Google has been courting business users in an attempt to get them to switch from desktop productivity apps to Google Apps. Lightweight sharing, without the complexities of software like Microsoft SharePoint, has been one of the major selling points of Google Apps.

In a blog post, Jeffrey Chang, associate product manager for Google Groups, describes how a user might use a Google Docs spreadsheet to manage a softball team.

“You want all the players, but only the players, to have editing access,” he explains. “You already have a Google Group set up with the tournament participants, so you simply share the spreadsheet with the group itself, granting the group members permission to edit.”

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Microsoft, which launched Bing in early June, racked up 8.9 percent of U.S. Internet searches in July, up 0.5 percentage points from June.

Google, the leader in the market, and Yahoo, the distant No. 2, both lost 0.3 percentage points of market share in July, to 64.7 percent and 19.3 percent, respectively.

Late last month Microsoft and Yahoo finally signed an agreement to cooperate on Internet search advertising, with Bing powering searches on both companies’ sites and Yahoo handling the ad sales.

The deal has yet to be approved by regulators and likely won’t take full effect in the market until early 2012.

Source: Reuters

Midrange cell phones could soon fall by the wayside as consumers in developed markets are opting for more advanced smartphones, while wireless users in developing nations gobble up low-cost devices.

Two new market studies released this week suggest that the midrange cell phone market is being squeezed out. Overall, cell phone sales were down for the second quarter, according to market research firm Gartner. But sales of high-end smartphones remained high. And sales of low-cost devices are expected to explode in the coming years as more consumers in emerging markets go wireless, a recent report from Juniper Research said.

The reason cited for the sales declines in the second quarter has been the weak economy, which has battered businesses in almost every corner of the globe.

Compared to the second quarter of 2008, global sales of mobile phones were down about 6.1 percent. This was the third consecutive quarter that fewer mobile handsets were sold worldwide when compared to the previous year. But analysts noted that the decline was at a much slower pace in the most recent quarter compared to the first quarter in 2009, in which the drop was 9.4 percent.

Still, demand for smartphones remained high. And sales in this category actually grew 27 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. For several quarters now, smartphones have represented the fastest growing segment of the mobile market, and this has been in spite of a global recession.

Analysts believe the trend is the result of many consumers waiting to upgrade their phones, and those who do upgrade are gravitating toward more sophisticated smartphones.

Pricing has also likely played an important role in prompting more people to buy a smartphone over a midrange feature-phone.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/

Priced at Rs33,990, OmniaHD is a full-touch handset, equipped with 720P high definition (HD) video recording on mobile and 9.4 cm Amoled screen, Samsung said in a statement.

The company also launched OmniaPRO B7320, priced at Rs 16,500.

Based on Windows Mobile 6.1, OmniaPRO is equipped with features like a three-megapixel camera, FM radio and Wi-Fi, it added.

“Samsung OmniaHD exemplifies our vision of providing premium phones for consumers who desire functionality, style, usability and entertainment in one innovative device. Samsung Omnia series keeps the consumers at the forefront of work and play, staying connected, anytime, anywhere,” Samsung India country head (mobile business) Sunil Dutt said.

Source: http://infotech.indiatimes.com/

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook, the world’s largest social networking site, said it will buy FriendFeed, netting a group of prized ex-Google engineers in the fast-growing Internet business.

FriendFeed, an up-and-coming social media startup, lets people share content online in real time across various social networks and blogs.

The service is similar to, though less popular than Twitter, the microblogging site that Facebook tried to buy for $500 mn in 2008, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed on Monday, but Facebook said FriendFeed would operate as it has for the time being as the teams determine long-term plans.

Facebook’s big gain in the acquisition is the engineering talent at FriendFeed, rather than the actual product, which has won critical praise, but lagged in popularity compared to Twitter, said Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang.

“These guys now how to build scalable, social applications,” said Owyang.

In a statement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he admired the FriendFeed team for having created a service he described as simple and elegant.

“As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use,” said Zuckerberg.

FriendFeed’s four founders are former Google Inc employees who count well known products like Gmail and Google Maps among their accomplishments.

Facebook said the founders will hold senior roles on its engineering and product teams.

FriendFeed had talked with Facebook “casually” for a couple of months, and that it became clear that the teams were “cut from the same cloths,” FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor told Reuters in an interview.

Source: here

The first beta of the next generation of the uTorrent client is available and contains some useful upgrades that address how torrenting has changed in the past few years.

A transfer cap feature has been added, which will allow users who have cap-limited bandwidth to throttle down their torrenting habits and stay away from overage charges or having their service shut off. The feature offers graphs and can show your upload and download usage by megabyte. Most importantly, you’ll be able to set it to shut down uTorrent once your limit has been hit. It’s also configurable, so you can set it to turn off uTorrent by either upload limit, download limit, or both.

uTorrent also supports UDP trackers, which are a new kind of protocol for tracker communication that uses noticeably less processing power. As more trackers use UDP, it will allow them to continue to function on lower-end machines, which should result in faster transfers as the client itself won’t be slowing down the torrent.

Another back-end change for version 2 is support for uTP, an alternative communication method for torrent traffic that allows the client to automatically regulate bandwidth usage so that your local network isn’t adversely affected. Unlike the bandwidth cap, which is a cutoff point, uTP will make sure that other locally-running programs can still use your Internet connection without taking forever to resolve sites.

“Unlike the year that passed between Firefox 3 and Firefox 3.5, we expect that this 3.6 releasewill be released in a small number of months,” Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard said in a blog post Friday.

Firefox 3.6, code-named Namoroka, has a variety of changes, but it’s not as dramatic a departure as 3.5 was from 3.0. Among the 3.6 features are faster JavaScript, the Web programming language Firefox executes with itsTraceMonkey engine; faster page-rendering speed; some new features for CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)technology for controlling some of the look of a Web site; and a feature called the compositor that handles complicated layout circumstances better.

Performance is a big issue with browsers these days as people spend more time using them and programmers create more sophisticated sites and applications that live on the Web. All major browser makers are emphasizing performance improvements in their newest versions.

Download links for the first Firefox 3.6 alpha are at the Mozilla Developer Center.

by Stephen Shankland

Source: http://news.cnet.com

A blogger who was targeted in a co-ordinated attack against websites such as Facebook and Twitter has told the BBC he blames Russia for the assault.

The pro-Georgian blogger, known as Cyxymu, said he had been targeted for “telling the truth about the Russian-Georgian war” in his writings.

The attack caused a blackout of Twitter for about two hours on Thursday.

Despite the blogger’s claims, security researchers say there is “no suggestion the attack was state-endorsed”.

Google, Facebook and blogging platform Live Journal – all sites where Cyxymu had accounts – were also affected.

“I write the truth about the Russian-Georgian war and somebody did not like these truths – these people in Russia,” the blogger told BBC News.

“I don’t know which people,” he added.

The blogger, real name Georgy, has posted videos and blogs which criticise Russia over its conduct in the war over the South Ossetia region, which began one year ago.

“It’s a big surprise to me that my blog has meant that 250m people have not been able to enter Facebook,” he said.

Graham Cluley, of security firm Sophos, told BBC News there was no suggestion the attack against the blogger was state-endorsed.

“It was almost certainly an individual who took objection to his blogs,” he said.

“They took internet vigilantism into their own hands to try to blast him off the web, but in the process blasted Twitter off instead.”

Source: BBC