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.

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.

Google buys into WiMAX

So how is this? Google herds Verizon into buying and opening up the 700MHz band and then finds itself with some cash to spend on plan B … to wit … WiMax in the form of Sprint and Clearwire which are merging and teaming up with a cast of dozens:

Sprint and Clearwire merge next-gen wireless businesses, goes by Clearwire - Engadget

the new outfit will be called Clearwire, even though Sprint will hold around 51-percent of the firm, while existing Clearwire shareholders will own 27-percent and the new investors will hold 22-percent. New investors? Ah yes, Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks will collectively invest $3.2 billion in the new company, but that figure is “based on a target price of $20 a share of Clearwire’s common stock,

But from a previous post, I think we can see why this part of the wireless strategy was plan B all along …

Sprint, Clearwire set to announce $12B WiMAX deal with Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Intel, and Google? - Engadget

it’s a pretty big boost for WiMAX, which was looking pretty sickly lately. Still, asking consumers to have faith in Sprint and Comcast and Time Warner Cable is pretty ballsy — between the three of them, they’ve probably burned everyone in America.

Gartner on Google and the Enterprise

So just how threatened is your traditional IT department by Google’s onslaught? That depends on what they value. Gartner’s Rich Hunter is quoted as saying:

Sanity check: Will the Google revolution engulf IT departments? | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com

“Google has the potential to be the first-choice provider of many services that are now handled by internal IT organizations, starting with non-competitively-differentiating services such as email (which Google already provides to a number of enterprises), and ultimately including high-value-added functions and services such as business intelligence, mobile sales support, and others. Some IT organizations might consider it a boon to pass these functions on to Google so that the IT department can concentrate on very enterprise-specific competitively differentiating applications. IT organizations that measure their worth in terms of how much of the company’s IT needs they supply themselves will be less happy to see Google move in on their turf-and I do mean specifically that in many cases it will be an argument about turf, not enterprise value.

OpenID and Google Accounts

It didn’t take long for someone to use App Engine to start providing OpenIDs for Google accounts.

See here

OpenID for Google Accounts

You can use your Google Account to log into any site that supports OpenID! First, log in to your Google account.

Google Humor

Planets begin to align in Yahoo deal

If Yahoo acquires AOL, that would also bring Bebo into play. The resulting search/social combo would have to interest Google, given its OpenSocial plans. Meanwhile, NewsCorp is trotting its MySpace social network Microsoft’s way to help them sweeten their own offer. Either way, Google or Microsoft would round out their social offerings nicely, while increasing their user base and search capacity. Stay tuned.

In Another Surprise Twist, AOL-Yahoo Deal Said to Be Close At Hand

Things are moving fast in the Yahoo-Microsoft drama. All the different forces are aligning for an endgame. The latest twist: The WSJ is reporting that Yahoo is close to signing a deal to combine with AOL.

This at the same time that Yahoo is doing a limited test to place Google ads in its search results. Meanwhile, News Corp, which Yahoo once hoped would be its white knight, is said to be turning on Yahoo and talking to Microsoft about joining its bid. Obviously a lot of balls are up in the air right now, and anything is possible.

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.

Another tool to sync Google and Exchange

Yes, its a link to a Scoble article … but it points out a potentially interesting third party app that may have some advantages to the Outlook/Google sync tool that Google provided, in that it syncs new entries right away, instead of on an absolute timer.

Google’s five-year plan to hit Enterprise continues (Cemaphore helps Google out) « Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger

Today we are seeing new signs of life in Google’s strategy and the help didn’t come from within Google itself.

It comes from a small company named Cemaphore. They just announced “MailShadow for Google Apps.”

What does it do? It synchronizes email and calendar items between Microsoft Outlook and Exchange and Gmail/Google Calendar.

Sounds really boring, right? Hey, didn’t Google just ship its own synchronizer?

Yes, and yes.