The title of the report, “Should Your e-mail Live In The Cloud? A Comparative Cost Analysis,” is actually somewhat misleading. The cloud implies a diffuse network of servers that hold partially redundant copies of information. Some of the services examined by the report don’t necessarily offer that sort of setup, although the report frequently refers to any off-site service as “the cloud.”

Semantics aside, Forrester surveyed over 50 IT workers at major enterprise companies to see how they handle e-mail, contacts, and calendaring services. They also discussed options and costs with 21 vendors of these services, and created some rough estimates of how much each portion of the various services cost.

One of the things they discovered is that the business community is largely unaware of the costs of running an e-mail account. Many of those surveyed gave guesses from $2 to $11 per user, although a detailed accounting showed that the costs were often several times that (Forrester came up with $25.18 per month, compared with $8.47 for Gmail). Part of the problem is that costs are often split among several cost centers, with software licenses part of a different department’s budget from the salaries of the people that support it. In some cases, the e-mail system was running on older hardware that had initially been bought for a different purpose and had been depreciated.

Despite the confusion, a lot of companies realize that e-mail has become expensive for two simple reasons: spam and malware. Nearly half of those surveyed were evaluating off-site solutions because e-mail costs had risen, while another 30 percent were performing the evaluation as part of an upgrade or service consolidation process. Fully 85 percent of these companies were leaning towards moving some of the services off-site.

The biggest reason for doing this seemed to be so that someone else could deal with staying on top of spam and malware; over half of those surveyed were planning on implementing a hybrid system where an external service filtered mail on its way into and/or out of the company’s internal servers. Reasons cited include the challenges of staying on top of the threats and up-to-date with the software, as well as the resource-intensive nature of combating mal-mail. Another 30 percent were leaning towards a complete outsourcing of the service, presumably in part because of these costs.

The author of the report calculated the monthly costs for the components of various systems, such as storage and client software. The biggest cost was clearly archiving, which is often legally required for a lot of positions. Beyond that, the software and filtering costs all came in at roughly 10 to 15 percent of the costs when they’re needed—off-site services, for example, eliminate separate purchases of server and filtering software, and lower staff costs in exchange for a monthly subscription. The overall conclusion is that any company with an employee count of under 15,000 would probably benefit from using off-site services.

The two examples of actual cloud services, Microsoft’s Exchange Online and Google Apps for Business, came out significantly ahead. Exchange Online provided significantly lower costs until somewhere above 30,000 seats, while Google Apps’ monthly cost consistently came in at half the cost of others, in part because its subscription cost is so low, and in part because the “client software” is a free web browser.

The author of the report cautions that there are a lot of variables to consider, such as how often the company adds and removes users, the frequency of large attachments, and the archiving requirements. Still, the results make it clear that Microsoft is now undercutting most of other services available, including those that rely on Exchange itself. But Google has managed to significantly undercut Microsoft. Although its solution is nowhere near as integrated as Exchange, an increasing percentage of the workforce is getting comfortable with managing their life and e-mail through a web browser.

Original URL: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090108-report-gmail-about-one-third-as-expensive-as-hosted-e-mail.html

When users log into their Gmail using Internet Explorer a red text link appears at the top right of the page saying ‘get faster Google Mail.’

If you click on the link then you are taken through to a Google answers page that suggests that you should use a faster browser.

The suggestions it makes are Google’s own Chrome browser or Firefox 3.0.

We suggest you upgrade

“Browsers are getting faster and better at running web applications like Google Mail that use browser technology to its limits. In order to get the best Google Mail experience possible, we suggest that you upgrade your browser to one of the fastest Google Mail supported browsers that work on Windows,” reads the text.

There is a proviso that IE8 is being worked on ‘Note: A faster version of Internet Explorer, IE8, is in development and available in a beta release.’

Although not all users appear to be affected in our early investigation, at first glance it is a particularly aggressive approach from Google.

To actively push two browsers over the currently dominant Internet Explorer is far from the normal Google softly, softly approach – especially in a week where Internet Explorer has been beset by news of a major security problem.

It seems, however, that Google is only pushing users to the other browsers if they are currently using Internet Explorer 7. Those that are using Internet Explorer 6 are told to upgrade to either Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 for a faster Google service.

Whether this is a silly overview on Google’s part or an active push away from Internet Explorer by the search kings remains to be seen.

What is for sure, is that Google is sending out mixed messages to its users, depending on what version of browser they are using.

Original URL: http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/google-pushing-users-away-from-ie–496216

The ability to install third-party applications that add capabilities chosen by users, but not provided by Mozilla, is a key reason for the open source browser’s popularity. Google is apparently borrowing from that playbook in proposing the extension system to Chromium, the open source project behind the development of Chrome.

Google’s proposal was introduced over the weekend in a blog post from Aaron Boodman, a Google programmer working on Chrome. The design document outlines areas that would have to be addressed, such as application programming interfaces to connect extensions to the Chrome engine.

Under the heading “use cases,” Google lists some types of extensions that the company would like to support in Chrome, such as ad and flash blockers. Google makes its money from selling Web advertising but has decided not to ignore two of the most popular Firefox extensions. Other third-party apps Google says it would support include bookmarking/navigation tools, download helpers, and privacy and parental controls.

Having an add-on system from Chrome tops users’ wish list. “If I can’t even add a third-party extension, this browser won’t stay long on my computer,” one person wrote on the Chromium forum.

Google did not set a timetable for releasing an extension system for Chrome, but the design documentation for Chromium developers indicates the search engine has already started to work on the technology.

Google designed Chrome to be lightweight and fast, to have a minimalist user interface, and to resist crashing under have JavaScript demands of Web applications. While a reviewer for InformationWeek believes Google has largely met its goal, not having an extension system gives rival Firefox the upper hand. Microsoft also doesn’t provide an open extension system for Internet Explorer.

Extensions give users more choices in customizing the browser to meet their needs, while relieving the browser maker from having to add a lot of features that can hinder performance. Internet Explorer accounts for more than 70% of the browser market, followed by Firefox with almost 20%. Chrome, which is in beta, has less than 1%.

Original URL: http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/browsers/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212201263

But, on Friday, Verizon Wireless and Research in Motion, the BlackBerry’s maker, will do the unthinkable: They will introduce a BlackBerry model without a physical keyboard, one where typing and navigating require tapping on glass, just as users do on the iPhone. This new model is called the BlackBerry Storm, and will sell for $250 with a two-year contract, though a $50 mail-in rebate can bring the price down close to the $199 that Apple charges for the base model of the iPhone.

Despite its lack of a keyboard, the Storm is a real BlackBerry in every other respect, with push email, corporate features and the familiar BlackBerry menus. In many respects, the Storm is a touch-based, large-screen version of the recently released BlackBerry Bold, which is the most polished version of a traditional BlackBerry. It is also the latest member of the new class of hand-held computers, the super-smart phone category kicked off by the iPhone last year and joined by the Google G1 earlier this year.

The Storm sports a large, high-resolution touch screen that fills most of its surface and automatically switches from portrait to landscape mode when the phone is turned. There’s also a forthcoming souped-up download store for third-party software, meant to be similar to the ones on the iPhone and the Google phone. And the Storm can even be used in European and other countries where most Verizon phones don’t work.

However, the biggest innovation in the Storm is a clever feature RIM hopes will give it a big advantage over the iPhone. When you strike a key or icon on the Storm’s screen, you feel a physical sensation, as if you were pressing down on a real key or button. That’s because you are, in fact, pressing a real button. The entire glass display is one large button, mounted on a mechanical substructure that allows it to be depressed when pressure is applied.

The idea behind this feature is to make typing on glass feel much more like typing on a real keyboard, and thus to make the virtual keyboard, and the touch interface, more acceptable to people used to physical keyboards and buttons. This push-down screen also replaces the side-mounted scroll wheel or track ball on other BlackBerrys for activating menu choices and icons.

But, in my tests, this physical feedback feature, which RIM calls SurePress, didn’t magically turn the Storm’s touch interface and virtual keyboard into their physical counterparts. The feature does provide a more reassuring confirmation that a key has been struck or an icon has been clicked than the mere visual feedback one receives from the iPhone. But neither I, nor any of the several BlackBerry addicts I asked to try it out, considered typing on the Storm’s keyboard to be very similar to using the keyboard of a traditional full-sized BlackBerry.

In my opinion, using the Storm’s keyboard is much more like using the iPhone’s keyboard than a traditional BlackBerry’s. I found that I could type quite well on the Storm after awhile, but that a greater adjustment, and more practice, were required than with a physical keyboard.

The Storm also has a keyboard oddity that I found annoying, and that may put off others. It presents you with a full virtual keyboard only when you are holding it horizontally. When you hold the Storm vertically, you get a mashed-up keyboard, like the one on the narrower BlackBerry Pearl, which has multiple letters on each key. This keyboard design relies on software to guess which letter you meant to press. You can also switch to a virtual cellphone-style keypad that requires you to hit each key multiple times.

This is a curious design decision. Once a company ditches a physical keyboard for a virtual one, it can create all kinds of keyboard variations. RIM could have offered a full, vertically oriented keyboard, even if it would have had smaller, more closely spaced keys.

RIM also failed to customize the Storm’s virtual keyboard for some common, specific tasks. For instance, on the iPhone, when you are typing in a Web address in the browser, the keyboard morphs to offer a convenient key that automatically enters “.com”. Not so on the Storm.

There’s another glaring deficit in the Storm: It lacks Wi-Fi capability. This means that, unlike on the Bold, the iPhone or the Google G1, if high-speed cellphone data service is absent or pokey, you can’t fall back on speedy Wi-Fi connections in public places. And, at home or in the office, you can’t take advantage of Wi-Fi connections that are often much faster than cellphone data networks.

The Storm has some important advantages over the iPhone. Its screen, while 7% smaller physically, offers about 13% higher resolution. Photos and videos look beautiful on it. It has much better battery life for phone calls than either the iPhone or the Google G1. While the latter two phones deliver just under their claimed five hours of talk time, in my tests, the Storm lasted a bit over six hours, which is actually half an hour more than its claimed 5.5 hours of talk time. And the Storm has a removable battery, unlike its Apple rival.

This new BlackBerry comes with more memory than the similarly priced base model of the iPhone — nine gigabytes versus eight gigabytes. And, unlike the iPhone’s memory, the Storm’s is expandable, via larger flash cards.

The Storm’s camera is much better than the iPhone’s, at 3.2 megapixels, versus just 2 megapixels for the Apple device. It also has zoom and flash, features the iPhone’s camera lacks. And, unlike the iPhone or the Google G1, the Storm can record videos. In my tests, all of these camera features worked well.

Also, the Storm has copy and paste functionality; MMS (a service for sending photos directly to other phones without using email); voice dialing; and the ability to act as a modem for your laptop. It also allows you to edit, and not just to view, Microsoft Office documents. All of these features are missing from the iPhone out of the box.

The Storm also has a better speaker than the iPhone, and a noise-canceling microphone system. Phone calls, even on speaker phone, were crisp, clear and plenty loud. Physically, the Storm is attractive but hardly svelte. While it’s about the same length and width as the iPhone, it is 15% thicker and 17% heavier — almost as heavy as the chunky G1.

The Verizon high-speed network on which the Storm runs is older and better-established than either the T-Mobile high-speed system the G1 uses or the AT&T 3G network used by the current iPhone. Where Verizon’s high-speed data coverage is strong, the Storm flies.

But, because it lacks Wi-Fi, the Storm can be much slower at Web access than its main competitors. I tested these Web speeds in two hotels in Silicon Valley. In the first, where Verizon reception was strong, the Storm trounced the iPhone on cellphone data speeds, averaging over 800 kilobits per second to the iPhone’s 621 kbps over AT&T. But, when I switched the iPhone to use the hotel’s Wi-Fi network, it beat the Storm by 100 kbps or so.

At the second hotel, barely a mile away, the Storm’s lack of Wi-Fi hurt much more. There, Verizon’s signal was poor, and data speeds on the Storm averaged a horrible 96 kbps. But the iPhone on AT&T averaged 459 kbps, and on Wi-Fi the iPhone averaged 785 kbps.

My test Storm, which was a near-final model missing only a few minor software tweaks, was also sluggish at some tasks. It took noticeably longer than the iPhone to flip the first photo from landscape to portrait orientation, or to start the process of flipping through a series of photos by swiping them with a finger. And some other tasks were also slow. It’s possible that production models will be quicker.

BlackBerry Storm’s touch screen switches from portrait to landscape mode when turned, and aims to make typing on glass feel more like typing on a real keyboard.

Rim has tweaked the familiar BlackBerry user interface for the touch screen, and in general these changes worked well. You select the menu item or icon you want with a light touch, then press down on the screen to activate or confirm your choice. There are even a couple of cool new touch features. For instance, in a list of emails, if you lightly touch and hold one entry, the Storm shows you all messages in that thread.

But this combination of a light touch followed by a hard press on the large screen took some practice, just like typing did. It befuddled several BlackBerry veterans at first.

And some common tasks took more steps than on the iPhone. For instance, emailing a link from a Web page required four steps on the Storm, versus two on the Apple device. The Storm’s email system will be familiar to every BlackBerry user. It has the same corporate email features as other BlackBerrys, and I was easily able as well to use a BlackBerry Internet email account and to set up several personal email accounts, including Gmail.

The Web browser is much improved over the one in older BlackBerry models, and offers multiple ways to view and navigate pages, including one in which a finger moves a cursor, just as on a PC. But I found that panning and zooming in the browser was a bit slower and more awkward than on the iPhone. And, to make some Web sites work properly, I had to dig through menus to change options.

Using the BlackBerry desktop software, I was easily able to synchronize my calendar and contact data over a cable from a Windows PC. (There’s also Mac software for the same task.) But, unlike the iPhone or the G1, the Storm doesn’t offer wireless synchronization from consumer services, only from corporate servers.

The Storm’s multimedia software isn’t as fancy as the iPhone’s, but it’s better than the G1’s, and worked very well in my tests.

Overall, the Storm is a very capable handheld computer that will appeal to BlackBerry users who have been pining for a touch-controlled device with a larger screen. And it offers yet another good option for anyone who is looking to buy one of the new, more powerful, pocket computers.

Original URL: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122714533895043229.html

“Gmail fans have been building unofficial extensions to spice up their inboxes for a while, but up ’til now themes haven’t been an integral part of Gmail,” said Gmail engineer Annie Chen in a blog post. “We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we’re launching today, there’s a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your in-box into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company.”

Google’s enterprise customers, however, are allowed no such levity: Gmail themes are not available to Google Apps users, a Google spokesperson said.

Google’s personalized home page, iGoogle, has had themes for over a year.

To apply a new theme, select the Settings link in Gmail and click on the Themes tab. Those who don’t have such a tab yet should see one in a few days, as the Gmail update propagates across Google’s servers.

Gmail has been the focus of much attention from Google lately. Last week, Google added voice and video chat to Gmail. About three weeks ago, Gmail gained the ability to send and receive SMS messages, though Google temporarily withdrew that feature in order to fix a show-stopping bug.

Just last month, Google launched seven features for Gmail: Gmail Gadgets, emoticons for messages, Gmail for mobile version 2.0, Canned Responses, contact manager improvements, advanced IMAP controls, and Mail Goggles.

Original URL: http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212100915

The guidelines, to be announced Tuesday, call for Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to try to reduce the scope of government requests that appear to conflict with free speech and other human rights principles. They also require participating companies to seek requests in writing, along with the names and titles of the authorizing officer.

The Global Network Initiative guidelines were drawn up by the Internet companies along with human rights organizations, investors and academics.

But ultimately, the documents are less about “what happens when you get a knock on the door than what are you doing before then,” said Leslie Harris, chief executive of the Center for Democracy and Technology, one of the main groups behind the guidelines.

Harris said the companies are agreeing to consider human rights issues ahead of time as they decide which countries to operate in and what services to offer. The guidelines also call for companies to train employees and develop mechanisms to resolve conflicts.

It was not immediately clear, however, what practices, if any, will change, as the guidelines do not ban any specific conduct, and many of the key points are open to interpretation or are left to individual companies to implement.

“What’s disappointing is that the amount of effort … didn’t produce something more substantial,” said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, which sued Yahoo for giving Chinese officials information that led to the arrest of two journalists. The lawsuit has since been settled for an undisclosed amount.

He said the documents do not offer specific guidance on how a company’s employee is supposed to respond when presented with a particular set of circumstances.

But Sklar praised the companies for recognizing “that there was a huge problem here and needed to be addressed.”

About 18 months in the making, the guidelines do call for the creation of an oversight organization to regularly review the companies’ practices, though what sanctions they face have yet to be decided. Other companies may join the Global Network Initiative.

The guidelines stress that free expression and human rights are ultimately principles requiring the commitment of governments, and that organization will also help companies collaborate on lobbying.

Internet companies have felt compelled to expand into China because of its growth potential, but the push into the world’s most populous country has raised thorny issues, particularly for Yahoo and Google, which were both co-founded by immigrants.

Yahoo and its Taiwan-born chief executive, Jerry Yang, have faced the biggest backlash for handing over e-mails that led to the imprisonment of two Chinese journalists. Besides Sklar’s lawsuit, the outcry spurred a congressional hearing during which the late Rep. Tom Lantos likened Yang to a moral “pygmy” for cooperating with the Chinese government.

Yang has since been more proactive about speaking out for human rights. Leading up to the Olympics in Beijing, Yang urged the Bush administration to use its diplomatic influence to obtain the release of jailed political dissidents.

Google has refrained from offering e-mail or blogging services in China because it doesn’t want to be put in a position where it might have to turn over any of its user’s communications.

Still, Google has come under fire for censoring about 2 percent of its search results in China to comply with government rules. Google’s Russian-born co-founder, Sergey Brin, has maintained that the people living there will be better off with an abbreviated version of the search engine than a full version that is entirely blocked by the government.

“From the start, Google has promoted free expression and the protection of our users’ privacy,” said Bob Boorstin, Google’s director of policy communications. “We see this as another crucial step. The coming together of all these diverse companies and groups is more likely to bring change in government policies than any one company working by itself.”

In a statement, Yang said the guidelines “provide a valuable roadmap for companies like Yahoo operating in markets where freedom of expression and privacy are unfairly restricted.”

Original URL: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20081028/ap_on_hi_te/internet_human_rights

The source of the feud: Facebook chose Microsoft as their ad partner and investor a year ago; Google had already put their money behind MySpace. But beyond that, Google was also quick to compete with Facebook platform by launching Open Social with most of Facebook’s competitors, cementing the ill-will.

Now Facebook may be shooting itself in the foot to spite its face (or however the saying goes) by ignoring the new Android platform. From what we hear, Facebook has dedicated exactly zero resources to creating a version of the service for Android, and has no plans to launch anything at all. That’s despite the fact that the company has robust iPhone and RIM applications (the iPhone app was developed internally by Joe Hewitt, the RIM app was built by RIM with Facebook’s help). Meanwhile, MySpace has already released an Android version of their service.

So why no Andoid app? The official reason is that Facebook is looking to others to develop these applications. Joe Hewitt pushed the iPhone app internally, a spokesperson says, and RIM built the app themselves (but Facebook lent engineers). Google or third parties are free to use the Facebook API to build apps using Facebook services, the spokesperson said.

But the off record discussions I’m having with others at Facebook tell a different story. One source derisively called Android “vaporware” (it looks pretty real to me). Another source at Facebook says “Android sucks, it doesn’t matter.”

Sounds like they’ve reached their decision.

Original URL: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/22/dont-hold-your-breathe-for-the-facebook-android-app/

If you’re a Gmail user, what you’ll want to do after a few more unsuccessful, increasingly frantic attempts is to speak with a Google customer support representative, post haste. But that’s not an option. Google doesn’t offer a toll-free number and a live person to resolve the ordinary user’s problems.

Discussion forums abound with tales of woe from Gmail customers who have found themselves locked out of their account for days or even weeks. They were innocent victims of security measures, which automatically suspend access if someone tries unsuccessfully to log on repeatedly to an account. The customers express frustration that they can’t speak with anyone at Google after filling out the company’s online forms and waiting in vain for Google to restore access to their accounts.

Tom Lynch, a software entrepreneur who lives near Austin, Tex., discovered early last month that he had been locked out of both Gmail accounts he used; he had no idea why. He received boilerplate instructions for recovering his accounts that did not apply to his particular circumstances, which included his failing to maintain a non-Gmail e-mail account as a back-up. He said it took him four weeks, including the use of a business directory and talking with anyone he could find at Google, before he succeeded in having service restored.

A Google spokesman placed the blame on Mr. Lynch, saying he did not follow Google’s guidelines. The spokesman characterized Mr. Lynch’s ordeal as a praiseworthy illustration of Google’s tough security: “We have had no cases of falsely recovered accounts.”

Google does provide phone support to Gmail customers who subscribe to Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $50 annually and includes larger storage quotas and other benefits. Customers who use the advertising-supported version of Gmail, however, must rely solely on what Google calls “self-service online support.”

Microsoft and Yahoo similarly offer phone support only to their premium e-mail customers. (Yahoo says it offers phone support for its free e-mail service “in some cases,” but it does not publish the phone number; it is revealed to the user in distress only after e-mail communication fails to resolve the problem.)

Last month, Google’s official blog dispensed advice for those unfortunate souls who find themselves locked out. The post, “What to do if you can’t access your Webmail,” scolded users about not sharing passwords with anyone, pointed customers to a form to reset the password and, if that doesn’t solve the problem, to another form to start the “account recovery process.”

As customers, we bring the same expectations to Google’s personalized information services, like Gmail or Google Docs, its word-processing service, as we do to our bank’s Web site. These are places that hold information very dear to us. My bank recognizes that losing access for days at a time is unacceptable. It provides me with round-the-clock phone support for account problems. So, too, should Google, even if I pay the company not in the form of a monthly account fee, but with my attention, which Google commercializes by selling slices to its advertisers.

Last month, with cases like Mr. Lynch’s in mind, I contacted Google to see what the company had to say about my suggestion that it add phone support for its customers with account-related problems. The company returned with a debate team of three to argue the negative position: Matthew Glotzbach, who works with Google’s business customers; Roy Gilbert, who handles consumers; and Greg Badros, who is an engineering director.

Mr. Glotzbach began by saying that “one-to-one support isn’t always the best answer” because it would take Google too long to collect lots of data about a problem that is affecting many users simultaneously.

For systemic problems, data collection is important. But not for other categories. Account recovery could be slow for a locked-out customer who doesn’t have a backup e-mail account, and who declined to provide a security question and answer because of concerns that someone else could use it to get in (which is what someone did to Gov. Sarah Palin’s Yahoo Mail account).

Mr. Badros argued that Google asks so little personal information of a new Gmail customer that it’s hard to determine identity when the genuine user and the impostor both present themselves to claim the account, and neither can produce the verification. He said more information could be asked of users when they sign up, but the inconvenience would dissuade them from trying the service.

Mr. Gilbert added that proving identity with only minimal information is a problem, whatever form of communication is used to reach customer support. He said, “Even if they were standing right in front of us, it wouldn’t help.”

THIS makes sorting out competing claims seem permanently hopeless, when, of course, this is not the case; it simply means that standard security questions will not suffice. But if Google were to use real people to sort out identity problems over the phone, the only remaining consideration would be the one that Google’s panel of experts didn’t mention in our talk: cost.

Google says it has “tens of millions” of Gmail customers. (It declines to be more specific.) If it’s willing to consider phone support for account-access emergencies, it can take heart in the example of Netflix, which last year adopted phone support with enthusiasm, replacing online support completely. For all customers. For all problems. And without resorting to an offshore call center.

It turns out that a staff of 375 customer service representatives are enough to handle calls from Netflix’s 8.4 million customers, answering most calls within a minute. Netflix says with justifiable pride that it has received the top ratings in online retail customer satisfaction by both Nielsen Online and ForeSee Results.

A Netflix spokesman explained the complete switch to phone support: “Most people don’t need customer service,” he said, “but when they do, they want it now.”

Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/business/05digi.html

The new release catches the open-source operating system up with Windows, which got the Picasa 3 beta one month earlier. There’s still no word about a Mac OS X version, although Mike Horowitz, Google’s Picasa product manager, told me earlier that “Macs are important to us…We’re always looking for new ways of making sure our users are happy, so it’s something we’re looking at.”

The new version adds a retouching tool, automatic synchronization of photos on the PC with those stored at Google’s Picasa Web site, and a collage mode that lets people combine numerous snapshots into a poster-size collection, Google programmer Lei Zhang said in a blog post announcing the new version. The new version also is faster, he added.

However, it does lack the Windows version’s movie maker feature that can turn photos into a slideshow with a soundtrack that can then be uploaded to YouTube.

The software runs using Wine and an open-source software layer that translates a program’s Windows instructions into commands for Linux instead. Google has contributed about 850 patches to the Wine project so far this year, Google said. Better video support in Wine is still a work in progress, though, which is why the movie maker feature is disabled.

Original URL: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-10057452-39.html

At the end of its third week of availability, Google Inc.’s Chrome accounted for 0.77% of the browsers that visited the 40,000 sites tracked by Net Applications, down from a 0.85% share the week before.

“The trend line on Chrome still has a slight downward angle, and these weekly numbers reflect that,” said Vince Vizzaccaro, Net Applications’ executive vice president of marketing. Although Chrome popped above 1% within hours of its release, the new browser now reaches that mark only in the middle of the night, U.S. time, Vizzaccaro added.

Chrome’s numbers, like those of Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox and Apple Inc.’s Safari, typically climb after work hours and then fall as work resumes the next day. Many businesses standardize on Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer (IE) and don’t allow employees to use alternate browsers.

IE and Firefox still showed share erosion compared to the period immediately before Chrome’s Sept. 2 debut, but both browsers regained users last week, Vizzaccaro said. IE picked up 0.24 percentage points last week, while Firefox regained 0.06 points. Both, however, remained down for the month, as was Opera Software ASA’s Opera and AOL LLC’s now-defunct Netscape.

Safari, the only browser to escape Chrome’s impact, was still on the plus side for September, ending last week up 0.45 percentage points before Chrome, although that was down from the prior week’s 0.68-point net gain.

Last week, Vizzaccaro said Safari’s immunity could be traced to the lack of Chrome competition. Although Google has promised a native Mac OS X edition, its browser is currently only available for Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Computerworld’s site metrics echoed Net Applications’ trend for Chrome. The percentage of visitors to Computerworld.com who used Google’s browser dropped to 4.01 points last week, down from 4.96 points.

Chrome’s slow slide may be because of Google’s low-key promotion, Vizzaccaro said. “The only marketing effort I’ve seen from Google is in sponsored links on search results for ‘browser’ or ‘browsers’ search terms,” he said. “On Google, Chrome is naturally the top sponsored link. On Yahoo, it was second. And on Windows Live, I couldn’t even find it in the first five pages of organic results.”

Original URL: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9115341