Web company

IBM on Thursday said it is donating code for securing mashups to the Open Ajax Alliance, a group of vendors and open-source Ajax projects. The software, called Smash (for secure mashups), is designed to make it easier to keep the sources of data separate in a mashup so that the application can't be hacked, according to IBM. Better security for Web applications built with Ajax is generally a good thing. For IBM, this is particularly important because the company is trying to build tools that let business users create their own mashup applications. Without better security, IT managers could block the use of these tools. ***

LAS VEGAS--While Internet Explorer 8 demos, Silverlight progress and a Monkey Boy reprise from Steve Ballmer captured much of the attention at Mix 08--it was a database announcement that could be the sleeper announcement of the show. Dave Campbell(Credit: Microsoft) What Microsoft ***

Following a most amazing pre-keynote performance by Vince Mira, a 15-year-old with the voice of Johnny Cash without the gravel, Microsoft Chief Software Architect took the stage to update the software and services strategy, in the context of content, commerce and community, for company. Vince Mira, the 15-year-old reincarnation of Johnny Cash(Credit: Dan Farber) As News.com's Ina Fried chronicled in her play-by-play of the keynote, Ozzie offered carefully orchestrated nod to the bid for Yahoo. "I can say its [Yahoo] already added some interesting twists to what promises to be a really, really exciting year," he said. ***

There are a number of software projects that enable Web applications to run offline, including Adobe's AIR, Google Gears, and the Mozilla Foundation's Prism. What about Microsoft and its Silverlight browser plug-in? Microsoft does not currently have specific plans to bring offline capabilities to Silverlight, but it's something it will eventually do, said John Case, general manager in Microsoft's developer division. "It's something that we will want to do," Case said in an interview on Monday. "Eventually, customers will expect us to do it." Silverlight is Microsoft's cross-platform plug-in for running media-rich applications in different browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Apple's Safari. ***

Adobe Creative Suite users will soon have to turn to other Web-based or local stock photography services to get their stock photo fix. Adobe on Monday quietly announced the end of its stock photography service. The Stock Photos service has been a part of the popular Creative Suite since the introduction of Adobe Bridge in version 2. The cutoff date is March 31st, giving users a little less than two more months to use the service to acquire legal shots to use in design work. According to ***

The Web IM and chat company, Meebo, just rolled out some very interesting new features. First off, they have introduced a developer API for their Meebo Rooms product. This will allow people to integrate a Meebo Room into their own Web site. Meebo has said that this API will "...further accelerate the widespread adoption of Meebo rooms." Meebo is hoping that Web site owners will take this as an opportunity to build a community around their site. Meebo also announced a big win for their new Meebo Network chat and advertising platform. ***

It may not be quite as rapid as the company had hoped, but Livescribe is ready to show the world its Pulse. The digital pen company showed off a prototype of its technology at last year's D: All Things Digital conference, but missed its goal of shipping by year's end. And although Livescribe is unveiling more details on the product at the Demo trade show in Palm Springs on Monday, it won't actually be shipping the product until March. ***

Enterprise Web software company Salesforce says it will be a holiday season worth celebrating: the company announced Wednesday that it is set to surpass a milestone of one million paid customers by the end of 2007. "It took seven years to reach the first 500,000 paying subscribers and only another 16 months for the second 500,000," Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said in a statement. "That's incredible global momentum and adoption for businesses of all sizes." Benioff is set to be present at a New York press event on Wednesday afternoon that will elaborate on the news. To commemorate the 1 million mark, Salesforce will be donating a total of $1 million across an array of ten nonprofit organizations: the Acumen Fund, the Bridge School, the Bronx Lab School, Endeavor, Kiva.org, Room to Read, San Francisco Connect, San Francisco General Hospital, Tibet House, and TransFair USA. ***

Gmail users running short on storage are getting a reprieve starting today. The company has announced they'll be increasing the speed in which they've been adding storage to their popular e-mail service, along with bumps to Google Apps users. You might have seen the storage counter that's been running on the Gmail's start page, which is nearing the 3 GB mark bit by bit--and now, it's doing it just a little bit faster. Meanwhile, Google Apps users are getting a slightly better end of the deal. Standard and Educational users are getting a size match with Gmail's offerings, while the Premier gets an extra 15GB, bringing their cap to 25GB. ***

Adobe Systems on Monday released an early version of LiveCycle Enterprise Suite, a revamped version of its document management and work-flow server. LiveCycle Enterprise Suite, which is expected to be available for deployment in July, integrates with Adobe's Flex development environment so developers can create Flash-based user interfaces. Until now, LiveCycle served up and routed forms in the PDF format. Now customers can choose between either friend front end as the server can serve up data and forms to both, said Jeff Whatcott, the vice president of product marketing and strategy for enterprise solutions at Adobe. LiveCycle is the primary product in Adobe's enterprise business, which represents $200 million in annual revenue and growth opportunity for the company, said Whatcott. ***

Google may be known as the Web search advertising company but Google has big plans for offering services to corporations, says Stephen Arnold, author of The Google Legacy and a Google patent scrutinizer. Arnold figures out possible tech company strategies by analyzing their patents. He's come across several patent applications from Google that he says indicate that they plan to use the Google Search Appliance as much more than just a device that lets employees search for data within the internal network. The Google Search Appliance is a "Trojan Horse" that will soon be able to do much more than just search, he says. ***

Apple's retail stores now offer two services for the price of, uh, two. Prior to Wednesday, those who had signed up for Apple's ProCare service were eligible to get quick service at retail stores and have an Apple Genius tune up their Macs every so often, as well as sign up for one-on-one training classes, for $99. But starting Wednesday, those services will be offered separately, both at $99 a year. Kudos to AppleInsider for its report earlier this week that the move was about to happen. On the Apple Store portion of its Web site, the company said "we've expanded personal training, one of the most popular ProCare services, into its own program called One to One." ***

Google says some users of its free Gmail service and others may experience some problems as the company works to improve the system. "Users of all Web services may have periodic trouble with access, and as we make updates to improve and enhance Gmail, some users may see error messages and experience short periods of inaccessibility," a Google spokesman said in a statement Wednesday. "These errors are neither persistent nor pervasive, but we take all issues very seriously and resolve them as quickly as possible. We encourage these users to contact the Gmail Support team, who can investigate any problems. We're continually listening to feedback from our users and working to improve the product. ***

Google on Wednesday said its Gmail service is now open to anyone who wants an account. Previously the service, which provides users with 2.8GB of e-mail storage space, has been by invitation only. The service, known as Google Mail in the U.K., has proved very popular. When it was launched, Google raised eyebrows with its practice of indexing the content of e-mails so that the company could place contextual advertisements in them. Nevertheless, early ZDNet UK stories garnered hundreds of reader responses from people looking for free accounts. Google ceded rights to the Gmail name in the U.K. ***

Broadband phone company Vonage is offering a new service to help parents find out what their kids want for Christmas. Anyone who dials 1-700-CallSanta (1-700-225-5726) from a Vonage phone will be directly connected with the "North Pole." Children can listen to a message from Santa and then leave him a voice mail telling him what they would like for Christmas. Vonage will automatically send the message to the voice mail box of the account holder, so that he or she can ensure that Santa delivers. The program began in October, and runs through December 24. Customers will also be able to track Santa's travels on Christmas Eve via a Vonage Web site dedicated to all things Santa. ***

Microsoft on Wednesday released Messenger 6.0 for Mac, allowing Apple users of its instant messaging software to connect to Yahoo Messenger users. The company added that feature for PC users in July, but Mac support has been notably absent. The new software also allows Microsoft IM users on the Mac to create custom emoticons and allow buddies to see what song in iTunes they are listening to. The software can be downloaded free from Microsoft's Mac Web site. ***

On Thursday, Google is launching its buying service, Google Checkout (known previously by Google watchers as Gbuy). It is going to make purchasing easier for Web users. You'll just enter your credit card billing and address information once, and then on any commerce site you go that's Checkout-enabled, you won't have to enter your data again. This is not much of a competitor to eBay's PayPal, as some have predicted. Checkout is designed for serious merchants more than for individuals unloading old Star Trek snow globes on eBay. To be sure, the few merchants that are considering adding PayPal as a payment option (and that don't already have it) might divert their energies to signing up for Checkout. However, there's no reason a commerce site couldn't offer both PayPal and Checkout, if it desired. ***

Businesses may be looking forward to trying out the new extension of IBM's brand-monitoring software, but some bloggers are less sure the technology is a good thing. Watching what customers and the press are saying about a company online is nothing new. But IBM reports it is making the task of monitoring sentiment circulating on the Web about a brand much easier and more thorough. Dubbed the Public Image Monitoring Solution, the new software is an improvement upon IBM's already existing WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Edition, and is said to read and analyze blogs, news articles, online forums and other Web material to find what is being said about a company and its products or services. ***

It's unfortunate for the Mambo open-source publishing software project and for its customers that its developers had to decamp with their source code to start the Joomla project, according to a high-ranking IBM software executive. "It does look like the company that was shepherding this along got a little bit off track on their interests vs. the open-source community's interests," said Rod Smith, vice president of emerging Internet technology for IBM's Software Group, in an interview Tuesday. "That's a bad thing," because Mambo had a lot of traction, and the "fork" undermines that, he said. Corporate customers dislike such conflicts, Smith said. "They're not scared of open-source software. But what they are scared of is what just happened to Mambo," he said. ***

Cisco Systems is making it easier for business customers across the globe to meet via video conference. On Wednesday, the company announced it has added video to its Internet-based conferencing software, MeetingPlace, which previously only supported voice and Web conferencing. Cisco's new MeetingPlace 5.3 will let business customers set up conferences over video, through Web collaboration or by phone. The software upgrade is part of the company's strategy to shift its enterprise customers to more Internet Protocol-based communication. The software is based on technology Cisco acquired last year from Latitude Communications in a deal valued at $80 million. ***