Applications

Up to now, Google's smart eyeware, Glass, largely has been considered a diversion for gadget lovers, but the company on Tuesday announced a new program to encourage its use in the workplace. "Today, there are thousands of consumers out there enjoying Glass in ways that are both practical and inspira...

Microsoft last week unveiled Office for iPad, which consists of Excel, Word and PowerPoint, rearchitected from the ground up. Office for iPad is available as a free download for the iPad and iPhone, with limited capability. Users who want to create or edit documents with the office suite have to sub...

Cloud computing has ushered in an emphasis on service-oriented, on-demand IT in the federal market. The shift from acquiring hard assets, such as computers, servers and even mobile devices, as well as software packages installed on those assets, has been gradual. However, the process has reached a p...

Microsoft's tip of a news event next week triggered an avalanche of prophecy that the long-awaited version of Office for the iPad was about to be released. Microsoft is billing the event in San Francisco on March 27 as a "briefing and news focused on the intersection of cloud and mobile computing." ...

Google has launched a referral program for its office apps. It will hand out $15 bonuses to Google Apps customers who convince new users to sign up for the service, which includes Gmail for businesses, Google Calendar, Docs, Slides, Hangouts and Google Drive. Google will award the $15 bonus for up t...

During the heyday of the dot-com boom, then-HP CEO Carly Fiorina espoused a notion called "good enough" computing. Despite significant performance differences between x86 servers and Unix and other enterprise-class systems, the dramatically lower cost of x86-based products would cause organizations ...

What's in a name? Microsoft is hoping more traffic to two of its online properties. The company has renamed its cloud storage service because of legal entanglements and the website for free versions of its Office productivity apps because of consumer confusion. The name changes, which took effect ...

LogMeIn has announced that it will be shutting down its free service and unifying its existing portfolio of paid products in a single offering. Existing users of LogMeIn Free will be given seven days from the next time they log on to the service to upgrade to the premium service at a discounted pric...

Microsoft and GoDaddy on Tuesday announced they were partnering to market Microsoft's Office 365 to GoDaddy's 12 million small business users. GoDaddy's small business users can attach Office 365 to a domain name and get access to cloud storage and Microsoft's productivity suite. 24/7 live customer ...

The TV industry has been quick to move into the app market, and these offerings may foster a new era for television services. The term "app" was initially coined for small applications that run on mobile devices and fulfill a particular purpose, but apps are now common to several platforms, notably ...

Despite recent revelations regarding the NSA's extensive surveillance of email messages, Internet traffic and mobile communications, no one expects people or businesses to discard these essential habits and tools. In fact, I believe cloud-based alternatives to traditional, on-premises software and s...

The Google Compute Engine became generally available on Tuesday, almost 18 months after its introduction at last year's Google I/O. "We have been taking time and doing careful work to ensure that as we open Compute Engine to developers, they have a great experience with things like billing and suppo...

A bit more than six months ago, EMC and VMware celebrated the launch of Pivotal, a new company led by former VMware CEO Paul Maritz. Pivotal's team included IP and personnel from EMC's Greenplum and Pivotal Labs organizations, and VMware's vFabric, Cloud Foundry and Cetas organizations. A considerab...

Google on Wednesday unveiled Newsstand, a new Android app in its Google Play store that's designed to collect and present the user's favorite news sources in a single place. Readers can subscribe to a host of magazines, newspapers, blogs and news sites. The app formats and optimizes the content so r...

Dropbox is not only planning to raise $250 million in the next few weeks but is also reportedly seeking a corporate valuation of $8 billion. That's more than double the valuation investors placed on the company the last time Dropbox hit the funding circuit back in 2011. The company has already raise...