Salesforce Chatter Goes Freemium

In its attempt to bring social streams into the enterprise, Salesforce is taking its Chatter messaging service and making it freemium. Unlike most freemium services which start out free, and then add on premium features for a price, Salesforce is going in the opposite direction. Chatter started out as an additional $15/user/month service, but perhaps the uptake wasn't what CEO Marc Benioff had hoped it would be. Now most of the basic features will be free (as, arguably, they should have been from the beginning), and premium features will be available for power users at the $15 price as Chatter Plus. Chatter first launched in private beta last February, and then opened up in June. Chatter gives employees a realtime feed of what is going on in their company. You can follow other co-workers, but also documents, data, and accounts. It is tied into Salesforce.com, and all the apps built on top of the Salesforce platform (although that is now extra, see below). So for anyone who uses Salesforce, Chatter provides a realtime intelligence feed.

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Who needs Whuffie â Whatâs your PeerIndex at Le Web?

Who needs Whuffie – What's your PeerIndex at Le Web?

Who are the superstars of this year’s LeWeb? We’ll it’s hard to pick from the pretty awesome line-up. However, one startup has attempted to sift the list, coming up with the top 10 “titans of LeWeb”. PeerIndex has a technology similar in some respects to Klout to do this.

However, more interestingly they are now pulling together a Twitter list of the top 200 attendees here. This you’ll be able to check their Whuffieas you trawl Le Web’s halls. Mine’s 69, what’s yours?

Meanwhile, here’s the top 10 speakers at Le Web according to Peer Index:

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Chrome OS And Chrome Web Store To Play Up Web-Based Gaming At Launch

It’s now just about time for the Chrome event Google is holding in San Francisco, presumably to show off both the new Chrome Web Store and the beta version of Chrome OS. We’ll be there to cover it live, but here are a few last-minute tidbits.

First, as Google Operating System noticed, Google uploaded two new videos to the YouTube Google Chrome channel earlier today. While neither video is live, the thumbnails are and confirm that one is about Chrome OS (a tour) and one is about the Chrome Web Store.

Second, some users are reporting seeing an alert in their versions of Chrome that asks them if they want to “test drive” a new Chrome OS notebook.

Third, it looks like there will be at least two games installed by default with Chrome OS: Entanglement and Poppit, Peter Beverloo noticed the other day. It would seem that these two games (made by third-parties) will be in addition to the regular group of Google Apps like Gmail, Calendar, Docs, etc, that will be default apps for the new OS.

Fourth, a number of partners will be on hand to show of things for both Chrome OS and the Chrome Web Store we hear. Expect some other big games to be a part of this, we hear.

It still seems as if Chrome OS will be a bit half-baked at this time, but a very limited “test drive” should help them iron out some bugs quickly. At least Cloud Print looks good to go. More to come.

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Google Cloud Print Now Open for Chrome Dev on Windows, Prints to Any Printer from the Web [Chrome]

Google's planning to host your printer drivers in its cloud to make the Chrome OS (debuting today) a viable option. Now there's a landing page where you can test Google's web-based printing, if you're using the latest Chrome dev release on Windows.

Google's Cloud Print page, which carries the beta tag, walks you through the process of setting up cloud printing in the latest version of Chrome—it's a setting in the Under the Hood section, where you'll register with your Google credentials.

Having set that up and synced your local computer's printer drivers, you'll be all set to print from any computer that's also running Chrome, or (presumably) Chrome OS or some future mobile app, assuming that same computer is connected and ready to print.

I tried out Cloud Print this morning, and it was able to recognize all my printer drivers—including the doPDF print-to-PDF app—and print out a test page, the top portion of which is pictured at the top of this post. It's a promising peek at Chrome OS, which seems slated to debut at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time today.

Connect a printer to Google Cloud Print [via Google Operating System]

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OnLive Viewer for iPad Introduces the Unexpected Pleasures of Video Game Voyeurism [Video]

Cloud-based gaming service OnLine has been developing briskly over the last half year. Their first move onto the iPad, the free OnLive Viewer app, doesn't let you play games but rather lets you watch them as they're being played. Huh!

The ability to play games will come sometime early next year—OnLive says they're waiting for publishers to retrofit their games with touch and motion-based input—but in the meantime you can use the free OnLive Viewer iPad app (and soon a similar app for Android tablets) to watch the action that's transpiring on the OnLive servers. It's more fun than it sounds! The app lets you dip into ongoing sessions, add friends to track and chat with across the service, and view and rank a gallery of "Brag Clip" highlights. You'll have to have an OnLive account to watch, but if you're the kind of person who's already an early adopter for a cloud-based gaming service then you can probably don't need to be sold on the appeal of gaming-as-spectator-sport. [OnLive Viewer]

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