By Erik Small -

Ipswitch File Transfer launched a brand new file transfer product today – WS_FTP Server Ad Hoc Transfer Module.

This new module eliminates the need for email attachments which burden corporate email servers. IT managers can use WS_FTP Server Ad Hoc Transfer Module to enforce file sharing policies and have full visibility into the company’s file sharing activities.

Ipswitch’s website has been updated with all the details and features of the new module.

The simple benefits are summed up like this:

 1.Complete visibility into all file sharing activities
2.Proactively manage all file sharing interactions, both internal and external to the company, organization or domain
3.Enforce administrator defined policies and rules for sending files to other people
4.Remove the “file attachment” burden from the email server

By admin -

Microsoft is apparently shrugging off the big Chrome OS announcement from last week, which seems a bit silly to me. Considering Google is very big on FREE, a school of which Microsoft does attend – and with years of frustrated MS OS users, I would say that a Google offering will be a very welcome option. Especially being a Linux base – so hey, maybe we won’t need some ungainly antivirus/firewall suite bogging down our systems.. mmm, to dream. Anyway – here’s some more reason MS ought to worry -

Googles got a not-so-secret weapon in its bid to convert the world to applications such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk, Google Sites and, soon, Googles Chrome operating system: the 17 million college students on more than 4,000 campuses across the country.

For more than two years, Google has approached colleges and universities with a near-unbeatable offer: provide unlimited hosted e-mail and other applications, all branded by the institution and delivered free of charge.

via Googles 17 Million Built-in Chrome OS Users GOOG.

By pete -

It’s happened! Google has announced that it is officially working on an Operating System! It is only natural really – this writer has seen the signs for a while and has been talking it up for some time. When you look at how Google talks about many of its services as “web applications” – and then has actual applications such as Chrome and Google Talk, etc, it makes alot of sense. And then when you consider Android - a mobile OS – even more writing appears on the proverbial wall.

Google Chrome Operating System

Google Chrome has always been a little more than a browser: it’s optimized for running web applications, each tab runs as a separate process, the interface is minimalistic and there’s even a task manager. “We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build,” said Google in September 2008.

Google’s blog announces a natural extension of the Chrome project: an operating system for netbooks. “Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. (…) Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.”

As people use more and more web applications, the operating system becomes less important and it makes no sense to pay for it. The desktop mail client could be replaced by Gmail, the calendaring application could be replaced by Google Calendar, the office suite has lightweight alternatives: Google Docs and Zoho, it makes more sense to use an online feed reader like Google Reader, your scientific calculator is less powerful than Wolfram Alpha and you’ll rarely need a video player when you have YouTube, Hulu and other video sites.

This idea is not new and there are already operating systems optimized for the browser. For example, Good OS announced last year Cloud, an operating system that “integrates a web browser with a compressed Linux operating system kernel for immediate access to Internet, integration of browser and rich client applications, and full control of the computer from inside the browser”. If Google manages to create a great user interface, the new operating system could be very successful.

{ Image from Google Chrome’s comic book, licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs. }

via Google Chrome Operating System.

By pete -

We picked up on this last week, but today is the official announcement. In a nutshell, “A test version of Opera’s formidable alternative browser introduces Unite, a plug-in that lets users share music, pictures, files, notes, and chat rooms straight from their desktop.”

For some more info, read Opera product analyst Lawrence Eng’s blog post on the subject:

“Currently, most of us contribute content to the Web (for example by putting our personal information on social networking sites, uploading photos to Flickr, or maybe publishing blog posts), but we don’t contribute to its fabric — the underlying infrastructure that defines the online landscape that we inhabit.

Our computers are only dumb terminals connected to other computers (meaning servers) owned by other people — such as large corporations — who we depend upon to host our words, thoughts, and images. We depend on them to do it well and with our best interests at heart. We place our trust in these third parties, and we hope for the best, but as long as our own computers are not first class citizens on the Web, we are merely tenants, and hosting companies are the landlords of the Internet.”

Diagram:

Video Overview:

see also.. TechCrunch: That Reinvention Of The Web Thing Opera Was Talking About? It’s Called Opera Unite and

Lifehacker: Opera Unite Puts a Media Server in Your Browser

Boy Genius Report: Opera announces “Opera Unite”, a web server within a web browser

By pete -

TechCrunch picked up on this little snippet from Opera -

We’ve heard the phrase ‘reinventing the web’ too many times already, so we’re weary of Opera’s claims, but this made us curious anyhow. The browser maker has just unveiled Opera 10 in beta, so it could be taking the wraps off the product and taking it public rather quickly. Or it could be something entirely different.

via Next Week, Opera Claims It Will “Reinvent The Web” .