Microsoft Testing A Twitter For Business

Microsoft is continuing to look into ways to make social computing services part of business users’ lives with a new pilot program for something called “OfficeTalk.”
Microsoft mentioned OfficeTalk in a March 19 posting on the Office Labs blog, calling it a vehicle that “applies the base capabilities of microblogging to a business environment, enabling employees to post their thoughts, activities, and potentially valuable information to anyone who might be interested.” (From that description, OfficeTalk could be more like the enterprise microblogging service Yammer than Twitter, as a few readers have noted. But there’s really not enough information on the Office Labs’ site to know for sure….) Office Labs officials described OfficeTalk as a research project, with no clear or definite commercialization path. (It is one of the team’s “Concept Tests,” like the recently introduced Ribbon Hero training game, Canvas for OneNote add-on, and pptPlex zoomable canvas.) Officials said OfficeTalk was “one of the most popular internal concept tests to date.” Microsoft isn’t offering any more details on what OfficeTalk looks like or what it will do. The Office Labs folks describe it as beeing “pretty bare bones.” They are allowing interested parties to fill out a brief survey to see if they qualify to test the service.

Google To Take Over Your Tube?

Google may be perched above your TV soon, according to a recent report. Word is, the search behemoth is teaming with Sony, Logitech and Intel to create a TV set-top box platform based on its Android operating system and designed to meld traditional TV with Internet content. Meanwhile, the FCC showed off its big plans, Microsoft bared a little more WinPho7, and Apple revealed a new way to deal with old batteries.
Apparently Google is teaming up with Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI) to build a consumer set-top box platform for mixing TV with the Internet. That's Google's Android for the OS, Intel for the chips, Sony to put together the first model, and Logitech to make the peripherals. Right now, putting the Internet on your TV isn't exactly difficult -- just stick a VGA cable between your laptop and your flatscreen and voila. But that's not really the comfiest arrangement. What the Google TV platform would do -- reportedly -- would be to streamline the experience of watching regular TV, Internet video and various Web sites through the television. They could also put a development kit out there for anyone who wanted to put their content on Google TV, maybe sort of like making your own cable channel. If nothing else, the whole experience should be more like the familiar act of vegging out on the couch and flipping through channels, rather than lying there with a wireless keyboard and mouse on your lap.