Google combines word processing, spreadsheets
Google launched a beta version of Google Docs & Spreadsheets. The free program lets people create, manage and share documents and spreadsheets on the Web. The program enables people to collaborate online in real time, use a variety of file formats for importing and exporting, and publish documents and spreadsheets on a Web page or blog. Google acquired the online word-processing application Writely in March and launched Google Spreadsheets in June. Google recently opened Writely up to the public. Google also sells a product to corporations and organizations that they can offer their employees and members for free called Google Apps for Your Domain that ties together Web-based e-mail, calendar, chat and Web page publishing.

McDonalds brings "m-Venue" user-selected media
McDonald's has begun testing an in-store digital media service called m-Venue, offering music and video content from Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and others. The service, announced September 25, allows customers to browse and download music and video from their mobile phone or Wi-Fi-connected laptop when within a specific area in the restaurant. The pilot restaurant, in the Woodfield Mall at Schaumberg, Ill., features several flat panel displays promoting the content and customer text messages. No word yet on how many songs have been downloaded, but McDonald's says food sales have increased 17% since the service's introduction.

Magazine World Still Flat
The world of magazines is still flat, according to the latest data released by the Publishers Information Bureau. The new figures show that ad pages rose 0.7% in the first three quarters of the year compared with the equivalent period last year. Ad pages at 'Jane' were down 25.8% through September. Estimated revenue from January through September did grow 4.3%, per the Publishers Information Bureau. Much of the dollar calculations are pegged to official ad rates -- while many publishers frequently discount pages by undisclosed margins large and small. Some struggling titles narrowed their ad-page deficits in the new report, including Jane, where pages fell 25.8% through September. That's a big improvement for the Conde Nast Publications book, which was down 41.2% at the half. Conde's The New Yorker, on the other hand, saw pages fall 16.9% in the first three quarters from the period last year -- a slight improvement from a 17.6% slide in the first half. Celebrity weeklies kept adding pages, most notably the young Bauer Publishing tag team of In Touch Weekly, up 38.6% to 647 pages, and Life & Style Weekly, up 19.2% to 338.64%. Ad pages also grew at American Media's Star, by 9.1% to 752, and Wenner Media's Us Weekly, by 4.8% to 1,375. Time Inc.'s People dropped 0.7% but held onto its enormous lead, printing 2,700 ad pages through September. Among advertisers in the first three quarters, the drugs-and-remedies players expanded their buys the most, running 13,507 pages for an increase of 12.2%. Retail showed the next-largest gain, running 7.6% more ad pages than appeared in the first three quarters of 2005. The auto industry, true to form this year, kept weighing magazines down through September, cutting page buys to nearly 14,130 for a decline of 12.7%. The good news: Only one other category declined, and barely at that: ad pages for home furnishings and supplies slipped 0.5% through September. The apparel-and-accessories category racked up the most pages in absolute terms, totaling 17,173 for a gain of 1.4%.

Yahoo builds digital time capsule

Yahoo has kicked off a project to build a digital time capsule, allowing users to submit stories, photos, videos, artwork and poetry through the project's website. The Yahoo Time Capsule submissions will be collected until 8 November, when it will be sealed and stored at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. Yahoo plans to reopen the digital archive in 2020 to mark the firm's 25th anniversary. The site records submissions in several categories, including country, age, gender and theme. In addition to contributing to the capsule, Yahoo is asking users to vote on how to distribute a $100,000 donation to be made by the company. Before the capsule in sealed, Yahoo plans to project the content onto the side of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán, Mexico.


Here Comes IE7

Microsoft has confirmed that IE7 will be released as an optional download later this month. The long-awaited next version of Microsoft's browser software will be pushed out as an automatic update a "few weeks" later, probably as part of Microsoft's regular Patch Tuesday update cycle in either November or December. Firms not ready to install IE7 will be able to temporarily block the update. In the meantime, Microsoft is urging webmasters and application developers to test for compatibility using IE7 RC 1, a pre-release version of the software. Redmond has produced a variety of tools to aid this work, as explained in a posting on its IE development blog here.

Best tool for today - The Levelator
The Levelator, It's software that runs on Windows or OS X (universal binary) that adjusts the audio levels within your podcast or other audio file for variations from one speaker to the next, for example. It's not a compressor, normalizer or limiter although it contains all three. It's much more than those tools, and it's much simpler to use. The UI is dirt-simple: Drag-and-drop any WAV or AIFF file onto The Leveler's application window, and a few moments later you'll find a new version which just sounds better.

Sexy Slim Great Camera Phone
The Nokia N73 offers a multimedia computer in a compact and savvy exterior with photography features and integrated stereo speakers with 3D sound. In addition to a large 2.4-inch display, the N73 includes a 3.2-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus and support for Internet communities like Flickr. Music fans can tap into the N73's integrated digital music player with playlists and equalizer or tune into the FM radio. Available in 3G or quad-band EDGE/GSM networks, the N73 has all the diversity of a powerful multimedia computer enabled with the S60 3rd Edition Software on Symbian OS.

Today's Site To Peek At:
Inkling is a fantasy stock market that predicts outcomes based on the free market. It works like this: users create questions and potential outcomes (”Will it rain tomorrow?”, “At which major technology conference will Bill Gates shed his human skin and reveal his angelic beauty high above Mount Rainier?”) and other users buy and sell shares based on their belief that a particular outcome is true. Inkling’s real strategy, however, is to aid in decision-making. Say, for example, you’re making a widget. The widget should be under budget and on deadline, so you pose a question to a market of your co-workers “Will we complete our widget on time and under budget?” You offer four outcomes and have them anonymously by shares in each of these outcomes. The resulting graphs will plot the most likely outcome because everyone - from marketing to the tech guys - will have a say. The tech guys will say everything will be over and the marketing guys will say everything will be under and the programmers will say it will take quite a while but it will come in under budget. The mix will give you a fairly strong indicator of what you’re up against. This general concept - creating unique markets out of various outcomes - is already in place over at Cantor Fitzgerald with their Hollywood Stock Exchange although Inkling’s mission to create white label markets for small and medium businesses is quite nice. It’s a great way to get everyone’s opinion by filtering out language, emotion, and human interaction which, we all know, poison the brain.

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