Pete Babb

In a post to the Google Docs blog, Venkat Panchapakesan, vice president of engineering at Google, says that the company will be culling the list of browsers Google Apps will support come Aug. 1. On the chopping block: Firefox 3.5, Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, and all earlier versions of those browsers.

While the elimination of support for Firefox 3.5 and earlier and Safari 3 and earlier won't affect many users, the latest figures from NetMarketShareshow that IE7 is still pulling 7 percent of the browser market. Beyond that, IE6, which Google dropped support for last year, is still claiming a healthy 10.36 percent, second only to IE8. All told, Google is eliminating support to 17.4 percent of the browser market merely by cutting off IE7 and below.

In a post to the Google Docs blog, Venkat Panchapakesan, vice president of engineering at Google, says that the company will be culling the list of browsers Google Apps will support come Aug. 1. On the chopping block: Firefox 3.5, Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, and all earlier versions of those browsers.

While the elimination of support for Firefox 3.5 and earlier and Safari 3 and earlier won't affect many users, the latest figures from NetMarketShare show that IE7 is still pulling 7 percent of the browser market. Beyond that, IE6, which Google dropped support for last year, is still claiming a healthy 10.36 percent, second only to IE8. All told, Google is eliminating support to 17.4 percent of the browser market merely by cutting off IE7 and below.

Here's a line of defense Microsoft could use against accusations that Bing steals Google's search results: Bing doesn't rip off Google because Bing is more accurate than Google. Ouch!

According to research by Experian Hitwise, Bing (and Yahoo Search powered by Bing) achieved a success rate of 81 percent for January 2011; Google, meanwhile, managed only a 65 percent success rate. Both of those figures are unchanged from December 2010.

Jailbreaking an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch used to be a somewhat complicated process, but now it couldn't be easier: Simply go to the website jailbreakme.com, and you're done. As a bonus, jailbreakme.com gives you access to the Cydia store of apps for your newly jailbroken device.

Let's assume that the conventional wisdom comes to pass: AT&T loses its exclusivity as the iPhone's carrier, and Apple's smartphone is brought to Verizon Wireless' network as well. Naturally, Verizon customers who are also iPhone fans will celebrate the news, but in terms of the big players in this space, who stands to gain the most, and who stands to be left behind?

The spin-jockeying has already begun: AT&T is pre-emptively claiming that losing its exclusive grip on the iPhone won't hurt its revenue. On the heels of that, Motorola floated the idea that it will benefit if the iPhone goes to Verizon. Both are likely wrong.

The big trend for applications in 2010 can be summed up in one word: collaboration. Nowadays, it's not enough for an app to help workers do their job; apps must also let workers work with each other and easily share information. Microsoft has clearly gotten the message, as Office 2010 will provide a big boost in collaboration abilities.

Paul West of SharePoint 360 has plenty of experience with Microsoft technology, having been a part of the Microsoft Early Adopters Program for years. Recently, they were given a sneak peek at Office 2010 and immediately saw a slew of upgrades aimed squarely at helping Office users collaborate as effortlessly as possible via SharePoint.

Salesforce.com today introduced Salesforce Chatter, a social networking service in the cloud that customers use to set up secure walled gardens for collaborative business efforts. The new offering also enables subscribers to the Force.com app dev platform to turn existing Force.com applications into social apps.

Chatter offers many of the features of social networking sites like Facebook, including profiles, status updates, update feeds, and groups. In this way, users across a business can easily connect with other users, see what others are working on, and team up to work on projects. Chatter can also pull content directly from users' Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Microsoft is announcing today the latest step in its next wave of Office-related products, Project 2010, which the company says is the biggest Project release in a decade. The software has been given a significant upgrade with an eye toward simplifying project management.

Project 2010 is built on SharePoint Server 2010 in order to enhance collaboration capability, make for easy integration with Microsoft Office and Exchange, and allow for easy deployment and scalability. "The fresh, simple and intuitive features of Microsoft Project 2010 will enable teams and organizations of all sizes to select and deliver the right projects on time and on budget," said Chris Capossela, Senior Vice President, Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft.