There's a new kid on the corporate email block

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Cisco are most famous for their networking offerings, but they've been about much more than that for a long time now. With WebEx, they took more that their fair share of the corporate screen-sharing, web conference and IM. They have VoIP, they have video conferencing. In short, they have networking, in all its forms.

One of the few things they're missing is mail, right? Wrong. Cisco WebEx also provides mail services, but SaaS-based (in the cloud), rather than traditional, hosted services. They serve the mail service from the cloud, and support customers who choose to use Outlook as their mail client.

What next? Well, they replace the client-based Outlook experience with a fully online client offering, called Ciso Inbox, which will allow a user to do all the things they'd normally do in Outlook, but without ever having to leave the comfort of their browser.

This is starting to sound like gmail, right? Well, not really, because Cisco Inbox users can sort mails by "Topics", where they can classify mails by topic. This is not at all like gmail labels. No, honestly.

Still not convinced? Well, here's another way it's different to everything that's gone before, especially gmail:

You can link your inbox to social networking sites. One site, anyway: LinkedIn. That's right, the shit one that nobody in their right mind would ever be interested in.

What? It's like Buzz?! What do you mean? It's nothing like Buzz! You can't link Buzz to your social networking sites, now can you?

OK. So you can link Buzz to your social networking sites, but you can't post to them from Buzz, only the other way 'round.

Woohoo! Cisco Inbox scores.

Wait, no it doesn't. gmail can post status updates to Facebook.

So now I'm sure you can see all the reasons why Cisco Inbox is going to rule the world of corporate mail. Watch out IBM. Watch out Microsoft. Watch out Googl... Actually, google, you're safe.

Related articles

• Cisco CCNA Training Courses - Update (wealthyways4you.com)
• The Cloud's Important Role for WebEx on the iPad (readwriteweb.com)
• Cisco unveils WebEx app for Apple iPad (newstatesman.com)
• Cisco WebEx brings mobile meetings to BlackBerry (v3.co.uk)
• LinkedIn for Lawyers: LexBlog Network Webinar recording (kevin.lexblog.com)

Posting to your blog from Google Docs

Create striking data visualizations with Axiis

Image via Wikipedia

How do you present data or statistics in a way that makes an impact on the audience?
They've all seen histograms, bar charts, pie charts and 2d axial graphs so many times before, all you're going to do is provoke a yawn - at best.















Take browser market share statistics.
Add Degrafa and Adobe Flex 3.
What do you get?

Welcome to my Airport

jQuery is rather useful and fun, even if it has been around for quite a while now. You can find a lot of examples of things you might find a use for on your site, or a customer's site, and some bloggers have taken the time to compile "Top nn jQuery Tips and Tricks" lists, like this one, or this one, for example.

One such nice little script I came across earlier today is Airport, which imitates the effect of an airport information board, and would look a bit like this (please visit the blog post if you want to see it in action):

I like

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• Coin Slider: Free jQuery Image Slider Plugin (crenk.com)
• jQuery HTML Table Toolbox (noupe.com)
• New jQuery Podcasts (ajaxian.com)

10 Google Search Tips

Image by Somewhat Frank via Flickr

We all use Google search, and many of us will assume we would know the ins and outs pretty well, but you might find something here that you didn't know before, or forgot all about.

Further Reading

• 14% Say The Canonical Tag Doesn't Work on Google, Really? (seroundtable.com)
• Small Google Navigation Bug (seroundtable.com)

Google and McAfee uncover possible Vietnamese government plot to expose dissidents

Google, who pulled out of the Chinese mainland just last week, uncovered a plot to use malware infected computers to expose visitors to http://www.bauxitevietnam.info, a dissident website criticising Vietnamese mining project involving a Chinese state run company.

The malware made its way on to the unsuspecting users' target computers when they downloaded plug-ins to suppose Vietnamese characters from another site, that had itself been hacked unbeknownst to its owners. McAffee analysed the malware, which they said was a quite standard trojan for tracking user activity, creating access logs and sending them back to the perpetrators servers, currently believed to be elements of the Vietnamese government's security services.

Am I the only one who finds it hard to believe that China isn't involved here somewhere too?


Watch and read the full BBC World report.

Related articles

• Vietnam Dissidents Hit By Online Attack (huffingtonpost.com)
• Google: Online attacks aimed at Vietnam critics (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Google: Critics of Vietnam mine face online attack (ctv.ca)
• Google says online attacks used in Vietnam (cbc.ca)
• Google Hints At More Attacks From China (GOOG) (businessinsider.com)