Video: Google Makes Video All Business

At MIT's Emerging Technology conference, I had the opportunity to speak to Matt Glotzbach, Product Management Director for Google Enterprise.

Chief among the new enterprise capabilities we spoke about were the new video features for business that have been added to Google Apps. We also spoke about the potential effect of Android phones on Google enterprise offerings.

Live from EmTech 08: Talkin Bout Innovation

Yesterday I attended the Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT (also known as Technology Review EmTech 08). This conference looks at many of the new technologies and the issues surrounding them today and in the near future.

The first day of the conference was heavy on discussion panels, which were impressive for the luminaries from across technology and academia who participated in them, and in the important areas that they addressed, such as green technology and cloud computing.

Yesterday I attended the Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT (also known as Technology Review EmTech 08). This conference looks at many of the new technologies and the issues surrounding them today and in the near future.

The first day of the conference was heavy on discussion panels, which were impressive for the luminaries from across technology and academia who participated in them, and in the important areas that they addressed, such as green technology and cloud computing.

I have to admit though that the conference was probably too weighted toward panels. I found the panels I attended to be interesting but, in general, I tend to think of discussion panels as the Lite beer of technology conferences. They do tend to be enjoyable to watch (tastes great!) but they also tend to be low on actual information to digest (less filling!).

The Standout Products from DEMOfall 08

At the recent DEMOfall 08 show in San Diego, a wide variety of products and companies debuted. These products and companies spanned the whole spectrum of technology, from consumer Web sites to enterprise-focused SAAS solutions to cool gadgets to core pieces of manufacturing technology.

Past DEMO shows have seen the launch of companies that are now household words, such as Salesforce.com and Tivo. But predicting which of the companies from this past DEMO show will go on to similar success is a tough job. Past shows have seen companies that looked like can't-miss prospects fall to obscurity while mostly ignored products go on to real success.

So rather than try to pick future winners or losers, I've chosen to list the products that looked the most interesting and promising. So here is my list of the most promising products and companies from DEMOfall 08.

Startups in the Cloud

It's no secret that the state of the economy is really bad, and it seems to get worse on a daily basis. So it stands to reason that this must be a really bad time to try to start up a new company.

But this may not be the case. In fact, this might actually be a pretty good time to start a new company.

At the recent TechCrunch 50 and DEMOfall conferences, I saw plenty of evidence that there is no shortage of interesting new companies and that many of these companies may actually be thriving.

But how could this be? Given the credit crunch, struggling economy and still-existing hangover from the .com bubble, it doesn't make sense that there would be lots of money floating around to jump-start new companies.

However, that's the key: Companies nowadays don't need "lots of money"--it sometimes takes a relatively small amount of money for a business to launch to the entire world.

Live from DEMOfall: The Weird, the Web and the World Mind

Day Two of DEMOfall 08 started with a collection of companies that can only be described as nontraditional. Among the collection of products presented in this session was a tool to trace family connections, a service designed to pay people for doing successful job interviews, a social tracking tool for volunteer work and a service essentially designed to help people hitchhike. But if these products were a little nontraditional, it doesn't mean that some of them weren't promising.

From a pure potential standpoint, the most promising of this group would appear to be the silicon expansion valve from Microstaq. Now I don't know much of anything about valves for air conditioning units, but if the company has what it says it has--which is a smaller, vastly more efficient system for AC units--if adopted this product has the potential to save lots of energy and resources. We'll see if it really happens.

Just Browsing?

Web browsers aren't just about surfing the Web anymore. With Microsoft, Mozilla and Google (!) introducing new browsers, the browser may just be more important than ever before. In this report I look at the current generation of Web browsers and what it means for the future of the Web and IT. Also, look below for links to reviews of all the latest Web browsers.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 and older versions of IE dominated the market with more than 95 percent of users. And, at the time, Microsoft had no plans to improve on its browsers, saying there would be no IE 7 until the launch of "Longhorn." Microsoft officials put more water on the browser flames by saying that browsers would go away as stand-alone applications, and that most Web activity would be handled by applications and operating systems.

Not everyone was convinced. People who were interested in an open and vibrant Web were pinning their hopes on the release of Firefox 1.0. These hopes weren't misplaced, as Firefox stole market share from IE and forced Microsoft to change course on its Web browser plans.

Fast-forward to today, and it's hard to imagine a more vibrant and more important technology sector than Web browsers. In the minds of many observers, the new browser wars are quickly replacing the old operating system wars in terms of determining how people and businesses will use computers, both on the Web and off.

Web-Style Audience Responses in Real-World Meetings

Traditional thinking tends to always favor in-person meetings and training over virtual Web-based replacements. Most people would say that while Web-based meetings and conferences have their place, especially when travel is difficult or too expensive, in most areas they fall behind a face-to-face meeting.

But anyone who has used Web-based conferencing extensively knows that there are certain advantages over real-world meetings and conferences that extend beyond the travel savings. And one of the biggest is the ability to instantly quiz and poll meeting and conference attendees to track their knowledge and grasp of the information being presented. This kind of real-time feedback can be invaluable when it comes to customizing and even changing presentations on the fly.

And it is also much harder to gather in person. In small meetings you can ask for a show of hands, but this doesn't work with complex questions and there's the reality that people will change their vote to match the rest of the group rather than be the only person without a hand up. And when it comes to auditorium-sized conferences and training, shows of hands are pretty much useless.

If you're lucky enough to work in a modern university environment, or have a business with advanced and dedicated training facilities, you may have access to audience response systems built into seats and desks. But these are very expensive to deploy and can't be taken to any conference room or meeting environment.

This problem is why I was interested in trying out Turning Technologies' ResponseCard AnyWhere, part of its TurningPoint Response System.

Video: The Future of Unified Communications

Click here to watch the video

Unified communications has become a very hot topic for enterprise IT operations. The ability to combine and easily manage all forms of voice and digital communications within a company clearly offers huge cost and time savings benefits.

The importance of this field can be seen by the number of major vendors jumping into the Unified Communications arena.

But unified communications has been slow to take off. In this eWEEK video interview, Ashley Daley talks to eWEEK's Chief Technology Analyst Jim Repoza about the future of Unified Communications.

Click here to see the video interview of a look at unified communications

Adobe Reader Gets Connected

REVIEW: Just about a week after Adobe released version 9 of Acrobat, the latest version of the tool that most people use to read PDF files was also released. For most users, Adobe Reader 9 won't seem like a major departure from the previous versions of the free PDF reading tool.

The interface has been streamlined a bit, making it simpler to view multiple page PDF files. And search can be easily done across multiple PDF files.

However, the majority of the new features for Adobe Reader 9 fit into two camps: increased integration with the Acrobat.com Web site and support for new features introduced in Acrobat 9 (click here to read my review of Acrobat 9).

Acrobat 9: The Web/Desktop Hybrid for Documents

Click here to see screenshots

REVIEW: When it comes to document collaboration and sharing, there can be little argument that most of this activity is moving to the web. But there can also be little argument that the current slate of Web-based tools come up short in features and capabilities when compared to desktop tools.

Perhaps what is needed is a hybrid approach, something that combines the strong feature set of a desktop application with the easy collaboration of a web-based approach. If this is truly the case, then Adobe may be on the right track.

That's because the latest release of their flagship Acrobat document platform is definitely focused on combining Acrobat's strong document editing and creation features with broad web-based collaboration, sharing and conferencing tools.

To do this Acrobat 9, which was released in June, relies heavily on the recently released Acrobat.com to provide web-based collaboration and sharing tools, as well as leveraging other products from the Adobe portfolio to add conferencing and live document reviewing features. And while there are few completely new capabilities in the core Acrobat feature set, many of been overhauled and improved to such a degree that they feel like completely new features.