Google Voice now on smartphones

Google is ready to bring Google Voice to a place where it really makes the most sense: the smartphone, reports cnet.

Android and BlackBerry owners who are also Google Voice users will be able to use the service directly on their handsets, said Vincent Paquet, senior product manager for Google Voice and a co-founder of GrandCentral, the product currently known as Google Voice.

Google Voice, which is expected to be available at some point today, lets users assign a single number to ring their home, work and cellphones, and also get voice mail messages as text transcriptions.

Microsoft outlined details of the Azure cloud computing platform at its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, states Computing.co.uk.

In November, the first data centres go live, offering enterprises the Windows-based online hosted application platform.

Data centres in the US, Dublin and Singapore will be open for businesses to deploy applications on what Microsoft is touting as an inexpensive, massively scalable platform, with no hardware management for users.

For compulsive users of Twitter, Verizon's latest FiOS TV service enhancement will sound like pure brilliance, says PCMag.

The company is introducing a set of widgets that will allow all FiOS customers to view Twitter posts and Facebook updates alongside their live television feeds.

Shades of Web TV? Definitely not, says Shawn Strickland, Verizon's VP of FiOS product management.

IBM is adding instant messaging, VOIP, file transfer and several more options to its Lotus Foundations appliance, a Linux-based collaboration server the company makes for its business partners to sell to SMEs, reports eWeek.

Next month, it will offer Lotus Foundations Reach for $70 per user for existing customers of the Lotus Foundations "Start" appliance, which costs $229 per server and $149 per user for the software.

IBM began selling Lotus Foundations in the second quarter of 2008 as a cost-effective alternative to Microsoft Office, Small Business Server and Office Communications Server.

General Electric (GE) unveiled a project at its research labs that will let homeowners cut annual energy consumption to zero by 2015, says cnet.

These "net-zero energy homes" will combine on-site power generation through solar panels or wind turbines with energy-efficient appliances and on-site storage. Consumers will get detailed energy data and potentially control appliances with Home Energy Manager, a device that is expected to cost between $200 and $250, according to GE executives.

GE is piloting the in-home products this year and expects to have the appliances and energy display available next year.