Rails Framework Adds Ajax Tools In Major Update

Microsoft to bring Hotmail onto the desktop

Blogging Gets Down To Business

REDHERRING.COM: Blogging service company Six Apart said in early March that it was releasing business versions of its tools for easy blogging. That’s not such a big leap for the San Francisco-based firm. Six Apart already powers around 25 Fortune 500 company blogs—including those of Amazon.com, Cisco, Motorola, and Wal-Mart.

It wants more. Six Apart doesn’t disclose financials, but it’s the biggest independent company in the blogging space, with 15 million users and 125 employees. Still, many of its products are cheap or free. The company’s most expensive hosted blogging service for consumers is $14.95 per month. By contrast, the new TypePad Business class, which amps up security and storage, starts at $89.95 per blog per month. Business executives may not be known for their gripping narratives, but a barely penetrated market with deep pockets is a pretty compelling opportunity.

Read on.

Social Networking Connects For Business

INFORMATIONWEEK.COM: Keeping up with friends is all well and good, but business-focused social networking sites offer a better way to find new employees, customers, and even capital.

Read on.

Web 2.0 and Yoda

Blog: Staying current with Web 2.0 lingo can be a maddening task. So much so, in fact, that sometimes it's tough to tell the difference...

The Race to Improve Search Engines -- and Their Business Models

KNOWLEDGE @ WHARTON: Consumers these days swim in an alphabet soup of digital devices -- PCs and PDAs, DVRs and iPods, MP3 and DVD players. And each device delivers a host of programming that is not easily enjoyed on the others. This diversity means that market power will continue to reside with firms that can help consumers find and organize content for their preferred device -- in other words, search engines, according to panelists at the 2006 Wharton Technology Conference. Discussion centered on increasing advertising opportunities that will accompany improved search engines, the development of local and enterprise search, and the need for standard data-storage and transfer formats.

Yahoo to offer new mashup tools

Social atlas for friends and burritos

The Net's New Age

Social Networking Connects For Businesses

Review: Accoona, Google Alternative

Apple's iTunes Player Climbs Streaming Media Charts

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview [download available today]

Amazon S3 - Simple Storage Service

Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers.

Nike + Google = Joga.Com

BUSINESSWEEK.COM: The sporting goods giant and the Internet search king have teamed up to create Joga.com and connect soccer fans around the world. Nike and Google, hoping to take social networking to a new realm, have quietly launched the first invitation-only Web site for soccer-mad fans around the world. Joga.com went live late last week and will soon be running in 140 countries and 14 languages.

Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications

Microsoft launches Web search engine

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- In its latest bid to catch up with rivals Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. is launching a revamped Internet search engine it says will help computer users find information faster, view it more easily and organize it better.

Ajax homepages market review

ZDNET.COM: Over the past year many new AJAX homepages, aka personalized start pages, have been introduced to the market. Microsoft and Google have offerings, as do a host of small startups. First I'll define what an AJAX homepage is, then I'll do a feature comparison between the leading services.