Webware

Starting next month, subscribers of Comcast's cable Internet service in Oregon and southwestern Washington state will be getting their connections switched over to "wideband." The upgraded service, which was announced late last month doubles the speed of residential and business connections as well as offering two faster, more expensive plans that bring the maximum download speed to 22 and 50 Mbps respectively.

Wideband is currently available in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and parts of New England, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. According my press contact, Comcast plans to get it in "close to 10 million homes and businesses in the next couple of months," which is a good percentage given the company's overall customer base of 14.7 million subscribers.

The technology behind wideband, which is formally known as DOCSIS 3.0 brings with it the capability to hit speeds in excess of 300 Mbps, is six times faster than what Comcast is currently offering (or even capable of handling with its current network infrastructure). As mentioned before, this increase in download speed has not made a difference in Comcast's bandwidth use restriction, which requires users to stay within 250 GB of downloads per month or face a one-year suspension upon the second offense.

OpenSocial is growing up fast. What started out as Google's effort to create a common application programming interface for developing small applications that can tap into multiple social-networking services is becoming a full-fledged development platform.

(Credit: Ben Metcalfe)

According to the OpenSocial Foundation, it has garnered a potential audience of 600 million users, with 7,500 compliant applications developed so far and 20 containers (hosts for social applications) supporting the APIs within the last 12 months. The Google spin-off incorporated itself as a nonprofit foundation to ensure support from a broad range of social-networking competitors, including Yahoo, MySpace, Hi5, LinkedIn, Ning, and Xiaonei, China's largest social network.

Giants Facebook and Microsoft, however, have so far not jumped on the OpenSocial bandwagon. Facebook has 125 million active users around the world, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seeking to establish Facebook as an "open" application platform and so far is holding off on endorsing OpenSocial. Facebook investor Microsoft, which last week introduced a social dimension to its Windows Live platform, is in the midst of rolling out a cloud services development platform.

David Glazer, director of engineering at Google

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET News )

The large OpenSocial contingent, plus Facebook and Microsoft, are all advocates of open Web standards, but they are in a competition for developers. "Everyone doing social stuff is interoperable at some level of the stack," said David Glazer, director of engineering at Google. "Facebook and Microsoft are using a big chunk of the open stack. Open architectures are all converging. It's moving fast--last year, there was no such thing as a social platform."

He pointed to collaborative efforts on OpenID, OAuth, and Portable Contacts as examples of open Web standards that are in various stages of adoption. But the OpenSocial notion of "write once, run anywhere" doesn't fly without Facebook and Microsoft joining in, or the three major platforms providing a level of interoperability and compatibility beyond common Web standards.

OpenSocial is also being positioned as more than a platform for basic widgets (gadgets in Google parlance). "We are going to see application-to-application hooks, which will blur the difference between things in the box (container) and lots of different surfaces working together," Glazer said. "We will definitely see enterprise applications."

There might come a day when Microsoft Office or Google Docs & Spreadsheets are among the top OpenSocial applications, said Alan Hurff, senior vice president of engineering at MySpace and president of the Board of OpenSocial. However, enterprises more slowly adopt new technologies, such as social networks and mashups, and must have a return-on-investment justification to fund deployments.

Some of the future improvements to the OpenSocial platform will include better development tools (Visual Studio-like tool to speed development), payment platforms, analytics, cross-container portability, and mobile-application support. "We need to make it easier for developers to build applications, reach users, and make money. From where we started, the platform has gone a long way in the right direction," Glazer said.

In regards the OpenSocial code, version 0.9 is due out at the beginning of next year. Glazer was asked to speculate on when version 1.0 would be released. "The functionality of 0.9 feels 1.0-worthy. But we don't want to stretch beyond what we know," he said.

OpenSocial is still an infant, but it has big ambitions to stretch out as a major application development platform for the cloud.

SlyDial, the telephone service that lets you dial directly to someone's voice mail, has launched three new mobile applications for users on Windows Mobile, Research In Motion's BlackBerry, and Apple's iPhone. The new apps have direct access to your phone's contact list so you can begin a SlyDial call without having to first phone in to the service then remember your contact's number.

All three are free, and with the exception of the iPhone app--which is pending Apple's approval, are available right now. The iPhone version is also the only one of the three that does not require you to be a registered SlyDial user to make calls.

Since we covered SlyDial's official launch back in July, it's added a handy feature that lets you assign numerical shortcuts to contacts you think you're going to call frequently. This lets you call them by dialing in the first four letters of their name (or nickname) followed by the # key.

Below is a demo of how this works on a BlackBerry, effectively giving you the option to SlyDial from anywhere via contextual menu:

GigaTribe, a Web 2.0 file-sharing service, announced Monday that it has launched its product to the U.S. market. The company's software will allow users to share photos, videos, music, and documents with other users over a private peer-to-peer network.

At its core, GigaTribe is much like other file-sharing sites on the Web that are being monitored by the RIAA and MPAA, but it creates a private network to keep them out. The service allows users to share any file for free and create a group that can send files back and forth.

Due to the inherent security risk that goes along with its business model, GigaTribe's executives pointed out that the company does its best to keep files secure. To do that, it allows users to assign friends into groups and allow them access to certain files. The company also encrypts all files to add an extra layer of security.

"Security is our top priority," Alexis Leseigneur, GigaTribe's CTO said in a statement. "When it comes to sharing your personal photos and videos, you need to be absolutely sure they will only be available to the appropriate contacts."

Although GigaTribe tries to make its free application sound compelling, it's the $29.95-per-year "Ultimate" product that packs most of the benefits. Aside from faster downloading and multidownloading capability, the Ultimate service provides remote access to the files, password protection on all files, and most importantly, group access management.

According to the company, the free version allows anyone to view files, while the Ultimate version gives users the ability to decide which groups can access certain files.

GigaTribe's service is available now on the company's site.

The New York Times' new reader uses AIR capabilities to flow text and show video.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

Correction, 11:25 a.m. PST: This story misspelled the last name of The New York Times vice president of research and development. He is Michael Zimbalist.

SAN FRANCISCO--During the keynote speech of the Adobe Max conference, New York Times Vice President of R&D Michael Zimbalist demonstrated a new news reader app from the company. Based on AIR 1.5, which is being released Monday, the news reader was shown displaying International Herald Tribune content, but it's pretty clear that the company will release a reader for The New York Times as well. Zimbalist said the the IHT reader will come out "this fall," but a NYT spokesperson later said it will arrive in the first half of 2009.

There is already a desktop reader for the Times, of course, but it's a fairly heavy app. The new AIR version will take advantage of some of the new features built in to the new AIR runtime, including a fast text-rendering engine that re-flows text as you resize the screen.

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch shows the New York Times app on the Linux-based Aigo handheld.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

The new app also uses the video capabilities of Flash 10, which Air 1.5 uses. The demo showed videos in ads, but it could also be used for editorial content.

Of course, there's also a nice crossword app built into it. It's not social, though. Maybe the next version?

After Zimbalist left the stage, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch demonstrated the app running on a "MID"-size Linux computer, the Aigo. Adobe's AIR 1.5 is being released for Linux and will have the same video and text-rendering capabilities of the Windows and OS X versions.

Click here for more news on Adobe's Max conference.

Good news for Firefox users who have lusted over Chrome and Safari's option that lets you "tear" away tabs from an open window. The latest build of 3.1 offers it as a standard feature--and it works marvelously.

As in Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers you simply pull away a tab from the interface and it turns into its own window. Likewise you can drag it back into an already opened window, just like you'd do to re-order your existing tabs.

While not a ground-breaking feature, tab tearing is a large step forward in changing the way we interact with our browsers. It's a cross between the idea of having multiple tabs and multiple windows, but does not relegate the user to being pigeonholed in either one permanently.

If you're feeling brave you can download the latest development build of 3.1 here. As mentioned before, this also comes with some nice JavaScript speed improvements and a new look for Windows Vista users.

Below is a quick demo of how the new tear-away feature works, both with dragging tabs and choosing to open them via contextual menu.

(via MozillaLinks)

Tim Tisdale, CEO of Atlanta-based ThoughtBridge, explains how his company is using Microsoft Online as part of an "HR in a box" service it sells to businesses.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET Networks)

SAN FRANCISCO--For perhaps the first time in its history, Microsoft made the case on Monday that businesses shouldn't run its software. Instead, Microsoft argued that corporations should let it run the software for them.

During the past several years, Microsoft has been testing out the idea that it can host and run business software cheaper and more effectively than individual enterprises can do on their own. The effort started in 2005 with a single customer--battery maker Energizer--which had Microsoft essentially handle all of its PC desktops.

Over time, Microsoft narrowed the service to an option in which it hosts Exchange and SharePoint, runs the software in its data center, and charges customers on a monthly basis. Microsoft officially launched the products, known as Microsoft Online, at a customer event at the St. Regis hotel here.

"We can help you save money," Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop told the crowd, saying Microsoft estimates that companies can save at least 10 percent by letting Microsoft run their messaging and collaboration software for them.

One of the early customers is video retailer BlockBuster, which has been using Exchange Online for about six months. Blockbuster CIO Keith Morrow said in an interview that Microsoft's online services came at a good time for the company, which was on a several-generations-old version of Lotus Notes.

Morrow said the video rental company needed to make a change of some kind, and the option to move to Exchange without having to bring that skill set in-house was a key selling point, as was the ability to offer better mobile options, including Outlook Web Access and iPhone support.

Another Notes switcher in the crowd was Eddie Bauer, which has been a Microsoft Online customer for about five weeks. Chief Information Officer Rich Mozack said the clothing retailer wanted to move off Notes but couldn't make the numbers work to run Exchange on its own.

"We just couldn't justify the up-front investment," Mozack said.

Microsoft's Ron Markezich said about two-thirds of early customers are moving from Notes to Exchange. But even as Microsoft continues to target those moving from Lotus Notes, the company faces the threat of its own Exchange customers moving to other hosted options, including Google Apps.

Just last week, Serena Software said it was switching to Google from Exchange in a move it said would save it $750,000 a year, according to several reports.

At the event, Elop made Microsoft's familiar case that, while the cloud is great, customers are better served by an option that allows software to run on customers' own machines as well as over the Internet.

Elop said Microsoft is adding thousands of servers to its data centers every month. Although Microsoft Online is initially aimed at Exchange and SharePoint, the goal is to offer a hosted option for all of Microsoft's server software.

"We expect all of it be available in this way in the near future," Elop said.

The software maker said last year that it would offer the hosted option for large businesses, later expanding the offer to businesses of all sizes. At last month's Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft also confirmed that it would offer Web-based versions of its Office applications, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

While many of those at Monday's event were the company's early customers and partners, not everyone at the event was ready to sign off. I spoke with a municipality that was highly interested in Microsoft's product, particularly as it plans to move from GroupWise to Exchange. Still, with a dearth of other governments to point to, this CIO told me that he still faced challenges in getting the city's upper management and government to sign off on the deal.

AOL is ending its foray into user-generated video, the company confirmed Monday after a weekend of blog reports. On December 18, its AOL Video Uploads service will officially close its doors.

Users who have videos currently hosted through the service will receive an e-mail this week, and will be given the chance to transfer their videos to AOL's preferred alternative, start-up Motionbox, before December 18. If they don't, their videos will be deleted.

AOL has made a concerted effort to shake off some of its older and less successful properties--Journals, Hometown, and AOL Pictures, to name a few, not to mention the fact that parent company Time Warner plans to spin off its flagging dial-up service--while forging ahead with newer, shinier projects. The company continues to launch new blog titles and beef up its Platform-A advertising product; it's also modified its homepage to bring in feeds from multiple e-mail and social-networking sites.

The Google-owned YouTube remains the overwhelming leader in amateur video uploads.

But AOL's not the only one reworking its service priorities. Earlier this fall, Microsoft announced that it was shutting down its MSN Groups service in favor of starting the new Windows Live Groups, and that MSN Groups would be effectively ported over to social network Multiply.

Intuit is announcing on Monday a Flash-based Web service that companies can use to geographically visualize their customer data and business activity.

Customer Explorer is being unveiled at this week's Adobe Max conference in San Francisco. Customer Explorer, available at the Intuit Workplace, imports QuickBooks data and overlays it on a live map.

Users can view where their customers are clustering or which regions generate the most revenue. They can also generate time slices of the data, much like a moving weather map, to see how their business has been evolving. And they can overlay regional demographic information, such as median household income.

This free version of SpatialKey was created by Universal Mind.

This map is animated and shows customer density growth over time.

(Credit: Universal Mind)

The app is more than eye candy. Any business owner trying to get a handle on where he or she is successful--and where the business' holes are--can learn something from the service.

The app is also an interesting hybrid service. While it uses QuickBooks users' data, which is stored on their computers, the visualizer melds that data with geographic and demographic information from Web servers to create maps that are displayed via Flash in a browser. It's an interesting and fairly seamless mashup of various public data sets with the user's own data.

On this map, the circled numbers represent clusters of customers, and the shading is demographic data: median household income.

(Credit: Universal Mind)

Previous coverage: Intuit getting into the hosted app business.

Click here for more news on Adobe's Max conference.

Useful Networks, a mobile location firm that has been operating in the U.K. and Scandinavia, announced Monday that it has brought its mobile and Facebook-integrated friend finder, Sniff, to the U.S. through the Sprint Network.

Sniff allows users to find friends automatically and in real-time and provides them with exact coordinates to let them know exactly where they are throughout the day. In order to alert its users to their friend's location, Sniff automatically sends a text message to their mobile phone or a note through the company's Facebook application.

Once users ask to follow friends, Sniff requests the friends permission. As soon as confirmation is received and it's determined that both individuals are Sprint customers, Sniff starts providing the user with a detailed map view of their friend's location in real-time. But if friends don't want their locations revealed, they have the option of becoming "invisible" through the Sniff service.

"There is inherent value in allowing your close friends and family to know where you are but only when you want them to," Useful Networks CEO Brian Levin said in a statement. "Friends can now 'sniff' each other out easily and quickly. That is, if they want to be found. You can easily become 'invisible' if you'd rather not be 'sniffed out.'"

The major issue facing Sniff is privacy. Few people really want others to know where they are at all times, and the company claims that it understands that. In order to combat the obvious privacy issues, Levin was quick to point out that all users are given notice and asked for consent. His company also provides multiple confirmation notices to new users reminding them of their current privacy status.

"Privacy is the most important aspect of Sniff," said Levin. "With varying permission levels, Sniff allows consumers to manage if, when, and how their location information is shared with other parties. In addition, users have the ability to set up notifications via SMS of key events, such as being located or invited by another user to be part of the Sniff network."

Registering for Sniff is free, but all users are charged $0.25 "per sniff" from a Sprint device, which are applied to the user's mobile bill. Standard text messaging rates on top of the Sniff's fee charges still apply.