| Dimdim 6 Released: New Collaboration, Online Meeting Features | Today, Dimdim annouced the availability of Dimdim 6. The latest version of the cloud-based Web collaboration and conferencing platform offers several new enhancements, such as:
- An improved myScreen feature which allows users to share as much or as little of their screen as they like.
- Instant poll creation and reporting.
- Secure cloud-based document storage for presentations, PDF, Word, and Excel documents.
- The ability to share a secure Web link to original documents at any time.
- Enhanced Web mashups with the integration of YouTube, Picasa, and any other embeddable Web object within the Dimdim meeting.
- A four-way, full-screen video chat.
- Available meeting room, e-mail, and template customization so businesses can apply their branding to the Dimdim 6 platform.
Dimdim 6 is now available for download. | | Workstreamer Wants You To Stop Searching, Start Listening |  The World Wide Web is a filled with an ever-growing about of chatter from customers, critics, colleagues, and competitors, which can make filtering the data a challenge. Enter Workstreamer, an app in public beta that acts as a "social CRM" tool that can help you keep track of the talk.
Workstreamer gets its real-time information from an array of sources ranging from blogs and published news articles, to Twitter, LinkedIn, Salesforce.com, and more.The results (featured on your account page, or sent to your inbox by e-mail) are processed and filtered in an attempt to deliver highly relevant business data.
You can sign up for the free tool right now.
[Via GigaOM]
| | Business Bits: Remote Management, CMS Alternatives, Collaboration Tools, and More |  Welcome to Business Bits, a collection of hot business technology links from around the Web that will help your company be more productive.
Are You Remotely Managing Your Business?
Smart phones are wonderful do-it-all devices that let you check e-mail, visit Web sites, and edit and read documents, but are they robust enough to let you run your business remotely? American Express Open Forum explores the issue.
Five Lightweight CMS Alternatives for Small Businesses
Creating and maintaining a Web site can be challenging, especially if you
want a CMS platform that's deeper than Tumblr or Posterous, but not
quite as complex as Drupal or WordPress. Mashable takes a
look at the developers creating lightweight CMS systems.
Three Collaboration Tool Startups Use for Short-term Projects
WebWorkerDaily tapped three startups to discover what they use to complete short-term projects. Ta-Da, Notable, and Pivotal Tracker were the tools mentioned.
Six Lessons from IBM's Social Media Guru
Savvy SMBs know that an an online presence can heighten brand awareness and drum up new business. What's overlooked, however, is that a lack of a clear plan will lead to social media failure. Smallbiztechnolgy has the story.
Box.net Addss Social Media Features
The online collaboration service has added a newsfeed filled with activity updates to make it easy for business to share information. InformationWeek SMB takes a look. | | Cloud Computing Cisco-style: Quad |
 Murali Sitaram, Cisco's Vice President/General Manager of Enterprise Collaboration Platform and Doron Aronson, Cisco's Public Relations Manager of Corporate Communications stopped by PCMag's offices today to introduce me to Cisco Quad, Cisco's new collaboration platform.
Cisco Quad is unified communications plus social networking for business. The Quad platform lets employees create and manage personal online profiles, collaborate on any kind of digital content and can dyanamically form and participate in virtual communities. Quad is currently targeted at larger enterprises for deploying in a private cloud, but Sitaram told me there will be public cloud Quad service for SMBs in the near future.
Sounds like Facebook? Sure. That's the kind of experience Cisco wants users to have. But this is Facebook for the corporation. Integrated with all of the cool, social stuff is enterprise security and policy management, business system integration, and contextual and semantic search.
I watched a video demo of the product. Quad truly incorporates all aspects of communications: blogs, wikis, forums, IM, video...etc.
Cisco as a collaboration platform vendor? Yes, there's Cisco's own WebEx, but Quad is a much deeper offering. It's more on par with SalesForce and its new Chatter platform--except Quad is not Sales-focused. It's more encompassing and seems to be a very sophisticated product. I expressed my surpise to Murali that Cisco would undertake such a project. His response gave me pause;
"[Quad] is not about where Cisco wants to be. It's where the world is."
That world being dominated by Google, social networking and all things cloud. The ways we prefer to communicate and exchange content has changed. Big vendors like Cisco have taken notice.
The cloud is here and Cisco is going after it.
| | Microsoft Releases Exchange 2010 SP1 | style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">
Today, Microsoft's Exchange Server Team blog posted that Exchange 2010 SP1 is available for download. The Service Pack delivers several new features and enhancements that have been eagerly awaited by Exchange Administrators and Microsoft Partners. Some of the major new updates include:-
The ability to now manage Active Synch in the Exchange Control Panel.
- SMS Sync -- a new feature within Active Synch that works with Windows Mobile 6.1 with the Outlook Mobile Update, and with Windows Mobile 6.5, and provides the ability to synchronize text messages, Inbox, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, and Notes between a smartphone and an Exchange 2010 Inbox.
- Outlook Web Apps now has 27 themes.
- Enhanced monitoring and troubleshooting of MailTips.
- New functionality to detect and repair corrupted mailboxes and Exchange databases.
- Improved Calendar Repair Assistant.
- .PST files can now be imported without using Outlook, through the Mailbox Replication service.
- Exchange Management Console user interface enhancements.
- New retention policy user interface.
- New mailbox audit logging.
That's just a fraction of the new and improved featues. Enhancements cut across the board affecting Unified Communicatins, voicemail integration, and compliancy issues. Here are complete details on what's new in Exchange 2010 SP1. | | RNA Teams With Mellanox for 12X Faster Memory Virtualization Performance |  RNA Networks announced today
that it will partner with Mellanox
Technologies to demonstrate the performance
improvements achievable through memory virtualization.
The demo
(held during VMworld in San Francisco's Monscone Center from August 30 to September
2) will show how the recently debuted RNA MVX 2.5 combines with
Mellanox ConnectX-2 40Gb/s InfiniBand adapters to create memory
virtualization -- a new technology that consolidates memory across
servers into a single, distributed memory service. This "memory cloud"
extends server memory, and speeds up storage. The result? Up to 12X
performance improvements in virtualized environments.
The memory
cloud accelerates IO throughput by leveraging memory across
servers as a compute tier cache, which brings active data closer to apps
while offloading storage. As such, the memory cloud increases virtual
server performance, and maximizes the benefits and utilization of
existing processing and memory resources.
If you're attending
the conference, the showcase will be held at Mellanox' booth, No. 1412. | | Campaigner Adds New Features to Enhance SMB Email Marketing |
Campaigner, an email marketing service provider, announced a set of new features within the Campaigner service to enhance email marketing for small businesses. These new features include:
- Integrated image editing capability: It's now possible to import an image into the Campaigner library and use the powerful image editor to crop, rotate, and resize images while building an email newsletter.
- Opt to have business contact information appear in email templates automatically: This auto-fill feature saves you the trouble of manually entering information. Additionally, favorite templates can now be saved for easier re-use.
- Email preview function: This allows viewing and testing the look-and-feel of emails before sending. Users can also see how an email will look to a recipient who has images turned off in an email program.
- Contact imports: Users can now import email contacts from Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo! to quickly create a database of contacts without creating or managing lists. Duplicate contacts are checked for during import and permission levels are maintained when an import is complete.
Campaigner offers a free 30-day email marketing trial as well as a free eBook with tips and techniques to get started on effective email marketing.
| | Business Bits: Central Desktop, Slideshare Goes Freemium, and More |  Welcome to Business Bits, a collection of hot business technology links from around the Web that will help your company be more productive.
Central Desktop Brings The Cloud To Microsoft Office
WebWorkerDaily takes a look at Cloud Desktop, a tool aimed at SMBs that's designed to let them share documents (and collaborate on them) via the cloud.
Slideshare Goes Freemium
Slideshare, a service for sharing presentations, has announced that it's switching to a "freemium" business model that caters to professionals, small businesses, and enterprises. Mashable has the story.
6 Questions To Ask Before Creating An App
The iPhone platform is popular, with thousand of apps available across a variety of genres. Many businesses see the advantage of having an iPhone app--should you? MarketingSherpa explores the issue.
Cloud Computing: Managed File Transfer
Managed file transfer is a cloud-computing service feature that gives companies a more secure way to transfer large amounts of data without the constrictions of FTP and e-mail. AllBusiness breaks down the technology.
| | Dimdim Business Brings Web Conferencing To SMBs |  Dimdim has launched a new version of its Web conferencing software that targets SMBs: DimDim Business.
Dimdim Business is a Web conferencing solution that lets users customize meeting rooms, company URLs, and even email templates. This lets a business brand meetings with its logo, company name, trademark, symbols, and colors, to add a more professional look. Businesses can also embed Dimdim Business inside their sites using open APIs, which also facilitates integration with Facebook, Twitter, and other Web services.
Interested? Dimdim Business is priced at $33 per user per month. | | Egnyte Allows Businesses to Make Hosted Services Look 'In House' |  Egnyte recently introduced a Branding Kit, allowing its cloud file server and online storage services to be integrated seamlessly with a company's existing brand assets and IT infrastructure.
Egnyte's Branding Kit allows businesses small and large to use Egnyte's services without sacrificing corporate identity and control. Companies can configure their cloud file server to reflect the company's brand identity, using their corporate logo, color schemes, and map the Web URL to their Internet domain. All communications from the cloud file server can be customized and branded, as employees and business partners access and share files.
Existing branding and management policies can be applied consistently across infrastructures so users accessing files on a local server will have the same user experience as they would accessing the same files through cloud storage. This gives both cloud and in-house storage infrastructure synchronized active file repositories, assuring users are accessing the most current files in the office or from the road. | | Xobni Makes Outlook Work Better |  As indispensable as Outlook is, none of us are completely happy with it. That's where Xobni (free or $29.99 Plus version) comes in.
It's an Outlook plug-in that helps you search faster, communicate better, and just get more done. It lets you include social media links for all your contacts and automatically generates profile info.
The downside is you may suffer from information overload--and your system performance might take a minor hit. PCMag.com reviews editor Dan Costa has been using Xobni for months now and finds it is the best way to wade through mountains of e-mail and my cacophony of contacts. Get the full scoop in his in-depth Xobni review at PCMag.com. | | Cloudmark's Pro Antispam Well Worth the Price |  Cloudmark DesktopOne-Pro Mode does everything its free version does, but for multiple accounts. It can whitelists your correspondents, automatically purge old spam, and more. The price gets you two licenses, so it's a real steal at $19.95. | | Business Bits: Being a Successful Remote Worker, Starbucks to Capitalize on Free Wi-Fi, and More |  Welcome to Business Bits, a collection of hot business technology links from around the Web that will help your company be more productive.
The 7 Hats of a Successful Remote Team Member
If you are a remote member of a virtual team, you're responsible for the role for which you've been contracted. But, as your virtual team thrives, you may need to adopt additional hats. WebWorkerDaily explains the skills you'll need to succeed.
How Starbucks Plans to Capitalize on Free Wi-Fi
Starbucks now offers customers free Wi-Fi, which will let its millions of customers connect to the Web. But the offering isn't totally altruistic; the Starbucks Digital Network (coming this fall) will offer exclusive and premium content from hand-picked content providers, such as Apple, The New York Times, and more. Mashable has the story.
Testing Out Panasonic's Video Conference System (VC500): From New Jersey to Florida
Smallbiztechnology posted a YouTube clip of a VC500 HD Visual Communications demonstration. The participants viewed each other through a 60 frame per second, 1080i plasma TV using the 360-degree HD Audio. The result? People felt as though they were looking through a window. Could your business use this tool?
Betting That Customers Want Online Banks to Be Simpler
The Wall Street Journal reports on banksimple, an online bank that looks to take the kinks out of the banking experience. Banksimple plans to partner with established banks that will take care of the back end (from making sure accounts are FDIC insured, to paying and charging interest), and create a unique user experience and mobile apps.
How Twitter Helps Small Firms Snag Customers
AllBusiness
reports that small businesses are acquiring more customers using
Twitter than large companies, even though big companies spend more money
on social marketing.
| | Meraki Launches Traffic Shaper, Adds Auto RF to Wi-Fi Optimization Suite |
Cloud-based wireless networking provider, Meraki, today announced the launch of Meraki Traffic Shaper, an application aware bandwdith control system integrated with Meraki's wireless networking solutions.
Designed for those administering SMB wireless networks, Traffic Shaper allows administrators to analyze network traffic by application or application class and enforce traffic shaping policies (e.g., limiting each user's peer-to-peer traffic). It also enables administrators to prioritize critical applications using QoS policies and stay up to date with hundreds of constantly updated application signatures.
Meraki has also announced the addition of high-resolution spectrum analysis to its cloud-based wireless optimization system. This added feature is called Auto RF and with it, Wi-Fi network administrators can detect and mitigate non-802.11 interferences sources (i.e., from Bluetooth devices,microwaves, etc.). This capability can help optimize coverage, throughout and reliability. Read more on both announcements at www.meraki.com.
| | Ten Simple, Helpful Microsoft Outlook 2010 Tips |  Outlook 2010 is one of the most useful desktop applications ever created. Software analyst Edward Mendelson has many helpful tips to offer that can help you can get the most out of your Outlook, such as how to insert screenshots into an outlook 2010 message or using Outlook's advanced search features. Here are ten detailed tips to master some of Outlook 2010's deep functionality. |
|
| Dell cedes data-storage maker 3Par to HP
(AP)
|  AP - Dell Inc. is walking away from a bidding contest with rival Hewlett-Packard Co. for data-storage maker 3Par Inc.
| | AOL signs new search agreement with Google
(AP)
|  AP - Google Inc. will continue to provide the search results on AOL Inc.'s websites under a new, five-year deal the companies signed this week.
| | Google, Skype targeted in India security crackdown
(AP)
|  AP - India has widened its security crackdown, asking all companies that provide encrypted communications — not just BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion — to install servers in the country to make it easier for the government to obtain users' data. That would likely affect digital giants like Google and Skype.
| | Able to unplug from work while you’re on vacation?
(Ben Patterson)
| | Ben Patterson - Fighting the urge to check your work e-mail while you’re on holiday doesn’t exactly qualify as the worst problem in the world; after all, it’s pretty nice to have a job at all in this tough economy, right? Then again, the pressure to hang onto a job seems to be driving more and more connected workers to stay plugged in even while they’re trying to tune out. | | Mobile users still wary of being found, survey says
(Ben Patterson)
| | Ben Patterson - Feel the need to "check in" on Foursquare or Facebook every time you saunter into a restaurant, browse the goods at your neighborhood grocery store, or cram into a rock concert? Well, if you, you’re still in the minority — and you’re also probably a guy below 40 — according to the latest research. | | Samsung, Toshiba take on Apple with 'iPad killers'
(AFP)
|  AFP - Competition to Apple's highly successful iPad hotted up on Thursday as Samsung and Toshiba unveiled rival tablet PCs that they hope will steal some of the Californian giant's thunder.
| | AP Interview: UN telecoms chief urges data sharing
(AP)
|  AP - BlackBerry's Canadian manufacturer should give law enforcement agencies around the world access to its customer data, the U.N. telecommunications chief said, adding that governments have legitimate security concerns that should not be ignored.
| | Nokia to discontinue remote file-sharing service
(AFP)
|  AFP - Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, announced Thursday it would discontinue its popular mobile file-sharing service called Ovi Files as of October 1.
| | Burger King agrees to $3.26B buyout by 3G Capital
(AP)
|  AP - Burger King Holdings Inc., the nation's perennially No. 2 hamburger chain, said Thursday that it is selling itself to little-known private equity firm 3G Capital in a deal valued at $3.26 billion.
| | Singapore Airlines curbs crew's Facebook musings
(AFP)
|  AFP - Singapore Airlines (SIA) has directed its flight attendants to avoid discussing work-related matters on Facebook and other social networking websites, company officials said Thursday.
| | AOL renews search deal with Google
(AFP)
|  AFP - Google will power Internet search across AOL properties and AOL video will appear on YouTube under an agreement reached on Thursday between the Web companies.
| | Ambitious Online Banking Alternative Scores $2.9 Million in Series A
(Mashable)
| | Mashable - Banksimple has just raised $2.9 million in a Series A round to fund their ambitious alternative online banking startup for full-service, fee-free banking. The round includes investments from First Round Capital, IA Ventures and Village Ventures, a collection of industry veterans with extensive startup portfolios. | | Ping's scheme is to sell more tunes
(Appolicious)
| | Appolicious - Do we really need another social network? That depends on how you view the purpose of social networks. The biggest, Facebook, is great for monitoring, from a safe distance, what your old high school buddies are doing. But don't put Apple's new Ping service into the same category. | | Ping on iTunes - Not So Hot
(PC World)
| | PC World - Apple's big overhaul of iTunes, announced Wednesday, turns the media management software into a fledgling social network thanks to a newly introduced feature called Ping. I would have expected more from Apple with this first attempt at building a community around iTunes. It's not all bad, but if Ping doesn't improve soon this music-oriented social network will bomb faster than an American Idol wannabe. | | Plastics company cancels job creation contract
(AP)
| | AP - A plastics compounding company operating in eastern Texas has canceled its state job creation contract, joining other businesses that have quit or changed their pacts under the Texas Enterprise Fund. | | Botnet Takedown May Yield Valuable Data
(PC World)
| | PC World - Researchers are hoping to get a better insight on botnets after taking down part of Pushdo, one of the top five networks of hacked computers responsible for most of the world's spam. | | Oracle's Suit Against Android Could Split Open Source
(NewsFactor)
| | NewsFactor - Oracle's suit against Google for the use of Java in its Android portable operating system continues to reverberate through the open-source movement. In the newest development, Google has declined to participate in the upcoming JavaOne conference, an event formerly hosted by Java creator Sun Microsystems and now run by Sun's new owner, Oracle. | | Malaysian blogger faces jail over satirical post
(AFP)
|  AFP - A Malaysian journalist was charged Thursday over a satirical blog which made fun of the state power firm Tenaga, and faces a year's jail if convicted.
|
|
