Motorola Unloads Good Technology After Just Two Years

Is Motorola shying away from its aspirations to compete with Research In Motion for business customers? That's what the sale of its Good Technology unit to Visto might suggest. Motorola bought the mobile messaging company just two years ago, but the company's fortunes have been on a steep decline since then, and it could be ready to refocus on the consumer market. Struggling mobile phone maker Motorola (NYSE: MOT) announced Tuesday that it will sell Good Technology -- its "push" email, calendar and contacts unit -- to Visto. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close at the end of the month, were not disclosed. The sale comes just a little more than two years after Motorola acquired Good Technology in an attempt to compete with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) for a larger share of the business customer market. The sale of Good Technology is part of Motorola's strategy for turning around its flagging mobile device business by making it leaner and more focused on the consumer market. It also rids Motorola of a troublesome asset. In 2006, Visto sued Good Technology for infringing on patents associated with its push email and synchronization technology. Motorola's stock was up 3.58 percent to US$3.76 per share in mid-day trading on Tuesday.

Windows Washing: Microsoft Talks Up Tweaks Following Public Beta

Microsoft has detailed some of the changes it plans to make following its public beta of the Windows 7 OS. Meanwhile, remarks made by the president of a Taiwan laptop manufacturer suggested the final version of Windows 7 may arrive as soon as this fall. Vista, however, remains the company's flagship product, and as such it needs regular service. An SP2 release candidate has been made available to select parties.

With its big round of public beta testing out of the way, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is apparently moving quickly to the next milestone on the Windows 7 upgrade path. On Thursday, the company revealed some of the changes users can expect to see in the upcoming Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) -- possibly the penultimate stage prior to the release of a final product -- in its Engineering Windows 7 blog. Looking at feedback garnered during the first round of public beta testing, Microsoft has been working on incorporating some needed changes. "It should be no surprise, but the Release Candidate for Windows 7 will have quite a few changes, many under the hood, so to speak, but also many visible. The goal of having a fully functional Beta was to make sure we received reliable feedback and not a lot of 'hey this doesn't work at all' sorts of reports. This has allowed us to really focus on delivering a refined RC where the changes we made are all the reflection of feedback we have received," wrote Chaitanya Sareen, senior program manager at Microsoft.

With Gmail Offline, Google's Package Is Almost Too Good to Pass Up

Recently, Google began experimenting with a way to make Gmail accessible offline. Download an applet, get yourself synced up, and suddenly you're able to write and read stored mail even when you have no Web access. It's not perfect, but setup is generally smooth and it works well, writes reviewer Jack Germain. After a year in development and testing, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) last month added an offline mail client to provide local access to mail folders when there is no Internet connection.Gmail Offline is still experimental and limited to synchronizing a maximum of 10,000 messages. It does not yet provide offline access to other Google features such as Calendar and Documents, but that capability is rumored to be in the works. It is not yet a perfect solution, but it does work rather well.Gmail Offline makes using the free, Web-based email service more efficient and useful. It solves the nagging problem of not having access to data stored in email folders. Until now, the absence of an offline mail reader has been a major reason for not using Web-based services like Google as a primary email delivery system.The ability to continue work tasks regardless of Internet access puts Google in the forefront of the free Web-based email providers. The addition of the offline email component leaves me with no compelling reason to use other Web-based products such as Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) Mail, Windows Live (aka Hotmail or Messenger Live) or Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Outlook, which is an offline email application.Until Gmail, with its ample gigabytes of online storage, I couldn't see much use for Web-based email in general. However, working on numerous computers in several locations, I can use Web-based email to centralize my email activity. Google's calendar and document storage, along with its latest feature of offline email access, makes the package almost too good to pass up.