I love having big birthday bashes, no matter how irrelevant the occasion – in this case my 26th, which, other than being the 5th anniversary of my 21st, is completely pointless.

The tech story (how do I always find one?) – is that I’ve been using Google spreadsheets to manage the dinner reservation (it involves tedious working out of set-menus in advance) — it’s very useful. 5 years ago the concept of an online-only service would have driven me nuts, but am actually finding myself moving away from the ‘thick client’ MS model – and there are two key motivations for it.

1) I need to access the content from multiple locations, usually at least home and work. Being online makes this easier.
2) I really, really can never be bothered to wait for my Office apps to load. Even on quite fast machines. It’s why I so often end up taking notes in ‘Notepad’.

So here’s my guidance for MS in their next release of Office.

1) Provide a pared down, simpler, SAAS, web-based version of all the apps online.
2) FIX Windows Live Mail so it is as quick and easy to use as Gmail
3) Work out some clever integrated online storage scheme so that people can store large amounts of data securely online

If you do all that, reduce the license fee and provide the basic versions for free or a low subscription cost, you might make Google nervous. With broadband everywhere, and rumours of Mesh cities popping up here, there and everywhere… More people will be happy about moving online for basic software needs.