SAN FRANCISCO – Mobile business professionals have been able to sync Google Docs to the iPad and have access on the go even without a live network connection using the Memeo Connect app, but iPhone users were out of luck. Now, Memeo is launching version 2.0 of Memeo Connect–including an iPhone app extending the Google Docs capabilities to the popular smartphone.

Spencer Chen, director of corporate communications for Memeo, described the hurdles to developing the iPhone version of Connect. “It’s hard to believe, but iPhone support had a hard time making it onto our roadmap due to the many commitments to our partners, such as Google, Western Digital, Seagate, Netgear, and most recently Sony. But we couldn’t ignore our users…they were screaming for iPhone support.”

Aside from introducing an iPhone version of the app, Connect 2.0 also adds new features and capabilities to the Memeo app. Connect can now perform Google-powered searches of the full text of Google Docs content. The app also now provides a “download all” Google Docs option, as well as the ability to cancel all uploads.

The Connect 2.0 app–especially with the addition of the Connect app for the iPhone–is a great tool for businesses that are using Google Apps for business productivity. Microsoft still has a dominant position–a virtual monopoly–on the business productivity with the Microsoft Office suite, and on messaging with Microsoft Exchange, but Google is making progress in convincing businesses to adopt its cloud-based alternative.

While Google is aggressively trying to stake its place in larger enterprises–such as the city of Los Angeles or the United States government–it still faces a tough battle. Chen notes “The data, statistically and anecdotally, is clearly telling us that Google Docs adoption remains in the mid-market…the SMBs and very small enterprises,” adding “The disruption always comes from the low-end off the market. Enterprise adoption is coming along slower, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Microsoft Office just celebrated its 20th birthday and Google Apps is not going to displace that overnight.”
Chen also had some thoughts to share on the competitive landscape. “Memeo Connect’s unfair advantage will always be our ‘backend’…Google. Our deep partnership and even deeper product integration provides customers with the ideal joint solution. Memeo’s proven expertise in data management and file sync together with Google’s mind-numbing portfolio of web technologies makes for a formidable content management offering.”

While I agree with Chen that Memeo–with its partnership and integration with Google–has some distinct advantages over competing platforms such as Box.net or Dropbox, that relationship is both a blessing and a curse. Memeo has an upperhand when it comes to organizations adopting Google Docs–those organizations are in the minority. Organizations that haven’t embraced Google may find more benefit from using a less Google-centric solution.
Regardless, Connect 2.0 introduces some useful functionality, and those organizations or business professionals that do use Google Docs will welcome the capabilities Memeo brings to the iPad and iPhone platforms. Check out the new and updated apps in the Apple App Store.

And there’s little doubt that Windows 7 is a hit. More than 10 percent of all PCs worldwide run Windows 7, which is the fastest-selling operating system in history, Redmond claims. And while Microsoft’s third-quarter revenue of $14.5 billion rose a modest 6 percent over the same period a year earlier, profits shot up an impressive 35 percent.
So what’s not to like?

Well, for starters, Microsoft’s position in the emerging mobile computing market is questionable at best. For large enterprises, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry phones still rule, while Apple’s iPhone and Google Android-based devices continue to make inroads.

Redmond has stumbled badly in the cell phone arena. Its Windows Mobile 6.x platform is essentially moribund. Know anyone who uses a Windows phone anymore? (Yes, I know they’re out there, but their numbers are dwindling fast.) The company recently scrapped its social media-oriented Kin device, which arrived on the mobile scene at least a year too late. And while Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 7 software does look promising, devices that run it won’t debut for a few more months.

Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to milk its Windows PC cash cow for all its worth. When it comes to the desktop and laptop market (both business and consumer), Redmond rules with its series of dominant products, including Windows 7 and the latest versions of Office, Exchange, and SharePoint.

But that could quickly change if low-cost laptop and tablet devices running one of Google’s mobile operating systems–Android or the upcoming Chrome OS–prove popular for businesses.

Microsoft’s PC-centric ways should be a cause for alarm in Redmond. It’s no surprise that the company’s biggest revenue growth is in its Windows and Windows Live division, while its Online Services and Entertainment and Devices divisions are relatively flat. Microsoft sees its Bing search, Xbox Live, and budding cloud services as areas of growth–but they’re not there yet.

Redmond’s revenue stream is too desktop-centric for its own good. Despite its Windows-oriented success, the company is a big question mark moving forward.

The honeypot accounts, like http://twitter.com/tayBourne, automatically post updates drawn from a collection of 120,000 real tweets harvested from Twitter. The team has also deployed honeypots on MySpace, and created software that uses dummy profiles on both networks to learn about spammer tactics. “We have a bot monitor who contacts our profiles,” says [ Kyumin ] Lee. “It looks at what they put in their messages and also accesses their profile to see their demographic information and past updates.”

So far, Lee says, “Our 61 honeypots tempted and collected 30,867 spammers on Twitter.”

The fake accounts try not to mimic a real person and are allocated to a dark address space and legitimate users are segregated from the spammers.

Lee said that most of the spammers pretend to be (surprise!) college-age females from California and (shock!) target men. Why is it so prevalent on social network sites? Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are extremely vulnerable to phishing, because users tent to trust their social networks more and due to the widespread use of URL shorteners.

Google funding research isn’t new. Its Google Research Blog chronicles most of the projects it funds, including a book on text processing, human-computer social interaction and other computer science research. Ridding the world of spammers is obviously a necessity for anyone using a computer and definitely for Internet entrepreneurs, so Google’s money is well-spent — even if it also helps its competitors.

Nobody pushes cloud computing harder than Google: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Apps, Google this, Google that. It’s all based on a framework of remote resources and an amorphous blob of processing that’s been tuned to spit out whatever we happen to be looking for, accept whatever documents we create, and send email and IM messages. And unlike so many other cloud service providers, Google seems to be accepted in this role, while others inspire skepticism.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Read about Google's adventures in Wi-Fi snooping in France. | Check out Neil McAllister's comparison of Google Docs and Microsoft Office Web Apps. ]

Most people have heard Google’s corporate motto, “Do no evil,” which has been challenged again and again, from censorship in China right up to Google Street View cars detecting and cataloging nearby Wi-Fi networks. Google claims the latter was inadvertent, but the company is still in hot water for it.

Nonetheless, Google is going a step further. To feed Google Places, it’s placing cameras in certain public places and establishments, so you’ll be able to view the interior of a restaurant, say, before heading out for dinner. And this seems perfectly fine to most people. I wonder what the reaction would be if Microsoft or Oracle tried the same thing? Would it be all roses and sunshine, or would people look at some crusty, beady-eyed Oracle guy and send him packing?
Somehow, Google has convinced the world that the company isn’t, in fact, evil. That’s despite the fact that Google is the most powerful force on the Internet today — a position that companies with different corporate mentalities might wield like a truncheon.

But Google steps lightly and presumes nothing. The famously sparse home page remains free of ads and clutter — a design so beloved that when Google introduced a Microsoft Bing-like background image a few weeks ago, the Internet exploded with outrage, and the situation was quickly reversed. But screaming about background images is like yelling at a prison guard for the quality of the food: You’re still under lock and key, even if the consistency of the pudding improves.

Recently I’ve noted how much Facebook knows about you, but make no mistake, Google knows plenty, too. Based on IP information, they know your searches, naturally, but they also know everything you do with Google tools. Planning a trip? They know where you’re going and how you’re getting there if you use Google Maps and directions. Correlate that information with keywords in messages in your Gmail account and you can determine times, companions, specific destinations, the whole works. Use Google Maps on your smartphone and, technically, they could track your progress.
Given the paranoia about so many other intrusions such as government surveillance, snooping bosses, predators, whatever, it’s amazing what Google has gotten away with. We’ve taken the candy, and in return we’ve given up significant levels of privacy to some huge corporate entity that we inexplicably trust not to betray us.

Maybe we trust Google because it has been benevolent in the past — in not “monetizing” when it could have, in promoting open source here and there, and in providing whimsical perks to its employees. Sure, now and again we’ve sucked air and said, “Oops, that was kinda evil.” But strictly speaking, the company hasn’t screwed over enough people to dent its public image. The idea that Microsoft — or even Apple — could ever make that same claim is almost comical.

Google also has the benefit of being constantly available. Can you even recall the last time that Google Search was unavailable or down? Some apps have had snafus in the past — notably Gmail — but the Google main page has always been ready for service, fast as you please. And that impeccable reliability may have more to do with why folks trust Google with their details, documents, pictures, videos, and so on than anything else.

Me, I don’t trust the cloud. I don’t know that I ever will. Yet I have a Gmail account and I use Google Maps and a variety of other Google tools all the time. At this point in the evolution of the Internet, it’s impossible not to. Let’s just hope that those in control of our information can truly be trusted to do the right thing. Hope, in the end, is all we can do.