Webware

If you're a regular user of the revision comparison feature in Google Docs, you'll likely enjoy new service Compare My Docs. It comes from the same folks who created TextFlow, the Adobe AIR-based app that spot differences across multiple copies of a Word document or rich text file.

Compare My Docs does many of the same things as TextFlow, including being able to compare up to six versions of the same document to see what's been changed. The big difference though, is that it runs right in your browser and requires no sign-up whatsoever.

Just like TextFlow, Compare My Docs color codes any changes it finds between the different revisions of a document and gives you a quick and easy way to accept, reject, or set aside a change. This means you can cruise through a document and keep the changes or revisions you like, while keeping an active log of what you don't.

When finished, you'll have a new version that has all of those changes, which can be saved either as a Word doc or rich text file back on your hard drive. Although unlike what you can do in TextFlow, with Compare My Docs there's no way to publish the finished product to the Web or save it in parent company Nordic River's servers for safe keeping; something that seems meant to entice users to try out TextFlow instead.

Compare My Docs looks a lot like TextFlow, in fact it basically is, but runs in your browser instead of as an Adobe AIR app.

(Credit: CNET)

The service does manage to suffer from some of the limitations in the core technology behind both it and TextFlow, including having photos and charts being stripped out. This means you'll have to add them back in after you've run a few documents through its editor.

Along with Compare My Docs, Nordic River is also finally releasing an API for TextFlow, which will let developers make use of the service's comparison technology in their apps or Web services. This could help make up for some of the service's shortcomings, while augmenting the versioning tools currently offered by some online services. File hosting in particular comes to mind, since places like DropBox and Box.net offer versioning, and version rollback, but in order to see the differences you have to save, then open up each file and look for differences. Those places could now very quickly build tools that let users compare multiple versions of a saved Word or text file from right within the app.

Nordic River says that TextFlow in its Adobe AIR form will remain, but that the site is closing up to new users in a few weeks until it readies a new interface. In the meantime the company will continue its free and paid services to those who have already signed up.

Correction 8:57 a.m. on November 3: This story initially misstated that users could not make edits to the text within the tool. This was due to the functionality not being present in the pre-release version of the site used for review.

Typing on the iPhone/iPod Touch's keyboard can be arduous. This is never more evident than when trying to bang out messages in several instant-messaging conversations at once. Shape Services, the makers of the popular IM+ instant-messaging app ($9.99 App Store link), have realized this, and are soon rolling out a new version of the app that includes speech-to-text, albeit at a price.

Taking advantage of Apple's recently released in-app payment system, 99 cents a month gets you the feature, meaning that the annual cost of continuing to use it is about $12 a year. Not bad if you're a heavy user. But how well does it work?

In short, it does a decent job, but it still experiences some of the typical pitfalls found in other speech-to-text tools. If you've used Google's search app on the iPhone you know all too well that it can handle some words better than others, and that it works slightly faster when you're on Wi-Fi. The same can be said of IM+.

The app managed to get a few sentences without flaws, but I regularly found myself going into make a quick edit to one or two words each time. That wouldn't be so bad if it didn't take so long to do all the processing. Over 3G, small quips like a four- or five-word reply took around 15 seconds to process and get sent back, whereas full messages took up to 24 seconds. These times were cut a few seconds shorter when on a solid Wi-Fi connection, but still on the long side.

The updated version of the app is in Apple's review queue, meaning it could be out later this week, month, or be rejected outright (although not likely since it's using standard APIs). Besides speech-to-text, the update also adds animated emoticons for whatever service you're using. It's a small touch, but sure to make IM enthusiasts happy. We take a quick look at that and the speech-to-text feature in the video below. Worth noting is that processing times have been sped up for the sake of time, although we make note of that when it occurs:

As a follow-up to its free, 50-user microblogging product, Socialtext is launching a new paid service for large to enterprise-sized companies that lets them run the Twitter-like service behind the firewall, and with many more users.

Companies that want it can pay $1 per user, per month, alongside a monthly fee that pays for Socialtext's server appliance. This hardware runs the microblogging software locally, and can be connected to a company's backup systems for if something goes wrong, although it makes nightly backups of its own. The appliance fee also covers monthly software updates that will fix bugs and add new features.

In a call with CNET News on Monday, Ross Mayfield who is Socialtext's chairman, president, and co-founder, said that the benefits of having a system like this locally can make a big difference when doing a fresh setup on a big company. "You turn it on, and in five minutes you can start posting right away."

Your company 'tweets' would go through this box.

(Credit: Socialtext)

To speed things up, the appliance can be connected to local staff directories and pull in employee information to create user accounts that have profile information including phone numbers and e-mail address already filled out. Anytime local directory changes are made, this information gets updated in Socialtext too. Administrative control is also not limited to IT staff, since certain users can be graced with admin privileges of their own that let them moderate both user content and the users themselves.

Companies will still be able to use Socialtext's free 50-user version of the service that lives in the cloud, but this option gives larger companies a bigger user cap and more control over the data. Mayfield also pushed the fact that companies that wanted to tack on additional Socialtext services won't have to get any additional hardware since they'll already have it for this service.

Socialtext is undercutting competitors like Yammer in price, as well as offering an additional way to deliver its service. Yammer has its own Web based service for enterprise power users, however it's a little more pricey at $3-5 per user, per month (depending on what plan they go for). There is, however, no hardware to buy. On the flip side, Socialtext's solution can still be used even if access to the outside world is blocked, which can often be the best time to find out what your employees are up to.

The new version of AIM notifies you when a new instant message arrives.

Good news on the IM front: AIM (Free Edition) and BeejiveIM 3.0 are among the first instant-messaging apps to support push notification, meaning you'll get alerted to new messages even when the apps aren't running.

If that sounds a bit familiar, it's because we reported on AIM's use in push-notification stress-testing about a week ago.

It also follows the news that uberpopular texting app TextFree was first out of the SMS gate with push support, allowing users to get new-message notifications while the iPhone is off or doing other things.

AIM offers a fairly robust feature set for a free app. It supports multiple screen names and works with AOL, ICQ, .Mac, and MobileMe accounts. It keeps you logged in for 24 hours and gives you the option of receiving notifications via SMS for those times when you're logged out.

I particularly like how you can finger-swipe between different chats. Of course, those features have been around for a while. The big news here is push, and in my tests it worked flawlessly.

I haven't been able to test BeejiveIM 3.0 yet, which is notable for its cross-platform support of AIM/MobileMe, Facebook, GTalk, MSN, Yahoo, and just about every other chat service known to man.

Thankfully, the developer lowered the $15.99 price tag, though it's still on the pricey side at $9.99.

Of course, when you take into account the money you stand to save on SMS charges, that might just be the deal of the century.

Are you geeked about push-enabled IM? If so, what's your favorite app? (Feel free to list those that haven't received the push treatment just yet.)

Box.net has added iSpeech to its OpenBox platform, which lets users get integrated text-to-speech conversion on any text document they have stored on the service. Users simply have to add it to their list of used OpenBox services and it becomes a part of Box.net's contextual menus, meaning you only need to right click on the document and choose the text-to-speech option to get it going.

You do have to be separately signed up with iSpeech to get this to work. It's not a free service when it comes to processing full length documents. There is, however a free tier of service that gives you 250 words per conversion, which amounts to a couple of paragraphs. If you feel like converting your doctoral thesis you'll need one of the service's premium plans.

While neat, I think a far more useful add-on to Box, or any other storage provider would be converting audio recordings into text documents. I've recently become hooked on this with my voicemail through Google Voice, and it would be great get a recording from an interview, or business meeting transcribed in the same place I'm storing it in the cloud.

A right click on any document file will let you convert it to speech using iSpeech. You have to be registered with that service to use it though.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The Free Music Archive, an organization created by WFMU, a "freeform" radio station, has officially launched into beta. So far, the site has 5,000 tracks that users can download for free. According to the site's founders, the Free Music Archive is aimed at becoming a repository of tracks, remixes, and music clips for personal consumption. Any of the songs can be added to podcasts, video shows, or a playlist. No licensing fees or royalties will be charged. The organization hopes that through free downloads, more people will buy an artist's full album. Along with a download link, each individual track page has a link to the artist's album page. That page makes the full album available for purchase. The Free Music Archive is live now.

Insurance company Geico has launched a new site to provide visitors with all the information they need about Geico-sponsored car racing teams. Dubbed GeicoGarage, the new site provides access to the company's NASCAR program. It features updated news and photos on all the teams, as well as bios, competition schedules, and downloads.

Enterprise collaboration service Socialtext recently announced that it has raised $4.5 million in a new round of financing that was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Omidyar Networks. The company's founder said in a blog post that he plans to use the funding to improve the product.

Social-banking firm SmartyPig announced Thursday that it has launched a new mobile site. The site will allow users to quickly access account information, as well as view the status of their financial goals. They can also track transaction history and transfer funds from their mobile device. The mobile site is optimized for the iPhone, but the company says that users on Android-based devices will be able to see the site just fine. The SmartyPig mobile site is live now.

A man who didn't want to be photographed for Google Street View turned the tables on the online giant and threatened to take a picture of the Street View vehicle and its driver unless it moved on, the Telegraph is reporting. It didn't, so he started snapping pictures. The driver in the Google vehicle became upset that the photographer was taking pictures of him and shouted to the man to stop taking pictures of him. He then asked for his face to be blurred. Individual faces are also blurred in Google StreetView images.

WorldGaming, a site that allows console video game players to challenge each other to earn cash, announced Wednesday that it has officially launched to the public. Along with that announcement, the site has launched a 30-day online "launch party" that will give users the opportunity to join daily tournaments, earn cash, and receive sign-up bonuses.

WorldGaming allows users to challenge each other on genres like first-person shooters and sports games. The players add funds to their personal accounts and mutually decide how much cash to play for. After the game is over, WorldGaming verifies who won and awards the victor with the agreed-upon money taken from the loser's account. WorldGaming says the service is legal because it's a "game of skill."

Enterprise Content Management company Open Text, announced Wednesday that it has acquired digital media firm Vizible. According to the company, the addition of Vizible will help Open Text expand its digital media services and offer companies video, audio, graphics, and photography.

Open Text also plans to use Vizible's technology to help its clients syndicate their media content to consumers, businesses, and other customers over an open-standards platform. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Open Text will add the Vizible team to the company's Digital Media Group.

FreeWheel, a company that helps mobile app developers deliver advertisements, announced Wednesday that it has signed a deal with video site Joost to become the company's exclusive provider of video ads in the Joost iPhone app. The ads are now being displayed in the free Joost app.

TextFlow, the Adobe AIR application that lets users collaboratively edit documents, is now available in the browser. Users can group together multiple versions of the same document and selectively pick which edits they want to keep--just like they would on the desktop version, but now without software.

Along with the move to the browser, the service now hosts your documents so you can access and begin editing them from any computer. The company has also lifted the file size limit, meaning you can finally upload and edit documents more than 10 pages in length--not being able to do so was a serious limitation in versions past.

Additionally, the service comes in two flavors, a free and premium version. Both let you work on any size document, and with up to seven collaborators' edits; however the free one puts a watermark on the finished product that says "not for commercial use." The paid version--which costs $99 per user, per year--adds live customer support and the option to watermark shared documents with your company's logo.

Still missing in this version is support for images, tables, and documents outside of Microsoft Word and RTF files. I was hoping to see at least the images and tables support added to the professional version--not having those could severely limit the customers this service appeals to if it doesn't work with the document style they're used to.

Message Systems, a company that offers message management platforms for carriers and ISPs, announced the launch of its first message management service that "combats the transmission of illegal and inappropriate images sent via email and wireless messaging." According to the company, the tool will use image recognition software developed by Image Analyzer to provide ISPs and mobile carriers with better knowledge about what's being transmitted over their networks.

Detecting illegal and illicit images has been difficult for ISPs and mobile carriers, Message Systems said in a statement. But with the help of Image Analyzer's technology, ISPs and carriers will have "real-time image analysis" at their disposal that will allow them to distinguish between inappropriate and appropriate content. The tool can be integrated directly into an ISP's or carrier's existing messaging system.

Quickoffice, a provider of mobile office software, announced Tuesday that it has released its first Microsoft Office viewer for Google's Android platform. Dubbed Quickoffice for Android, the app will allow T-Mobile G1 users to access, view, and manage their Word and Excel files. The software costs $7.99 and is available now.

Offerpal Media, a company that provides in-game offers and surveys to help developers monetize their online games, has secured a $15 million in a Series B round of funding that was led by D.E. Shaw Ventures, The New York Times is reporting. According to the company, it has over 2,000 advertisers in its system and adds 100 new offers each week. It plans to use the funding to expand its services to other developers.

Career search site, Indeed released a new feature Tuesday, called Industry Trends, which provides a visual look at job seeker trends in 12 major industries, including accounting, finance, and retail. The company found that the number of job listings has declined over the past year, but job-seeker traffic is up over the past 12 months.