Windows Server 8 to Serve Up The Cloud
Is Microsoft finally coming around to fully embrace private clouds with Windows Server 8?

Google Shores Up Android By Buying Large Batch of IBM Patents
Google quietly purchased (if you can call a few billion dollar transaction quiet) an additional 1000 patents from IBM In August. These patents range from server and desktop patents to web related patents.

America Invents Act Signed Into Law
On the subject of patents,President Obama recently signed the America Invents Act into law. Critics argue that this bill will further hamper technology startups due to the fact that the bill will transition the patent process  from “first to invent” to” first to file”.

Facebook Aims for Small Business Market
With Google+ just getting around to soon launching Business Pages, Facebook wil try to corner the SMB demographic by offering $50 in advertising to 200,000 small businesses

Amazon EC2 suffers significant outage on April 21
Amazon’s challenges with getting all services back online following an outage in its US-East  region  is already becoming a hot topic for debate in the Cloud Computing Industry.

Key differences between Social Business and Social Media
Social Media Club readers have posted compelling feedback on Chris Heuer’s framework that outlines the differences between Social Business and Social Media.

New Enterprise 2.0 survey needs participants
Jacob Morgan is looking for reader participation in an interesting Enterprise 2.o Survey.

Dell makes 1 Billion investment in Data Centers
Dell continues its transformation into a full services IT firm with 1 Billion investment in data centers. This investment in comes on the heels of recent major acquistions by Dell.

SpeakerMeter records audience Social Media reactions and feedback for presenters. Originally designed for use by conference speakers the SpeakerMeter team envision usage by educators, managers and others who value real time graphical feedback for their presentations.

New York City based startup TripMedi aims to become a aggregator for individuals and businesses looking for world-class Medical Tourism treatment. As one who has struggled to help others in the past review medical tourism options, this is an application that if it truly can offer timely, useful and accurate offshore medical treatment information, will truly be a winner.

Chicago land based startup Shotput was conceptualized and cobbled together in 48 hours on the Startup Bus journey from Chicago to Austin in early March. Shotput is a SMS list application that allows organizations or user groups with mailing lists to add subscribers via SMS.

FlyByMiles is targeted at frequent flyers who have miles in numerous accounts who wish to book award travel easier and or with combinations of miles and dollars. FlyByMiles promises to offer real time award availability for frequent flyers (which for award tickets is harder to achieve than it sounds) and hopes to monetize quickly by being first to market.

Smartling allows customers to utilize real time translation services to offer static web sites in multiple languages. Smartling was a SXSW Accelerator finalist and offers free and pay for service options. Website Translations ON Smartling are completed via crowd sourcing, professional translators or machine based translation.

Although not technically a startup bySXSW standards, (SocialWare received an additional 3 million in funding just prior to SXSW) Austin based SocialWare was also present at SXSW. Socialware allows companies in regulated industries like banking or insurance to integrate social media around its business processes.

IBM launches its 3 day Social Business Jam on 8 February 2011. The Social Business Jam is a online business social media brainstorming event along the lines of IBM’s Innovation Jam and is one of a series of Jam Events that IBM sponsors throughout the year.

During the event IBM partners, Subject Matter Experts, developers and Social Media Analysts will examine the role of Social Media in business, how to lower the risks of engaging in Social Media in business and what type of systems need to be in place for Social Media to be adopted in business.

A few of the scheduled participants in the Social Business Jam include, Charlene Li, Founder of Altimeter Group, Author of “Groundswell”, Steve Wylie, GM of Enterprise 2.0 Conference and Vittorio Cretella, CIO, Mars, Inc.

Some of the topics to be covered during the jam include Building the Social Business of the Future, Using Social to understand and engage with Customers, and What Social Means for IT.

Marc Benioff unveiled Salesforce.com’s Chatter application on the opening day of the firm’s annual DreamForce conference in Moscone Center In San Francisco.

Salesforce Chatter is a secure, private social network intended for enterprise use. Chatter has social computing features along the lines of Facebook and Twitter and is composed of a Chatter App and a Chatter Social Development Platform.

The Chatter App includes standard social computing features like Profiles, Status Updates, Feeds and Content Sharing.  Users of Twitter and Facebook will see familiar functionality and social media tools built into Chatter App.

The Chatter Social Platform; billed as the Collaboration Cloud, will include standard social media and collaboration components as well as Twitter, Google and Facebook developer toolkits. The Chatter Social Platform will also include API’s that will enable developers to integrate data from both cloud and on premise apps into Chatter.

Salesforce Chatter is scheduled to go live in 2010. Chatter will be included in all paid editions of SalesforceCRM and Force.com and a Chatter edition that includes Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Content ad Force.com will be available for $50 per user per month.

Amazon Launches Relational Database Service
Amazon this week launched its Relational Database Service.(RDS) Amazon RDS is a MYSQL 5.1 database offering that will compete directly with Joyent’s recently announced MySQL Accelerator and indirectly (but not at an enterprise level) with Microsoft SQL Azure.

Cloud Wars Begin
Amazon also announced a 15% drop in pricing for all EC2 instance families and sizes. This is significant due to the fact that one can expect EC2 competitors like GoGrid and Softlayer to follow suit and lower pricing as well.

Stephen Baker Researches Enterprise 2.0 Consulting
Over on BusinessWeek; Stephen Baker is creating a few articles on Enterprise 2.0 Consulting. Will be interesting to see whether his research indicates that Enterprise 2.0 consulting is a viable industry or more of the sometimes dubious Social Media consulting with an Enterprise twist.

W3C announces OWL2
The Semantic Web group within W3C released the OWL2 recommendation. OWL2 is part of the W3C’s Semantic Web Toolkit and is a standard for representing knowledge on the Web.

Microsoft technical strategist  Steve Marx outlines the  Windows Azure Platform for developers in the following video.

GSA launches Apps.Gov
The General Services Administration has launched the long awaited Apps.Gov site. Intended as a one stop shop for US government agencies keen on getting into the cloud, the site lists vendor provided Social Media, Business, Productivity and IT Services applications.

Are Washington Post’s Policies A Sign of The Future?
The Washington Post’s draconian Social Media Policy for its staffers has raised the question of whether strict Social Media Guidelines will become the norm in corporate America.

Practical Web 3.0 Applications
An interesting listing of 13 useful Semantic Web application over on ThoughtPick

Is this the Best Enterprise 2.0 Definition?
Bill Ives has posted what is probably the best Enterprise 2.0 definition I have seen to date. Now it will be up to a vendor to actually sell Enterprise 2.0 solutions to a customer with this definition.

There are a number of new events scheduled at this years conference including new cloud computing workshops and an open enterprise study.

The popular Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad returns in 2009 and a strong group of Enterprise 2.0 developers and entrepreneurs have made it to the round of 8. The comunity will choose 4 finalists to present at the conference based on each firms 2 minute product video.

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference organizers at TechWeb have offered 1 free conference pass valued at $2200 that I will give away to one of the OnDemand Beat’s readers.

The pass will go to the first reader who can answer either via twitter to @ondemandbeat or via a comment to this post the answer to the following question:

“Who were the 5 finalists in the 2008 Enterprise 2.0 Conference LaunchPad?”

If you do not win the Free Conference Pass you can still save 30% on conference registration or get a free Pavillion Pass by using code CNAPEB22 on the conference registration page.