricians and numerous other professionals. We need to be focusing on the development of green vehicles and green energy systems locally.

The Government could be saving and creating jobs by setting up incentive scheme for industries which have got the skills but are currently focusing on slow moving expensive product lines, such as petrol driven vehicles or conventional geysers.

With the right governance and correct application of funding, we could be positioned to provide Southern Africa with energy efficient vehicles as well as green energy.