The big financial news over this weekend is that Microsoft withdrew its nearly $48 billion offer to purchase Yahoo. Which raises the question...

Who on Earth cares?

After all, Microsoft completely blew the desktop business with the launch of the horrible Windows Vista operating system. (I personally switched to Macs rather than upgrade to that clunker. And how happy I am for it!)

Meanwhile, Yahoo likewise managed to complete blow the online business. With a huge lead, it has been throughly trounced by Google.

Of course, it logically follows that rather than fix what's broken, Microsoft would rather keep shoveling a poor OS at the marketplace and try to fix things by combining with another ailing company. That's not a strategy. That's a surrender...

On second thought, maybe Microsoft and Yahoo are perfect for each other, after all.

I'm a big fan of Google Apps. We use them at my firm for gmail (using our farrellkramer.com domain), shared calendars, chat, and Google Docs, which is an office suite.

Now, here's somone who's really interested in the application. The author of this post is writing a book about Google Apps ... using Google Docs as his word processor. He discusses it in great detail:

Pros and cons to using, say, MS Word

• Working from anywhere: In theory, as the book is stored on the Google server farm and not your home computer, you can access and edit it from anywhere, like an internet cafe, or your friend's computer, or a public cafe with wifi. In practice, when writing a book you need to concentrate quite a bit. Some authors may be able to concentrate better when hooked up to their laptop in a public cafe, while others need to go have a non-changing, quiet place – like their home desk, room doors closed. If that's the case, then the "work from anywhere" bonus of online applications is somewhat lost. Nevertheless, the fact that Google Docs allows me to collaborate on the same document with my editor, who sits across the ocean, is a great benefit.

Beyond the pros and cons, the author discusses his workflow -- both in terms of writing and collaboration -- with the very clever use of features such as linking one doc to another and using color coding to specify the draft status of each chapter.

Basically, this is a very cool look at the real power of Google Apps: You can write together with someone else in real time, across geographic boundaries. Even something as complex as an entire book!

Just a quick note to .farrell subscribers who haven't heard from me recently.

In early February, I closed down the old .farrell blog and launched my Farrell Kramer Digital Images blog, which focuses on my photographic work. But I've decided I still need an outlet for non-photographic posts that also fall outside the domain of my PR life.

So, I've relaunched .farrell at the same domain.

I just finished redirecting the old feed URL to the new feed, so you'll see posts start coming across again. I hope you like the blog and feel like sticking around. On the blog site, I've aggregated all my content from across blogs, photo sites, etc. Please stop by and let me know how you like it. You can also find a link there to the old .farrell blog, which has reverted to its original wordpress.com domain and now functions as an archive.

And please do comment. I'd like to hear from you.

It's nice to know that Apple isn't the only computer manufacturer with a sense of humor...

Good question.

Why would I need to create another blog? After all, I've got one over at Farrell Kramer Communications and another at Farrell Kramer Digital Images. Isn't enough, enough already?

Well, no. With all the blogs, sites and social networks I've got running, I'm beginning to feel a bit dismembered by it all. So, I've decided to resurrect .farrell, which morphed into my photo blog, to have a place to pull it all together.

This blog is meant to let me speak about topics not related to PR and photography, but also aggregate all that content. That's why I've got the sidebars full of links. I want to be able to see it all in one place.

The tabs at the top of the page aggregate the RSS feeds my other sites and networks create. They're meant to bring together not only links, but actual content. Please feel free to check them out. I think they'll work nicely. Enjoy!