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Bungee Labs is extending the hosting options for its Web application development environment, Bungee Connect. Today, developers using the Bungee Connect development environment can host their applications on Bungee's multitenant grid in the U.S. and Europe or on Amazon EC2. Beginning in July in public beta, organizations will be able to deploy Bungee Connect applications via the new Bungee Application Server on their own hosting infrastructure.

Bungee Labs, along with Coghead, Amazon EC2, Google App Engine, Joyent, Mosso, salesforce.com, NetSuite, Microsoft and others, is paving the way to platforms-as-a-service--hosted infrastructure for developing and delivering Web applications. … Read more

As witnessed by the unfortunate travails of R2-D2, Star Wars product merchandizing can go horribly awry. So sometimes it's safer to go with a simpler product for branding purposes, even if it means going analog (gasp).

Case in point: These Lego Star Wars Pens as seen on Uber-Review. The set pictured here includes Yoda, Darth Vader, and, yes, even the hapless, chirping R2-D2.

In addition to serving as perfectly serviceable writing instruments, these pens can be dispatched so you can mix and match their various parts while waiting for the next blockbuster arrives from the Lucas Empire. Because there … Read more

If I had to describe LightPole in 10 words or fewer, I'd call it an interface for accessing location-aware services from mobile phones. More than anything else, LightPole's downloadable application offers a listings and mapping format that many location-based services, such as Yelp and Yahoo Local, can squeeze into to gain more visibility or avoid creating their own rich cell phone applications.

It works like this. Users looking for stuff--a good restaurant, happy hour specials, or Internet cafe--can click open LightPole, select a service (MappyHour and Hotspotr are two more,) and can read about the establishment, call the … Read more

For years, Microsoft has maintained that the PC is the center of the digital home and office.

But Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie said Tuesday that it's time for the company to acknowledge a new reality.

"Over the past 10 years, the PC era has given way to an era in which the Web is at the center of our experiences--experiences delivered not just through the browser but also through many different devices including PCs, phones, media players, game consoles, set-top boxes and televisions, cars, and more," Ozzie said in a memo to be sent to employees on Wednesday (PDF). … Read more

On Tuesday, Microsoft officially spilled the beans on its Live Mesh service for synchronizing data and connecting multiple devices. If your eyes are glossing over from all the mentions of seamlessness, synchronization, and software plus services, here's our best attempt at making sense of things.

What is Live Mesh? At its most basic level it combines downloadable software and a cloud-based service to synchronize and share data and applications among different devices.

How does it work? In large part, it uses the notion of feeds to go beyond a Web site and also to describe both data and devices. … Read more

The Live Mesh service that Microsoft unveiled Tuesday night is a peek of what Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie has been working on all these months.

In its initial incarnation, Live Mesh is mostly a file-sharing and folder-synchronization service, as well as a nice, easy way to access a PC remotely. Down the road though, it's Microsoft's latest attempt to find preeminence in a world in which Microsoft-based devices are just part of the mix.

As previously noted, the version that launches Tuesday is limited considerably from the broad service Microsoft envisions. (See Ozzie's recent memo to Microsoft employees for the big vision.) … Read more

Microsoft is announcing Live Mesh today in conjunction with the Web 2.0 Expo. It's an ambitious technology platform for sharing data among people, apps, and devices. Consumers will first be exposed to the technology in a personal data synchronization and device-sharing product of the same name, competing directly with products like LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, SugarSync (review), Syncplicity (review), and Microsoft's own FolderShare, and SyncToy.

We tried the technology preview version of the app. As a sync tool for PCs, it's got good potential. It is easy to perform the basic operations of adding PCs to your sync … Read more

While I try to get Web 2.0 Expo darling du jour Fireball working (still no luck), I thought it'd be worth covering another location service for Twitter: Trackthis. You tell it a package tracking number from FedEx, UPS, USPS, or DHL, and it will Twitter you back whenever there's an update from the shipper.

Yes, there are other ways to get this data, but there are advantages to using Trackthis: First, you can attach a descriptor to your query (like "lamp shade"). Second, you can use Twitter to easily change your message delivery options: you … Read more

We still might not exactly be able to define "Web 2.0," but we certainly know it when we see it. The CNET Download.com team has been gradually building a catalog of more than 2,300 editorially selected Web-based software products in categories such as Audio, Bookmarking, Security, and Social Networking.

Almost everyone uses a Web-based e-mail client like Yahoo Mail, Gmail, or Hotmail, and I know that many users are shifting from Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc to Google Docs & Spreadsheets for their basic spreadsheet needs, or for sharing documents with friends, family, and … Read more