Oracle has announced immediate availability of the industry's first integrated, standards-based product offering to help organizations build, deploy and manage event-driven applications, based on an Event-Driven Architecture (EDA). Oracle Event-Driven Architecture Suite is comprised of best-in-class Oracle Fusion Middleware products that allow customers to sense, identify, analyze and respond to business events in real-time.

Microsoft has announced that it is teaming up with telecommunications providers to deliver a broad set of unified communications devices that enable choice for information workers and enterprise IT departments. Devices include innovative business Internet protocol (IP) phones, PCs and PC peripherals for Microsoft's unified communications platform.

Siemens Communications and Microsoft have announced the expansion of global collaborative efforts to advance the transformation of telephony, audio-, video- and web conferencing, instant messaging, and e-mail into a single unified communications platform. Cooperation between the two companies is rooted in a shared vision for unified communications that is people-centric, breaks down silos between different forms of communications systems, and expands on ongoing efforts by the two companies to integrate technologies around Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server.

Sun Microsystems has announced that it has withdrawn from the Aperi open source storage management initiative started by IBM in October 2005. Sun is a proponent of open source projects across its portfolio and has been a major supporter of this initiative in its formative phases. Given that Sun believes this initiative should be governed by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), Sun plans to participate in software projects under the auspices of that organization.

iWay Software, an enterprise integration solutions company, and Active Endpoints, an independent provider of BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) products and services have announced a strategic technology alliance in which iWay Software will integrate and resell Active Endpoints' ActiveBPEL products as a key component of iWay SOA Middleware.

BEA Systems has announced that it has seized the top spot in the application servers segment based on total software revenue in 2005 according to analyst firm Gartner. Gartner has also again positioned the company second overall in its application integration and middleware report based on total software revenue in 2005.

Back in October of 2005, Google and Sun made a deal to include Google's toolbar as an option in downloads of Java Runtime. Yesterday, Adobe announced the signing of a multi-year agreement with Google to distribute the Google Toolbar. If you are not excactly sure what is this all about, I'll try to interpret these news.

Oracle has unveiled the fourth Oracle Grid Index, which charts the global adoption of Grid Computing and investigates related technological issues and their implications for the business world. The latest research confirmed that Grid Computing is a maturing technology and highlighted the rise of Service-Oriented Architectures in maximizing the business benefits of Information Technology.

Oracle has announced that it is expanding its CRM On Demand offerings with the acquisition of Telephony@Work, a provider of IP-based software infrastructure for hosted contact center services. Telephony@Work's CallCenterAnywhere is a carrier-grade, multi-channel contact center solution that provides an alternative to custom programming and systems integration for on demand and on-premise contact centers.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently revealed that the company was likely to abandon its China-based search engine Google.cn. On Jan. 25 of this year, Google established Google.cn that operates on servers based in China, but now the users of Google.cn are not even up to 1% of people who use Google.com.

Google Earth, which combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at users' fingertips, yesterday was released in its latest version - Release 4 (Beta). Google has added several new features.

With Splunk 2.0, data access, processing and indexing can be partitioned to run across multiple hosts for greater scalability. The company itself reports that it runs its own software to index its internal logs from email, VoIP and QA environment.

'A bug can exist for half a century despite our best efforts to exterminate it,' wrote Google's Joshua Bloch (formerly of Sun) last week, as he highlighted something called the 'binary-search bug' and reminded the world that it applies equally to mergesort, and to other divide-and-conquer algorithms.

Microsoft has been testing adCenter with 6,000 accounts and reportedly those who tested it got more clicks converted to paying customers than Google or Yahoo. Looked at that way, Google tends to come in last behind AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo. Which might explain why Microsoft might be interested in doing a deal with Yahoo as the Wall Street Journal suggested the other day. If it gets more traffic Google will break out in hives. In this regard, Microsoft is also going to be spending money on developing content.

'I look forward to working for Microsoft and with the many talented people there who have the ability to be a force for change to continue to shape this still nascent industry.' With that bland stock sentence, written surely by a PR flack as an all-purpose quote for any new recruit to Redmond and not a dynamic CEO, Steve Berkovitz - the CEO of Ask.com and the man credited with building the management team that orchestrated the turnaround of Ask.com, today the second-largest pure search site on the Internet - joined Microsoft as senior vice president of the Online Business Group.

Baidu.com, the leading Chinese language Internet search provider, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with 2006-Intel China Ltd., a subsidiary of Intel, for cooperation in the development of Internet search and related applications in China.

From today, all registered Google Account users - that's to say, users of Gmail, AdWords, AdSense, Personalized Search/Homepage, Google RSS Reader and Google Groups - can use the beta of Google Calendar, the latest AJAX-powered application from Mountain View, CA.

According to Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, the 26-year-old Israeli-born student Ori Allon - a University of New South Wales doctoral candidate - has not only successfully created his own search engine, called Orion; he has also succeeded in having himself (and the engine's all-important algorithm) be snapped up by Google.

Google has opened up its AdWords keyword research tool by allowing it to be accessible from outside AdWords accounts. The company has also added seasonal search volume data for global and local searches, and allowed it to be accessible by match type (ie: broad, phrase, exact.)

Search marketing network Miva has partnered with 118 118 to launch a new pay-per-text ad channel that lets advertisers reach potential customers via their mobiles. The new product enables advertisers for the first time to buy space within 118 118 text messages.

CBS Corp. said it will showcase segments from its popular '60 Minutes' television news magazine on Yahoo as it seeks a wider audience for its news programs. The site will also feature special '60 Minutes' segments created for the Yahoo site and previews of upcoming broadcasts.

Scotsman Guide, a resource for mortgage originators, has announced the release of its complete line of free online wholesale-lender search engines at scotsmanguide.com. All matrixes from Scotsman Guide's residential and commercial magazines are now searchable online.

Yahoo Japan said Friday personal data on 8,223 deals for a wine-selling firm on its shopping website have been leaked through the Winny file-sharing program on a virus-infected personal computer of the firm.

Yahoo has notified subscribers to its Yahoo Plus service that the bundle of fee-based premium content and services will be discontinued in April. The move is another indication that such brin g-your-own-broadband-acce ss packages, while popular a few years ago, are losing their appeal.

The 3 group has announced a deal with Microsoft that will allow third generation mobile phone users to use MSN Hotmail and MSN Messenger through their 3 mobile handset.

Cgogo,Beijing-based mobile search service provider plans to provide mobile search services, free of charge, to more than 10,000 WAP portals in China, allowing them to add mobile search functions onto their sites.

Metamend, a SEM/SEO firm, has unveiled its new services, market segmentation, and website. Metamend services include utilizing Metamend's monitoring capabilities and technologies to meet client requirements for relevant and accurate SEM/SEO services.

SearchArize.com has returned strong results in its quest to provide small businesses and professionals with a solid online presence and search engine marketing campaign that is both affordable and effective. While many search engine marketing firms focus on selling the advantages of pay per click campaigns, SearchArize.com prefers to equally emphasize the strength of natural and organic search results, as an essential first step in any online marketing plan. Jon Breidbart, Founder and Marketing Guru of Neighborhood Media...

Yahoo has launched Instant Message Phone in the United States that lets people make phone calls through the company's instant messaging software. The service allows people to make calls from their computers for 2 cents a minute or less to the top 30 national phone markets, including the United States.

Google and Nike have launched a Web site,Joga.com available in 14 languages for soccer fans that offers video, information on games and players and social networking.

Oracle has announced Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g, a comprehensive, standalone search engine that enables customers to make critical business information available to authorized users while enforcing corporate security policies.

Hot Banana Software announced a new technology solution - Hot Banana For Agencies - targeted exclusively at online, eMarketing and interactive agencies, as well as traditional marketing and advertising agencies. Hot Banana For Agencies is designed to help all kinds of agencies manage their unique needs for clients who are running multiple marketing campaigns utilizing multiple time-limited, custom Landing Pages or Micro Marketing Sites.

A recent blog entry from SYS-CON West Coast Bureau Chief Roger Strukhoff suggests that Google's motto gets in the way of the company's business. He thinks Google is wrong to think it can have things both ways. But he could be wrong, too. What do you think?

57 bloggers/online experts gathered in Redmond yesterday at the 'MSN Search Champs' event were invited to discuss with senior MSN management the recent news and concerns around the data MSN Search, Yahoo and AOL provided to the US government. The precise nature of the information hadn't been disclosed...until now. It turns out that it was nothing more than an innocuous two-column list of search terms and frequency.

IBM today announced that it has made new open source technology available that will enhance knowledge discovery capabilities across multiple industries and applications and provide developers with tools to support a new breed of software for the analysis of information.

Escom, LLC, today announced the acquisition of the domain name Sex.com, from entrepreneur and Internet personality Gary Kremen, the CEO of Grant Media, LLC and founder of Match.com. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. It is believed to be among the most significant domain sale transactions in history. Financing for the acquisition was provided in part by Domain Capital LLC, a leader in the financing of Domain Names and Intellectual Property.

According to a smallish sample of just 2500 voters, the world's top brand is Google. Last year it was Apple.

Redknee has announced the availability of its Enhanced Messaging Gateway (EMG). Redknee's EMG is a next generation messaging platform that combines an innovative rating and charging engine along with advanced message profiling, routing, and delivery functions over and above standard SMS-C functions, the company says. This gives service providers flexible and precise control on a per-message basis how SMS and MMS services are routed, delivered and charged for.

Splunk (http://www.splunk.com/), creators of the first search software for fast moving IT data, today announced the launch of its OEM partnership program, Splunk Powered. Software companies, data center device and appliance vendors, and hosted service providers can now integrate advanced troubleshooting technology and make it possible for their customers to diagnose and resolve issues faster. More than 12,000 system administrators, developers, and help desk professionals have downloaded Splunk since its launch in August.

Is Google Pack the end or the beginning of Google's intrusion into the traditional desktop software market that's been dominated by Microsoft for as long as most people can remember? Offering several free applications via download, the announcement was practically invisible in the glare of the twin annonuncements by Google and Yahoo of their vision of the entertainment future.