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Seems increased competition with Google is making Microsoft look twice at its pricing for online services such as SharePoint (news, site)

Let me Google that for you is a free service that shows your non-tech-savvy friends how to use the popular search engine. You just type in the query your friend asked you (presumably by e-mail or IM) and it gives you a link to send back to them that shows both where to type and where to click to get a search going. It’s even nice enough to do the search when it’s done, while displaying the somewhat friendly message: “Was that so hard?”

This is a service on the snarkier side, meant to send to people who should have searched themselves. It’s been done before by a site called JustF***ingGoogleIt.com, however you couldn’t exactly send your boss or mother that link.

(via Digg)

Passive aggressiveness has never been so educational.

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‘Let me Google that for you’ shows Luddite friends how to search

PodTech, a video podcast network that had taken over $7 million in venture funding, has been sold–and the price may have been a downright embarrassing $500,000.

The news was reported this week by Eric Eldon at VentureBeat, but Valleywag’s Jackson West was floating the rumor with less detail last week. And Fake Steve Jobs jumped the gun a little bit by declaring the company dead last October.

The buyer is the Los Angeles-based ViewPartner, a “communications technology company” that seems to only produce Google results about the fact that it bought PodTech. And while no financial specifics were named in the release, VentureBeat reported that the price was around $500,000. Ouch.

PodTech’s woes had been very public as high-profile employees started leaving: marketer Jeremiah Owyang, who became an analyst at Forrester; blogger Robert Scoble, essentially the face of the company; and even CEO John Furrier. It was reportedly out of money, despite having raised a $5.5 million venture round and then another $2 million from U.S. Ventures and Venrock.

The rough economy is making it a shaky ride for many start-ups, but PodTech may have suffered from additional problems: the niche of “podcasting” didn’t play out the way many expected it to, instead blending into Web video and audio content alongside far more traditional programming. While a few podcasters have become stars, the “top podcast” charts at the iTunes store look a whole lot more like big media: NPR, Comedy Central, and um, the Jonas Brothers.

Not quite up PodTech’s alley.

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Once-hyped PodTech sold at a bargain

Good things happen to software publishers that listen to their users.

Fring, an aggressively growing company that builds a chat and cheap calling application for Symbian, iPhone, and Windows Mobile platforms, heeded a swell of feedback from iPod Touch users who had been using the pre-release iPhone version for jailbroken iPhones on the voiceless iPod Touch (review). On Friday, Fring announced a new pre-release version for the iPhone that also fixes a bug found when using the application on the iPod Touch.

Both sides were pleased that the initial experiment had worked, Fring reports, but not quite satisfied with the results.

(Credit: Fring)

It turns out that when applied to the iPod Touch, whose specifications were never considered when designing the iPhone version, Fring IM was a little rocky. Users who had tried it out couldn’t see the text they’d punched in until after the message was already sent. The update, available through the application called Installer, should rectify the surprise oversight.

In a video tutorial on the Fring blog, iPod Touch users are reminded that the iPhone cousin is a silent device. Since there is no built-in microphone, Fring’s international VoIP service is suspended on iPod Touches, leaving Fring for iPod Touch as a cross-platform IM service. There has been forum chatter about forging a workaround with the Touchmods microphone application, but forum contributors have attempted it with no luck.

As one contributor, blueridgebruce puts it, if Fring were to succeed to give the iPod Touch a voice, “iPhone users will love you…BUT…Touch users will worship you!”

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Fring’s iPhone and iPod chat app nets two for the price of one

DITA today and the number of vendors coming out with XML-based solutions, you need to understand the market well to know how to work within it.

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Get a Better Handle on XML Tools and CCM Vendors