In a move bound to excite the open source community, today, AOL (operator of both the popular AIM, and ICQ Instant Messenger networks), seems to have begun the process of moving their systems from their proprietary protocols, to open source solutions.

ICQ, developed in 1996 by Mirabilis and sold two years later to AOL for US$407M was one of the early stars of the Social Web. Developed at a time when instant messaging was a new concept, it’s creators were forced to develop their own language to allow their new application to communicate with their server. In the years since, dozens of other protocols and clients have been developed by competing companies. Internet giants Yahoo, Microsoft, and even AOL before their purchase of ICQ, developed their own IM networks.

Because each of these networks relied on their own protocol, clients were incompatible with each other and there was no interoperability. To communicate with each other many users were forced to join, and use multiple networks simultaneously.

In 2005, when Google launched it’s own IM network, gTalk, it took a different approach. Rather than developing their own proprietary protocol, google chose to use an open protocol called XMPP (developed by the Jabber Open Source Community). This allowed google to focus on providing network support, integration with their own software (in-browser messaging in gmail for example), and the general user experience. Users can choose can choose from the many XMPP compatible IM clients, and share contacts between gTalk, and other XMPP compatible networks.

In 2006, Yahoo and MSN seemd to be experementing with the idea of combining their networks. The latest versions of each of their client programs allow users to add friends from the other network. The move by AIM to XMPP will put pressure on Yahoo and MSN to go all the way, and adopt an open protocol too.

For information on connecting to AOL’s XMPP test server, read on here.

InfoWorld has announced its 2008 Technology of the Year Award winners and one Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application to earn kudos is eXpresso. Named as the Best Spreadsheet Collaboration application, eXpresso enables the easy creation of communities for sharing Microsoft Excel files.

Powered by an Oracle database, eXpresso provides more extensive content auditing & management control than services such as Google Spreadsheets. Going beyond basic file versioning capabilities, eXpresso ups the ante by incorporating interactive community features like chat, social tagging and simultaneous editing. The well thought-out interface also adds to a very satisfying user experience.

Priced at US$15 monthly per user, eXpresso certainly warrants a close look for SMBs that rely on Excel as their primary planning and tracking tool.

As the de facto front page of the Internet, Google has tremendous power.

Research suggest that 97% of users will never look beyond the top 30 results for their search. Google keeps the exact formula they use to rank results is a secret, and it’s constantly being modified. But when they answer over 3 billion queries a day, the difference between a high and low Google ranking in the results can be the difference between an IPO and chapter 11.

Consequently there is a constant battle between spammers (and site owners) who desperately crave the traffic of a high ranking, and Google who want their results to remain as relevant and useful as possible. And because Google is constantly modifying their formula, what worked brilliantly last month to boost your rank, might get you removed completely from the results now. And for as long as googles algorithm remains a secret, Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), isn’t a science, but something halfway between an art and superstition.

Steve Russell expects 2008 to be a bumper year for the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model in Asia – not surprising given that Russell is the President of leading on-demand CRM software vendor Salesforce.com.

Industry research pundits from Gartner & IDC share Russell’s optimism, and many traditional software vendors have also jumped onto the SaaS bandwagon – Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and Adobe, amongst others, have recently launched hosted applications of various sorts. Many of these SaaS products are aimed squarely at the small & medium business (SMB) segment. The lower upfront cost of the SaaS model is often touted as a major selling point in the SMB market.

However, adopting SaaS-style hosted applications is not without its headaches – reliability, security & vendor lock-in are all very real issues that SMBs evaluating on-demand, hosted software must address carefully.

Google has recently added some new features to Google Presentations, which is a component of the free Google Docs office suite. Google Presentations has the same basic features as Microsoft’s Powerpoint application, but lacks much of the professional polish and wow-factor of the latter.

Where the Google applications shine, though, is in their collaboration features. Multiple people can collaborate on creating a presentation and the finished product can easily be shared publicly or with an invited group. Major new feature include the ability to easily embed slide shows into web sites as well as drag-and-drop image insertion and slide importing.

Then MizPee’s the site for you – if you’re in the US, that is. This novel site is an online guide to public restroom that incorpoartes community features and advertising. The application sports a mobile interface that enables location-based services through GPS equipped handsets.

Innovative web-application driven business models such as this are becoming increasingly feasible given the advances in mobile and social web technologies. Focused interactive web applications are set to blossom over the next few years, many of which will provide truly useful services to an increasingly web-enabled population.

A recent New York Times article discusses how blogging can be a low-cost, high-return marketing tool for small businesses. Blogging is particularly useful for consultants and professional services firms who need to position themselves as experts in their fields.

The examples discussed in the article show how small companies can use blogging to good advantage, but it does require good writing skills and not inconsiderable time commitment. To be truly effective, companies must formulate a cohesive strategy for their blogs and build a sustainable content pipeline.