Umbrella Today is a refreshingly easy service that helps you figure out whether or not you should bring an umbrella out into this crazy world we live in. You just plug in your ZIP code (sorry international users) and it will give you a easy yes or no answer.

Rain or shine, you’re given the option to sign up for an SMS alert service. It lets you know the next time you should bring an umbrella for that selected ZIP code whenever precipitation is in the forecast. You can also set what time of the day you want them delivered–like before you leave the home.

Related: Rain and shine hit Google Maps and Google Earth

[via BuzzFeed]

Wondering whether or not you'll be needing some rain protection? Umbrella This day gives you the heads up.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

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It stands to reason that TechCrunch the blog will have an unfair advantage in covering the TechCrunch50 event. The same team produces both products, and the company has put a gag order on companies accepted to present on stage. Only the TechCrunch team knows who’s going to be pitching at the event. So it will be easy for them to organize their coverage and even prepare stories on the presenting companies ahead of time.

This kvetch might smack of inside baseball to many readers, but it’s been bugging me. Do I really want to spend three days covering an event where I am at such a decided disadvantage, where I’m competing with the event itself? DemoFall, for comparison’s sake, doesn’t compete with other journalists or blogs; It has its own site but it doesn’t have the readership, stature, or aspirations of TechCrunch.

But I believe TechCrunch’s unfair advantage in covering its own event will be mitigated by policies that TechCrunch50 co-host Jason Calacanis relayed after talking with CNET News Editor in Chief Dan Farber. Quoting an e-mail from Calacanis:

Mike [Arrington, TechCrunch founder] has concurred that:

a) he’ll not allow TechCrunch editors to bank stories [write them ahead of time].

b) TechCrunch won’t cover the live demos until after each session–giving other press outlets first shot at the stories (like an HOUR advantage!)

c) TechCrunch will link to other publications in TC’s coverage.

Good for you, Jason and Michael. I still have issues with the way the event is set up, but if your team holds true to these policies, at least I’m not going into this event with the deck completely stacked against me.

This move is also a sound business decision. It makes sense to keep the press happy at TechCrunch50, since press coverage is one of the key drivers for events like this, and since the TechCrunch50 event is such a massive moneymaker for the TechCrunch company. Even a blog of TechCrunch’s size can make only so much money from advertising. The real money for a business of TechCrunch’s scale is events, and TechCrunch50, with its 800 to 1,000 (my estimate) paid attendees at $2,995 each, and its roster of five-figure sponsors, is this operation’s large revenue producer.

For other coverage of TechCrunch50 and the competing DemoFall conference, see CNET’s Launch Week page, our special Twitter feed, and the other major Web 2.0 blogs like Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm, and CenterNetworks. If you like the inside-the-beltway skinny, ValleyWag is also sure to have some fun items.

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To my mind, the killer feature of Google Docs is not that it is Web-based, per se. It’s that it makes real-time collaboration easy. You can invite a user into a document you currently have open, and you both can edit the file at the same time. It’s not a feature you’re going to need all the time, but when you’re on a deadline and need to get sign-off from one or more other person on a document right away, it’s a life-saver (see also: Zooos).

Plutext adds new collaboration functions to Word.

(Credit: Plutext)

Fighting this killer feature is Microsoft Word’s own killer feature, which is: Everyone in business has Word, and most people know how to use it effectively. There are plenty of people who would use a simultaneous editing feature in Word if it had one, and who aren’t going to switch to Google just because it does.

A new service, Plutext, currently being developed, will bring nearly live editing to Word documents. I saw a demo at the Office 2.0 conference.

The service works as a plug-in to Word, adding a collection of buttons in the “Review” tab. These new functions let you invite users into a document, push your changes to the Web, and read in new changes.

While Plutext does not support strictly simultaneous editing (you have to intentionally publish your changes and get new updates), neither does it let two users get out of sync by letting them work on different versions of the same file. You really can have a dozen people in the same document at the same time. Plutext uses Word’s existing Accept and Reject Revisions function to review changes other people have made on your open document.

With Plutext, you won’t have the problem of multiple versions of the file floating around with different revisions in them, nor will you run into the issue of trying to open a document to edit it only to find that some other user has it opened and locked for changes, and is out to lunch.

There’s also a wiki-like revision history that acts as an audit trail of all the work done on a document. Revisions in this report are flagged either by paragraph or section heading (user’s choice); the latter could make reading updates on technical and legal documents much easier than it would be otherwise.

The system creates readable audit trails of changes.

(Credit: Plutext)

Plutext Managing Director Jason Harrop told me that real-time co-editing is technically possible with his platform, but that his research says users want the level of control that the intentional publishing gives them.

Plutext is also going to release a free Java-based editor, Docx4all, that natively supports Word .DOCX files as well as the Plutext system. It’s not a pure Web-based editor, but it will grant document authors to send links to active versions of their files to users who don’t have Word.

The demo I saw was early and a bit rough; taking a file from standard single-user mode to collaborative looked complicated; Harrop states the system will be cleaner when it ships in October.

Plutext will be available as server-based software for companies that want their documents stored inside their own firewalls; a cloud-based Plutext service may also be forthcoming.

See also: Expresso, EditGrid, Sharepoint. And keep an eye on Docverse.

Fore more visit Source: [webware]

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Google Chrome will work with NetSuite’s online record-keeping and customer-relations software, the company said Friday.

Elements of the company’s online tools, including editing text and drag-and-drop operations, benefit from Chrome’s fast JavaScript, NetSuite stated. However, Google’s assertions of compatibility with Apple Safari notwithstanding, NetSuite stated it will gradually extend support to its customers, finishing by mid-October.

The company boasted it’s the first on the internet business application to support Chrome, just as it was the first with native support for the iPhone’s version of Safari and the new Firefox 3.0.

But that sort of support seems more like a reasonably clever attempt to capitalize on the Chrome buzz than anything customers truly are clamoring for.

After all, NetSuite is geared toward businesses that typically are the kinds of conservative and technologically unadventurous customers who aren’t first in line to try the latest beta version of a Web browser. One of the reasons Microsoft won’t frog-march us all to Internet Explorer 7, much less IE 8, is that many businesses have set up operations using IE 6, even though it was introduced in 2001.

Click here for full coverage of the Google Chrome launch.

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Google Chrome will work with NetSuite’s on the web accounting and customer-relations software, the company stated Friday.

Elements of the company’s on the internet tools, including editing text and drag-and-drop operations, benefit from Chrome’s fast JavaScript, NetSuite stated. However, Google’s assertions of compatibility with Apple Safari notwithstanding, NetSuite stated it will gradually extend support to its customers, finishing by mid-October.

The company boasted it’s the first on the web business application to support Chrome, just as it was the first with native support for the iPhone’s version of Safari and the new Firefox 3.0.

But that sort of support seems more like a reasonably clever attempt to capitalize on the Chrome buzz than anything customers truly are clamoring for.

After all, NetSuite is geared toward businesses that typically are the kinds of conservative and technologically unadventurous customers who aren’t first in line to try the latest beta version of a Web browser. One of the reasons Microsoft won’t frog-march us all to World wide web Explorer 7, much less IE 8, is that many businesses have set up operations using IE 6, although it was introduced in 2001.

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On Monday, September 8, two major product launch shows kick off: DemoFall in San Diego, and TechCrunch50 in San Francisco. There will be more than 100 products officially announced at these conferences, and we’ll be covering the ideal of them on CNET blogs and on our Launch Week page.

For the full rundown of everything that’s happening at the show, see the Twitter feed at the right of our roundup page, or go to the standalone Launchweek Twitter page.

We’ll have video crews at both shows. Natali Del Conte at DemoFall, and Kara Tsuboi at TechCrunch50 will be interviewing the most interesting entrepreneurs. Those videos will also appear on the roundup page.

For more on the rivalry between the shows, see “Are Demo and TechCrunch 50 fragmenting their audiences?“

What to expect
Launches at the TechCrunch show will all be Web 2.0 companies. Demo’s presenters likely will be mostly Web 2.0 launches, with a few traditional software and hardware companies in the mix. So what’s the real difference between the shows?

Demo, a show that’s been running since the late 1980s, attracts a regular group of venture capitalists and journalists who come to see what they know will be a highly-produced showcase of closely vetted companies. Demo charges companies to present to the crowd (the fee is now more than $18,000), and this has historically had the effect of filtering out poorly-funded companies from even applying to present. While Demo’s presenting companies are not always scintillating, the majority of them have solid business models. There have been notably cool demos at Demo, like the Palm Pilot, the Pleo, and the Moobella ice cream machine I mocked previously.

TechCrunch, in its second year, is the scrappier conference. Timed this year to run at the same time as Demo, it also has a tough approval process, but it doesn’t charge companies to present on-stage. Companies for which $18,000 makes a massive difference are drawn to TechCrunch, as are those that believe that the new TechCrunch conference will get superior press coverage than Demo. I anticipate that a much bigger proportion of the companies at TechCrunch will have unformed business models and be further away from being ready for customer adoption, but there will still be many with solid, creative plans. TechCrunch last year brought us some really good Web 2.0 start-ups, such as Mint and TripIt.

This year, stories written about TechCrunch presenters will likely be less insightful than those about Demo companies, for two reasons. First, TechCrunch management has scared presenters into not pre-briefing the press. A few companies have wisely ignored this directive, but for the most part the writers and bloggers covering TechCrunch don’t know what they are going to get when they go to the show. Demo presenters have been pre-briefing journalists for weeks.

Second, there is no post-presentation showcase for TechCrunch companies. People who want to interview TechCrunch CEOs have to buttonhole the presenters immediately after the presentation in a special room set aside for interviews, or find them later in the hallways. There will be a demo hall for TechCrunch companies, but this “demo pit” is for companies that did not make the cut to present on-stage. Demo, in contrast, puts all its presenting companies in one large pavilion where people can wander between the companies and chat up the execs as they want, either before or after they see their presentations on the main stage. It’s a better environment for learning about the companies.

Based on my experience with previous product launch conferences, it’s a safe bet that no more than a dozen of the companies presenting during the combined Demo/TechCrunch launchfest will be truly memorable. But there are plenty of opportunities still to seize market share on the Web, and we will try to find those dozen companies that have identified good ways to do it. CNET writers and video crews will be on-site at both events and will uncover the new products worth your attention.

Fore more visit Source: [webware]

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LetsCall.Me is a smart new service for giving out your contact information to others without actually revealing it. At sign-up you get a special vanity URL and the option to have it direct callers to whatever number you provide. People who have your URL and want to call you can simply enter in their phone number and it will call that number to connect them to yours.

Unlike some other services that offer de-centralized calling (see GrandCentral, Jaxtr, JaJah, and iNumbr), LetsCall.Me preserves the caller’s number so you can see it before picking up. I had my brother help me test this and he was a little confused to be calling Palm Springs, Calif., whereas I knew it was him because he was in my phone book.

Users who want to use the service as a virtual business card can simply make various bits of their contact information publicly available, although the phone number will always remains hidden. In future versions, I’d like to be able to display a wider array of profile information, as well as have a simpler way to manage multiple URLs with the same account. As it stands you’ve got to remember which ones you’ve set up even though they’re on the same account.

[via MakeUseOf and Lifehacker]

Just enter in whatever vanity URL you want, and if it's available, anyone who clicks on it will be able to see what contact information you've made public, as well as being able to plug in their phone number and have it connect you.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

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Privacy suggests are starting to sound the alarm over a feature in Google’s Chrome that sends anything typed in the browser’s Omnibox back to Google.

Google told CNET News earlier Wednesday that it plans to store about 2 percent of the data it gets back, along with the IP address of the computer that sent it. Google stated it won’t receive or store data if users turn off the auto-suggest feature or if they choose a default search provider other than Google or if they’re using the product’s “Incognito” mode.

Still, EFF staff technologist Peter Eckersley said in an interview that he is concerned about Google having yet another window into what the world is browsing.

“We’re worried that Chrome will be another giant conveyer belt moving private information about our use of the Web into Google’s data vaults,” Eckersley stated. “Google already knows far too much about what everybody is thinking at any given moment.

Eckersley did point out that there are lots of ways to keep the data from being sent to Google, but noted that there’s still a lot of data that’ll head Google’s way.

Because Chrome is open source, Eckersley suggested that one option would be for privacy-minded outsiders to create their own suggestion engine that sits on surfers’ own Personal computers, offering some of the utility that Google provides, without having to send the data to its servers. He noted that Chrome, itself, already does this when a surfer uses Chrome in its more stealthy Incognito mode. In that case, all recommendations are based on a surfer’s locally stored history.

“The addition of Incognito is great,” he stated, adding that Google is making some strides with Chrome, clearly recognizing that people want to be able to surf the Web without having a record of it stored in various places.

“They are making some initial moves in the directions of that,” Eckersley said, but reiterated his concerns over how the Omnibox works.

“We are genuinely really worried about the Omnibox thing,” he stated. “It’s just one more piece of the complete puzzle of Google seeing everything that everyone is doing.”

Simon Davies, Founder of Privacy International and a senior fellow with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) also expressed concern over the Omnibox feature.

“I’m astonished that these terms are sent to Google even without the return being hit,” Davies said. “That is beyond anything that Google has ever contemplated before.”

Davies said the lack of attention to privacy and less-than-clear disclosure of its information use is typical Google behavior.

“This is why Google is running into trouble with regulators in Europe,” Davies said. “They will trip themselves up at some point very badly. The patience of regulators is growing thin.”

Click here for full coverage of the Google Chrome launch.

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Google introduced Chrome in part because it wants faster browsing and the richer Web applications that speed will unlock. So how does Chrome actually stack up?

Google's Chrome overpowers the other browsers on the five subtests by which Google measures its browser's JavaScript performance.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Lars Bak, the Google engineer who was the technical leader for Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine, stated at the launch event Tuesday he’s confident Chrome is “many times faster” than the rivals at running JavaScript, the programming language that powers Google Docs, Gmail, and many other Web applications.

But when pressed for specifics, he told me to try them out. So I did.

Google offers a site with five JavaScript benchmarks. On each one of these tests, Chrome clearly trounced the competition. I hope benchmarking experts and developers will weigh in with comments about how well these tests represent true JavaScript performance on the Web–either for ordinary sites or for rich Web apps.

Here’s the site description of the speed tests:

•

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LetsCall.Me is a smart new service for giving out your contact information to others without actually revealing it. At sign-up you get a special vanity URL and the option to have it direct callers to whatever number you provide. People who have your URL and want to call you can simply enter in their phone number and it will call that number to connect them to yours.

Unlike some other services that offer de-centralized calling (see GrandCentral, Jaxtr, JaJah, and iNumbr), LetsCall.Me preserves the caller’s number so you can see it before picking up. I had my brother help me test this and he was a little confused to be calling Palm Springs, Calif., whereas I knew it was him because he was in my phone book.

Users who want to use the service as a virtual business card can simply make various bits of their contact information publicly available, although the phone number will always remains hidden. In future versions, I’d like to be able to display a wider array of profile information, as well as have a simpler way to manage multiple URLs with the same account. As it stands you’ve got to remember which ones you’ve set up although they’re on the same account.

[via MakeUseOf and Lifehacker]

Just enter in whatever vanity URL you want, and if it's available, anyone who clicks on it will be able to see what contact information you've made public, as well as being able to plug in their phone number and have it connect you.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

Fore more visit Source: [webware]

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