Salesforce shuns Google Docs route
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Benioff resists Office 2.0 distraction Salesforce.com wants to be many things to all people. But a move into hosted office productivity apps won't be appearing on its agenda anytime soon.â¦
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The companyâs Office Open XML document fails to meet two criteria for a standards designation.
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Failing to impress Oracle Salesforce.com systems are calling in sick this Monday. The company's service status page has been winking red X's as the software-as-a-service poster child struggles to wrangle its machinery.â¦
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InfoWorld - Salesforce.com Inc. and Google Inc. announced a strategic global partnership Tuesday, but it wasn&#39;t the&#160;widely expected tight integration&#160;between Google Apps and Salesforce.com&#39;s hosted CRM (customer relationship management) software. Instead, the two vendors brought out their first jointly developed and co-marketed product combining Google AdWords with Salesforce on-demand CRM.
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For 15 hours, e-mail addresses exposed through flaw in Google Docs' new Presentations feature, before Google fixes it.
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The Internet Engineering Task Force has nixed Microsoft&#39;s Sender ID proposal because of patent concerns. By Thomas Claburn. The Internet Engineering Task Force, an international standards organization, has
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In the hype of the CRM boom a few years ago,  sales force automation software seemed largely forgotten. Though not quite a dinosaur, it certainly was not a hot topic.
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(InfoWorld) - Google isÂ putting finishing touches onÂ the integration of Docs & Spreadsheets with Google Apps for Your Domain --another step in its strategy to build a suite of hosted applications for organizations. The introduction of the new version ofÂ Google Apps for Your DomainÂ including Docs & Spreadsheets will happen this quarter, and it could come as early as next week, several people familiar with the company's plans said. It has been widely assumed that at some point Google would add Docs & Spreadsheets, a word processing and a spreadsheet program, to Google Apps, a suite of communication services for organizations. Docs & Spreadsheets lets multiple users share files and collaborate on them. Google Apps provides white-label versions of several Google communication services, including the Gmail Web mail service, the Talk instant message and voice chat service and the Calendar online scheduling service. Organizations can provide these services with their own Internet domain and branding to their users. Arizona State University, which launched Google Apps in October for its students, would be very interested in having Docs & Spreadsheets as part of the suite, said Kari Barlow, assistant vice president of the university's technology office. "Where the strength is with Docs & Spreadsheets is in the ability to synchronously collaborate on documents," Barlow said. Groups of students could use it to collaborate on class projects, she said. "Google Apps has been highly successful for us. We're looking at extending the environment and implementing new technologies as they are released to us. It'll be interesting to see when Docs & Spreadsheets comes out, how that will impact the environment," Barlow said. Not everyone sees a use for the Docs & Spreadsheets integration, however. San Jose City College is delighted with Google Apps, which it adopted mostly to provide e-mail accounts to its students, but doesn't see a clear need to offer them hosted word processing and spreadsheet software at this time, said Michael John Renzi, the college's director of finance and administration. However, the college would like the suite to have a course management application, he said. Google Apps is free but Google plans to introduce a more sophisticated, fee-based version for large organizations. Google Apps and Docs & Spreadsheets have been parallel projects in Google's attempt to enter the hosted applications market and expand beyond its core search engine business. Many see Google gearing up to compete against Microsoft's PC-based Office applications suite. Proponents of hosted applications say they are more convenient than the PC-based, packaged software upon which Microsoft has built its empire. Hosted applications are housed in vendor servers, freeing customers' IT departments from installation and maintenance work, and from having to purchase extra hardware and storage, proponents say. However, the consensus currently is that hosted applications suites don't come close to offering the breadth of features that Microsoft Office has. Google has other hosted applications for organizations, including Google Analytics, a hosted service for tracking Web site usage and traffic. The company also has a wiki platform that it acquired when it bought JotSpot Inc. last year. It has been rumored that Google is developing a presentations application. Google declined to comment for this story.
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Look, but don't touch, on a mobile phone Google has slipped its Web 2.0 Docs application onto its mobile portal, allowing users to view documents, spreadsheets and presentations on their mobile phone browser.â¦
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Google's new commitment to on-demand apps should terrify Salesforce.com.
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Google will tackle offline access, one of the thorniest problems facing Web-hosted applications, with a browser extension called Gears available for Web developers.
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Directive does not apply to search engines Google is not bound by the Data Retention Directive when it comes to search engine logs, Europe's data protection committee has said. Google has used the Directive to justify keeping data, but OUT-LAW has learned that the law does not apply.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Google is in damage control mode over a clause in the user agreements for its Google Docs and Spreadsheets applications that implies an inordinate degree of power over the content that runs over its services. The clause reads: "By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services." This matters more because it's Google, of course, but the issue may be an important one for other online software companies to watch as they seek to build credibility and support among business customers. Most of the controversy centers around the firm's use of the word "public." If you're posting it on Google Docs or in Google spreadsheets, the implication goes, it's up for grabs if the company needs some sample use cases for its next advertising campaign. You really have to stretch yourself to think about how this kind of scenario would play itself out. Might Google use various Docs and Spreadsheets customer's data as case study material? Or perhaps reproduce them in the kind of print magazine ads that it never, ever buys (and why would they, when we give the company this kind of constant media attention)? Maybe we should be paying more attention to the word "modify," in the clause, which might give Google the go-ahead to insert references to its services in the actual content ("Here's today's sales report. I finished it using Google SpreadsheetsÂ®!"). I can't think of a better way to lose customers. And whatever you think about the firm's market cap or long-term investment value, Google is still a bit player in the applications space. It can't afford to outrage users that way. We should also realize that legal mumbo-jumbo aside, we all take a huge leap of faith when we use online program like these. Google could easily "reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, and distribute" whatever it wants. That may be why few are entrusting it with highly sensitive company material. It's not that anything bad has happened, it's that nothing bad has happened yet. Docs and Speadsheets, and their many other budding online rivals, are allowing unprecedented degrees of collaboration, which is why our notion of "public" may be so confused. This is exacerbated by the fact that we often use the same online tools for both work and personal purposes. Both kinds of content have a "public," and there may even be some overlap between them, but the "public" of the wider world is another matter. In order for Web-based software to flourish, we need to engage in a more prolonged discussion with one another about the boundary lines between users, vendors, and everyday Internet surfers. It has to happen before content gets inadvertently (or advertently) misused. It's a discussion we have to make as public as possible.
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Still seeking OASIS approval The Open Document Foundation (ODF) has quietly ended all work on its da Vinci project after failing to secure approval from the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).â¦
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Due to the new advancements Google has made in their Analytics API (Datasource) functionality, the API changed slightly and the code that Felix Geisendorfer had created to work with a CakePHP install wasn't working anymore. He's corrected the problem with this new post with the new code and an example of its use.   In a very productive CakePHP session with nate a couple weeks ago in Atlanta I finally implemented some new HttpSocket stuff that was needed (minimal support for cookies / ssl) for creating the new API as a datasource. Now that its done I'm fairly happy with the outcome of the new API.   You can download the source here and follow his simple two-ish step process for getting it working on your site and with your Google account.
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Microsoft is calling IBM out over its opposition to Office Open XML, saying it is attempting to create a movement to prevent ISO standardization of the format. In an open letter posted to its Web site, Microsoft claims IBM is trying to limit choice by pushing the OpenDocument Format.
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Heightens battle with Microsoft The Office wars continue. Today, Google stepped up its challenge to Microsoft Office, adding a PowerPoint viewer to its online email client, Gmail. Google users can now open mind-numbing business presentations inside their browsers â without opening Microsoft software on the desktop.â¦