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Messaging Software and Collaboration Software

eWEEK Messaging and Collaboration coverage includes news and reviews on instant messaging, text messaging, Unified Communications, chat, workflow, knowledge and information sharing, automated alerts, SMS, Web conferencing, online meetings, decision making and wikis. eWEEK also watches Messaging and Collaboration vendors and products such as Microsoft Communications Server, Microsoft SharePoint, Adobe, Documentum, IBM, Microsoft, Intuit, Oracle, vignette, ICQ, Jabber and LAN Messenger

Top Messaging & Collaboration News
While the business optimism of cost-conscious businesses has flutuated significantly throughout 2009, a survey by Constant Contact suggests companies are feeling positive about the holiday shopping season.

News
Glowpoint's ScheduleSync telepresence feature now integrates with Microsoft Exchange, the company announces.
News
IBM's research team comes up with a new tool that translates text between English and 11 other languages.
Review
In Office 2007, the Outlook mail client looked a lot like its previous iteration, lacking even a full implementation of the productivity suite's ribbon interface. With Outlook 2010, however, Microsoft has caught the mail client up with the rest of the Office suite. eWEEK Labs' tests of the Outlook 2010 beta show some significant improvements, but also some room for confusion.
News
Verizon is rolling out its Telehealth Collaboration Services, which aid health care organizations in setting up online collaboration environments to help physicians connect remotely with patients and other health care professionals. Verizon also will help organizations design and implement the telehealth environments. Other vendors, such as Cisco Systems, also are getting into the telehealth field, which one analyst company says could grow into a $6.1 billion market annually.
News
Gist Public Profiles is a new service that lets users publish their contact details, including name, company name and profile picture, personalized news and social network data on a public Web page. Ideally, this service -- and certainly any inclusion deals with Google, Bing or both -- will help Gist grow its user base. While Gist is a fledgling offering yearning for traction among any users who will try it out, e-mail in-box management and socialization tools are gaining traction in businesses. Xobni launched Xobni Enterprise, a secure version of its e-mail search plug-in, while Microsoft launched Outlook Social Connector.
New Slideshow
Released with the Office 2010 beta, the Outlook 2010 beta looks to be a fairly significant upgrade over the previous version. Outlook 2010 is now a full-fledged member of the Office suite, with full use of the Office ribbon in the Outlook interface. Outlook 2010 also will help users quickly perform common tasks and integrate social network awareness directly into the mail client. However, the only so-called social network the beta currently works with is Microsoft's own SharePoint.
News
Global mailbox shipments decreased by more than 4 million during the first six months of 2009, according to a report from T3i Group.
News
The proliferation of smartphones is increasing the propensity of consumers to use nonvoice communication, a study by BIA/Kelsey finds.
News
In order to reduce its operating cost, AOL management is asking for so-called voluntary layoffs. Involuntary layoffs will follow if AOL does not hit its target of reducing its operating budget by $200 million in the first half of 2010.
New Slideshow
NEW YORK—The Web 2.0 Expo was not quite the news frenzy that its San Francisco-based brother Web 2.0 Summit was in 2009. But the show's creator, high-tech publishing guru Tim O'Reilly, provided some zing Nov. 17 by arguing that arms races between Google and Apple as well as Facebook and Twitter threaten to stifle the Internet as we know it. O'Reilly also said Microsoft would emerge as a major player in the open Web ecosystem. Digg founder Kevin Rose and Digg CEO Jay Adelson discussed the past, present and future of Digg, while Hunch Chief Product Officer Caterina Fake and Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd held forth on the social Web. Lifehacker founder Gina Trapani discussed some Google Wave use cases.
New Slideshow
In a few short years Facebook and Twitter have attracted so many users and had such an influence on the way people interact on the Internet that Salesforce.com has decided that the social networking paradigm is the way for people to interact with its cloud CRM application. On Nov. 18 the company introduced its upcoming Salesforce Chatter, a "secure enterprise collaboration application and social development platform," as the highlight of its annual Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco. Chatter will provide links to Twitter feeds and Facebook profile information. Salesforce users will be able to filter the most relevant Twitter feeds through Chatter to track the competition, watch for new business leads and follow developments and user opinions about a particular product or industry.
News
MindTouch Nov. 19 joined Google, Zoho, Microsoft and a raft of others in SAAS with MindTouch Cloud, embracing the Internet as a way to deliver collaboration applications. MindTouch Cloud lets non-technical sales representatives or business managers pull business data from CRM and ERP applications, such as Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and Oracle, and weave them into documents in team workspaces. MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson said his company is targeting Microsoft's SharePoint collaboration platform and Google Apps, which offer classic document and spreadsheet applications without blending in the business data.
News
Salesforce.com demonstrated a new work group collaboration tool dubbed "Chatter" as the highlight of opening keynote of its annual Dreamforce user conference Nov. 18 at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center. Chatter is designed with a Facebook-like interface and allows users to set up real-time feeds of selected Twitter posts. Chatter will run as part of Salesforce's customer relationship management platform with the object of enabling enterprises to set up collaboration groups to share information, close business deals or solve customer problems.
News
Polycom is unveiling its ATX 300 offering, designed to enable businesses to work with audiovisual integrators to create customized telepresence environments based on Polycom technology. Polycom officials say this differentiates ATX 300 from the turnkey solutions rivals like Cisco and Tandberg offer.
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REVIEWS
Liaise is a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook designed to ease task and project management for individuals and teams through e-mail. The product shows some promise, but performance and other issues may make it more hinderance than help.
Sure, the developer preview is rough. But Google Wave's innovative collaboration metaphor, its customizability and its potential as a protocol make it compelling as a next-gen productivity tool.
In its current, developer preview form, Google Wave doesn't live up to the hype that has surrounded it since its announcement. But, based on eWEEK Labs' tests, the collaboration platform could be leveraged by inventive developers to provide a new level of Web 2.0 engagement.
Xobni Plus--the paid service upgrade to the free Xobni--provides advanced search, indexing and filtering capabilities that allow users to work more efficiently in Microsoft Outlook.
Video conferencing is traditonally touted as a money-saving technology in a down economy. Companies can slash their travel budgets by using video conferencing, but meeting with partners and suppliers outside of your own network requires interoperability of video conferencing systems. eWEEK Labs tests the ability of two very different systems to work together.
 
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