Pittsburgh looks to save money with Gmail migration
In an attempt to get away from paying for high-priced email administrators, the Pittsburgh city government is looking to save money and move to the cutting edge with a migration to Google Apps.
Pittsburgh CIO Howard Stern said the city is set to sign a contract with Google in mid-August and then begin the process of migrating to Gmail and Google Calendar in November. All of the city's 2,000 to 3,000 email accounts should be moved over to the new system by the end of the year, according to Stern.
"Going to the cloud seems like a great option for us," Stern said. "I'm optimistic.... I'm a little anxious about any change that will impact 2,000 to 3,000 users, but I think the disruption will be minimal and the impact will be huge." Read more...
Twitter vs Google+: Why one of these is way more interesting than a social network
Twitter is not the same as Facebook or Google+. There, I've said it. And, for the benefit of certain internet power users, such as Robert Scoble, I'll say it again: Twitter is not the same as Facebook or Google+. Nor should it be.
Facebook and to a lesser extent Google+ are, first and foremost, social networks. Twitter is an information network. That's a big distinction.
A social network is a network of people connected by acquaintance, whereas an information network draws people together based on interests. The first set of connections are typically forged - in the first instance at least - by geographical proximity. You need to have been in the same room as a person in this network, at some point in time. Read more...
Developer fury as Google makes Android apps vanish
Android developers are furious about Google's changes to the way search works in the Android application marketplace.
The changes were put into place on 1 July, and since then, a lot of previously very popular applications have now effectively disappeared.
The anger on the Android forums is partly financial – one developer said downloads had been cut 80 per cent since the change – and partly irritation at Google's arrogance: the company hasn't bothered to respond. Read more...
Adobe revs online forms and survey creator
Hot on the heels of its acquisition of digital-signature firm EchoSign last week, Adobe's Acrobat Solutions team popped another piece into its online-documents puzzle with an upgrade to its fledgling web-form creator, FormsCentral.
The online tool was launched on Valentine's Day – that's February 14 to you readers living in romance-free zones – with the goal of making the creation and management of forms and surveys so easy that even overpaid corner-office execs could do it.
"We wanted to ... really simplify the way you could create, distribute, collect information, and analyze the results," Adobe marketeer Todd Gerber told The Reg when describing the purpose of FormsCentral. Read more...
Mozilla mobile OS may face future patent battles, says expert
Mozilla's plan to create a mobile operating system will probably face patent challenges, one expert said, while another called it "too little, too late."
Yesterday, Mozilla announced a new project dubbed "Boot to Gecko" (B2G) that it hopes will lead to a "complete, standalone operating system for the open Web."
Although B2G will feature new Web-based APIs (application programming interfaces) that let developers access device hardware to make calls, send texts, take photos and more, Mozilla plans to use bits of Android, including the kernel and device drivers, at the outset.
That could leave Mozilla open to the kind of intense patent litigation Android now faces, said Florian Mueller, an independent patent analyst whose blog FOSS Patents is closely followed by both patent professionals and and technophiles. Read more...
Google works to soothe users over real name controversy
Google has heard the public outcry about its name restrictions and the way it killed off many Google+ user accounts, and it's working fast to fix the problem.
Many Google+ users have been up in arms over the past few days, since the new social networking site cranked up its efforts to delete the accounts of people who weren't using their real names.
Some users are upset because they want to use a pseudonym as a privacy measure and don't want to be forced to give their real names. Others complained that they did use their real names but had their accounts deleted anyway because they have nontraditional names or their names have foreign-language characters.
Google+ executives said they've heard the complaints and they are working to rectify the situation. Read more...
Keeping mobile workers connected overseas
It's been a rough time of late for global business travelers who need to stay in touch.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods and wildfires have disrupted communications across large geographic regions, while political turmoil -- and government responses to that unrest -- have thrown normal communications routines into disarray.
What's notable is how quickly and unexpectedly events can unfold. One day, a country can be wired and connected. But the next day, cellphone service is out and Internet connections are down. Travelers without a backup plan can be left stranded and scrambling. Read more...
Facebook targets Google+ users with business-friendly page
Facebook introduced "Facebook for Business," a step-by-step guideline and tips page for small businesses using Facebook on Tuesday. This news is interesting, Colleen Taylor from GigaOm points out, primarily because it comes in the days after Google+ purged its social network of business accounts.
Google recently began removing business accounts -- including Mashable, Ford, and Sesame Street -- from its Google+ social network. The reason? Google+, as it stands now, is for individuals -- not businesses (hey, at least that's in line with their "real names" policy). Ford's and Mashable's accounts were later restored, and Google said it would allow a "tiny" number of businesses to keep their profiles. Read more...
Drive-by attack shows mobile threat
As smartphones increasingly hold interesting data, attackers will target the devices using known vulnerabilities in common software packages.
One security researcher plans to show off just such an attack at next week's Black Hat Security Briefings in Las Vegas.
In a presentation at the conference, Neil Daswani, chief technology officer for Web security firm Dasient, will show off a proof-of-concept attack that demonstrates a drive-by attack on an Android phone using a vulnerability in the Webkit framework that powers the common browser for the platform. The attack opens up a channel through which Daswani exploits a vulnerability in Skype to read information from the application and eavesdrop on chat conversations. Read more...