Matthew Dorn

Symantec Corp. today released a new version of Norton Online Backup that supports both Windows and Mac operating systems on up to five computers, linked together through the same central account. Backed-up files also can be retrieved from any Web connection, including up to 90 days of file revisions. Norton Online Backup version 2.0 now allows users to transfer files between any of their computers and with other users. With Norton Online Backup's Web browser, users can select and share any of the files they have backed up by generating download links that can be e-mailed to any address.

Norton Online Backup retails for $49.99 per year, which includes 25GB of online storage to back up files from up to five computers. Users who've purchased new computers, for example, will be able to use the file transfer feature to populate their machines from current systems. Additional storage space can be purchased incrementally at any time. "Now consumers can turn to Norton to back up their priceless photos and music collections," Rowan Trollope, senior vice president of consumer products and marketing at Symantec, said in a statement. "With the combination of our brand, worldwide reach, and these latest technical improvements, we intend to bring online backup to consumers in a major way." An advanced search feature also allows users to search for backed-up files by name, date, size or type of file. Also, the file purge and storage management features allow users to remove previously backed-up files in sequential order to clear up available storage space. File backup stores the most current file, even if it's open, which can be handy for e-mail files. Other features include improvements to file migration, automatic initial setup, user settings and a more intuitive redesign of the user interface, Symantec said.

Version 2.0 supports cross-platform functionality for Windows XP, Vista, Window 7 and Mac OS X, including Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). The upgraded version is available through retail stores and through Symantec's online store . The new version of Norton Online Backup will be updated automatically for current subscribers within the coming weeks.

LA VEGAS - Four years after buying Ray Ozzie's Groove, Microsoft is making its most significant dive into the technology using the client software to create an offline data store and workplace for SharePoint users. It lets users view and edit both online and offline data from SharePoint and third-party line-of-business applications and synchronize those changes with SharePoint and third-party systems. The company made the announcement during Monday's opening of its annual SharePoint conference, which has attracted 7,000 attendees. 10 things you need to know about Windows 7 SharePoint Server 2010, which will go into its first public beta next month, will include the SharePoint Workplace Client, which is Groove software redesigned as a native SharePoint client. For example, data in an SAP system will look like native SharePoint data, and using the Groove-based SharePoint Workplace Client, that data can be taken offline and edited and then synchronized with the third-party system.

In addition, Microsoft has added to the optional browser-based SharePoint client the ability to read and edit external data. The synchronization is supported by workflow features including check-in and check-out capabilities. In the 2007 version, users could only read external data via the browser client. The access to third-party data is via a SharePoint feature called the Business Data Catalog, which lets users connect to line-of-business applications. "The Workplace Client is a key part of building these kinds of applications where SharePoint ties together different information in your organization," said Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of the Office SharePoint Server group at Microsoft. "It brings the data seamlessly into SharePoint and SharePoint Workspace." The client is available as part of the Office Pro Plus suite. "We have put ton of work in this release that we think will make developers lives easier to bring line-of-business data together with SharePoint data, take it offline and then update it," Teper said. "It is a real pain point for IT organizations to build these business front ends and tie them into collaboration activity." Groove was founded in 1997 by Lotus Notes creator Ozzie, who is now the chief software architect at Microsoft. The 2007 version of SharePoint included a Groove branded client, but it provided a read-only option for external data along with very basic SharePoint integration.

When Microsoft purchased Groove in March 2005, Groove's Virtual Office, peer-to-peer client-side technology supported file sharing and the ability to work with data offline and, most notably, securely collaborate over corporate firewalls. In addition, it added auditing/logging controls, Web services APIs, and integration with Microsoft's Visual Studio development platform for creating custom tools and agents for use within Virtual Office. It also had a host of corporate-class features and servers to turn the Groove Virtual Office environment into a secure, managed universal front-end-to-back-end data repository and a bridge that tied together disparate client technologies used for collaboration. The forthcoming SharePoint Server 2010 also features tighter integration with Visual Studio. Office Groove Server 2007 is a bundle with SharePoint 2007 that includes the former Groove Enterprise Management, Relay and Data Bridge servers that made up the back-end infrastructure of Groove.

The Groove 2007 in SharePoint 2007 included tools for discussion, files, meetings, calendar, forms, issue tracking, Notepad, pictures and sketchpad. Follow John on Twitter: twitter.com/johnfontana

An Indian eye hospital is piloting software that will push to doctors' iPhones retinal images collected from patients in remote locations. Doctors are more likely to have access at all times to their mobile phones than their laptop computers, Vinekar said. Doctors can then quickly send their diagnosis and recommendations from their iPhones, said Anand Vinekar, project coordinator and pediatric retinal surgeon at the Narayana Nethralaya Postgraduate Institute of Ophthalmology in Bangalore.

The hospital plans to use the technology to test infants for a potentially blinding condition called Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), besides other conditions such as ocular cancers. The problem in India is that the country has about 15 to 20 doctors trained to diagnose and treat patients with ROP, and they are located in the cities, Vinekar said. ROP requires treatment after diagnosis within 48 to 72 hours to prevent blindness, Vinekar said. As part of its village outreach program in rural areas, two years ago the hospital started sending qualified doctors to villages and equipped them with instruments used to examine the eye. These people, who were not doctors or technicians, were also trained to make a preliminary diagnosis, Vinekar said. To improve its reach in rural and semi-urban areas, the hospital trained people to take eye images using a wide-angle retinal digital camera, with 130 degrees field of view.

Once the hospital started using images for a diagnosis, the doctors did not have to go to the rural locations every time for diagnosis, he added. Some months ago, the hospital installed a system that allowed the images to be uploaded to a server using the Internet, and a doctor could access the images from a computer. Images were transferred from the camera to a computer, and then the images were e-mailed to the doctor in Bangalore for final diagnosis and recommendations. Under the new system, images from the computer are uploaded to a server using the Internet, and the software then pushes the images to the doctor's iPhone. Doctors can give their diagnosis, and send their reports from their mobile phones to the server, and from there on through the Internet to the persons at the patient's site.

Doctors from other hospitals in other locations can also download the application to their iPhones, and collaborate in the diagnosis, said Sham Banerji, CEO of i2i TeleSolutions, the company that developed the software, and also hosts the application and the images. The hospital selected the iPhone for its graphics capability and screen resolution, Vinekar said. The ability to create PDF reports on the iPhone also helps doctors to create diagnostic reports and upload them on the Internet, Vinekar said. The iPhone also offers features such as the ability to enlarge images, he added. The software has been submitted by i2i of Singapore for inclusion by Apple in its App Store, Banerji said. The software can also be ported to other mobile phones, and the company may also look at phones using the Android mobile operating system, Banerji added.

Having the software listed on the store will help the company market the software to more hospitals, he added. Vinekar meanwhile hopes to down the line use a mobile phone and the mobile telephone network for collecting images at the patients' end, and transmit them in real-time to the back-end servers and the doctors' iPhones. But first the phones will have to support quality cameras with 130 degrees field of view, he added.

Los Angeles City Council approved a US$7.25 million five-year deal Tuesday in which the city will adopt Gmail and other Google Apps. According to Los Angeles City Council minutes, just over $1.5 million for the project will come from the payout of a 2006 class action lawsuit between the City and Microsoft. Google is touting the deal as a major endorsement of its cloud-based approach to computing, but it turns out that some of the funding is indirectly coming from an unlikely source: Microsoft.

Microsoft paid $70 million three years ago to settle the suit, brought on behalf of six California counties and cities who alleged that Microsoft used its monopoly position to overcharge for software. Los Angeles City Council approved the deal unanimously on Tuesday, according to Google Spokesman Andrew Kovacs. Microsoft has paid out more than $1 billion in other class-action settlements based on similar claims. The migration from the city's Novell GroupWise e-mail servers will be handled by contractor Computer Sciences Corp. The five-year contract will cost Los Angeles about $1.5 million more than simply sticking with Novell. Other applications such as calendaring, document sharing and chat will be handled by Google Apps too.

But because the city will get extra storage capacity from Google, while at the same time being able to run other software on the Novell servers, it's worth the cost, according to an Oct. 7 city finance committee memo written by City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana. The Los Angeles deal may hint at how this product will work. Google has pushed Google Apps as an option for government agencies, promising to ship a product called Government Cloud, which will be certified under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), sometime next year. According to a Sept. 15 memo from the Los Angeles Information Technology Agency, Google will "provide a new separate data environment called 'GovCloud.' The GovCloud will store both applications and data in a completely segregated environment that will only be used by public agencies." This GovCloud would be encrypted and "physically and logically segregated" from Google's standard applications. Because data would be encrypted and then stored on many different servers, Google's administrators wouldn't typically be able to access the information, although there would be so-called "Super Administrators" who would be able to recompile the data and read it.

The data would be stored only in the U.S. and only accessible to U.S citizens who have undergone security clearance. The city would own the data and would be notified of "any request of data or security breach," the memo states. They convinced Los Angeles council members to tack on a "liquidated damages" clause to the contract that would award the city a payout in the event of a data breach. Critics are still worried about security and privacy, though. Kovacs of Google downplayed privacy and security concerns over the project. "One thing that was very clear in council today," he said. "They believe that Google Apps will make the city more secure than their current solution."