Archive for August, 2009
Corporate BlackBerrys to get Google Apps syncing
August 21st, 2009 | 
Author: If your office has given you a BlackBerry for work purposes, you may soon be accessing your Google Apps Gmail, calendar, and contacts via the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
On Friday, Google announced that some functionality in Google Apps, its suite of premium enterprise-level applications, will now give company-issued BlackBerrys some push and sync functionality.
The Google Apps Connector promises to push Gmail messages within 60 seconds, and sync in-box actions like assigning labels and archiving messages. You’ll also be able to search contacts from the company’s global address list, a huge bonus for mobile workers. Synchronization between the Google Calendar and the BlackBerry calendar is one-way in this release, with Google’s calendar populating your schedule on the phone. Google plans to include bidirectional calendar syncing in the future.
While the connector opens up syncing to some of the Google Apps, in this iteration it does not sync with Google Docs, the intranet site-hosting app called Google Site, and Google Video. You’ll still be able to view content through the mobile browser, however.
The Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (download) is available for free to corporate Google Apps Premier and Education Editions customers, and must be implemented by an IT administrator.
Check out more details in this Google blog post.
Source :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10315236-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
CNETNews Corporate BlackBerrys to get Google Apps syncing http://bit.ly/DoKeS
Photoshop.com adds video hosting, group albums to repertoire
(Credit: Screenshot by Lori Grunin/CNET, photos by Lori Grunin, Michael Ricca/CNET)Photoshop.com may be Flash-y and Air-y with photo-editing capabilities, but it surprisingly still seems to lag sites like Flickr and Facebook when it comes to various sharing features. For instance, only this week has Adobe launched video-hosting and group album capabilities (available for free accounts as well as paid), long available from its competitors.
There are some done-it-better aspects, however. For example, Adobe allows for larger videos: a maximum of 2GB vs. Flickr’s 150GB/90 seconds. Of course, the more large videos you upload the closer it will push you to the 2GB storage maximum of a free account. As it’s taking forever (it’s up to about an hour and still hasn’t completed) to process my short 177MB video, however–everything gets transcoded to Flash video–I shudder to think how long a 2GB file would take.
There are still a few UI kinks to work out as well. If you e-mail an invite to someone at an e-mail address other than the one connected to their Adobe ID, there’s no way to link the addresses or even allow the person to reply to you with the correct address.
People you invite as Collaborators to Group Albums aren’t automatically added as your friends. And while it notifies you via e-mail of updates to the album there don’t seem to be other notification options, like posting Twitter, Facebook, or even an RSS feed. (Concurrently with the rollout, Adobe updated Photoshop.com’s terms of service. There doesn’t seem to be anything objectionable in the new terms. Yay!)
You can see how Photoshop.com’s editing capabilities stack up against the competition in 15 online photo editors compared.
Source :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10314843-1.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
WordPress gets own URL shortener
As I have said in recent stories about short URLs, I believe that content management systems (blogging platforms, for example) should have their own short-link generators. Why hand over control of your traffic — and your analytics — to a third party, after all?
Automattic’s WordPress.com has launched just exactly this: its own built-in short-link generator. When you’re creating a post on the WordPress.com service, you get an option to create a wp.me link alongside the post’s default link.
Full Story…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10314587-250.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Source :
CNETNews WordPress gets own URL shortener http://bit.ly/u8XgT
Los Angeles gets its Google Apps groove
On August 11, Randi Levin, the chief information officer of the city of Los Angeles, stood before City Council members at a hearing of the information technology committee and made her case for why the nation’s second-largest city should adopt Google Apps.
“The ability to get whatever information the city needs, whenever they need it, on whatever device they need it on will fundamentally change the way the city works and enhance productivity greatly,” she said. “In a fiscal crisis it is difficult to find technology solutions that will save money without requiring a significant capital outlay to achieve those objectives.”
Security concerns have kept many government agencies and large corporations away from Google Apps. That is starting to change. A number of small U.S. cities are using the suite and there are Google Apps pilots in more than a dozen federal agencies. If Los Angeles signs on, it would join the District of Columbia as one of the largest government adoptions.
Full Story…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10313846-245.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Source :
CNETNews Los Angeles gets its Google Apps groove http://bit.ly/4ptPH3
Blockbuster, Motorola team up for mobile movies
After inking a deal with Samsung last month to deliver movies directly to your home, Blockbuster announced on Tuesday that its OnDemand service is also coming to your mobile phone.
Blockbuster OnDemand, to be available on “select” Motorola mobile phones, will provide users with access to “thousands” of films, the company said in a statement. Users of the upcoming application, whose release date is yet to be announced, will also be able to choose films for home delivery or reserve titles for in-store pickup.
According to Blockbuster, the Motorola deal is yet another element in its strategy of providing consumers with options to get its movies anywhere, at any time.
For its part, Motorola believes that offering Blockbuster movies on its handsets will help it regain some of its appeal. The company once sat atop the mobile-phone industry. Today, it’s a shadow of its former self. And it’s trying desperately to regain some market share.
That might be coming through Android-based devices. Motorola has already signed on to deliver Android phones. Blockbuster’s app might become a component in that strategy. But by competing with the iPhone and its many multimedia capabilities, Motorola and Blockbuster will be facing an uphill battle.
The iPhone features a YouTube app, providing users access to just about any video they want.
Apple’s handset also has iTunes, through which users can download their favorite films or television shows, then watch them on the iPhone while they’re away from home.
Rumors are also swirling that Netflix will be coming to the iPhone in the coming weeks. If that happens, the iPhone will become an even more attractive handset for those who want multimedia features. And both Motorola and Blockbuster would be facing an even more powerful juggernaut.
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Source :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10313303-17.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in Internet, media, movies, video | 
Tags: Blockbuster, mobile movies, Motorala | 
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