Imagine — no travel delays, no business class costs, no lost equipment, no harried, sleep-deprived employees. Just log in and go. What am I talking about? Web conferencing. Since cost-cutting is undoubtedly keeping IT decision-makers busy (and rightfully too), web conferencing can singularly improve business’s response time and effectiveness in 2009, opine the IT consultants.

According to one consultant, “As with most tech trends, some corporates/businesses went in blindly, without really analyzing what the costs and benefits of UCC could be — or whether the latter outweighs the former. After all, if everyone’s talking about it, it must be a good thing, right?” For chief technology officers (CTOs), chief information officers (CIOs) and IT directors globally, 2009 has brought dramatically smaller budgets in many areas. web conferencing has the potential to save big money and improve response time of businesses. Also, the minuscule percentage of stay-at-home employees can also benefit from it.

Unified communications and collaboration (UCC) software is an integration of communication tools such as e-mail, VoIP, audio and web conferencing, and instant messaging. Most corporates have at least one or two of these toys, but few are truly integrating them to their full advantage. For example, many people still don’t think to forward e-mail to their mobile phones (when possible) or use headsets to take conference calls when they’re away from the office. UCC has the potential to replace a lot of business travel. Think about it — most users have been invited to attend a web conference, but many of them aren’t being proactive by managing their own meetings. (Of course, some of us choose not to let technology suck up all of our energy, but that’s another discussion.) Web conferencing can definitely be a big help in 2009.

Google is launching Google Video for business, a customized video platform aimed at businesses for internal use. Google is targeting Heads of training and HR and anyone that uses internal videos at the company. The product will be included in Google Apps Premier Edition for free, with 3 GB of storage per user account.

This is a “Zero billion dollar market today” said the director of product management Matthew Glotzbach in a briefing about the product. “But we will change this and Google video for business will be easy to use.” See Google Video Overview here.

These videos will basically have the same features and limitations as YouTube, including upload size and file type limits. Videos have access control, even if they are embedded outside of the intranet or Google Apps, and can be tagged and commented on just like YouTube. These videos are quick and easy to create and can be uploaded and shared in a number of ways: for training, to communicate end of quarter results, to showcase employee achievements and finally just for some laughs and fun during a stressful overworked the day.

So, what do you think as head of training or Human Resources at your firm? How will you use this? Will this replace your in-house video production crew? Will you use video more in video sharing sites to describe a new service or for quick updates?

In June this year, Electronic Arts launched Spore Creature Creator, a $10 version of its Spore game. Then, from within the application, players could share videos of their creations by clicking a button and uploading to YouTube. The idea was to get buzz going about the game before its September launch. To date, more than 160,000 videos of Spore creatures have been uploaded. The most popular of these videos has been viewed 194,000 times. EA ran a contest on YouTube, including a link to buy the game online on the contest site. This is the latest way, YouTube helps monetise your videos directly. (more…)

At first, I didn’t get Twitter. The internet service allows users to write and send, via SMS or online, short (140 characters max) messages to a network of fellow Twitters, usually off-the-cuff updates describing what they are doing at the moment. I couldn’t see why anyone would want to have such insights into my life. However, slowly and surely, after getting enough emails from people who said they were following me on Twitter, I started using it again.

It would be safe to say that probably most of the country’s 40-odd million net users still don’t get Twitter, but 6 million do. That is, six million have signed up, according to ABI research reports, but concludes that “the number who use it regularly is much smaller.” Still, that’s not bad, considering it was launched in 2006, although as the report says, it didn’t really begin to take off until around March of 2007. Twitter continues to amaze, astound, or underwhelm and baffle, depending on your point of view. Most people, however Twitter to communicate with friends on the fly. In fact, during the tragic carnage in Mumbai, one writer acquaintance of mine used Twitter to get updates from friends who were texting while in hiding. (more…)

The iPhone continues to attract interesting applications, despite concerns about Apple’s rigid policing of its online App Store, and the latest highlights include a delightful software from online retailer Amazon. But according to various estimates (measured online), games dominate the league table of most popular premium (paid-for) iPhone apps. (more…)

It’s no good reiterating what’s been happening in Mumbai. But my mind does visit the past.

Within hours of the London bombings, a renewed call went up for the United States to use its considerable technology heft to prevent similar attacks on the nation’s transit system. Public transit’s chief lobbyist said its members need $6 billion to upgrade security, and US Congress expectedly increased the funding.

Has our security intelligence ever thought about ideas such as smoke-detector-like devices sounding an alarm when a bomb-porting terrorist enters a train station? Or these are years and billions of dollars from fruition — if ever. The best current defenses for the country’s subways, buses, airports and trains, remain decidedly low tech — human vigilance and bomb-sniffing dogs!! (more…)

Almost overnight, we witnessed a new crop of mini-laptops on the scene. Manufacturers have always tried to figure out ways to make laptops lighter, smaller, faster and with longer battery life, but there always seemed to be a downward limit in the size of the machines. Now, it seems like just about every major manufacturer of laptops has its own sub-notebook, only now they’re referred to with the buzzwords of ultra-mobile PC or netbook. (more…)