Google posted a video tour of one of its data centers today, highlighting some of the steps it takes to keep data secure and maintain reliability.

Google has been notoriously tight-lipped about its data centers, and doesn't even disclose exactly how many it operates.

So why the sudden openness? There are several likely reasons:

• Yesterday's Amazon Web Services outage is creating new questions about the viability of cloud computing -- including services like Google Apps

• Also yesterday, environmental activists Greenpeace released a scathing report on data center efficiency and use of dirty energy sources like coal (PDF here). The group admitted it didn't have all the information it needed to make the report perfectly accurate, but blamed data center operators for not sharing enough information. The group had some particularly harsh words for Google, giving it an F on transparency.

• Last week, Microsoft called into question whether Google Apps was secure enough for government use. Google's slow response made it look like it had something to hide.

• Earlier this month, Facebook made Google look silly by open-sourcing the details of its own highly efficient data center design. Facebook's move is also meant to undercut Google's big data center advantage by letting the rest of the industry work together to improve efficiency.

Google isn't exactly going the Facebook route, but today's video is a big step given how secretive the company has been so far.

I am a very big fan of Androids. I have used at least 6 different android phones within the last 2 years.
Currently using the EVO 4G and the Google nexus one classic. Androids are great on phones and not so great on tablets that's why I choose to go with Apple's iPad when I was shopping for a tablet to fill that void that didn't really exist in the first place.

Apple's tablet is a great piece of hardware and I have to admit I love it, but just like every Apple device I know of, you tend to be fully boxed into the platform.

• need itunes to copy files
• no usb port
• no memory card reader
• no 1080p video
• no camera
• the list goes on and on.

Being a Google fan, the options were very limited with the Samsung galaxy tab not really offering me the experience I craved on a tablet medium.
Enter Google's Honeycomb and the new Motorola Xoom and I think the tides may have changed.
While I don't own one just yet, the reviews I have seen online say this is a pretty amazing alternative to the iPad and because I love the whole "free" concept of android this will probably be the gadget for me.

Below are a few videos I found via Youtube showing the Motorola Xoom

Microsoft Rolls Up Cloud Services Into Office 365, Takes Aim At Google Apps

Today at an event in San Francisco, Microsoft’s Office division is unveiling a new product: a suite of the company’s productivity services called Office 365.

Before now, Microsoft’s business-facing cloud services have been broken up in a few places: SharePoint, Lync Online, Exchange, and Office web apps. Office 365 looks to unify these. Microsoft SVP Chris Capossela says “This is everything we know about productivity brought to the cloud”.

The messaging here seems to indicate that Microsoft is more directly targeting Google Apps, the suite of online products that have been increasingly encroaching on Microsoft’s enterprise market. In what may have been a jab at Google, Capossela says “We can differentiate from our competition, particularly those coming from the consumer space, by making sure our servers are far more reliable”. I’m sure Google would object to this, as it often beats its chest about the security of Google Apps.

Microsoft is going to target small businesses in a way it hasn’t previously: for a business with under 25 employees, Microsoft will charge $6 per user per month; for larger companies, plans start at $2 per user per month for email alone — prices scale up to $27 per user a month, which includes telephony features (voicemail in your inbox) and video/voice conferencing. There’s also a single sign-on to access all of these services. Before now, Microsoft sold its Business Productivity Online Suite for $120/user/year; In contrast, Google Apps runs $50 per user per year, so Microsoft’s new price points are more competitive.

Microsoft says that before now it could only traget around 15% of an enterprise’s budget, because it was only selling software. Now it’s also helping run their infrastructure, which expands the potential market.

Office 365 is going to launch to the public in a worldwide release next year. For now, Microsoft is kicking off Office 365 with a limited beta rollout.

You’ll be able to learn more at Office 365.com, which Microsoft isn’t throwing live for another three hours for reasons that I’m sure make sense to them.

Google Testing Chrome OS Release Candidates. Official Release 1 Month Away?

It was last July that Google dropped a nuclear bomb in announcing Chrome OS, their operating system based around their Chrome web browser. The world was different back then — namely, Google’s Android mobile operating system wasn’t nearly as powerful as it is now. But its rise has led some to wonder why exactly Google is pushing ahead with Chrome OS — or if they might abandon it? (Remember, they did losetheir key Chrome OS engineer to Facebook.) Well, they’re not. All indications are that it is coming very soon now. In fact, it may even launch a month from today.

At their official unveiling event 11 months ago, Google promised that Chrome OS would be ready to by the end of this year — before the holiday season. It looks like they will be able to keep that promise, as bug comments on their Google Code site for the project indicate that the OS has already hit “RC” status — also known as “Release Candidate”. As far as I can tell, it achieved this milestone in the past few days or so, and the most recent build would seem to be 0.9.78.1 (or RC 78.1). When that number evens out to “1″, we can probably expect Chrome OS to be ready to go.

Further, the most recent updates in this thread from three days ago twice have a Google employee referencing a November 11 date. “We will push this after November 11,” the employee writes in response to a question about a specific feature. The same employee then references that date again later. It’s hard to tell for sure if that’s the date Google is targeting for the Chrome OS launch, but it certainly seems inline with everything else we’ve heard.

It’s also possible that November 11 will be a final code freeze and Chrome OS could ship a week later — maybe on the 1 year anniversary of their unveiling event last November? It’s worth nothing that the Chrome Web Store is due out this month — that will obviously be very useful for Chrome OS as well. And yes, you can probably expect at least one U.S. carrier to be on board with the official launch.

More indications that Google is quickly approaching a first build of Chrome OS includes what they’re actually working on now. Screensavers, sign-in screens, and highlight colors — in other words, a lot of UI elements, the icing on the cake.

Google Calendar Disruption Enters Fourth Day

Hosted service problems offer a reminder that 99.9% uptime isn't the same as 100% uptime.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek 
October 8, 2010 04:20 PM 

Google Calendar, part of Google Apps, has been experiencing intermittent problems since Tuesday, October 5th, and users are getting frustrated."I use Google Calendar to keep my second grade classroom on track," wrote a user posting in the Google Calendar help forum under the name justinmay2000. "All of my lesson plans are stored in this calendar and [I] share my plans with my colleagues. ...This system worked flawlessly for six weeks, but yesterday the contents of one of my calendars went missing ... PLEASE HELP me and my second graders."


In a response to complaints on Friday morning, a Google employee identified only as Adrienne121 said that the company understands what went wrong and has successfully restored some users' calendars.A help forum thread about Calendar problems has grown to include 435 replies at the time this article was filed.

She said that Google expects to be able to continue restore inaccessible Calendar data without any permanent loss of information.
Reprinting an explanation posted on the Google Apps Status Dashboard, she said that the issue does not affect primary user calendars and that secondary calendars have been affected for less than 0.1% of users.
That would be at most 30,000 users, if it could be assumed that all 30 million Google Apps users were counted as Calendar users. The actual number is likely to be significantly fewer.
"We're sorry for the inconvenience, and are working to fix this asap," the note says. "Calendars are being restored every hour, and we expect to have everything back to normal today (PDT)."
A Google spokesperson said she hadn't heard of any enterprise Google Apps accounts that had been affected.
Google Calendar's last reported problem occurred on September 23rd and affected less than 0.05% of users during a period of about three hours.