While being a geek this Sunday on one of my regular motorcycle forums, I came a across a post about a mobile app I hadn't year heard about - Waze.

It seems on a basic level to be a app that you download on your smart phone that monitors your motion in traffic and uploads that data real-time to the Waze system that other user can then access to see what's happening on the roads that minute...  More than that, Waze uses the input of its users to actually create the maps in its database.  This could be really useful where there's road construction going on or local roads not reflected on published maps.  It's got some other cool features, as well.

Anyway, I just watched the demo and if it weren't for the fact that I had dropped my Blackberry in my dogs water bowl, I'd be downloading it now.  If anyone has used it, I'd love to get some impressions of it...

A few weeks back there was a NY Times article on South Korea's concept of the Ubiquitous City, where an area called New Songdo would arguably become the most networked place in the world.  Following the crash of the Asian markets a few years back, Seoul made a concerted effort to move from an industrial economy to that of one based on IT.  In this vein, they've created the concept for the Ubiquitous City.  For example, recycling bins could use RFID to credit you with recycling a glass bottle, if you need a birth certificate you could get one printed from a city government kiosk on the sidewalk, there's even talk of pressure sensitive floors to detect a fall in an elderly persons home...  Naturally, storing and processing all this data would be ideally suited for the Cloud and it seems that Korean government feels the same.

To develop their Cloud infrastructure, the government just announced that they will be devoting $172 million dollars over the next year to help the private sector promote, develop and deploy Cloud based systems.   While that might not be considered a lot of money in some circles (especially when it comes to government funding) the fact that the Seoul is putting any money towards this nascent industry is a sign of forward thinking and can only bode well for SaaS vendors worldwide.  Kudos to South Korea for putting its money where its mouth is...

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Rick Nucci of Boomi sat down with us today at SIIA's OnDemand '09 and gave us his thoughts on integration.  Keep in mind, this is just a sneak peek so be sure to check back with us for the full length interview!

http://www.boomi.com 

Inc. Magazine interviewed Salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff as SaaS and Cloud Computing celebrates 10 years. Here are some of the highlights.

• When you started Salesforce.com in 1999, Web-based software was virtually unheard of. Looking back, what convinced you that the idea was going to work?
  When I was at Oracle in 1996, we were working with Amazon.com in architecting their system. And I said, If Amazon could build a system to deliver books, then we can deliver business functionality through the same technology model. What we were really able to do is stand on the shoulders of giants like Amazon and eBay and other consumer services who had pioneered this idea but for consumer ecommerce, or search, or for auctions. What we were able to show is how companies could run all their business information that same exact way.

• Do you have an example of a small business that is using cloud computing particularly well?
  There’s a great company called Vetrazzo: They crush recycled glass and turn it into kitchen counter tops—it’s very cool. The CEO is a guy named Jim Sheppard and he’s able to take our services, not just CRM, but our platform called Force.com and he runs an entire business on Salesforce and Force.com. He’s built manufacturing, inventory, and customer management systems on it—and he’s one of the fastest-growing companies in environmental products. The power of that is as he grows and gets bigger and scales and gets more successful, he doesn’t have to change systems because we can go higher when he goes higher. You can be a business of any size—small, medium, or large—but if you’re a small business about to turn into a big business like Vetrazzo, we’re ideal for you because you can focus on your business, not your software. 

(October 14, 2009, Espoo, Finland) What's new in PlanMill Release 12.1.1 

PlanMill Release 12.1.1 comes with several new enhancements, major usability and performance improvements, as well as addressing known and fixed issues.

Key features and enhancements View demo  

• Google Maps - Integrated to PlanMill Accounts, Contacts, Projects and Users modules* 
  
• List view & filters section - Ability to Hide and Show filters by double clicking.
• List view & reset sorting - Save selected column as Personalized default. Use reset sorting to update default setting. 
• Revenues summary by month report - New Project status filter added.
• Security - Enhanced password validation when saving new password. 

*Note! Remember to check your security option settings with MS Internet Explorer 8 - View demo