Productivity and business

Google has made it possible for Google Apps customers to sign their outgoing e-mail using a technology called DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) that makes it easier to ensure a sender is who he or she says he is.

Google has been using DKIM since 2008 to show Gmail users when incoming mail really is from PayPal and eBay--two major brand names often caught up in spoofed e-mails used in phishing attacks. Now the technology is available more broadly and for the e-mail Google Apps users send.

"Today...we're making it possible for all Google Apps customers to sign … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Owners of Seagate's GoFlex TV: I have some exciting news.

Seagate announced today new firmware for the popular network media player to add support for Pandora and a remote control app for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

While the addition of Pandora is great news for music fans, I personally loved the remote control app after briefly playing with it .

Once loaded, the app turns the iPhone's screen into buttons similar to those of the GoFlex TV's original remote control and you can use the phone to control the player via Wi-Fi.

However, unlike the original remote, … Read more

A new tool from Google Labs promises to help users quickly collaborate with other people through the same online calendars, maps, games, and other virtual work spaces that they create.

Google's new Shared Spaces tool, rolled out yesterday, offers a collection of 50 different gadgets formerly developed for the late Google Wave. By generating a work space using one of the gadgets, a user can create lists, design polls, brainstorm ideas, and even play Sudoku when in need of a break. A user can then share and collaborate in each work space with another person.

To create a work … Read more

Hotmail is rolling out a new platform this morning called Active Views that lets users surf through certain Web sites from inside of e-mail messages.

But it's not just any message where this functionality is enabled. Instead, Microsoft has partnered with specific companies as part of the launch to give users a way to do common tasks like searching and account management. Some of the first ones on that list are Orbitz and Monster.com, with Netflix and LinkedIn soon to follow.

When a Hotmail user gets an e-mail from one of these companies, they'll be able to … Read more

Just in time for New Year's resolution season, a site called Fitango has launched, intending to provide a marketplace where people can buy "plans" from experts who can offer online tutorials in anything from training for a marathon to transitioning to a vegan diet to learning as much Italian as possible one month before traveling to Florence.

It's structured like an app store. Pick an "Actionplan," pay for it (though some are free), and you'll receive instructions, including video and audio, where applicable, over a given span of time. You're invited to … Read more

Google unleashed the Chrome OS on the world today, shipping it in a limited-edition prototype laptop outfitted with the kind of hardware and specs that it expects manufacturers to use with the browser-based operating system. Chrome OS represents a major step forward for cloud computing, with single-serving Web sites getting rebranded as easy-access apps and the nascent HTML5 underpinning the whole show.

It's far from perfect, though. Not all of Chrome-the-browser's extensions run on Chrome-the-OS, and although it boots and wakes fast, it lags in other areas. At the end of the day, it's a souped-up Netbook, … Read more

Google is putting its DocVerse team to use, unleashing a new plug-in for Google Docs that lets offline Microsoft Word documents talk to Web-based Google Docs files.

DocVerse, acquired by Google earlier this year, has ported its software onto Google's network and is ready to let early testers get a crack at Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. The software lets Microsoft Office users who also have Google Apps accounts sync their documents with Google without having to work within the Google Docs Web interface, creating a Web-based copy of that native document for sharing and collaboration.

Google's been trying for several years … Read more

Google Apps customers are about to get a lot more options as part of their accounts, including one very interesting feature: Google Voice.

Google plans to announce today that it's adding several other Google services--more than 60 different Google services in total--to Google Apps accounts maintained by businesses and educational customers, which already include Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Sites. On a sour note, Google doesn't plan on extending its service-level agreements with Google Apps customers to cover the new services, and all customers will have to transfer their accounts to a new system to make … Read more

With a single new feature added to its online word processor yesterday, Google has diminished many concerns I had about taking the cloud-computing plunge a few months ago.

That feature, autocorrect in Google Docs, fixes common typos such as converting "teh" into "the." In and of itself, it's not a game-changer.

But it carried outsized importance for me because it was one of the things I missed most about Microsoft Word and because it gives me faith that Google Docs is headed in the right direction.

As if to validate my new optimism, Google today announced an improvement that's much larger than a single feature: the ability to edit Google Docs from Android phones, iPhones, and iPads. Google Spreadsheets already were editable with some mobile phone browsers.

Google Docs, which has grown considerably since Google's 2006 acquisition of Writely, consists mainly of word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation modules that compete with Microsoft Office's Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It's become a standard-bearer for the Web applications movement and, with Google selling it in premium form along with Gmail for $50 per user per year in the form of Google Apps, Google's next billion-dollar revenue stream after advertising. … Read more