In an unusual display of concern, the president of Google Enterprise has made a public statement saying there should be no cause for alarm about Google Apps and its cloud computing infrastructure following a major data breach by a China-based attack on Google and 20 other large enterprise companies. David Girouard, Google's president of Google Enterprise, said in a personally written blog post that Google suffered a massive cyber attack last month. According to the corporate Google blog , the attackers came away from Google with stolen intellectual property. Sponsor Girouard downplayed the impact of the attack. He said Google "believes" the breach did not affect Google Apps customers. Girouard, obviously concerned about the backlash, said the incident may raise some questions about Google security. He said that Google is introducing additional security measures to help ensure the safety of customer's data. There are consistent questions about cloud computing's potential security flaws. Girouard is well aware of this. He tries to make it clear that this incident was not an assault on cloud computing. "It was an attack on the technology infrastructure of major corporations in sectors as diverse as finance, technology, media, and chemical. The route the attackers used was malicious software used to infect personal computers. Any computer connected to the Internet can fall victim to such attacks. While some intellectual property on our corporate network was compromised, we believe our customer cloud-based data remains secure." Girouard comes close to making a sales pitch in his statement, saying, in fact, that Google customers benefit from the Internet giant's investment in data security. "While any company can be subject to such an attack, those who use our cloud services benefit from our data security capabilities. At Google, we invest massive amounts of time and money in security. Nothing is more important to us. Our response to this attack shows that we are dedicated to protecting the businesses and users who have entrusted us with their sensitive email and document information. We are telling you this because we are committed to transparency, accountability, and maintaining your trust." This is an incredible incident that will lead to some major issues for Google Enterprise over the next several months. As the battle heats up for cloud computing supremacy, competitors will pick at this incident as an example of why a company that's more security conscious should be trusted with customer data, not a search engine giant. Discuss

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Google's Top Enterprise Executive: Do Not Be Alarmed by Chinese Cyber Attack

In a world where emails, phone calls, texts, and Tweets constantly bombard us, it is getting harder and harder to manage the firehose of data and information being thrust our way. For young companies to succeed this environment, it is imparitive they become organized and efficient lest they fall behind and quickly become overwhelmed. While there is no shortage of online solutions, it can be hard to know which one is the right tool for the job, so here's a list of five web applications to help kick-start your company and keep it organized without breaking the bank. Sponsor Google Apps - Google's collection of web apps includes solutions for corporate email accounts, calendars or contacts, but its best use for a new startup is with document sharing. Using Google Docs to collaborate on text documents, spreadsheets or even presentations is far more efficient than sending a file in an email attachment. In recent years, Zoho has become an increasingly competitive enterprise alternative to Google, even adding integration with Google Apps . Zoho has also introduced more features that help it stand out against Google Apps, including their own CRM solution that aims to compete with Salesforce.com . Basecamp - We here at ReadWriteWeb use Basecamp on a daily basis for managing ongoing projects and reviewing edits of our stories. Developed by 37signals , Basecamp offers a great interface with an easily read dashboard of the latest activity, as well as to-do lists, milestones and email alerts. For the on-the-go entrepreneur, there are a handful of mobile Basecamp apps ranging in features and price. Personally, I recommend using Insight for iPhone , which was rebranded from Encamp and recently recommended by 37signals . Dropbox - Whether it's large financial spreadsheets, or Photoshop mockups of your website-to-be, you are going to need somewhere to store all your files. Dropbox makes all of these easy and relatively inexpensive, offering up to 100 GB for $20 a month. But it's not just storage. Dropbox can automatically sync with folders on your desktop, creating an offsite backup of your vital startup files in the cloud, which any member of your staff can access. An alternative solution would be to use Box.net , however their pricing plans are higher than Dropbox's and are aimed at larger corporations. Dimdim - The next time you find yourself struggling to explain an intricate concept to your coworkers through a text document or presentation, check out Dimdim and use the power of screen-sharing to make your point crystal clear. One of Dimdim's best features is that their product works entirely from within your web browser without the need to download or install any extra software. Screen-sharing services like Dimdim can save a young company hundreds if not thousands of dollars in travel expenses by providing a much more efficient way to meet and share information. Also a notable service in this space is Citrix's GoToMeeting . However, like Box.net to Dropbox, its pricing is much higher than Dimdim's. MindMeister - Between the last two semesters of graduate school, I worked on a collaborative ten-week reporting project, and used online mind-mapping app MindMeister extensively to stay organized. The application is a great way to keep those more abstract ideas organized in an easy-to-understand way. Countless startups have mapped out their product ideas and business plans on giant whiteboards, and now the whiteboard has gone digital. MindMeister makes it easy to create and share mind maps and flow charts, and best of all, its free to get started. Photo by Flickr user simax . Discuss

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5 Web Apps To Keep Your Startup Organized

MailBrowser wants to make Gmail and Google Apps more useful by offering a consolidated view of all your contacts and attachments in a browser sidebar. In this sidebar, you can quickly search for contacts, see the latest emails you received from a specific contact, add calendar events and attach notes and tags to a contact. In many respects, MailBrowser looks a lot like Xobni for Gmail. Sponsor Features MailBrowser is currently only compatible with Internet Explorer and Firefox on the Mac (OSX 10.5 and higher) and Windows, though the team is working on Safari and Chrome versions as well. The plugin offers a rich set of features , including support for multiple Gmail and Google Apps accounts and rich previews of attachments. Another nice feature is the "trend" section that appears at the bottom of the sidebar. Here, two graphs show a timeline view of how many emails you sent and received from any given contact. MailBrowser stores all your data locally on your hard disk, so no information is ever shared with the service. Because all the data is stored locally, MailBrowser also keeps a copy of all your attachments on your machine. The application also syncs all the data back to Google Contacts in the cloud, so any changes you make on one computer will automatically appear on another machine. Xobni for Gmail In many respects, MailBrowser is very similar to Xobni - a popular Outlook addon. Xobni, however, puts a stronger emphasis on giving you additional information about a contact by looking at the contact's social networking profiles. MailBrowser plans to add this functionality in a future version . Currently, the service can only display details about a contact's domain and website. More Features Coming Soon MailBrowser has big plans for the future. The company plans to offer support for more services (Yahoo Mail, Live Mail, etc.), integration with enterprise apps like Salesforce and integration with social media services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Verdict For now, MailBrowser works just as advertised. It doesn't yet offer the rich feature set of Xobni, but the company is clearly working on that. If you have a very large mailbox, it can take a while for MailBrowser to download and index your information. Luckily, the download process starts with your most recent email, so that you can be up and running long before your last email has been downloaded. Discuss

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MailBrowser: Get More Out of Your Google Contacts

With Apple, you never know who is going to be evil next. Microsoft usually gets the grand prize, but as of late it appears that Google may be getting the cold shoulder for its forays into the mobile word. Apple and Google have historically been very friendly. But in recent months, the tenor of that relationship has changed. Apple rejected Google Voice for the iPhone. And now it appears that the relationship may get a bit cooler with all the talk of a Google phone. As that relationship becomes more distant, it appears that Apple and Microsoft may be warming up a bit, which may prove fruitful for the future of the iPhone in the enterprise. It may also prove beneficial for Microsoft, too, as it is also fighting off Google's efforts to win over the enterprise with its Google Apps productivity applications. Sponsor As PCWorld points out, Microsoft may be smart to team up with Apple. The iPhone is a solid, smart phone. Microsoft could do well by developing applications for the iPhone that serve its customers. Its Exchange Server and Office products still dominate the enterprise. As it is platform agnostic, Microsoft can develop applications for the iPhone that support its customers and protects its market base. Apple needs a good partner like Microsoft to make any significant dent in the enterprise. It does not have the enterprise infrastructure like Research in Motion does with the Blackberry Server. Without an enterprise management service, Apple will find it tough for the iPhone to make any deep play into the corporate world. Further, Google is showing signs that its plans to dominate the Internet is dependent on having hardware to go with its enterprise services and cloud-based operating systems. Google is reaching out to handset and netbook manufacturers. This suits Google's designs on the enterprise. Google Apps are gaining acceptance as a enterprise suite. The Android OS finally seems to be gaining some momentum. And the Chrome OS is a strong contender for the netbook market, especially as Windows 7 shows yet more signs of delays. We expect the enterprise will serve as the place where the battles intensify between Apple and Google. Microsoft has nothing to lose in teaming with Apple to fend off Google, a common rival and current evil force du jour. Discuss

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Will Apple and Microsoft Join Forces To Fight Google?

Security is one of the biggest concern for business owners when deciding to use an online service like Google Apps . So what are the best ways to protect yourself when using it? Amit Agarwal is a professional blogger and technology columnist. He writes digital inspiration , a world-class technology blog. But Amit got hacked this week. He wrote about it on his blog, providing some excellent advice for how to protect yourself from a similar kind of attack. Sponsor Amit writes that he often receives false requests to change his password. He received a similar message this week. He ignored it. A few minutes later he started getting error messages. He could not get to his accounts. Amit had been hacked. He thinks that a hacker accessed a backup email that he had set up for his accounts. Amit had his service restored in about three hours after some calls to his colleagues at Google. He felt obviously relieved but also had that feeling of emptiness when you suddenly realize you have no control over your accounts. To help us avoid this kind of calamity, Amit summarized in five points how to make sure something like this does not happen to you: 1. Log-in to your Gmail / Google Account and associate it with a phone number: It's a simple set up. You will get confirmation via SMS. If you do get attacked, a notification will go to you that someone is trying to get to your password. 2. Create a new email address: Set up the email to act as a backup and as a secondary email for your Google Apps account. Good advice by Amit: Do not auto-forward your email as the whole purpose of setting it up will be defeated. 3. Write it Down: Get out that old-fashioned pen and paper. Write down the following information so you can verify your identity just in case you do get hacked and your secondary email gets compromised, too. From Amit: The month and year when your created your Gmail / Google Account. If you created a Gmail account by invitation, write the email address of the person who first sent you that invite for Gmail. The email addresses of your most frequently emailed contacts (the top 5). The names of any custom labels that you may have created in your Gmail account. The day/month/year when you started using various other Google services (like AdSense, Orkut, Blogger, etc.) that are associated with the Google account that you are trying to recover. If you're not certain about some of the dates, provide your closest estimate. 4. Run a Test! Log-out of all your Gmail / Google Accounts. Start the password recovery process. This guarantees that what you set up actually works. You want to be absolutely certain your SMS settings and secondary email addresses are configured correctly. 5. Check your IP Address: From time to time check out the IP address in the footer of your Gmail Inbox. If you see an odd one, change your Google password immediately. Knowing IP addresses may seem too technical to some but it's good information to know. You should not have to be overly concerned about Google Apps security. If people take these kinds of basic steps, the chances of getting hacked decrease considerably. Discuss

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Using Google Apps? 5 Ways to Avoid Getting Hacked

This week we ran a reader poll , asking for your votes on the top Web products of the year. Thousands of you voted for up to 10 products, from a list of 100 selected by the ReadWriteWeb authors over December. The poll has now closed and we're pleased to present the ReadWriteWeb community's Top 10 Web Products of 2009 . Here is the final top 10: Sponsor 1. Twitter 2. Google Chrome 3. Google Maps 4. Facebook 5. WordPress 6. iPhone platform 7. Google Apps 8. Adobe AIR 9. Hulu 10. TweetDeck So there you have it, Twitter was the best product of 2009 according to ReadWriteWeb readers! Relatedly, Twitter desktop client TweetDeck made the list at #10. Google had 3 products in the top 3: Chrome (#2), Maps (#3) and Google Apps (#7). This more than justifies their selection by our editors as Best BigCo of 2009 . Honorable Mentions, #11-25 The following products missed out on the final top 10, but they were all popular picks among our community. Many of them are startup products, so they can be proud to say they're among the top 25 products of 2009 according to our readers. In alphabetical order: Android platform Bing DropBox (note: DropBox was missing from the original top 100, but we're including in the top 25 due to the number of comment-votes it received on the original post) Evernote Facebook iPhone app Feedly Google Voice Open Calais Posterous Mint Spotify Tumblr Tweetie Wolfram Alpha Woopra That's it, the culmination of our Best Products 2009 series . Hope you all enjoyed it and we look forward to another year of innovation in web technology in 2010! Discuss

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Poll Results: ReadWriteWeb Readers Pick The Top 10 Products of 2009

We're down to the final day of voting for ReadWriteWeb's reader-selected Top 10 Web Products of 2009 . You can vote for up to 10 products, from a list of 100 selected by the ReadWriteWeb authors over December. Make your picks in the poll embedded below. You can cast up to 10 votes. If you don't see one of your favorites in the list, note it in the comments and we'll count that as a vote too. The year's top 10 products, as selected by the RWW community, will be announced tomorrow. Here is the current top 10, in alphabetical order: Sponsor Adobe AIR Facebook Feedly Google Apps Google Chrome Google Maps Hulu iPhone platform Twitter WordPress What are your favorite products of 2009? (multiple choice) ( polling ) Top 100 Web Products of 2009, Alphabetical Aardvark ActivityStreams Adobe AIR Amazon EC2 Android platform Appsfire Apture Arduino Basecamp BBC's Semantic Music Project Bing Blip.fm BNO (Breaking News Online) box.net Boxee Brightkite ChartBeat Cisco Collaboration Citysense Clicker Cliqset Collecta Data.gov DBpedia Echo (JS-Kit) Evernote Evri Facebook Facebook iPhone app Fedex SenseAware Feedly Fever Foursquare Freebase FreshBooks Glue Google App Engine Google Apps Google Chrome Google Maps Google Search Options and Rich Snippets Google Voice Hootsuite HP CeNSE Hulu IBM's sensor solutions ioBridge iPhone platform Jimdo Jive Software SBS 4.0 Jolicloud Layar Microsoft Windows Azure MindTouch Mint Mir:ror MOG Moshi Monsters Mozilla Raindrop New York Times APIs OneForty Open Calais OrSiSo Outside.in Pachube Posterous Postrank present.ly PubSubHubbub Rackspace Cloud Drive Regator Ribbit RSSCloud Salesforce.com Seesmic Shazam SocialCast Socialtext Spotify StockTwits Superfeedr Tornado (FriendFeed framework) Tumblr TweetDeck Tweetie Tweetmeme Twidroid Twingly Twitter Vuze Wetoku WideNoise Wikitude Wolfram Alpha Woopra WordPress Yahoo Query Language (YQL) Yelp Zemanta Zoho CRM Discuss

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Reader Poll: Top 10 Web Products of 2009 (Last Chance to Vote!)