Clint Boulton

For those of us who can accept that some software knows where we are, Yahoo Aug. 12 trumpeted the launch of Fire Eagle, a platform that lets programmers write Web services based on users’ locations.Fire Eagle lets users submit and store information in a Yahoo repository that lets them decide how and with whom they […]

In light of the latest Google Gmail and Google Apps outages, I asked several industry analysts whether Google’s software is dependable enough for enterprises and whether or not the Web is reliable enough as a business platform.IDC analyst Melissa Webster, who covers collaboration technologies, told me: “No surprise that as soon as there’s a big […]

Google’s latest Gmail outage (from 2 p.m. PDT to 4 p.m. PDT Monday) was well documented and, coming less than one week after another major outage of Gmail and Google Apps, the company felt compelled to blog about it in the form of an apology sandwich.What’s an apology sandwich? Well, the first sentence — the […]

Debate remains great about whether or not popular micro-blogging Web site Twitter, which lets us post 140-character updates on what we’re doing or commentaries on things, is a viable enterprise tool.There are instances burbling up that Twitter is used in business or enterprise communications and collaboration. Just today, as I’m writing this, Dell is using […]

Google Blasted over Gmail, Google Apps Outages by Clint Boulton Google Blasted over Gmail,Google Apps OutagesBy Clint Boulton Google Blasted over Gmail, Google Apps Outages – Has Google Set the Bar Too High? Google Blasted Over Gmail,Google Apps Outages1. Has Google Set the Bar Too High?Google’s Gmail and Apps outage caused some awkward moments. “It’s […]

The New York Times’ Miguel Helft posed an interesting question in his weekend feature Sunday. His question is actually the headline of the piece, Is Google a Media Company?The meat of the matter swirls around Google’s Knol service, a kind of encyclopedia where experts can write articles on topics and monetize their pages with ads […]

The media and bloggers rushed to cover the fact that Yahoo said it will let its users opt out of custom ads on its Web site, while Google said that it will let its own users opt out of a single cookie for both DoubleClick ad serving and the Google content network.Yahoo’s and Google’s cookie-cutting […]

In the wake of Apple CEO Steve Jobs telling The Wall Street Journal that there have been more than 60 million apps downloaded from Apple’s iPhone App store, software maker Morph Labs has launched an application support program for iPhone developers.Morph Labs is one company in a big cloud of PAAS (platform as a service) […]

When I read that Google filed a quarterly report in which it said its $1 billion investment in AOL may be impaired, the first thing I thought was, gee, you think?AOL has been on a backward slide for awhile and, heartened as I was to see its willingness to fight it out in the online […]

While Yahoo’s management team may be stinging from shareholders’ criticisms in the wake of some questionable vote counting at its board meeting, its lieutenants are preparing the company to combat Google and Microsoft on the online advertising battlefield.Yahoo in April unveiled its chief weapon for this fight in the form of an all-in-one ad management […]

What a week it’s been for Google’s AdWords crew.One day after launching its Google Insights for Search extension for the Trends utility, the group has added a DoubleClick ad-serving cookie across the Google content network that will let advertisers access some new tools.Before advertisers get queasy stomachs over the keywords “DoubleClick,” “ad-serving” and “cookie” in […]

Virtual world software startup Vivaty, one of a handful of companies following the path Linden Lab’s “Second Life” has blazed since 2003, has opened up its platform to allow third-party programmers to come in and create avatars and three-dimensional worlds.Through a program called Vivaty Create, developers can leverage the company’s software to create their own […]