Comcast buys Plaxo

Yessir. We knew Plaxo was looking for a buyer. Comcast comes as a bit of a surprise, though. Plaxo says that your Google contacts will continue to sync, and here’s why they think it all makes sense:

Plaxo’s Personal Card: Comcast to Acquire Plaxo; Pulse to Become Central to Creating Unified “Social Media” Experience Across the Web, the TV (and more)

Plaxo and Comcast have been working together for the past year on a number of initiatives. Plaxo is providing the universal address book for Comcast’s SmartZone communications center (slated to launch later this year), and we are also now hosting all of the address book accounts for Comcast webmail users. Our partnership has already more than doubled the reach of the Plaxo network, bringing the total number of accounts to nearly 50 million.

Together, we intend to deliver on a vision of making “social media” a natural part of the lives of regular people, not just early-adopters. For example, you should be able to securely post family photos online in Pulse, and have them viewable by any of your family members, whether they are online, at work, on their mobile device, or in their living room watching TV. And you should be able to discover new shows to watch, based on what your friends and coworkers have recommended.

A Fine List of Mac Freeware

Here is a cleanly organized list of free Mac software. Best of all, it seems to cover the best-of-breed in every category … and contains a few surprises.

Access Google Docs from OpenOffice

I haven’t tried it, but it might come in handy.

Linux.com :: Connect OpenOffice.org to Zoho Writer and Google Docs with OoGdocsIntegrator

Do you fancy Web-based word processors but aren’t ready to leave OpenOffice.org? You can work with your Zoho Writer and Google Docs files from the convenience of OpenOffice.org Writer, courtesy of the OoGdocsIntegrator extension.

Adobe goes for Picasa

Adobe opens Photoshop for freetards | The Register

The launch of Express takes Adobe into competition with Google, which offers a limited photo editing tool called Picasa. It’s Adobe’s second online venture, following the release of the online video editing and mash-up tool Adobe Premiere Express last year.

Micosoft has secret plans to topple Google

What a shocker: Microsoft is apparently taking the threat that Google poses to its Office software seriously. But the most interesting tidbit of this story is the assertion that once it is ready (maybe in time for Vista’s service pack 2?) Project Albany can be purchased at Best Buy.

Well, now. Let me see. Do I pay to switch over to a new Microsoft product, or keep using Google Docs for free. I dunno.

Update: Microsoft prepares ‘Albany’ to compete with Google Docs | IDGNS | News | March 26, 2008 | By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service

Facing pressure from hosted productivity suites like Google Docs and Google Apps, Microsoft is planning a new package of low-end productivity software and hosted services through a secretive project code-named Albany.

Project Albany puts together a combination of Office, Office Live Workspaces, Windows Live OneCare and the Windows Live suite of services in one package that eventually is expected to be available in retail outlets such as Best Buy, sources familiar with the company’s plans said Wednesday.

The sources, who asked not to be named, said Microsoft is asking select testers to try out the Project Albany beta but is requiring them to sign a non-disclosure agreement just to participate in the test. The main focus of the initial beta is to test the unified installer for the package, they said.

Free beta for IT assest discovery and network mapping Tool

Paglo - The Search Engine for IT

Universal Search means that we allow you to collect all of the information about your computers, networks, and users with the Paglo Crawler. The captured data is then securely sent to the Paglo Search Index and is ultimately presented through your Paglo Web Account. This is important because we are not limited to one type of information, say logs or documents. We also are unique with patent-pending technology that presents query results as both simple text and rich quantitative data.

Better than Google Sky?

It certainly looked like Astronomy would be a pretty good application for Photosynth.  This World Wide Telescope, unlike Google Sky, apparently only runs on Windows … not under Mac OS X or Linux. 

Microsoft poised to unveil WorldWide Telescope? | Channel Register

Redmond has apparently tapped the might of the Hubble telescope “as well as 10 or so Earth bound telescopes” to compile its multiple terabit view of the heavens, which will be driven by the company’s Photosynth technology.

TechCrunch has heard WorldWide Telescope is “significantly better” than Google Sky, offering a user interface which is “seamless as you move around the sky and zoom in and out”.

Google Spreadsheets back Surveys

So this is great.  Publish your spreadsheet as a survey.  Capture the data, then republish the real-time results using the Spreadsheet’s feed as maybe a graph

Google Spreadsheet Surveys

Google Spreadsheets can now be officially kidnapped to hold survey data. Just click on the Share tab and pick the new “to fill out a form” option*.

Hello TrueCrypt 5.0

The third bullet in the update notes:

TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X and Linux - Documentation

New features:

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Ability to encrypt a system partition/drive (i.e. a partition/drive where Windows is installed) with pre-boot authentication (anyone who wants to gain access and use the system, read and write files, etc., needs to enter the correct password each time before the system starts). For more information, see the chapter System Encryption in the documentation. (Windows Vista/XP/2003)

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Pipelined operations increasing read/write speed by up to 100% (Windows)

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Mac OS X version 

Zimbra done it?

Here is a reminder that Yahoo just acquired Zimbra, and was planning to use it to joust with both Google and Microsoft’s email services. 

Yahoo’s Zimbra: Threat Or Bait To Microsoft? — Yahoo — InformationWeek

The online/offline characteristics of ZCS 5.0 might mean that Microsoft would need Zimbra to compete with a growing slate of Google online applications. Google apps are getting more powerful, and “as a defense against this position, Microsoft needs to accelerate its own move into online services.”

And this still points to a move on the part of Microsoft to protect its turf in the Enterprise.

Yahoo’s Zimbra Releases v5.0 with BlackBerry Support, New Ajax Features

Zimbra, an open-source alternative to Microsoft Exchange Server that was acquired by Yahoo this past September, has released version 5.0 of its collaboration suite. The upgrades are various and wide-reaching, with support finally here for the BlackBerry and several improvements made to Zimbra’s browser-based email client.