No need to use email to version that spreadsheet collaboration. Just do it in Google Docs.
This week in Docs: Revision history in spreadsheets – Official Google Docs Blog
Today we’re excited to announce that the new revision history view we added to documents is now available in spreadsheets. At a glance, you can now see all of the changes that collaborators have made cell-by-cell. Each collaborator is represented by a different color so it is easy to understand who made what changes.
Who sucked up the Novell patents? All the usual suspects.
Microsoft Forms a Patent Bloc With Apple, EMC, and Oracle | BNET
When Novell (NOVL) finally structured an acquisition deal for itself, part included the sale of 882 patents to a consortium backed by Microsoft MSFT). Thanks to a tip received by free and open source software (FOSS) expert Florian Mueller, we learn that Microsoft’s partners are Apple (AAPL), Oracle (ORCL), and EMC (EMC).
Yes, you can see this posted on Slashdot, too. But since we blogged the original analysis that Stuxnet looked like a piece of ordinance consider this a follow up. The story reads like the Pink Panther scene where Clouseau has gathered all the suspects together in the drawing room and methodically ticks off the facts that lead to the undeniable conclusion that the wrong person did it. If you got China and Israel into a drawing room and confronted them with these facts … read on:
Stuxnet’s Finnish-Chinese Connection – The Firewall – the world of security – Forbes
As far as China goes, I’ve identified 5 distinct ties to Stuxnet that are unique to China as well as provided a rationale for the attack which fits China’s unique role as Iran’s ally and customer, while opposing Iran’s fuel enrichment plans.
There is an old Sci-Fi movie where invaders from space take up residence in unsuspecting humans. As the humans become more and more dependent on the aliens to provide life support, they end up eventually being completely replaced. In this case, the alien is GMail, the host is Exchange server, and the technology used to colonlize the victim is Postini. Very clever.
Google pitches Exchange backup with Postini | Relevant Results – CNET News
With the launch of Google Message Continuity, an e-mail backup service, Google wants to get a toehold in companies that run Microsoft Exchange servers for e-mail by offering themselves up as a backup solution should something go wrong with those servers. The idea is that in the event of an Exchange outage, workers could sign into Google accounts and get their regular work e-mail as usual through Google’s interface.
Google Groups will be revamping soon, dropping its vestigial wiki-like functions and concentrating on forum, email distribution, and group sharing core. It should be expected that the interface would change in concert and the preview is now available. That said, the new interface is still bare bones and lacks the tight integration with GMail and Google Docs that would make it a useful destination for Enterprise collaboration. One thing that is still missing is a way to easily form nested groups – a prerequisite for modeling most organizational structures.
The Google Apps Blog (original posts): Preview the new Google Groups
Millions of people around the world use Google Groups to power discussions with the groups and communities they care about. We have been working hard to improve this experience, and today we are happy to announce a sneak preview of the brand new Google Groups.
Not yet available in a store near you. Its being shipped to pilot program participants (say that three times fast) and other developer guinea pigs. The real question: will it retail for less than an iPad?
Google’s Gorgeous Cr-48 Notebook Ditches Caps-Lock | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
Google’s Chrome OS, announced Tuesday, comes along with a little something that makes us gadget-freaks pretty excited: the monolithic, plain-black Cr-48, an Atom notebook that will be shipped to selected developers and others as part of Google’s Chrome Pilot Program.
This is an unlooked for and happy ending for Google Wave, given the recent Oracle/Google/Apache Android problems
Google Wave Is Now an Apache Project
We look forward to seeing how Wave evolves as an Apache project; becoming an open-source, community-driven project is probably the best thing that could have happened to Wave as a large-scale, ambitious web app — much better than the deadpool.
It will be interesting to see exactly what pieces of Orkut, Buzz, and Wave get recycled int +1 with loops.
Google’s Possible “+1″ iPhone App, Facebook Similarities, And Social “Loop” Groups
This is particularly interesting because we have heard that early iterations of Google +1 itself were much more similar to Facebook. But that version was supposedly scrapped in favor of a more all-web-encompassing toolbar approach (at least as it currently stands). So it’s possible that the app is a bit old, or that Google is thinking a bit differently about the social product on mobile devices.
Its not just any agency that chose GMail, its the GSA.
Google wins email contract with U.S. GSA – MarketWatch
Unisys will provide the services and implementation of Google’s software platform. The contract covers “cloud-based email and collaboration tools that will reduce inefficiencies and lower costs by 50 percent over the next five years,” The GSA said.
With Oracle poised to go Freemium on Java, directories of JVM alternatives are getting plentiful. But this one included some useful (if niche) alternatives. In addition to
all the usual suspects” there is a Java-to-C version, and a Mono/.Net compatible version listed near the end.
An open source collaborative network
JC Virtual machine converts Java class files to C source code. It could also compiles with GCC and loads them with built-in ELF loader. Additional to that, JC provides a complete Java runtime with optimization to increase performance.
