Internet

Google’s Sundar Pichai revealed that offline Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs are planned for this summer according to Techcrunch.

“All of this is a long time coming for Google. They’ve had options for going offline in the past with things like Gears, but it wasn’t perfect. And actually, Gears is no longer being supported by Google as Chrome gains many of the same features via HTML5.

Pichai also noted that there are already hundreds of apps in the Chrome Web Store with offline access. And that includes almost every game in the store. This, on top of the built-in 3G connectivity is all vital to ensure the vitality of Chromebooks”

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/11/offline-gmail/

Microsoft Corp and Skype Global S.à r.l today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Skype, the leading Internet communications company, for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both Microsoft and Skype.

The acquisition will increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications, bringing benefits to both consumers and enterprise users and generating significant new business and revenue opportunities. The combination will extend Skype’s world-class brand and the reach of its networked platform, while enhancing Microsoft’s existing portfolio of real-time communications products and services.

With 170 million connected users and over 207 billion minutes of voice and video conversations in 2010, Skype has been a pioneer in creating rich, meaningful connections among friends, families and business colleagues globally. Microsoft has a long-standing focus and investment in real-time communications across its various platforms, including Lync (which saw 30 percent revenue growth in Q3), Outlook, Messenger, Hotmail and Xbox LIVE.

Skype will support Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and a wide array of Windows devices, and Microsoft will connect Skype users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities. Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms.

“Skype is a phenomenal service that is loved by millions of people around the world,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world.”

Skype will become a new business division within Microsoft, and Skype CEO Tony Bates will assume the title of president of the Microsoft Skype Division, reporting directly to Ballmer.

“Microsoft and Skype share the vision of bringing software innovation and products to our customers,” said Tony Bates. “Together, we will be able to accelerate Skype’s plans to extend our global community and introduce new ways for everyone to communicate and collaborate,” Bates said.

“Tony Bates has a great track record as a leader and will strengthen the Microsoft management team. I’m looking forward to Skype’s talented global workforce bringing its insights, ideas and experience to Microsoft,” Ballmer said.

Speaking on behalf of the investor group that sold Skype to Microsoft, Egon Durban, managing director of Silver Lake, said: “We are thrilled with Skype’s transformation during the period of our ownership and grateful for the extraordinary commitment of its management team and employees. We are excited about Skype’s long-term future with Microsoft, as it is poised to become one of the world’s most dynamic and comprehensive communications platforms.”

Founded in 2003, Skype was acquired by eBay in September 2005, and then acquired by an investment group led by Silver Lake in November 2009. Skype has made impressive progress over the past 18 months under Silver Lake’s leadership, increasing monthly calling minutes by 150 percent, developing new revenue streams and strategic partnerships, acquiring the intellectual property powering its peer-to-peer network, and recruiting an outstanding senior management team.

Other members of the selling investor group led by Silver Lake include eBay International AG, CPP Investment Board, Joltid Limited in partnership with Europlay Capital Advisors; and Andreessen Horowitz.

The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The parties hope to obtain all required regulatory clearances during the course of this calendar year.

About Skype
Skype is communications software whose purpose is to break down barriers to communication. With an Internet-connected device, families, friends and colleagues can get together for free with messaging, voice and video. At low cost, they can also call landlines or mobiles virtually anywhere in the world. Skype has recently introduced group video, allowing groups of more than two people to do things together whenever they’re apart.

Founded in 2003 and based in Luxembourg. Skype can be downloaded onto computers, mobile phones and other connected devices for free.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Academic researchers say they’ve uncovered weaknesses in dozens of the most popular file hosting sites that allow people to gain unauthorized access to data that’s supposed to be available only to those selected by the user, reports Dan Goodin writing on Theregister.

“The services, which include sites such RapidShare, FileFactory, and Easyshare, allow users to upload large files and make them available to anyone who knows the unique URI (or Uniform Resource Identifier) that’s bound to each one. Users may post the link on websites or forums available to the public or share it in a single email to prevent all but the recipient from downloading it. RapidShare, for instance, says it can be used to “share your data with your friends, colleagues or family.”

But according to academics in Belgium and France, a “significant percentage” of the 100 FHSs (or file hosting services) they studied made it trivial for outsiders to access the files simply by guessing the URLs that are bound to each uploaded file. What’s more, they presented evidence that such attacks, far from being theoretical, are already happening in the wild.”

Read more: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/08/file_hosting_sites_under_attack/

PC World has published a useful walk through “Setting Up POP3 Email Accounts in Gmail” for those changing to cloud email service Gmail.

“When you make the switch from Microsoft Office to Google Docs, you don’t just lose Microsoft Word and Excel, you also lose Outlook.

So, for any readers who may wish to follow in my footsteps, or who stumble across this project at some point in the future, we are going to take a step back today and go over the steps to add a POP3 email account to Gmail. As a side note, I tried this in IE9, Firefox, and Chrome, and the buttons and text did not render properly in IE9. I recommend using Chrome for this process”

Read more: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/227209/day_4_setting_up_pop3_email_accounts_in_gmail.html

Comdev, known for its success in creating PHP applications to assist with website building, has gone one step further with its latest series of apps which allow businesses to use a Facebook page as a platform through which to create and publish comprehensive web content or even operate an e-commerce store.

With more than 500 million users worldwide – at least 50% of whom log on daily – Facebook boasts a member roster of a quarter of the global Internet community. Although designed for social use only, the popular social networking site has quickly evolved into more than just a platform to share daily updates. Facebook is now one of the predominant social marketing tools used by businesses across the globe.

Comdev’s Facebook Apps allow users to create customized welcome tabs using a WYSIWYG editor, even if the user has no knowledge of HTML. Additional tabs and sub-tabs can also be easily created to publish other content such as products, services, company information and more. There is also the option for businesses to use the Online Store app to enable customers to shop on Facebook and then ‘share’ their purchases on their profiles.

Other apps available in Comdev’s Facebook series include client networks (first of its kind), notifications, enquiry forms, subscription forms (which include a tool for online payment), image galleries and blogs.

“We are creating Facebook Apps that enable businesses to monetize Facebook, increasing their social network presence, connecting with clients and building a database of prospective buyers with viral effects,” said Bryan Gan, founder and CEO of Comdev. “Businesses will always flock to a place where many people gather.”

Bryan Gan encourages web designers to expand their services by providing custom-made Facebook page design services to maximize the marketing benefits of social networking for businesses.

Facebook Apps are free; sign up at http://facebook.comdev.com.

About Comdev:
Since 2002, Comdev has provided PHP application scripts for web designers to create database-driven websites, such as content management systems, e-commerce systems, news publisher, blogs, photo albums, newsletters, events calendar, form designer, helpdesks and more.

Website: http://www.comdev.com

Dropbox: 25 million users and counting writes JP Mangalindan on CNNMoney.

“Since January 2010, CEO Drew Houston and CTO Arash Ferdowsi’s file-syncing and sharing service has exploded, from 4 million to 25 million, with 200 million files now saved daily, despite having spent zero dollars on advertising. According to Houston, it’s all thanks to word of mouth: 30% of new sign-ups now come via its user referral program, where users get a free, additional 250 MB for each successful referral, while 20% are due to its easy file-sharing features. And despite Dropbox’s focus on consumers, it counts hundreds of thousands of businesses among its userbase now, including United Airlines (UAUA), Red Bull, and Tishman Construction, the construction manager for One World Trade Center in New York City.”

Read full article: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/18/reviewing-dropboxs-vision-of-the-future/

Gmail now lets you use any picture you want as the background image in your Gmail inbox.

“Themes in Gmail are great—there are tons to choose from and they give your inbox a personalized look. But we’ve heard from many of you who thought it would be even better if you could give Gmail an even more personalized look and create themes completely on your own,” Google explained in a blog post.

Effective immediately, there’s a new link in the Gmail “Option” menu. Under “Mail Settings,” click on “Create your own theme” and you will be able to upload images.

HP recently released its WebOS 3.0 SDK to developers. Devs who get a prerelease version of an OS are generally bound under a strict “don’t show people what we have” agreement, but that hasn’t stopped one from doing just that, sending PreCentral.net a copy, which they ran in emulation to put the OS through its paces. And it looks decidedly cool, reports Cnet.

“As one might expect from a beta of a touch-based tablet OS, the new version of WebOS, which is destined for HP’s announced TouchPad tablets and likely a new generation of Pre smartphones, looked something like iOS for the iPad in some ways (for better or worse).
That said, it also appears to have a few innovative features that improve over Apple’s implementation, such as a three-paned e-mail view, better organization of browser windows, and an excellent-looking notification system.

In addition, 3.0 interestingly abandons Google’s pervasive maps in favor of Microsoft’s Bing maps. The new map app, like most of the others, is seen in the video after the jump, and it’s impressive.”

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20053716-1.html#ixzz1JV54qs6U”

Google has released Page Speed Online, a tool for optimizing page speed. It evaluates the web page content, and generates suggestions to page loading speed, reducing page load times resulting in the decreased bounce rates and the increased conversion rates.

Page Speed Online offers the new ability for web developers to analyze the performance of webpages as displayed in smartphones. Today, a number of web sites maintain two different versions of their site content: one is optimized for larger screen real-estate and higher bandwidth available to desktops and laptops over corporate and home networks. The other is optimized for a smaller screen real estate and the content is generally lighter: potentially less JavaScript, smaller images and less text.

http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com/

Google has enabled SPDY HTTP in it’s Chrome Browser. “Google enabled SPDY for Chrome in mid-January 2011 in a limited way, but is now running Chrome with SPDY, which replaces portions of HTTP and adds a few features at 100% over its own servers.”, reports Conceivablytech.

“The result is a dramatically increased page load performance that only works between Chrome (as it includes SPDY support) and Google’s servers (which supports the features for Google sites.) In effect, Google sites should load much faster in Chrome than in any other web browser.

SPDY is designed to overcome the shortcomings of HTTP, which was first documented in 1995 and related to web content that was much simpler than what we are developing and consuming today. Both TCP and HTTP have evolved into a bottleneck of data downloads and are constantly under scrutiny how these protocols can be made much more efficient in today’s world.

Google said that it saw pageload times to improve by 44 to up to 64%”

Read more: http://www.conceivablytech.com/6696/products/google-chrome-gets-spdy-and-an-onscreen-keyboard

Glide has launched new “social file posting” to Facebook and Twitter. Now post any files stored on your Glide GDrive including; photos, photo albums, music, music playlists, video, video playlists, documents, bookmarks, web content and more to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Glide gives you 30GBs of free online storage to upload and sync files from all of your devices including desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones as well as tools to capture and manage web content.
Glide’s new social posting tools do the work for you. Upload your files once and Glide’s automated compatibility engine formats your files for easy posting to Twitter and Facebook. Glide also automatically captures and converts web content into personal files that can also be posted. Glide’s automated device recognition makes sure that people who view your posts receive files they can access on different devices and networks.
The Glide Cloud operating system includes a full suite of productivity applications and web capture and conversion tools making it possible to create and edit content online including documents, presentations, photos, drawings and websites. This content can be shared securely and privately through Glide’s rights based collaboration tools as well as posted to Facebook, Twitter and Glide’s own social/private networking application Engage.
“Glide’s new social posting tool adds a powerful file synchronization, media management, collaboration and productivity backend to Twitter and Facebook enabling you to create, consolidate and manage files from all of your devices in the cloud and seamlessly share through your favorite social networks,” said Donald, Leka, Chairman and CEO of TransMedia. “By leveraging the Glide Cloud operating system Facebook and Twitter users now have a host of new features to significantly enhance these services for social and business use.”
Glide provides cross platform compatibility for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, Android Honeycomb, BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry Tablet OS (QNX), iOS, webOS, Symbian and Windows Mobile users based on automated device identification and file transcoding.

Glide: http://www.GlideLife.com
Glide Mobile: http://www.GlideMobile.com

Mozilla the organisation behind has listed slow performing Firefox add-ons.

Mozilla said, “One of Firefox’s great advantages is its extreme extensibility. Extensions can do almost anything. There is a down side to this: poorly written extensions can have a severe impact on the browsing experience, including on the overall performance of Firefox itself. This article offers some best practices and suggestions that can not only improve the performance of your extension, but also of Firefox itself.”

Read More: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/performance/#addon-11