News and Information Blog 25 02 2010

HipChat Instant Messaging for Small Business

Quick, efficient online messaging makes everyone more productive. Hipchat’s hosted instant messaging service offers a low-cost, no-hassle IM client for small businesses.

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Google Talk Improves Voice, Video Performance

As you might imagine, conversations tend to be more productive and enjoyable when they’re not interrupted and cut short all the time. Google’s made a smart move, then, by upgrading Google Talk in several respects.

The upgrades actually pertain to one of Google Talk’s most advanced features: the voice and video chat plug-in. As for what they do, users should experience fewer crashes when newer Macs are in the mix and benefit from increased webcam compatibility.

On the Google Talkabout blog, Google also promised increased plug-in stability and “fixes to the infrastructure used to set up and connect your video calls.”

This update would be something of a big deal under any circumstances; the last post on the Google Talkabout blog was made in September of last year, so the search giant’s proven that it hasn’t forgotten about this product.

But here’s a (big) added bonus: Jessan Hutchison-Quillian and Mikael Drugge, who are software engineers, wrote “From users who have chosen to ‘Report quality statistics’ in their chat settings, we can see a substantial increase in call connection rates and a big decrease in the call drop rate (see chart below).”

Google Talk looks to be much more useful now.

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Love Test

Here's a neat little script to figure the "love compatibility" between two people. Just enter their names and hit calculate! We are not responsible for any broken relationships resulting from this script.

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A.T. Cross turns profit in difficult 2009

A.T. Cross Co. announced Wednesday that it made $1.9 million in net income, or 13 cents per share, in 2009, compared with $500,000 the year before.

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