File synchronisation and backup is a growth area - Syncplicity, SugarSync, Mozy and Microsoft's Live Mesh compete in the space to provide cross-platform, cross-device and cloud-available data.
One of the players, SugarSync (RWW review here), today announced a development that further blurs the lines between synchronisation and collaboration services. With SugarSync's new functionality users can send any file from their desktop, web or mobile SugarSync application, regardless of the size of the file or number of recipients.
It seems Mondays are slowly becoming the traditional days for Microsoft/Yahoo updates. Today, Microsoft saw the need to 'set the record straight' after Yahoo had released a statement on Saturday that, according to Microsoft, contained too many inaccuracies to be left uncorrected. Microsoft and Carl Icahn had offered Yahoo a guaranteed search revenue of $2.3 billion annually for five years, but Yahoo rejected this bid on Saturday.
This week's prediction is about (what else) the iPhone. We're asking: How many total units of the iPhone will Apple sell in 2008?.
For background, Apple sold 2.3 million units in Q1 2008 and 1.7 million units in Q2 2008. Today Apple announced it's already sold 1 million 3G units. In 2007 Steve Jobs said he expected 10 million unit sales in 2008.
Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch has been growing quickly over the weekend. Close to 250 applications have been added since Friday. As Medialets reports, at the same time, the average price of those applications has dropped. Interestingly, free applications are getting higher average ratings from their users than paid apps.
At a time in history when Powerpoint is both ubiquitous and widely despised, when students in classrooms pay increasingly little attention to the education they're paying for because Facebook is more interesting - is there no hope for public communication any more? The internet is so much more interesting than anything that almost anyone has to say these days.
Believe it or not, here comes geekery to the rescue. The same people building the attention-absorbing internet are experimenting with new methods to make public communication engaging again. Below are some of our favorite ways it's happening.
Recently, Facebook changed its layout involving the commenting functionality on Mini-Feed items. Before, you had to click on the plus sign ("+") to add a comment, but now the word "comment" is written out. VentureBeat is reporting on this change and notes that it's probably to make the new commenting functionality more visible to users, since it appears that few are currently using this feature. But is it possible that the lack of use isn't because Facebook users didn't notice it, but because they just don't care?
Jeff Bezos clearly thinks there is a future in casual gaming. Just this May, he invested $3 million in Kongregate. Today, Bezos invested an undisclosed amount in the Social Gaming Network (SGN), which develops games like Jetman and WarBook for social platforms such as Bebo and Facebook.
This investment from Bezos comes just a few months after SGN raised a $15 million Series A round led by Greylock Partners and the Founders Fund.
Of course, we all know that the event of the past week (or perhaps we should say the event of the year, given the news coverage), has been the launch of the iPhone 2.0. Yet even amidst the iPhone news frenzy - the lines at the stores, the activations, the failures, the apps! - there was another phone getting some press too - the Google Phone. The rumor was that Google was going to build its own phone after all. Yet while that rumor was catching the headlines, the real story was taking place within the developer community itself.
When Apple first announced the launch of its iPhone platform, we wrote here that it is a game changer.
Even the core of iPhone is a major advance in mobile computing, but with
the platform iPhone
becomes
the new personal computer. The desktop from now on will be for professional and business work.
Laptops aren't
going away, but will get increasingly less personal use.
The reason is that iPhone with its application platform is a better
personal
computer and it's widely accessible.
A guest post by Ben Kepes of diversity.net.nz, a blog that focuses on SaaS, cloud-computing and Web 2.0 for the real world.
GroupSwim is an innovative company which has created an intelligent community building and collaboration SaaS solution. It was mentioned here on RWW previously as one of the finalists in the Enterprise 2.0 launch pad. GroupSwim aims to connect individuals and build knowledge utilising social based methodologies. Their method of working comes from four observations of current offerings and methods of working:
