Ok, so by now we are all aware of the mountain of feature upgrades that Google has been piling onto Google Docs.  They’re trying to prove to the world that they are the superior method of putting Office documents in the cloud, and some of these features are even enough to make you think twice.  However, today Google has really outdone themselves with the release of this new feature: scanned character recognition.  Yes, that is as in “scan a printed document, and have it digitally converted to a editable Google Doc” character recognition.

You know this story all too well.  You are surfing the internet intently; both business and pleasure simultaneously.  Every now and then you come across something interesting/useful enough that you want to look at it later that day, but not enough that you want to bookmark it. What do you do? Leave the window active and minimize.  Rinse, lather and repeat for an hour or so, and you’ve got a lot of windows open using up a lot of internet mo-jo.  Eventually, one of the applications in one of the windows crashes.  Unfortunately, this sets into motion a chain of events that makes the entire program crash.  Every window closes in a glorious explosion in web-failure, and you lose every bit of progress on every site.  Well, Mozilla has just shown why they are the#1 browser by fixing this problem in beta through new crash protection protocols.

Ever since Google bought that former branch of Microsoft that allowed them to make cloud MS office options, they’ve been doing surprisingly well at providing a decent alternative to standard MS office cloud.  It’s actually surprising, given how utterly dominant/streamlined office currently is.  They even did well enough that Microsoft had to make their cloud-based office free to continue to compete.  However, it looks as though Google may be ruining their “no idiotic marketing decisions with MSO Google Docs” streak.  They are seriously pushing the Chrome extensions/applications of using the new Google docs, and by extension trying to push Chrome.

According to Symantec Corp’s Global SMB Information Protection Survey 2010, small and medium-sized businesses are now aware of the importance of data security. They consider information protection as the most important factor in business. This is quite contradictory to the situation that existed just 15 months ago when most of the same respondents didn’t even have the most basic protection. Symantec has analyzed the reasons for the sudden change.

Switching to Verizon FiOS for your cable needs is now more convenient as Verizon is now offering month to month plans. Its few and fore between that service providers of any type provide anything without a contract. This will greatly benefit consumers and could be the first of many more month to month type plans. Added benefits include price protection for one year, no early termination fee, and 24/7 technical support.

National retailers have increasingly become more energy efficient say the results of the second annual Energy Management & Sustainability Strategy survey conducted by energy services firm Prenova, Inc. As revealed by the survey, 63% of the retailers surveyed have implemented a proper energy management sustainability program. Among them, 45% have let sustainability play a major role in the overall business strategy. Around 5% of the respondents admitted they were least bothered about energy management/sustainability, while twice that amount doesn’t have specific programs to address these issues.

Dow Jones corporate offices in New Jersey are all set to get a high efficiency solar power system makeover. SunPower Corp. is the official company selected to carry out this work by the end of early next year.

Dell is involved in a discussion with Google to implement the search giant’s cloud based Chrome OS into Dell machines, said a Dell executive. Amit Midha, Dell’s president for greater China and South Asia recently told Reuters that the company wants to be positioned “on the forefront” of “unique innovations” like Chrome OS that will hit the market in the next few years.

Earlier this month pictures of Samsung’s much awaited Galaxy S Pro device leaked. Now specs of the device have leaked. According to the rumored spec list, the Galaxy S Pro looks to be worth every penny. Let’s have a look.

Tiny nanoscale crystals called quantum dots are capable of extracting more of the available energy in sunlight, including the energy at the high end of the scale, finds the researchers led by chemist Xiaoyang Zhu at The University of Texas. They believe that this high energy captured by the crystals may double the efficiency of solar cells – from 31 to 66 percent. The research was initially started by a team from The University of Minnesota. 

Great news for all those that pre-ordered iPhone 4! As noted by some lucky customers, the pre-order devices are now shipping. They have got an update in their online pre-order status – it has changed from “not shipped” to “prepared for shipment.” This comes as a surprise, as pre-order customers are likely to get their devices before release day. What is even more surprising is that some customers received notifications that mentioned the delivery date to be June 23, reports MacRumors.

The Velocity Web Performance and Operations Conference kicks off this week. The conference features industry experts speaking on a variety of topics. The primary topics for Velocity 2010 are cloud computing, HTML5, scalable video and social gaming and multiple data center management. The conference will also cover the areas such as configuration management, network latency and green architecture.

Slowly but surely, everything we do on a daily basis is being replaced by digital versions.  From silly entertainment to paying your bills and money management, everything at least has a digital option.  Naturally, this makes things more efficient (and more awesome), but it has the unpleasant side effect of making  privacy and identity much more complicated and dangerous issues in the modern world.  Unfortunately, there are some unpleasant questions that the semi-anonymous yet sensitive nature of the internet draws.  Well, soon a large number of those questions are about to be answered, but as you would expect, the answer will carry with it a slew of new questions- The Anonymizer

In the great war for smartphone operating system dominance, the two major factions have seemed to be Apple, with the iPhone, and Android, with nearly every other device imaginable.  However, this has not stopped other third parties from trying to play their hand.  Since they’ve already been feuding enough with the two major contenders as it is, Microsoft figured that now would be as good a time as any to start making  headway for their own smartphone OS upgrades.  According to both Microsoft and Motorola, the new Enterprise Digital Assistant will have a new mobile Microsoft operating system that comes standard.

Apple has finally made the MobileMe service available, after it was holding it in beta for quite some time. Apple has added some enhanced features to e-mail at me.com. The features include widescreen and compact views, e-mail organization rules, one-click archiving, a formatting toolbar, high performance speed, better SSL and junk mail protection. The service is made functional only with Safari, Firefox, and IE8, but not with Chrome or Opera.