BBC News (7 Feb 2006) report that Google is to integrate its popular e-mail service with its own instant messaging, known as Gmail Chat to allow users to chat and send e-mails from the same web browser window. The report also gives the current stats on the subscriber bases of the 'big 3' in Instant Messaging:

Newsweek report in Smoother Surfing (Jan 30) on a exciting new set of technologies known as Ajax which underpin applications such as Google Maps and promises to deliver desktop-like usability, smoothness and performance to web browser-based applications. The potential of web-based applications which are equal in usability to their desktop-based counterparts could re-energise both the ASP (Application Service Provider) and web-based application provider markets and threaten Microsoft's long-standing dominance of office-based applications.

SearchCIO.com, 2 Feb, reports on the emergence of sophisticated speech recognition software which can highlight words that can indicate trouble on the line such as ‘confused’ and ‘cancel’. The software can also monitor in real-time telltale changes in the pitch, volume and timbre of a customer's voice which indicate hostility or rising anger.

‘Social bookmarking’ is the name given to the family of technologies which began to appear a couple of years back to allow you to share your favourite internet sites with others and to ‘tag’ them with sets of keywords known as a ‘folksonomies’.

Maurene Grey in Collaboration Loop January 03, 2006 reports that two years after being signed into law, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have released their report to the US Congress on the effectiveness of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Reuters report, Jan 6 2006, that some users are taking their lead from tagged animals and having minute RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) Chips storing their personal codes implanted into their hands to allow them automatic access to computers and access-controlled locations. But its going to make you think twice about changing your password. To read Computer chips get under skin of enthusiasts.

Message archiving software can help organizations and teams achieve regulatory and corporate policy compliance, reduce the cost of eDiscovery, and reduce storage costs through mailbox management. The top message archiving software vendors include Computer Associates, EMC, IBM, Open Text, Symantec and ZANTAZ. Forrester have evaluated their strengths and weaknesses across 74 criteria in a newly published research report: (December 05) Message Archiving Software, Q4 2005

Good single-function design is the secret

In a competitive and crowded market a trap for new entrants is the temptation to try to do all things well. This goes against the timeless design principle of cohesiveness. Cohesiveness is about ensuring you do the main thing better than the competition. Cohesiveness is particularly important in today's market for high tech products such as portable digital devices and web-based applications.

The owner of a business in the Channel Isles has successfully used a new anti-spamming law, The Directive on Privacy and Telecommunications, to win out of court damages against a UK company who sent him spam. The spammers ignored him when he wrote asking for an apology and claiming damages under regulation 30 of the privacy regulations according to Court victory hailed as spam stopper (December 28, 2005). This legal action is thought to be the first of its kind under the directive and may be a landmark case.

Imagine a scenario a couple of years from now where our governments and commercial enterprises discover that 99% of their documents are stored in a proprietary format (Microsoft) and some serious legal or technical issue has arisen which threatens their long-term accessibility. Fortunately this scenario is now much less likely due to an important international standards initiative known as Open Document Format.