Podcast appearances and mentions of jeff raikes

In this captivating episode of the Positive Leadership Podcast, I'm thrilled to welcome Charles Duhigg, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Power of Habit and Supercommunicator. Together, we dive, among other topics, into the science of habits, exploring how small behavioral changes can drive transformative leadership and fuel long-term success. Charles shares actionable insights on building better routines, fostering resilience, and creating a culture of innovation—essential tools for any positive leader aiming to inspire growth and impact. Looking for more inspiration? Listen to my conversation with Jeff Raikes, former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Combining Leadership and Philanthropy with Jeff Raikes Or my discussion with Kevin Scott, Microsoft's Chief Technology Officer: Empowering People with AI Subscribe now to JP's free monthly newsletter "Positive Leadership and You" on LinkedIn to transform your positive impact today: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

In this inspiring episode of the Positive Leadership Podcast, I'm joined by a leader who has redefined what it means to innovate in the world of industry and sustainability—Florent Menegaux, CEO of Michelin. Over the years, he has climbed the ranks to become a transformative leader, steering the company toward a bold vision: achieving 100% sustainable tire production by 2050. Under his guidance, Michelin has evolved far beyond tire manufacturing, positioning itself as a global leader in sustainable mobility. Florent's leadership is rooted in a deep commitment to innovation, environmental responsibility, and ethical practices. In today's episode, we delve into his visionary approach to transformation, exploring how he balances business growth with sustainability and how his leadership principles inspire positive impact across the globe. Join us for a thought-provoking discussion about the future of sustainable mobility, ethical leadership, and the power of transformation. Interested in similar episodes with other visionary leaders? Tune in to my conversation with Jeff Raikes, former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Combining Leadership and Philanthropy with Jeff Raikes - https://thepositiveleadershippodcast.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/16177556-special-100th-episode-a-journey-of-leadership-and-giving-back-with-jeff-raikesOr my discussion with Kevin Scott, Microsoft's Chief Technology Officer: Empowering People with AI - https://thepositiveleadershippodcast.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/14764673-empowering-people-with-ai-with-kevin-scottSubscribe now to JP's free monthly newsletter "Positive Leadership and You" on LinkedIn to transform your positive impact today: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

In this milestone episode of the Positive Leadership Podcast, I'm joined by someone who has had a profound influence on my career and personal growth—Jeff Raikes. Jeff and I share a deep connection, having both spent significant time at Microsoft, where he became a legendary manager and mentor to me.From his early days at Microsoft in 1981 to his pivotal role as President of the Business Division, Jeff's leadership has been integral to the company's success. Beyond his Microsoft career, Jeff is known for his extraordinary philanthropic work. As the former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and co-founder of the Raikes Foundation with his wife Tricia, he has made a lasting impact in youth development, education, and addressing youth homelessness.In today's conversation, we dive into the principles of leadership that have guided Jeff throughout his career and explore how his commitment to making the world a better place continues to drive his work.Tune in for an insightful discussion on leadership, giving back, and the power of making a lasting difference.Interested in other similar episodes with great positive leaders?Don't miss my conversation with Yoshito Hori, founder of GLOBIS Corporation, GLOBIS University, and GLOBIS Capital Partners: https://thepositiveleadershippodcast.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/16010088-combining-purpose-and-entrepreneurship-for-japan-s-future-with-yoshito-horiOr with Kevin Scott, Microsoft's chief technology officer: https://thepositiveleadershippodcast.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/14764673-empowering-people-with-ai-with-kevin-scottSubscribe now to JP's free monthly newsletter "Positive Leadership and You" on LinkedIn to transform your positive impact today: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

In this episode of Beyond the Blue Badge, host Rich Kaplan talks with former Microsoft executive Jeff Raikes, who shares his journey before, during and after working at Microsoft. In the final part of this three-part episode, Jeff talks about leading the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the work he and Tricia Raikes are doing with The Raikes Foundation, being part of a Major League Baseball ownership group and being part of the startup ecosystem.

In this episode of Beyond the Blue Badge, host Rich Kaplan talks with former Microsoft executive Jeff Raikes, who shares his journey before, during and after working at Microsoft. In Part 3 of this three-part episode, Jeff talks about the opportunities to land business and key strategies he worked on at Microsoft that helped change the world and what he learned from the leadership at Microsoft.

Early learnings from early Microsoft In this episode of Beyond the Blue Badge, host Rich Kaplan talks with former Microsoft executive Jeff Raikes, who shares his journey before, during and after working at Microsoft. In Part 1 of this three-part episode, Jeff talks about how he went from a farm in Nebraska to working in technology and how he got interested in software while working at Apple Computer, where he was involved in the development of VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet. He also reveals how he got a call from Steve Ballmer, who recruited him to join Microsoft in 1981. He also delves into what it was like in the early ‘80s as an early employee of the company.

Anthony talks with Mr. Jeff Raikes, Co-Founder of the Raikes Foundation and author of the op-ed published in FORBES entitled, 'Dear White CEOs: It's Time To Lead On Racial Justice' having real dialogue on the subject of race, perception, Corporate America and personal experiences. The HBCU Nation Radio Show airs on HBCUiRadio and HBCU Smart TV, Hosted by Anthony Ray, Founder, Creator and Producer of The HBCU Nation Radio Show. For more information, visit HBCUNation.org.

Today we're going to cover the software that would become Microsoft Office.  Microsoft Office was announced at COMDEX in 1988. The Suite contained Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These are still the core applications included in Microsoft Office. But the history of Office didn't start there.  Many of the innovations we use today began life at Xerox. And Word is no different. Microsoft Word began life as as Multi-Tool Word in 1981, when Charles Simonyi was hired away from Xerox PARC where he had worked on one of the earlier word processors, Bravo.  He brought in Richard Brodie, and by 1983, they would release it for DOS, simplifying the name to just Microsoft Word. They would port it to the Mac in 1985, shortly after the release of the iconic 1984 Macintosh. Being way more feature-rich than MacWrite, it was an instant success. 2.0 would come along in 1987, and they would be up to 5 by 1992. But Word for Windows came along in 1989, when Windows 3.0 dropped. So Word went from DOS to Mac to Windows.  Excel has a similar history. It began life as Multiplan in 1982 though. At the time, it was popular on CP/M and DOS but when Lotus 1-2-3 came along, it knocked everything out of the hearts and minds of users and Microsoft regrouped. Doug Klunder would be the Excel lead developer and Jabe Blumenthal would act as program manager. They would meet with Bill Gates and Simonyi and hammer out the look and feel and released Excel for the Mac in 1985. And Excel came to Windows in 1987. By Excel 5 in 1993, Microsoft would completely taken the spreadsheet market and suddenly Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) would play a huge role in automating tasks. Regrettably, then came macro viruses, but for more on those check out the episode on viruses. In fact, along the way, Microsoft would pick up a ton of talented developers including Bob Frankton a co-creator of the original spreadsheet, VisiCalc. Powerpoint was an acquisition. It began life as Presenter at Forethought, a startup, in 1983. And Robert Gaskins, a former research manager  from Bell Norther Research, would be brought in to get the product running on Windows 1. It would become PowerPoint when it was released for the Mac in 1987 and was wildly successful, selling out all of the copies from the first run.  But then Jeff Raikes from Microsoft started getting ready to build a new presentation tool. Bill Gates had initially thought it was a bad idea but eventually gave Raikes the go-ahead to buy Forethought and Microsoft PowerPoint was born.  And that catches up to that fateful day in 1988 when Bill Gates announced Office at COMDEX in Las Vegas, which at the time was a huge conference. Then came the Internet. Microsoft Mail was released for the Mac in 1988 and bundled with Windows from 1991 and on. Microsoft also released a tool called Inbox. But then came Exchange, expanding beyond mail and into contacts, calendars, and eventually much more. Mail was really basic and for Exchange, Microsoft released Outlook, which was added to Office 97 and an installer was bundled with Windows Exchange Server.  Office Professional in that era included a database utility called Access. We've always had databases. But desktop databases had been dominated by Borland's dBase and FoxPro up until 1992 when Microsoft Access began to chip away at their marketshare. Microsoft had been trying to get into that market since the mid-90s with R:Base and Omega, but when Access 2 dropped in 1994, people started to take notice and by the release of Office 95 Professional it could be purchased as part of a suite and integrated cleanly. I can still remember those mdb files and setting up data access objects and later ActiveX controls! So the core Office components came together in 1988 and by 1995 the Office Suite was the dominant productivity suite on the market. It got better in 97. Except The Office Assistant, designed by Kevan Atteberry and lovingly referred to as Clippy. By 2000 Office became the de facto standard. Everything else had to integrate with Office. That continued in the major 2003 and 2007 releases. And the products just iterated to become better and better software.  And they continue to do that. But another major shift was on the way. A response to Google Apps, which had been released in 2006. The cloud was becoming a thing. And so Office 365 went into beta in 2010 and was launched in 2011. It includes the original suite, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams for chatting with coworkers, Yammer for social networking, Skype for Business (although video can now be done in Teams), Outlook and Outlook online, and Publisher. As well as Publisher, InfoPath, and Access for Windows.  This Software + Services approach turned out to be a master-stroke. Microsoft was able to finally raise prices and earned well over a 10% boost to the Office segment in just a few years. The pricing for subscriptions over the term of what would have been a perpetual license was often 30% more. Yet, the Office 365 subscriptions kept getting more and more cool stuff. And by 2017 the subscriptions captured more revenue than the perpetual licenses. And a number of other services can be included with Office 365.  Another huge impact is the rapid disappearing act of on premises Exchange servers. Once upon a time small businesses would have an Exchange server and then as they grew, move that to a colocation facility, hire MCSE engineers (like me) to run them, and have an amplified cost increase in dealing with providing groupware. Moving that to Microsoft means that Microsoft can charge more, and the customer can get a net savings, even though the subscriptions cost more - because they don't have to pay people to run those servers. OneDrive moves files off old filers, etc.  And the Office apps provided aren't just for Windows and Mac. Pocket Office would come in 1996, for Windows CE. Microsoft would have Office apps for all of their mobile operating systems. And in 2009 we would get Office for Symbian. And then for iPhone in 2013 and iPad in 2014. Then for Android in 2015.  Today over 1 and a quarter billion people use Microsoft Office. In fact, not a lot of people have *not* used Office. Microsoft has undergone a resurgence in recent years and is more nimble and friendly than ever before. Many of the people that created these tools are still at Microsoft. Simonyi left Microsoft for a time. But they ended up buying his company later. During what we now refer to as the “lost decade” at Microsoft, I would always think of these humans. Microsoft would get dragged through the mud for this or that. But the engineers kept making software. And I'm really glad to see them back making world class APIs that do what we need them to do. And building good software on top of that.  But most importantly, they set the standard for what a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tool would look like for a generation. And the ubiquity the software obtained allowed for massive leaps in adoption and innovation. Until it didn't. That's when Google Apps came along, giving Microsoft a kick in the keister to put up or shut up. And boy did Microsoft answer.  So thank you to all of them. I probably never would have written my first book without their contributions to computing. And thank you listener, for tuning in, to this episode of the history of computing podcast. We are so lucky to have you. Have a great day. 

Moderator: Michael Gordon Voss, publisher of Stanford Social Innovation ReviewGuests:Jim Bildner, CEO, Draper Richards Kaplan FoundationJulia Reed, Managing Director, Relationship Management, Schwab Charitable After you listenWith almost two million 501(c)(3) charities registered in the United States, you may be looking for help in identifying highly effective charities that can have the greatest impact on the causes you support. Find guidance here: https://www.schwabcharitable.org/public/charitable/features/where_to_give/finding_charities.Interested in learning more about designing your philanthropic approach to maximize your impact? Spend six minutes with Fred Kaynor, Vice President Schwab Charitable and Jeff Raikes, Co-Founder of Raikes Foundation at https://www.schwabcharitable.org/public/charitable/maximize_your_impact/one_charitable_minute_videos.Curious about how a donor-advised fund might help you make more of a philanthropic impact over time? Watch our video and find out if this is the right solution for you at https://www.schwabcharitable.org/public/charitable/donor_advised_fund. Given the amount of capital available to Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, they are really trying to push the ball on complex societal issues including access to food and water, homelessness, access to education, healthcare, the critical issues that face society globally. Find out more about how DRK Foundation is looking for solutions to these very complicated societal issues, and how they are typically finding those in early stage entrepreneurs, in the three articles below:Learn more about DRK Foundation’s belief in early-stage investments in social entrepreneurs and how this practice is essential for creating profound and lasting change to society’s most challenging problems in "The Urgency to Fund Early-stage Social Entrepreneurs" published by Stanford Social Innovation Review.Funders who care about systems change should look from the outside in, and shouldn’t discount the potential and influence of early-stage organizations. Today, disruptive innovation is bubbling up, rather than trickling down, Read more in this article published by Stanford Social Innovation Review "To Change the System Look Outside the System."Read about how the need to bridge the digital divide between those with and those without adequate connection to the internet took more than technology. It required a system’s change. "Why Social Ventures Need Systems Thinking" in Harvard Business Review. Subscribe to Giving with Impact for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.Giving with Impact is an original podcast from Schwab Charitable and Stanford Social Innovation Review.If you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts.

In this of Beyond the Blue Badge, host Rich Kaplan visits Tricia Raikes on the shores of Seattle’s Lake Union at the headquarters for North Forty and The Raikes Foundation. Tricia shares why she and her husband Jeff Raikes in 2002 started the foundation, which has given more than $97 million in grants; how the organization’s mission has evolved; and how everyone — at any level — can think about impact-driven philanthropy.

Is philanthropy, by its very nature, a threat to today’s democracy? Some believe that such generosity is not the unassailable good we think it to be, and in its current form might even be undermining democratic values and set back aspirations of justice. Political science professor Rob Reich took Town Hall’s stage to cross-examine philanthropic practices of our age. He presented insight from his book Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better, decrying big philanthropy as an unaccountable and overly tax-advantaged exercise of power which converts private assets into public influence. Reich was joined in conversation with Jeff Raikes, co-founder of the Raikes Foundation. Together they examined the policies which define philanthropy today, casting a discerning eye on the ways we could restructure organized giving to serve democracy rather than undermine it. Calling for new designs that appeal to the purpose of philanthropy—decentralization of power, funding of public goods, and patronage of scientific research and the arts—Reich and Raikes discussed new foundations to guide our organized giving, and considered what we can all do to better support democratic values and promote justice. Rob Reich is professor of political science and faculty co-director for the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at Stanford University. Jeff Raikes is the co-founder of the Raikes Foundation, and formerly served as CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and member of the senior leadership team at the Microsoft Corporation. Recorded live at Impact Hub by Town Hall Seattle on Wednesday, November 28, 2018. 

If you’re white and middle class, you were probably raised thinking that discussing race was impolite. Color blindness was seen as a virtue. But in truth, color blindness is an insidious form of racial oppression, says Ford Foundation President Darren Walker. In this episode, Walker and Jeff Raikes, former CEO of the Gates Foundation, speak with Michele Norris, director of The Bridge at the Aspen Institute, about how color blindness affects social policy. Find the Aspen Insight episode, "What Would MLK Say About Today's America" by clicking here. Discover more about the Aspen Institute program The Bridge. Follow our show on Twitter @aspenideas and Facebook at facebook.com/aspenideas. Email your comments to aspenideastogo@gmail.com.

Food security is one of Africa's most pressing issues. Globally, 800 million people are undernourished, with 281 million coming from sub-Saharan Africa. Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is working to mitigate poverty and hunger by supporting local farmers. Two pioneers of this initiative, Strive Masiyiwa, Founder and Executive Chairman of Econet, and Jeff Raikes, former Chief Executive Officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, discuss how AGRA is tailoring solutions for African partners. They're in conversation with World Affairs CEO Jane Wales. We want to hear from you! Please take part in a quick survey to tell us how we can improve our podcast: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PWZ7KMW

This episode of IWL is brought to you by cardigans, the uniform staple of interchangeable white ladies everywhere. Today’s essential question: what’s an IWL and why does it matter?Annie & Hope discuss where the term “Interchangeable White Lady” comes from and what the challenge is for white female teachers working with diverse students. The term original defined as “smiling, 20-something in her Target cardigan standing in front of a Smartboard” in Hope’s blog post The Interchangeable White Lady: An Introduction. In actuality, this label refers to the way students view their teachers. The concept was created in the context that 80% of educators are white women, teaching students of color (stats vary depending on source). Student perception is key. Relationships are crucial. White female teachers need to consider how students perceive them and accept the challenge this creates. It's a challenge to:To teach in a culturally responsive way based on the students before us.To view our instruction through the lens of traditionally marginalized youth.To distinguish ourselves as allies in the fight against institutional racism as we equip young men and women through the power of education.Annie explains her own reactions to being an IWL. Paraphrases Roxanne Gay’s idea that you don’t need to apologize for being born white or wealthy, but to acknowledge how those traits are favored in society and how they make your movement through life different and often easier (and how you should use that privilege to help others move more easily). Annie also shared her deep, fangirl-like appreciation for the illustrious and fabulous Mary Yu.Timeless or Terrible: Annie and Hope weigh in on the staples of interchangeable white women everywhere. Today’s topics:  Ugg Boots LuLaroe Leggings Kombucha w/ the mother Do Your Fudging Homework: Go read Jeff Raikes’ article “Color-Blindness Is a Cop-Out” and “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh.Find us on Facebook www.facebook.com/IWLpodcast or follow us on on Twitter @IWL_Podcast

Jeff Raikes and Gregory Page speak on the world's agriculture and food security problems and provide important perspectives on the role of their foundations and companies in assisting farmers and reducing hunger. (February 10, 2011)

Jeff Raikes leads the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's efforts to promote equity for all people around the world. Before joining the foundation, Raikes was a member of the Microsoft Corp.'s senior leadership team, setting strategy and direction for the company. Raikes was president of the Microsoft Business Division. He previously served as group vice president of the Worldwide Sales and Support Group, where he was responsible for providing strategic leadership for Microsoft's sales, marketing, and service initiatives. Before that, he served as senior vice president of Microsoft North America. Jeff Raikes joined Microsoft in 1981 as a product manager and was instrumental in driving Microsoft's applications marketing strategy. Promoted to director of applications marketing in 1984, Raikes was the chief strategist behind the company's success in graphical applications for the Apple Macintosh and the Microsoft Windows operating system and the creation of the Microsoft Office suite of productivity applications. Before joining Microsoft, he was a software development manager at Apple Computer Inc.

Intro In our previous discussion regarding gaming we learned about Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games or MMORPGs. Among the most popular was World of Warcraft. This week we consider The Webware Wars. Among the factors that have led to the proliferation of webware are: increased adoption of high-speed internet, greater bandwidth, cheap storage and a new dynamic and interactive web architecture enable by a collection of technologies referred to as Web 2.0 and AJAX. Everybody's getting into the act, including big players like Microsoft and Google, and little fish like Zoho and Thinkfree. Mike, let's start out with what we have been using the longest - What are some of the New Features in Google Docs and Spreadsheets? As with any Google product, new features are quietly added with little notice or fanfare. Since we last talked about Google docs and Spreadsheets (GDS), there have been a number of additions and improvements - mostly on the spreadsheets side of the house. The first addition is actually within Gmail - Google's popular web-based email. In the past, when a Gmail user received an email attachment (either word or excel) the only option was to open the attachment as an an html document-viewing only, or download and open the attachment. Now when a users receives an excel document, the have the option of opening that spreadsheet directly in GDS - presumably, a similar functionality will eventually be available for word documents. Can you describe GoogleLookup? This a new feature in the spreadsheets portion of the GDS that takes advantage of the online nature of GDS. In fact, it's a formula in the spreadsheet that attempts to answer a question by using information from the web. The syntax is fairly straightforward: =GoogleLookup("entity", "attribute") [the double quotes are required!] Some examples include: looking up the population of New York City [=GoogleLookup("New York City", "population")] or when Google was founded [=googlelookup("google", "founded")] =GoogleLookup("Springfield, MA", "population") gives us 152,082  =GoogleLookup("NJ", "population") gives us 8,414,350 If you mouse over the cell, you'll see links to the source pages. Don't expect to change the world with this function, but have fun with it. What are some of the entity types you can look up? Here are some of the types of entities you can access using GoogleLookup, and a few popular attribute names (some entities won't have all these attributes, and some will have more, so experiment): Countries and Territories (like "Burkina Faso"): population, capital, largest city, gdp U.S. States (like "Tennessee"): area, governor, nickname, flower Rivers (like "Amazon River"): origin, length Cities and Towns (like "Chicago"): state, mayor, elevation Musicians (like "John Lennon"): date of birth, place of birth, nationality Actors (like "Audrey Hepburn"): date of birth, place of birth, nationality Politicians (like "Anwar Al-Sadat"): date of birth, place of birth, nationality U.S. Presidents (like "Zachary Taylor"): date of birth, place of birth, political party Baseball Players (like "Wade Boggs"): games, at bats, earned run average, position Chemical Elements (like "Helium"): atomic number, discovered by, atomic weight Chemical Compounds (like "Isopropyl Alcohol"): chemical formula, melting point, boiling point, density Stars (like "Betelgeuse"): constellation, distance, mass, temperature Planets (like "Saturn"): number of moons, length of day, distance from sun, atmosphere Dinosaurs (like "Velociraptor"): height, weight, when it lived Ships (like "USS Chesapeake"): length, displacement, complement, commissioned Companies (like "Hewlett-Packard"): employees, ceo, ticker What about GoogleFinance? While GoogleLookup provides access to a wide variety of data, another new feature, GoogleFinance provides just financial data pulled from Google Finance. Using a similar syntax, you can look up the price of Google stock [=GoogleFinance("GOOG")] or the 52-week high of Apple [=GoogleFinance("AAPL", "HIGH52")]. And since this type of data changes fairly frequently, they are updated in your spreadsheet automatically. How has Publishing Improved? Google has also improved web-based publishing of spreadsheets. You can publish your entire spreadsheet (or just one sheet of it) so that other people can view it as HTML, or PDF - without having to sign in to a Google Account. The HTML even updates is the original spreadsheet changes. Last week in Houston you demo'ed something called Thinkfree - can you tell us about that?Thinkfree http://www.thinkfree.com/common/main.tfo A new addition to the webware wars is Thinkfree and their online office suite. Like GDS, Thinkfree provides online access to Word and Excel documents - what differentiates it is the addition of powerpoint and the ability to create charts in calc - their version of Excel. Thinkfree provides 1 Gig of space for their Thinkfree Write, Calc and Show suite. The collaboration and revisioning features are very similar to GDS. I would rate the interface a little cleaner and more user-friendly - Thinkfree refers to your online documents as your webtop, as opposed to your desktop. Like GDS, the architecture is AJAX-based, but Thinkfree uses JAVA as well. Another interesting feature that the Thinkfree suite provides is a doc exchange - an online repository that users can publish their documents to and share with one another - in fact this feature allows for a variety of creative commons licensing options. Another neat option is the Bulletin Board - sort of a guest book, where you can view all of your published and blogged files, collaborate with other Thinkfree users and get feedback from people all over the world. Another unique thing about Thinkfree's Online office suite is that it's just one of a number of products that they have launched. In addition to the free online version, there are commercial versions available including a server version, a desktop version and a portable version. The desktop and server versions are cross-platform, running on Windows, MAC and Linux and are reasonably priced ($50 desktop, server pricing starts at $30 per user per year). The portable addition runs on a U3 drive - similar to a USB drive, but with the ability to run applications - see http://www.u3.com/default.aspx for more info on U3 technology. Finally, there's a version of portable show (powerpoint) for the iPod. Are there any other applications we should take a look at?Solodox http://www.solodox.com Not nearly as far along in development as either GDS or Thinkfree is Solodox. In fact, on their website, the product is listed as an alpha - in the nomenclature of software development and testing, alpha-testing is internal testing that occurs before the software is made available to the public for beta-testing. So why bother discussing a product that's not ready for prime time? Well what's unique about Solodox is that in addition to providing a web-based word processor with features similar to other such products (creating, editing and sharing documents) Solodox And Solodox supports English, Japanese and Chinese.Where is Microsoft going with this webware technology? In the December 4 issue of Business Week Seattle Bureau Chief Jay Greene interviewed Kevin Johnson, co-president of Microsoft's platform and services division, which makes Windows, and Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's business division, which is responsible for Office. Here's a couple of quotes from this interview: In the Web 2.0 world where everything seems to be moving online, it almost seems anachronistic to be talking about packaged software. RAIKES: The new world of computing is the combination of software and services, and Microsoft is very, very focused on that services opportunity. I think the point that some of the competition misses is they think of it as an either/or situation when in reality it's an "and" situation--it's software and services, and you use the combination to do the best job for the customer. But doesn't the growing importance of the Web and all sorts of devices require Microsoft to take a different approach? RAIKES: You might think the core of our business is the PC. That's the misconception. The core of our business is software. And the software can be applied to the PC, the software can be applied to the server. When K.J. [Johnson] was joining the company [14 years ago], servers were kind of just getting started for us. Now we're big in game consoles. Did we want to get into Xbox because we wanted to be a hardware company? No, Xbox is a vehicle that allows us to deliver software. Zune is about software. So we are about software, and if you stick to that understanding of our company, then it's a lot easier to see how we transform.You can find the entire interview at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_49/b4012009.htm The pricing has me a bit concerned: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX101754511033.aspx