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After weeks of anticipation, Google is finally accepting a limited number of new users into its Google Voice phone system. Google Voice allows you to unite all of your phones under a single number and then use a powerful set of controls to determine how calls are handled. It packs plenty of other impressive functionality, too, including voicemail-to-text transcribing and advanced call-screening.
(Check out PC World's review of Google Voice)
At the same time, though, adopting Google Voice as your communications commander introduces some potential negatives, ranging from privacy-related concerns to questions about reliability. Here's a breakdown of five pros and five cons to help you determine whether the service is right for you.
Month: June 2009 Page 1 of 3
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Users can preview two new Adobe products, Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder 4, starting today. Both programs aim to simplify the process of designing Web applications. Catalyst, which has never before been released to the public, is aimed at designers. Built to resemble Illustrator and other Adobe products, Catalyst allows a nonprogrammer to design working interfaces for Web applications. Builder, which updates a previous product called Flex Builder, is aimed at developers. Specifically, it's a tool for developers building Internet applications, and Adobe says that it has been improved to better handle data and to work easily with Catalyst.
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Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s answer to Apple’s App Store rolled out to a bumpy start, as the company’s debut of the Ovi Store was plagued with problems.
The over-the-air mobile content store was launched late Monday night, and users reported issues such as problems signing into their accounts, lack of applications, and overall sluggishness. -
Despite its use of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other standard Web coding, developers still need the tools from Palm in order to create official apps that can take advantage of the hardware.
Developers looking to create applications for the Palm Pre will have to wait awhile, as Palm said its software development kit likely won’t be available until the end of summer.
Palm intentionally built its webOS operating system to be developer-friendly, as it enables content makers to create mobile apps using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other standard Web coding. But these developers still need an SDK in order to create official apps that can take advantage of the hardware.
“We’ve been working very hard on the SDK and are eager to open access on a wider scale, but the software and the developer services to support it just aren’t ready yet,” Palm wrote on its developer blog. “Our goal is to make the SDK available to everyone by the end of summer.”
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The Internet agency with key oversight of the monikers behind every Web site, e-mail address and Twitter post named former U.S. cybersecurity chief Rod Beckstrom Friday as its next chief executive.
The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approved his hiring in a voice vote Friday as ICANN capped weeklong meetings in Sydney, Australia. Beckstrom becomes CEO next Wednesday.
Beckstrom, who had resigned after less than a year as cybersecurity director amid persistent turf battles, brings credentials in industry, government and diplomacy — but little direct experience with domain names and broader Internet addressing issues, ICANN’s chief mission. -
Why do Americans need to attach creation myths to everything, including the origins of our most visible business ventures? We idealize the lone inventor over the company man, the garage over the office space. We tell the story of Apple Computer not as that of two former Atari and Hewlett-Packard employees launching their own product, but two starry-eyed inventors in a garage, building a dream from scratch.
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When Apple unveiled its iPhone 3GS earlier this month, AT&T was noticeably absent from the list of providers that would provide tethering capabilities for the smartphone.
AT&T has since said that the technology, which allows users to connect their iPhones to a laptop and use the phone's network to connect to the Web, will eventually be available. But what if you want it right now?
Austrian blogger Benjamin Miller has posted a tethering workaround for the iPhone that will reportedly allow you to use the device to connect to the Web either via USB or Bluetooth.
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According to its advocates, cloud computing is poised to succeed where so many other attempts to deliver on-demand computing to anyone with a network connection have failed. Some skepticism is warranted. The history of the computer industry is littered with the remains of previous aspirants to this holy grail, from the time-sharing utilities envisioned in the 1960s and 1970s to the network computers of the 1990s (simple computers acting as graphical clients for software running on central servers) to the commercial grid systems of more recent years (aimed at turning clusters of servers into high-performance computers). But cloud computing draws strength from forces that could propel it beyond the ranks of the also-rans.
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While Twitter and YouTube have proven strategic for election protesters in Iran, the US Defense Department is “way behind the power curve” on social networking, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said last week. Military leaders need to get on Facebook and other social networking sites themselves, to learn how they’re used firsthand.
“How do we communicate better with [young people]?” Gates asked. “How do we get reactions from them to things that we’re doing? How do we get better plugged in with what they’re thinking?”
The answer to those questions, in Gates’ view, is to harness social media to enable DOD reach out to the world.
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Google (NSDQ: GOOG) wants you to be able to take on Uma Thurman (a.k.a., The Bride from the "Kill Bill" movies) — and win. At least, as far as cleaning up your Gmail inbox is concerned. Starting today, Google has published a tutorial called "Become a Gmail Ninja." The goal? To become a master in the art of Nin-Gmail-su.
Someone over at Google is putting his/her 20% time to creative use. The Gmail Ninja guide is a collection of tips and tricks that can be used to save time, increase productivity and better manage email. Gmail organizes the lessons by how many emails you receive in a given day.
The breakdown goes something like this.
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Tuesday is the day for release of the free public beta of Microsoft Security Essentials, Microsoft's security and anti-virus suite. The price is certainly right. Question is, will the program change the security landscape? Bigger questions is whether or not it provides the security your business needs.
The new security and anti-virus suite, Microsoft Security Essentials, formerly known as Morro will be available for public download tomorrow.
Assuming Microsoft's servers survive the demand, this beta, which replaces Microsoft OneCare (which wasn't free), should answer questions about the program's anti-virus and general security viability pretty quickly. It's hard to imagine that that this won't be one of the largest beta tests ever, with plenty of the testers being small and midsized businesses and their employees.
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Despite the skepticism of some in the investment community, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is still a big believer that a single application for handheld phones – be it a game, a utility, a social network or a productivity app – can be grown into a venture-scale business.
In fact, the venture firm known for being the most bullish on the prospects for independent developers may one day lift the $100 million cap on its year-old fund devoted to backing them, the iFund.
“We will exceed that cap,” said Matt Murphy, the Kleiner partner who oversees the iFund, to a room full of eager – if still unknown – app developers at the business school of Stanford University on Tuesday. -
At Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s developer conference last month, VP of engineering Vic Gundotra declared that “the Web has won” and suggested that emerging open Web standards such as HTML 5 have become the preferred platform to create Web applications, even graphically rich ones.
Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) begs to differ. Its Flash platform remains the de facto standard for rich Internet applications, and the company would be happy for that situation to continue. To make sure that happens, some from Adobe are expressing doubts about HTML 5.
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Being the technology-savvy group that they are, it is not surprising to find that many venture capitalists and angel investors are on Twitter. In fact, many of them are quite active and have attracted fairly large followings putting them in the upper echelons of Twitter users. So we wondered whether all activity on Twitter by venture capitalists and angel investors translates into or at the very least correlates with them making more investments in startups?
As our analysis below reveals, we applied many tests to see if there was any pattern/correlation, but the end result, perhaps not surprisingly, is that one doesn’t exist. Irrespective of the test, there was no correlation between any metric measuring Twitter activity and investment levels by VCs and angels. But in our examination, we did uncover a select group of investors on Twitter who we’d classify as Rockstars (9 firms) or Unsung Heroes (14 firms) based on their 2009 startup funding and Twitter activity.