Clint Boulton

Two bits of great news for Google’s Android mobile computing efforts today, one on the end-user device side and one on the mobile monetization side for programmers and advertisers. First, word leaked of the HTC Hero, a new smartphone running Google’s Android OS, as well as a new user environment called HTC Sense. Engadget’s Thomas […]

While Google has key programmers concentrating on hatching products like Google Wave and Google Voice, Google Apps has been a regular Steady Eddie of sorts, with enhancements rolling out one after another. The last one, however, threw Microsoft Outlook users for a loop. Google June 9 released Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, a synchronization […]

Analysis: For those who can’t get enough of the competition between Google and Facebook over traffic and advertising dollars, a June 22 Wired article by Fred Vogelstein characterized the Google-Facebook battle as a kind of Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier for the Internet age. Still, “Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate […]

Sometimes, Google manages to make me smile. Today, its people have taken a mundane tip tutorial on managing Gmail more efficiently and converted it into a humorous lesson in saving time. The Gmail staff created this Gmail tips Web page to help people use what’s already in Gmail to save themselves time and energy hacking […]

One of the bugbears of collaboration software tools released in the ’90s was that they were walled off from one another. You might have a number of communication tools in an intranet portal, but they didn’t communicate with one another well. Each application was a silo unto itself. Today in 2009, Web 2.0 tools, the […]

Enterprise wiki pioneer Socialtext is extending an olive branch to customers in cost-constrained times, offering a wiki desktop application free for up to 50 users within a business. Announced at the Enterprise 2.0 show in Boston June 23, the Socialtext Free 50 service will let employees create and invite users to private collaboration networks using […]

In the latest marriage of the cloud computing and on-premises software worlds, Zoho June 23 released Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint, a software module that will let Zoho Office users create new documents and save them to SharePoint in Microsoft Office formats. The plug-in, which users can see demonstrated here, will also allow users to […]

Semanti, which makes a Firefox browser add-on that augments search results from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Bing, is looking to help users bridge the gap between search engines and the Facebook social network, which boasts more than 200 million users. The tool is a step in solving the problem of trying to find information based […]

While some Google geeks may dream of Android applications along with the promise of new smartphones, not everybody is thrilled with the path Google has allowed the open-source operating system to travel. Android leverages the open-source Java programming language, of which its creators at Sun Microsystems are understandably protective. Shortly after Google unveiled the Android […]

Google is adding the ability for users to search photos of more than 50,000 landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower and other special constructions around the world. Though still in a proof-of-concept stage (presented at a “computer vision” conference in Miami today, June 22), the project makes use of 40 million […]

Media outlets today are heralding the next coming of the T-Mobile Android phone, the gadget that was going to help Google set the mobile applications world on fire. Well, maybe the G1 didn’t live up to the hyperbolic expectations. In trying to be everything to everyone, the device came across as big and clunky compared […]

Google has been working on ads that are more eye-catching than its text ads for awhile, but the emergence of Bing as a fertile new e-commerce ground may be spurring the company to move faster. The Wall Street Journal and others report that Google is set to test product ads for its users to click […]