Email overload? Yeah, us too. Perhaps Google’s new ‘priority inbox’ for Gmail might help some?
Priority Inbox is Google’s attempt to solve the e-mail woes of Gmail power users. At its core, the feature is an algorithm; Priority Inbox uses information such as keywords, the people you e-mail the most and your e-mail habits to select the most pressing e-mails in your inbox. Those e-mails are brought to the top of your Gmail and marked as important so you deal with them first.
Priority Inbox is also an adaptive algorithm. Marking items as important or unimportant teaches the system what types of messages you deem the most urgent. You can also use Gmail’s filters to automatically mark certain messages as important (for example, from your boss or your spouse),
The new feature appears as a new menu item just above the “Inbox” link (and is rolling out as we type so doesn’t appear for everyone just yet). Instead of indicating how many unread e-mails you have in your inbox, Priority Inbox only displays how many priority e-mails still require your attention. These appear at the top of Gmail as “Important and unread.”
The second layer of the new layout is your starred e-mails. These messages appear in their own section under the Priority Inbox. The goal is to get users to star important e-mails they have read but for whatever reason still need in their inboxes. Under the “Starred” section is “Everything else,” which contains the rest of your unarchived inbox.
Salesforce just released Q2 financial results today, posting record revenue of $394 million, an increase of 25% on a year-over-year basis. Q2 GAAP diluted earnings per share decreased 35% year-over-year to $0.11, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was flat year-over-year at $0.29.
Net Income came in at $14.7 million, down from $21.1 million in the same quarter in 2009. The company added 5,100 paying customers during the quarter, 500 of which came through the acquisition of Jigsaw earlier this year.
Salesforce says that it currently has 82,400 paying customers in total.
Google has decided to pull the plug on its Google Wave project.
Feted by some as this year’s new new thing, and by others as a confusing, buggy mess, Google Wave nonetheless managed to generate a ton of press during its short tenure.
However, with takeup lower than expected – due partly, one suspects, to the system being overly complex to use and really not ready technically for primetime, along with other priorities taking precedence (new social network anyone?), Google have made the move to put Wave into early retirement.
It won’t actually be completely dead, but the bulk of the team who had been working on it (many of whom are based in Australia) will be focussing on other projects, according to a Google spokesperson.
Interestingly enough, a number of the simpler collaboration elements of Wave have already started appearing in Google Docs, where they have a much easier to understand, and useful existence (one example being when multiple people are editing the same document). Given some of the big brains behind the project and advancements they were able to make, I’m sure we’ll see other aspects of Wave appearing in future Google offerings too at some point.
But, for now, it’s RIP Wave. We never really knew you at all….
Have you ever sent an email full of love, only to have it interpreted by the receiver as if it were full of boiling hate? Fired off an innocuous late night note to a customer only to read a reply in the morning that would suggest you’d asked about murdering their first born?
Yep, it’s happened to all of us at some point: you read your composition one way but somewhere along the line the meaning gets totally lost in translation.
Of course, you may also have written an email whilst feeling a little hot under the collar (or, even worse, having been on the bottle!), with very similar consequences.
Well fret no more, fellow email monsters. Allow me to introduce ToneCheck! Launched in Beta today, ToneCheck is “an e-mail plug-in that flags sentences with words or phrases that may convey unintended emotion or tone, then helps you re-write them. Just like Spell Check… but for Tone.”
ToneCheck evaluates words and phrases for the intensity of 8 primary emotions, allowing you to make corrections and adjust the overall tone before you send the wrong message.
Available as a plugin for use with Microsoft Outlook ToneCheck is currently available as a free trial. Further plugins and interfaces are apparently on the way.
PC World — Companies are doing a poor job of using social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, to engage their customers and employees. In fact, 70 percent of consumers want to interact with businesses via social media, but only 30 percent of companies are equipped to handle it. The grim news comes from a study by research firm Yankee Group, commissioned by Siemens Enterprise Communications.
Most customers and employees would rather use social media for business communications, but one-third of enterprises either lack formal social networking polices, don’t allow their employees to use social networks at work, or are unaware of their company’s participation in social media, the study showed.
By failing at integrating social networks, including corporate blogs, into regular business communications, enterprises are missing a golden opportunity to engage their customers and enhance worker productivity.
“Social media is changing the way businesses, customers and employees interact, and this creates significant opportunities for contact centers and the enterprise as a whole to leverage the integration of these tools into business processes,” said Yankee group research Zeus Kerravala, in a statement.
Other study findings show the importance of a strong social media presence for business:
• Fifty percent of survey respondents use social networks daily, or several times a day.
• Social media boosts devotion: Almost 60 percent of customers say that business outreach via social networks would improve their loyalty to a company.
• Enterprises should monitor social networks for consumer feedback, customers say.
• Employees love social media. Nearly 70 percent of workers want better tools to manage social networks for business. Example: They want the ability to launch a Web conference and invite people from their social and work networks.
Even with an appropriately large pinch of salt – the study above was, after all, developed in relation to Siemen’s OpenSpace software – there’s definitely in our experience resonance in the findings in relation to demand vs participation.
What do you think? Are they right? How is your business doing in this area?
IDG News Service — IBM’s second-quarter profits were up 9 percent from a year earlier, the company announced on Monday, with increased sales in the U.S. and Asia helping to offset weaker spending in Europe.
Net profit for the quarter ended June 30 was US$3.4 billion, or $2.61 per share, up from $3.1 billion, or $2.32 per share, in the same quarter last year, IBM said. Revenue was $23.7 billion, up 2 percent year over year.
IBM also raised its earnings outlook for the year to at least $11.25 per share, up $.05 from its previous guidance.
Big Blue expects to achieve that through a shift to selling more high-value products and the rollout of new mainframes and Power-based systems later this year, among other factors, CEO Samuel Palmisano said in a statement.
Second-quarter software revenue was up 2 percent, or 6 percent when taking into account the recent divestiture of IBM’s project lifecycle management business, the company said.
Global services revenue also increased by 2 percent, but the segment contained one notable weak spot: Contract signings in the quarter fell 12 percent to $12.3 billion, an indication that companies could be slowing down on new IT projects amid fresh uncertainties in the global economy, such as the European debt crisis.
However, IBM also signed 15 services pacts during the quarter worth more than $100 million, up from 13 in the previous quarter.
Revenue from IBM’s Systems & Technology segment, including its server hardware, increased by 3 percent. Sales of its industry-standard System x servers jumped 30 percent, but revenue from Power systems was down 10 percent, and System z mainframe sales fell 24 percent.
Sales of some hardware products may have fallen because customers are waiting for upcoming product releases, Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge said during a conference call.
For example, its next System Z mainframe is “not just a new Z,” according to Loughridge. “It’s a Z in a ’system of systems’ implementation.”
The results were mixed on a geographic basis. Revenue increased by 3 percent in the Americas to $10.2 billion, and by 9 percent in the Asia-Pacific to $5.4 billion, but sales were down 6 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, to $7.4 billion, IBM said.
IBM’s shares ended the normal day’s trading at $129.79 ahead of the earnings announcement, up slightly from their previous close.
Microsoft today announced the Windows Azure platform appliance—a Windows Azure cloud-in-a-box system enabling the creation of private Windows Azure systems.
The platform appliance will be an all-in-one combination of server hardware, networking infrastructure, storage, and software. Whilst the exact form of the appliance is still to be determined, the scale will be large: hundreds or thousands of servers - Microsoft’s own Windows Azure data centers use self-contained shipping containers packed full of hardware.
Unsurprisingly, given this uncertainty over system specifics, exact pricing and availability are presently unknown. Dell, HP, and Fujitsu will all be developing and selling Windows Azure platform appliances. Initially, the companies will be selling services hosted from their own data centers; this will then be expanded to include private sale and hosting of platform appliances. Dell hopes to have appliances running within its own data centers by January, and expects to be selling the systems to third parties within 12 months.
One early customer is eBay. eBay already uses Microsoft’s public Windows Azure hosting for its iPad listings, an early pilot deployment to prove the viability of the platform. eBay plans to expand this, first using Windows Azure appliances to host internal business applications, and ultimately hosting all business operations on a privately owned Windows Azure-powered cloud.
Though such systems will not be an option for smaller customers, they should give Windows Azure much broader reach into markets such as government and financial services. They should also help to alleviate some lock-in concerns; users of public clouds can be left in the lurch when their provider decides to shut up shop—no such problem exists for private systems.
[update: Microsoft's Bob Muglia has a few more details on the devices. Initial deployments looking to target the big end of town at 1000+ server installs]
iTNews has posted an interesting interview with Nick Holdsworth, Comm Bank’s EGM of Service Support. In it, Holdsworth talks about the bank’s approach to Cloud Computing and how they deal with the sheer scale of such a challenge – covering multiple data centres, geographies, systems and an extensive user base.
The bank has settled on a standard, virtualised infrastructure stack, to be deployed both in-house and mandated for private cloud providers wanting to do business with the bank.
The bank will outsource the lion’s share of its IT infrastructure needs to a service provider that is prepared to offer favourable pricing to win the bulkiest block of the bank’s data-crunching business.
But unlike past outsourcing agreements, the CBA will ask that these services be delivered on the bank’s mandated ‘cloud’ architecture and under a contract that allows the CBA to rapidly shift to another provider if competitors offer better value.
The full story can be found over at iTnews, and the video of the interview is embedded below:
Cisco announced today the Cius, an Android-based seven-inch tablet computer aimed at the enterprise.
The device will feature both front and rear-facing cameras, Cisco TelePresence-compatible video conferencing and access to applications such as Cisco Quad, WebEx and AnyConnect Security VPN Client, as well as access to the Android app store. The launch further diversifies Cisco’s offerings.
The device will weigh 1.15 pounds and feature Wi-Fi, 3G/4G data, Bluetooth, and HD audio and video. In addition to its phone-like docking station, the Cius will support Bluetooth keyboards and mice.
Cisco says the tablet will be available for customer trials Q3 2010, followed by general availability Q1 2011.
Cisco has been diversifying its product line beyond networking equipment in recent years, and this tablet complements the company’s cloud computing, collaboration and conferencing initiatives. Cisco has been selling VoIP and video-conferencing hardware for some years now, and entered the consumer video market with its Flip Video acquisition last year, but this is the first time the company has offered its own computing device.
Cisco also announced a partnership today with MobileAccess to provide in-building cellular coverage over an organization’s existing network infrastructure.
Priority Inbox is also an adaptive algorithm. Marking items as important or unimportant teaches the system what types of messages you deem the most urgent. You can also use Gmail’s filters to automatically mark certain messages as important (for example, from your boss or your spouse),
Google has decided to pull the plug on its Google Wave project.
Super strong results from 
.. or so say Siemens Enterprise Communications.
[HT to RWW]
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