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Google Apps tops 1 million businesses

Google is well known as a one-trick pony.

Almost all of the company's revenue comes from its search engine, which last quarter accounted for more than $5 billion. New initiatives, such as the Chrome browser, Google Gears, and Google Friend Connect, are focused on building a mostly open-source Internet operating system out of Google technology in order to funnel more user data and targeted advertising opportunities into the Googleplex financial engine.

It's easy to draw parallels to Microsoft, which gradually built the dominant 20th century operating system and applications platform. Bill Gates and company realized that attracting developers … Read more

Oracle to acquire ClearApp

Oracle on Tuesday announced plans to acquire applications management software maker ClearApp.

The acquisition, which is expected to close by the end of the year, aims to enhance Oracle's lineup of Enterprise Manager products. ClearApp's technology is designed to allow customers to manage applications built on service-oriented architecture (SOA) platforms.

ClearApp's software aims to provide a greater view into a company's business services spread across all related application components.

"As customers deploy more SOA-based applications, the task of effectively managing them becomes paramount," Leng Leng Tan, Oracle's vice president of applications and systems … Read more

Video added to Google Apps

Google is introducing video into Google Apps with the hope that companies will be attracted to a service that helps with training and internal communication but also removes the hassles of hosting video.

According to Google executives who spoke to CNET News last week, the search giant has tailored some of the technology developed by YouTube specifically for corporate clients. The offering is part of Google's continuing efforts to replace traditional office software with so-called cloud-computing services.

With the help of Google Video for Business, a company's employees can upload and share clips with the same ease as … Read more

iPhone apps of the week

Apple's iPhone App Store grows every day with new free and paid offerings. The lion's share of apps (and clearly the most popular) have been games, now with 626 digital time wasters at the time of this writing. I check the App Store almost every day for new stuff--mostly in the free category, but I've also bought my share of iPhone apps, too.

What do I look for? To be honest, I like it all--from the completely useless, but funny programs to the legitimately useful everyday apps. When I sift through the various lists of apps on … Read more

Following up on letting iPhone apps run my life

A week ago, I wrote a story about a morning and afternoon I spent in Seattle letting iPhone applications control my day.

And while I vouched for the concept of turning my life over to the various apps--a couple for finding restaurants, one for finding music, one for playing Internet radio, one for AOL Instant Messenger, and so on--I also said that I'd had some problems with several of them.

I also got a lot of feedback from readers who pointed out that I hadn't needed to take photographs of the apps because there is a way to … Read more

Google grab bag: Translation, Apps uptime, and more

Google's always up to something, and here's a recap of some recent moves.

Google is making room for gargantuan display ads on YouTube, according to Silicon Alley Insider, which cites advertising industry sources.

Making money off the popular video-sharing service is a top Google priority this year, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has said.

"Transparency" is a hot computing buzzword as everyone from Twitter to SalesForce.com seeks to share information about Web service availability so customers and users don't feel quite so helpless when things go wrong. And Google has showed it got … Read more

Google Apps Premier SLA credit and commitment to communication

Looks like Google is starting to take Apps Premier a bit more seriously, providing users with SLA credits for the August outage and realizing that the guy who chose Google Apps has to report to someone else when things go haywire.

Not much more to comment on...I hope they make it work. I switched entirely to browser-based Gmail and I'm still liking it.

E-mail pasted below from the Google Apps team:

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Given the production incidents that occurred in August, we'll be extending the full SLA credit to all Google Apps Premier customers for the month of … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 797: The superbug of piracy

Today's BOL Theory of the Day: the RIAA's constant crackdown on sites and services that ought to be fair use is creating cockroach-like, drug-resistant strains...like Opentape. Also, we reveal the Internet's biggest security hole, an iPhone ad is banned, and an iPhone app is banned (Apple only did the second one). Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 797

Google tests custom highlights, comments in search http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/08/27/1531241.shtml

Revealed: The Internet’s biggest security hole http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/revealed-the-in.html

Computer viruses make it … Read more

Violent comic book doesn't meet Apple's standards

Apple recently took an axe to Murderdrome, an electronic comic book in its App Store that the company deemed too violent.

Murderdrome, created by the United Kingdom-based Infuriouscomics, had been created especially for the iPhone. Apple turned down Infuriouscomics' application to put the comic in the App Store.

"This is due to the part of the SDK that suggests content must not offend anyone in 'Apple's reasonable' opinion," a post on the Infurious blog read. "Here at Infurious, we would love to work with Apple to ensure a content-rating system can be put in place to … Read more

'Tetris'-like iPhone app to be pulled

A young software developer has decided to pull his iPhone game from Apple's App Store because it was too similar to the classic arcade game Tetris.

Noah Witherspoon, a college student in Atlanta, created a free game called Tris for Apple's handset platform. But Apple recently contacted Witherspoon to let him know that the Tetris Company, which licenses the eponymous video game, had notified it about copyright and trademark infringement claims against the app.

Witherspoon wrote on his blog that he has chosen not to take the matter to court and will pull the game on Wednesday. "… Read more