Google Feb. 24 said it is advancing six features in its Gmail Labs and retiring five, a sign the company's programmers are dutifully keeping up with user interest or lack thereof in the experimental tools. If nothing else, Google's Gmail team is watching what the 176 million Gmail users are doing in the Webmail app. What will be interesting to see is the interplay of Gmail Labs features with the Gmail-hosted Google Buzz application, which leverages Gmail contacts to build a social network of conversations. Google Buzz already leverages the same keyboard shortcuts and formatting tools as Gmail.
- Google Feb. 24 said it is advancing six features in its Gmail Labs and retiring five, a sign the company's programmers are dutifully keeping up with user interest or lack thereof in the experimental tools. Graduates include Search Autocomplete, Go To Label, Forgotten Attachment ...

An LG smartphone running Microsofts newly introduced Windows Phone 7 Series may arrive as early as September, Engadget is reporting. Reporters at its China sister site are said to have received details from LG executives, at a Lunar New Year celebration in Hong Kong.
- The first LG smartphone running Microsofts Windows Phone 7 Series may arrive as early as September, according to a report from Engadget. Reportedly, members of its sister site, Engadget Chinese, had a sitdown with LG executives in Hong Kong who indicated that the date likely wouldnt be as l...

A car-sized fuel cell-based power plant, known as the Bloom Energy Server, could power up to 100 U.S. homes and fit in the driveway.
- As the green energy movement works to keep momentum in the United States, a Silicon Valley-based startup known as Bloom Energy emerged after nine years of closely guarded research to unveil the Bloom Energy Server, a solid oxide fuel cell technology, which provides distributed ...

Aimed at cost-conscious businesses, Citrix GoToManage is anintegrated web-based platform for controlling unattended IT infrastructure. The company also announced a partnership with Carpathia Hosting.
- Citrix Systems online division announced it was entering the IT Management sector with the launch of GoToManage, an integrated web-based platform for monitoring, controlling and supporting attended or unattended IT infrastructure. GoToManage is aimed at small to medium-size busine...

Passlogix offers cost-conscious businesses the open architecture v-GO Universal Authentication Manager (v-GO UAM), an authentication solution that enables Microsoft Windows to accept any identification device for logging on.
- Provisioning and authentication process specialist and developer of the v-GO Access Accelerator Suite, Passlogix, announced v-GO Universal Authentication Manager, a strong authentication solution that enables Microsoft Windows to accept any identification device for logon – inclu...

Salesforce.com reported fiscal 2010 revenue of $1.3 billion as it continues to benefit from the rapid expansion of the on-demand enterprise software market. Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said Salesforce.com's portfolio of cloud sales, service, application development products and its new Chatter business collaboration platform should allow his company to enjoy strong growth for years to come.
- st1\:* Salesforce.com continued to reap rewards from the rapid growth of the enterprise cloud software business as it reported record full year revenue for fiscal 2010 of $1.3 billion, a 21 percent year-over-year increase. The company's total $1.4 billion run rate made Salesforc...

Analysts at Gartner and IDC say new Intel and AMD processors are fueling a recovery in shipments of x86 servers from the likes of HP, Dell and IBM. Intels “Nehalem EP” Xeons and AMDs “Istanbul” Opterons in 2009 helped kick-start the momentum that rolled into the fourth quarter, and new processors from both chip makers this quarter will continue the growth into 2010.
- A week ago, executives with both Hewlett-Packard and Dell, while talking about their latest quarterly financial numbers, pointed to the increase in x86 server sales in the final few months of 2009. HP saw a 27 percent revenue increase in its industry-standard server business in the quarter, whi...

Sometimes you need a little help getting from points A to B, something a number of developers realized when they began designing navigation apps for the iPhone. Many of these apps take advantage of the GPS chipset embedded in the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3G S, which allows for turn-by-turn directions and easy viewing of local points of interest. Other apps, including Google Earth, focus primarily on actual maps as opposed to step-by-step directions. Many of these apps attempt to justify their high costs with that GPS integration and high-quality renderings, as well as a host of secondary features such as lane assistant. For those who dont want to spend quite so much on apps, or dont need that many gee-whiz features, a few of these options are notably cheaper.
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Apple could introduce an Explicit category to its App Store, as suggested by developers who saw a tab for adult-themed apps appear briefly as a primary category in the iTunes Connect system. Whether Apple was testing code or yanked the category after news leaked remains to be seen. Apples head of worldwide product marketing Philip Schiller indicated in an interview with The New York Times that the company had pulled controversial apps from the App Store in response to complaints.
- Apple could be considering an quot;Explicit quot; category for apps sold in its popular App Store, according to online reports. Such a category could potentially allow the company to sidestep outside concerns over some of its third-party developers' products while continuing to collect revenue f...

Parallels Server for Mac/Bare Metal Edition runs virtual machines on an Xserve machine so businesses can standardize on the Apple platform and still run Windows and Linux-based applications if they desire.
- Virtualization software maker Parallels said Feb. 24 that it is expanding its product line by adding a new hypervisor specifically designed for Apple's Mac OS X and Xserve server. Parallels Server for Mac/Bare Metal Edition runs virtual machines on an Xserve machine so businesses can standardi...

A posting on the company Website implied that OpenSolaris may soon be end-of-lifed. However, there's no need for app developers and IT managers to worry: Oracle says it is not killing off the freely downloadable community version of Sun's Unix-based Solaris enterprise operating system anytime soon.
- Was a posting on the Oracle Website published Feb. 24 titled quot;End of Service Life Status for OpenSolaris Operating System quot; simply unclear on the concept, or was it a hint that Oracle is planning to drop the Sun Microsystems-developed open-source operating system entirely? Industry f...

The BoxTone User Self-Service module aims to let users troubleshoot their own BlackBerry mobile support problems without involving the support desk, but falls short.
- BoxTone User Self-Service aims to let users troubleshoot some of their BlackBerry support problems without involving the support desk, although the system's occasionally unhelpful guidance may thwart that lofty goal. The BoxTone USS module is an add-on to BoxTone's mobile ecosystem troublesho...

The P2P Cyber Protection and Informed User Act would prohibit peer-to-peer file-sharing programs from being installed without the informed consent of the authorized computer user. The legislation would also prohibit P2P software that would prevent the authorized user from blocking the installation of a P2P file-sharing program and/or disabling or removing any P2P file-sharing program.
- Software developers would be required to clearly inform users when their files are made available to other peer-to-peer users under legislation introduced Feb. 24 by Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Thune, R-S.D. The legislation comes just one day after the Federal Trade Commission notified...

Pano Logic is rolling out its Zero Client Reference Architecture to show businesses that its desktop virtualization system is the only one with a true zero-client model. Zero client means that the endpoint does not hold anything, that everything from the processor to the data to the memory is housed on a centralized server.
- In a crowded desktop virtualization space that seems to have as many definitions as competitors, Pano Logic officials are looking to highlight their products differentiators. Pano Logic on Feb. 24 rolled out the reference architecture for its desktop virtualization offering, which Parmeet Chaddh...

The RTO team of 12 employees will be incorporated immediately into VMware and become part of the company's desktop business unit. VMware and RTO had been in a partnership since last fall, when VMware announced at VMworld that it would integrate RTO's Virtual Profiles management tool into its VMware View platform.
- VMware, which continues to expand its market reach outside of the server virtualization sector that it currently dominates, said in a blog post on its Website Feb. 23 that it has acquired software management toolmaker RTO Software. Financial details were not disclosed. The RTO team of 12 e...