Technology News: Web Apps

Adobe Makes Video Power Grab With Flash, Air Betas
November 17, 2009

Adobe on Tuesday announced pre-release betas of Flash Player 10.1 and Air 2. The technologies have been enhanced to enable access to online video on any platform, including smartphones. They will also help provide a single, unified application development platform for online apps. Flash Player 10.1 will support PCs, netbooks, smartbooks, smartphones and other mobile devices.

FOSS' Sunny Place in the Cloud
November 12, 2009

Richard Stallman's now-famous warnings about cloud computing (his verdict in a nutshell: It's "marketing hype") sparked a fresh round of debate in the blogosphere this week, along with some outbursts of incredulity. Stallman "is a few bubbles off of plumb and gets weirder every year," Slashdot blogger hairyfeet told LinuxInsider.

Google Dashboard Lights Up User Access to Privacy Controls
November 05, 2009

Google on Thursday announced the launch of Google Dashboard, an online utility that offers one view into all Google products a customer uses. This is intended to give users more transparency and control over their data, the Internet search giant claimed. Dashboard is really an information aggregator.

Microsoft Turns on a Dime to Beat Back Google Apps
November 03, 2009

Microsoft has slashed the prices of its SaaS email offering and its online business productivity suite, making them more competitive with the low-cost premier edition of Google Apps. Exchange Online as a standalone app is now available for $5 per month, while the business productivity bundle is now $10 per user per month.

The Audacity of Droid
October 30, 2009

The Android mobile operating system is graduating soon to 2.0 status, and Google gave it a pretty nice present to celebrate: a free turn-by-turn navigation app called "Google Maps Navigation." It'll run on Android 2.0 phones with GPS, and it'll use the phone's cellular Internet connection to get live map information.

Google Voice Whittles Blocked Number List to Under 100
October 29, 2009

Google said late Wednesday that its free messaging and calling service, Google Voice, blocks calls to fewer than 100 specific phone numbers likely to be adult chat lines and free conference call services. The company made the disclosure in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission.

City of Angels to Give Cloud Computing a Go
October 28, 2009

The Los Angeles City Council voted 12-0 on Tuesday to adopt Google Apps, which include Gmail and other office software tools, for its 30,000 employees. The deal places Los Angeles among the vanguard of public sector operations relying on cloud-based productivity software. Plans call for installation of the system by June, when a pilot project will begin.

Drupal Takes Up Residency in the White House
October 27, 2009

Free and open source software just got a major boost: The Obama administration announced that it has adopted open source content management system Drupal for the Whitehouse.gov Web site. Though it may look much the same to visitors, the newly revamped Web site went live on Saturday with the goal of improving the tools visitors use to engage with White House officials and each other.

Google Wave Beta: Some Undertow, but Lots of Potential
October 22, 2009

Five months of hype have roiled the waters for Google Wave. Is it an Outlook killer? The search giant's idea of a social network? One unified communications tool to rule us all? The buzz began at May's Google I/O Developer conference. Now, after much talk in the tech blogosphere and among analysts, Wave is finally in preview mode.

Firefox Locks Out Microsoft's App Dev Tech
October 19, 2009

Microsoft technology used to program applications that can be accessed through a browser continued to be blocked for Firefox users Monday. Mozilla had been blocking two Microsoft plug-ins after the discovery that Microsoft's .Net 3.5 SP1 install silently adds a plug-in to Firefox allowing the surreptitious launch of a malicious AML browser application that could take over infected machines.

GoToMyPC Gets Ready to Go to Your Mac
October 19, 2009

More and more workers require remote access to their personal computers at their offices, and often those office computers are Macs. That trend has induced a major maker of remote access software to tailor one of its offerings for the Applesphere. Citrix Systems is close to releasing GoToMyPC for the Mac, currently in open beta trials.

Google Doctors Up Docs Sharing
October 13, 2009

The life of a worker ant in a cubicle farm may offer its unique challenges -- how else to explain the popularity of "Office Space" reruns on cable TV? -- but the world of office productivity software and applications is turning out to be anything but boring. The latest example: the Monday announcement of new Google Docs features.

Is the Internet Falling Apart?
October 13, 2009

How secure and dependable is the Internet? The Great Twitter Outage of 2009, which shocked the microblogging community and amused many other observers, called into question the reliability of Web-based communications and transaction capabilities that are easy to take for granted.

Microsoft Budges on Browsers to Appease EC
October 07, 2009

The European Commission on Wednesday announced that it will test a new Microsoft plan that could end a long-running battle the two entities have been having over Web browsers. Microsoft has, in essence, agreed to offer Windows users a choice of browsers bundled into its Windows operating system. It will include mechanisms to let users turn off Internet Explorer and divorce applications from IE.

IBM Sets Up Shop in the Business-Apps Bargain Basement
October 02, 2009

IBM has launched LotusLive iNotes, an email and mobile mail service that interoperates with Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange. The package includes calendaring and contact management services. iNotes can be deployed to work with an existing on-premise email application or as a company's sole system.

ICANN Cuts the Apron Strings
October 02, 2009

According to ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush, nobody but nobody controls the Internet. Not China, not Comcast, not your IT guy, not Clippy, nobody. The Final Boss of the Internet does not exist. But there does exist a nonprofit that governs Web addresses, and that's Dengate Thrush's organization, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.