GigaTribe, a Web 2.0 file-sharing service, announced Monday that it has launched its product to the U.S. market. The company’s software will allow users to share photos, videos, music, and documents with other users over a private peer-to-peer network.

At its core, GigaTribe is much like other file-sharing sites on the Web that are being monitored by the RIAA and MPAA, but it creates a private network to keep them out. The service allows users to share any file for free and create a group that can send files back and forth.

Due to the inherent security risk that goes along with its business model, GigaTribe’s executives pointed out that the company does its best to keep files secure. To do that, it allows users to assign friends into groups and allow them access to certain files. The company also encrypts all files to add an extra layer of security.

“Security is our top priority,” Alexis Leseigneur, GigaTribe’s CTO said in a statement. “When it comes to sharing your personal photos and videos, you need to be absolutely sure they will only be available to the appropriate contacts.”

Although GigaTribe tries to make its free application sound compelling, it’s the $29.95-per-year “Ultimate” product that packs most of the benefits. Aside from faster downloading and multidownloading capability, the Ultimate service provides remote access to the files, password protection on all files, and most importantly, group access management.

According to the company, the free version allows anyone to view files, while the Ultimate version gives users the ability to decide which groups can access certain files.

GigaTribe’s service is available now on the company’s site.

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The New York Times' new reader uses AIR capabilities to flow text and show video.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

Correction, 11:25 a.m. PST: This story misspelled the last name of The New York Times vice president of research and development. He is Michael Zimbalist.

SAN FRANCISCO–During the keynote speech of the Adobe Max conference, New York Times Vice President of R&D Michael Zimbalist demonstrated a new news reader app from the company. Based on AIR 1.5, which is being released Monday, the news reader was shown displaying International Herald Tribune content, but it’s pretty clear that the company will release a reader for The New York Times as well. The IHT reader will come out later this fall, Zimbalist said.

There is already a desktop reader for the Times, of course, but it’s a fairly heavy app. The new AIR version will take advantage of some of the new features built in to the new AIR runtime, including a fast text-rendering engine that re-flows text as you resize the screen.

Adobe CTO Kevin Lunch shows the New York Times app on the Linux-based Aigo handheld.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

The new app also uses the video capabilities of Flash 10, which Air 1.5 uses. The demo showed videos in ads, but it could also be used for editorial content.

Of course, there’s also a nice crossword app built into it. It’s not social, though. Maybe the next version?

After Zimbalist left the stage, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch demonstrated the app running on a “MID”-size Linux computer, the Aigo. Adobe’s AIR 1.5 is being released for Linux and will have the same video and text-rendering capabilities of the Windows and OS X versions.

Click here for more news on Adobe’s Max conference.

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SlyDial, the telephone service that lets you dial directly to someone’s voice mail, has launched three new mobile applications for users on Windows Mobile, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, and Apple’s iPhone. The new apps have direct access to your phone’s contact list so you can begin a SlyDial call without having to first phone in to the service then remember your contact’s number.

All three are free, and with the exception of the iPhone app–which is pending Apple’s approval, are available right now. The iPhone version is also the only one of the three that does not require you to be a registered SlyDial user to make calls.

Since we covered SlyDial’s official launch back in July, it’s added a handy feature that lets you assign numerical shortcuts to contacts you think you’re going to call frequently. This lets you call them by dialing in the first four letters of their name (or nickname) followed by the # key.

Below is a demo of how this works on a BlackBerry, effectively giving you the option to SlyDial from anywhere via contextual menu:

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Tim Tisdale, CEO of Atlanta-based ThoughtBridge, explains how his company is using Microsoft Online as part of an "HR in a box" service it sells to businesses.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET Networks)

SAN FRANCISCO–For perhaps the first time in its history, Microsoft made the case on Monday that businesses shouldn’t run its software. Instead, Microsoft argued that corporations should let it run the software for them.

During the past several years, Microsoft has been testing out the idea that it can host and run business software cheaper and more effectively than individual enterprises can do on their own. The effort started in 2005 with a single customer–battery maker Energizer–which had Microsoft essentially handle all of its PC desktops.

Over time, Microsoft narrowed the service to an option in which it hosts Exchange and SharePoint, runs the software in its data center, and charges customers on a monthly basis. Microsoft officially launched the products, known as Microsoft Online, at a customer event at the St. Regis hotel here.

“We can help you save money,” Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop told the crowd, saying Microsoft estimates that companies can save at least 10 percent by letting Microsoft run their messaging and collaboration software for them.

One of the early customers is video retailer BlockBuster, which has been using Exchange Online for about six months. Blockbuster CIO Keith Morrow said in an interview that Microsoft’s online services came at a good time for the company, which was on a several-generations-old version of Lotus Notes.

Morrow said the video rental company needed to make a change of some kind, and the option to move to Exchange without having to bring that skill set in-house was a key selling point, as was the ability to offer better mobile options, including Outlook Web Access and iPhone support.

Another Notes switcher in the crowd was Eddie Bauer, which has been a Microsoft Online customer for about five weeks. Chief Information Officer Rich Mozack said the clothing retailer wanted to move off Notes but couldn’t make the numbers work to run Exchange on its own.

“We just couldn’t justify the up-front investment,” Mozack said.

Microsoft’s Ron Markezich said about two-thirds of early customers are moving from Notes to Exchange. But even as Microsoft continues to target those moving from Lotus Notes, the company faces the threat of its own Exchange customers moving to other hosted options, including Google Apps.

Just last week, Serena Software said it was switching to Google from Exchange in a move it said would save it $750,000 a year, according to several reports.

At the event, Elop made Microsoft’s familiar case that, while the cloud is great, customers are better served by an option that allows software to run on customers’ own machines as well as over the Internet.

Elop said Microsoft is adding thousands of servers to its data centers every month. Although Microsoft Online is initially aimed at Exchange and SharePoint, the goal is to offer a hosted option for all of Microsoft’s server software.

“We expect all of it be available in this way in the near future,” Elop said.

The software maker said last year that it would offer the hosted option for large businesses, later expanding the offer to businesses of all sizes. At last month’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft also confirmed that it would offer Web-based versions of its Office applications, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

While many of those at Monday’s event were the company’s early customers and partners, not everyone at the event was ready to sign off. I spoke with a municipality that was highly interested in Microsoft’s product, particularly as it plans to move from GroupWise to Exchange. Still, with a dearth of other governments to point to, this CIO told me that he still faced challenges in getting the city’s upper management and government to sign off on the deal.

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Good news for Firefox users who have lusted over Chrome and Safari’s option that lets you “tear” away tabs from an open window. The latest build of 3.1 offers it as a standard feature–and it works marvelously.

As in Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari browsers you simply pull away a tab from the interface and it turns into its own window. Likewise you can drag it back into an already opened window, just like you’d do to re-order your existing tabs.

While not a ground-breaking feature, tab tearing is a large step forward in changing the way we interact with our browsers. It’s a cross between the idea of having multiple tabs and multiple windows, but does not relegate the user to being pigeonholed in either one permanently.

If you’re feeling brave you can download the latest development build of 3.1 here. As mentioned before, this also comes with some nice JavaScript speed improvements and a new look for Windows Vista users.

Below is a quick demo of how the new tear-away feature works, both with dragging tabs and choosing to open them via contextual menu.

(via MozillaLinks)

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Citing research showing that customers are more likely to buy items online after they’ve read a few user reviews, both PowerReviews and BaazarVoice are expanding their services that collect and distribute user reviews.

PowerReviews user reviews show up on popular sites like ToysRUs.com

PowerReviews, which I’ve covered favorably in the past, is taking its user reviews service and making it available to smaller retailers. As before, the company makes a module that retailers can plug into their stores to collect reviews from buyers. The clever thing that PowerReviews does for retailers is collate all the reviews from across the Web together. So if Store A has only one review for a certain item but other retailers have additional reviews, Store A’s user review section for that item will show a reviews count that adds up all those other reviews. This makes the store look more active and also soothes buyers (providing the reviews are positive).

PowerReviews does not present competing retailers’ branding in its hosted service, but if you look on its aggregation site Buzzillions you can see where all the reviews are coming from.

The new Express program, which launches on November 26 at $80 a month (for the smallest retailer), grabs all the user reviews, including those from large outlets, and makes them appear to be local to the small retailer. Obviously, this can make a small retailer’s operation look more active than it truly is. The minor downside is that a small store with a quirky clientele might end up with mainstream reviews on it that don’t match its vibe, but that’s a pretty minor thing to worry about and is pretty much the biggest downside I can see for a small online store looking to increase its revenues.

BazaarVoice has its marquee clients, too, such as BestBuy.com

Meanwhile, BazaarVoice is launching a program, BrandVoice, in which manufacturers can collect user reviews on their sites and then syndicate those reviews out to their retailers. This service, like PowerReviews’, increases the number of user reviews that a potential customer sees on a retailer’s site.

The issue with both services, though, is trust. Since the user reviews a browser reads can now be coming from anywhere, like another store or a manufacturer’s site, how does a customer know that the reviews are honest?

PowerReviews has a “Verified Buyer” program that guarantees that reviews come from actual purchasers of a product. BazaarVoice lets reader flag fishy reviews, and employs a team of moderators and automated procedures to ensure that inflammatory of off-topic reviews don’t get posted for a product, but a fake review could, theoretically, be posted. BazaarVoice CMO Sam Decker told me that they could link the ability to write a review into a site’s login system, but that “70 percent of reviews come from people who’ve bought offline,” and neither he nor his company’s customers want to shut the door on valuable feedback from users who just don’t happen to buy the products on the Web.

The companies have different business models: PowerReviews’ Buzzillions site can be seen as competitive to the site where the reviews come from; BazaarVoice serves only manufacturers and retailers. But both companies are engaging in a very interesting new trend: they’re amplifying the consciousness of the consumer by spreading reviews around.

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Facebook has launched another way for members to sift through the noise when it comes to the thousands of developer-created applications on its platform: a “verified app” badge.

It’s sort of like the “verified merchant” status that PayPal awards: it’s designed to signify that the application has met standards that deem it “respectful, transparent, and meet the guiding principles for trustworthiness,” according to a statement from Facebook. Interested developers can apply for the verification process–a $375 fee–and if approved, will receive the virtual badge within a few weeks.

The “verified” badge will appear on an approved application’s “About” page, as well as next to its listing in the application directory.

Plus, Facebook says that starting early next year there will be visibility benefits: access to more communication tools, and more prominent placement in members’ activity feeds.

Some other social networks’ developer platforms, like that of business network LinkedIn, require all apps to go through a verification process before they even go live. Facebook’s platform, on the other hand, is open–though it has been known to be quick to pull down apps with potential security violations or intellectual property issues.

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