A recent article in the NYTimes asked the question – do GPS devices reduce our ability to self orient? I have asked myself this same question many times as I’ve travelled the world, relying on and marveling at how my Google Maps has helped me navigate unknown places with ease…but with no sense of where I really am in the more traditional geo-spatial sense.

In order to definitively answer that question all you need to do is to get stuck without any connection to GPS in a foreign city on your way to a meeting when you had completely counted on it in advance or worse be in the middle of a GPS navigation and lose connection.

That’s exactly what happened to me a while back in Cologne, Germany. I had arrived there for an important dinner meeting and got off the train at the main railway station. I had my Android with built-in turn-by-turn Google Maps directions with me – this has been a reliable, effective and cheap (i.e. free) provider of voice-activated directions for me since it was launched.  I loved that exclusive Android application and used it a lot.

Upon my arrival in Cologne, I set off in the direction of my meeting (as I had last identified it on GMaps) and wandered into the maze of winding cobblestone streets before I realized that I was not connected to 3G and the map was not working.

It was night and there was no one in the street, I could not find any cabs and there I was…standing in the middle of the city without a mental map of the place and lost. It was an amazing moment for me when I realized just how much I had become dependent on the connectivity and the app on my phone. No sense of place or location…contrasted with a time that I used to know cities by heart after a day.

I finally found someone to ask and they gave me direction to where I needed to go…but it had a lasting impact on my sense of place and convinced me that I should always consult with or have a real map in my back pocket when I set out on a trip to a place I don’t know – so that I can again be really truly independent.

Last week Google announced  a milestone deal with BBVA that should have people at Microsoft even more worried than they probably already are, and pure Cloud enthusiasts like my colleagues at TOA and I ever more excited and confident about the future of pure-play Cloud-based software.

BBVA is a major employer with over one hundred thousands employees. But this is significant not just because of the sheer number of new Google Docs and Gmail users – but mostly because of the network effect.

At TOA we have always ‘practiced what we preached’ and that means that we not only sell Cloud-based enterprise software (SaaS), we also buy and use only Cloud-based software. What that means for us is that we only look for SaaS solutions for our internal needs. We believe firmly that in order to understand the benefits, as well as the limitations of what we sell, we have to experience it like our clients do: as real bon-fide users. So we have been Google Apps users from the moment that these were available for the enterprise and moved our whole mail infrastructure to Google about two years ago. We have followed the evolution of the Google Docs Suite from the moment that Google bought Writely  and watch closely as these applications have become more and more deep and more and more sophisticated and complete. In fact, from a classic enterprise users’ point of view , someone who is not crunching numbers or doing intense graphics and a lot of offline work, there is very little difference today creating text, presentation or spreadsheet documents on Google Docs in comparison to Microsoft Office. In fact, the most amazing aspect of the GDocs Suite is the strong native collaboration capabilities that make it absolutely a killer app for this purpose.

Only one serious gap remains  that has kept us from adopting the GDocs Suite as our one and only productivity tool and that is robust, easy to use offline  capability, access and storage –(full disclosure: I am writing this very post on Word – to be transferred later  - because of that…I’m on a plane with no Wi-Fi).

The only other serious hindrance is people’s mindset.

Office is the standard and people are afraid of deserting the standard. But that’s where the network effect comes in. With companies like GM and BBVA adopting the G-Suite as their mail app and G-Docs as their primary productivity tool (even if for now for internal communications) we will begin to see the conversion of the masses and the tipping point will get ever closer.

I blogged about this a few weeks ago and it seems that Google’s Siri headache is not going away….

Here’s more fascinating stuff about what might be an even bigger battle than Android vs. iOS.

I’d be interested to read your thoughts and comments on this, so use that comments button!

There was a lot of negative buzz in press over the past few days about the Kindle Fire and now that buzz has turned into scorching criticism. Jakob Nielsen, one of the world’s foremost experts on usability, issued an alert saying that “Kindle Fire…suffers from plain old bad UI design in many areas” and “a disappointingly poor user experience”.

The NYTimes prominently covered the issues saying that Amazon is having some real challenges with the Fire in an article that went straight to the number one spot on the Times’ Most Emailed List. In it, the Times cautioned all the naysayers not to count Amazon out, but nonetheless described the problems in detail and raised red flags for consumers.

We should not forget that while there was plenty of criticism of the iPhone when it came out (remember no ‘copy/paste’?) or the iPad (‘who needs it…’) it was first to market; and the sheer wonder of the new was enough to help people over the hump.

The Kindle Fire competes with the iPad, despite Amazon’s insistence that it doesn’t…I personally can’t see myself owing the Fire AND an iPad AND a Kindle eReader….I will choose one eReader and one tablet. And though Fire might be cheaper…given that it is not functionally on par with the iPad…I choose the iPad as my tablet.

Amazon, an inspiring company on many many levels, should have made sure that its product was perfect. It didn’t and the Fire’s future is not clear.

And here’s an update to this blog…a followup article in the NY Times.