Yahoo! Inc. - Press Release about Open Social

Yahoo! Inc. - Press Release: "Yahoo! Supports OpenSocial; Yahoo!, MySpace and Google to Form Non-Profit OpenSocial Foundation
Community Organization to Assure Neutrality and Longevity of
Specification for Building Social Applications Across the Web"

OK, now you've got my attention.

Yahoo in the mix means that we're talking about serious reach across a very broad network indeed. It's also a clear move to create more demand with the ongoing buyout negotiations that are no doubt going on behind closed doors with the 800lb Gorilla.

It'll be interesting to see what sort of impact this has on the deal and if it speeds things along at all.

Google releasing control to a not for profit was the only logical way to proceed and not have it be perceived as a big play against FB's opening it's platform.

Now all the middle wear companies can come snickity snak on bridging solutions for desperate marketers wanting to release the next viral epidemic of zombie's vs. pirates make money dvd empire membership clubs onto both networks because of course FB is going to stick with the "we did it first so you can come play with us" position.

Tune in next quarter for the continuing SAAAAGaA ... of ... PIGS IN CYBERSPACE ... SPACE...space... spac.e.. ace.. ce..e

Google Data API released for Contacts

Official Google Data APIs Blog: 3. 2. 1. Contact. The API has landed: "Have you ever been on a web-site that asked you for your Google username and password so that it can import your Gmail contact list? Did you think twice before giving out that information, hoping the web-site would not use it to access your credit card information stored with Google Checkout? Now you don't have to!"

I'm not completely sure how this will change what we're doing, particularly with respect to the SSO with google apps, but... it's a nice change in direction. Could OpenID be far behind I wonder.

This should give us the ability to sync the contact lists of XLsuite with your google account, making filling in forms and other places where you want your contacts handy in the google universe.

Google Takes on the OS

This is interesting and comes with little fanfare, but is definitely one of those shots over the bow that Steve Balmer must be hearing.

It will be interesting to see how much traction this gets, they're selling PC's for $200 at walmart, that should get some people interested in Linux.

It's apparently an overhauled version of Ubuntu with a bunch of Googly goodness added for good measure.

Google Docs Rocks

I love these guys videos, they get down to the basics and really know how to simplify things.

This is a very good explanation of the benefits of using google docs.

Google VS. Everyone

This article is a really good outline of the various "big markets" on the web and where Google fits in the general webosphere.

A good read check it out:

XLsuite Approved for ISP edition of Google APPS

XLsuite is a ruby on rails based business management application aimed at providing a fully hosted solution that can replace the multitude of various applications that are needed to manage a business.

This is obviously a loft task for a small group of coders, so it is with great excitement that we are able to announce that yesterday, we were approved for the first stage of integration with google's hosted applications.

So now (ok not yet, but we'll tie our systems into one login very soon) we'll be able to offer an integrated solution that includes the google calendar, email, personal start pages and docs.

This is a very big deal as it will drastically cut down our production time, tackling the calendar was a daunting task to say the least, so being able to pull in the world class

Google Partner Edition has Launched

This is big news for us, we've been looking forward to this day for close to a year now, to be able to formally integrate our open source ruby ERP XLsuite into google docs will both save us a ton of codding time as well as help us to leverage the security and brand awareness of Google.

We're very happy to hear this news and look forward to the integration process, I'm absolutely positive that this will be looked at as a major turning point in software and hosted SAS solution adoption by the business community.

Here is the official news from Googles Blog:

Google Apps Partner Edition

5/18/2007 08:42:00 AM

Posted by Hunter Middleton, Product Manager

From the beginning, we envisioned making Google Apps available to any organization that might want to offer this innovative set of services to its employees, customers, students, members, or any other associates of the organization. Today, we're excited to take another step in that direction by releasing a version of Google Apps specifically designed for ISPs, portals, and other service providers, whether you have a few thousand subscribers or over a million. This new version, which we're calling the Partner Edition, makes it easy for large and small service providers to offer your subscribers the latest versions of powerful tools, like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs & Spreadsheets, without having to worry about hosting, updating, or maintaining any of the services yourself. All you have to do is point and click in the easy admin control panel and figure out what branding you'd like to layer on top of the products in order to create a customized look and feel. You can quit spending your resources and time on applications like webmail -- and leave the work to our busy bees at the Googleplex.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/google-apps-partner-edition.html