Google provides so many services for free, I am rather surprised that it doesn’t offer a free FTP hosting service for small business customers.

Sure, Docs, Apps, and even GMail and Picasa can serve as repositories of files, but they aren’t super convenient for transferring large files back and forth. Will there ever be a Google FTP?

Most FTP services aren’t that expensive. You can get storage for up to 10 GB for less than $10.00 USD or $20.00 USD per month, depending on where you have your FTP site hosted. That’s not a colossal expense for any business.

Small businesses, however, suffer more from the nickel-and-dime effect, and that $10.00 USD can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

On top of that, not all FTPs are created equal. Some have limits on the amount of data that can be transferred back and forth, charging you more when you go over the limit.

To be fair, Google is very generous with storage in its Gmail accounts. I currently have access to 6.8 GB of storage in my e-mail, and can retrieve anything I’ve sent/received at any time, from nearly any platform.

Google’s photo-sharing service, Picasa, grants you 1 GB of storage. Not bad.

Docs limits file uploads to 500 Kb for HTML, .doc and .rtf files. Spreadsheets can’t be larger than 1 MB, and Presentations can’t surpass 10 MB if uploaded from a PC, 2 MB if transferred from the Web, or just 500 Kb via e-mail.

It’s not uncommon for me to have to send a large batch of picture files, or a video file, here or there. Sending pictures one by one is a major pain in the rear. I often pack them into a single folder and then zip the file but even zipped, the folders can still be bulky.

Most e-mail systems, even Gmail, can’t really handle 30 MB attachments all that well, necessitating the need for FTP to transfer the bigger files/folders.

So, Google, just out of curiosity, why don’t you offer an FTP service for small business? Afraid it will be used to transfer copyrighted material such as movies and/or music?

Have the MPAA and RIAA already squashed any ideas you might have had? What’s the deal? Am I stuck finding some anonymous storage facility?

If you’ve dreamed of starting your own Web site, Google has made it easier than ever. It has expanded the availability of its Google Sites service — originally only for Google Apps users — to everyone. There’s no limit on the number of pages you can create, nor what you can share with the WWW.

When Google first made sites available to Apps users, I took it for a spin. It was fairly easy to register a site and use Google’s tools to crease some basic Web pages. No advanced knowledge of HTML or other Web technologies is required.

I also was able to set up user accounts, e-mail accounts, and make it really official. At the time, it was only for registered businesses with Google Apps accounts. Now every Jane and Joe can have at it.

Google writes in its blog:

“We’ve made it easy for anyone to set up a website to share all types of information — team projects, company intranets, community groups, classrooms, clubs, family updates, you name it — in one place, for a few people, a group or the world.”

Sites isn’t just for one person to set up and manage a Web site. It’s a collaborative tool that lets anyone (who you’ve invited) view or edit content. Setting up access for others is as simple as e-mailing them.

In the spirit of Web 2.0, the ability for many to contribute, change, and collectively alter Web documents can be truly powerful … or utterly annoying. Either way, launching your own Web site just got a little bit simpler.

One of my favorite features of Gmail is how easy it is to search through your e-mails to find what you want/need.

Sometimes, though, you need to be really specific. Google has some search tips that let you quickly narrow your search down to just a handful of results.

I don’t delete e-mails. I also don’t download them to my PC. I let all 12,000 conversations in my Gmail account just sit there, taking up some 1.2 GB on Google’s servers.

Why? So they are always stored in one, searchable location: the cloud. This way, I have access to every single e-mail from just about any device I might have.

This would be a pretty useless endeavor if I couldn’t search through them quickly. For the most part, I can.

If I need to find an e-mail from a particular person, I just type that person’s name, and every e-mail that person has sent me shows up. Even if that includes dozens or even hundreds of e-mails, chances are I can find the exact one I need pretty fast.

According to The Official Gmail Blog, the real power of Gmail lies in search operators. Search operators help modify a query and narrow down the results.

“Search operators work pretty much the same way within Gmail as they do for Google. So, if I want the e-mail Lisa sent me with her flight information so I know when to pick her up at the airport, I type from:lisa SFO.

You can limit the scope of your search to a particular subject (subject:) or label (label:) as well.

If remembering operators isn’t really your thing, that’s OK. There’s a ‘Show search options’ link to the right of the search bar at the top of your in-box.”

That lets you set parameters of a more advanced search.

I tried these out, and they really do help a lot. Remember, search operators = cool tool for searching Gmail.

Is it just a marketing veneer or is IBM really getting serious about integrating the social Web into its enterprise content management stack?

Yesterday, Big Blue released details on how its collaborative toolsets help companies prepare for Web 2.0 and previewed an integration between Lotus Quickr and its FileNet P8 ECM platform.

This is good news for FileNet clients as it appears their ECM repositories might get a Web 2.0 facelift, bringing better collaboration to often siloed islands of information.

Part of the foundation for its Web 2.0 strategy is Lotus Mashups, Web-based capabilities that make it easy for companies to assemble and publish mini-applications in real time.

And in true Big Blue style, IBM is ready to enter the building and take the business.

It has positioned Global Services to capture the projected demand for enterprise 2.0 solutions and social networking with the launch of specialized consulting services.

According to the release, it will focus on emerging technologies like social computing, SOA, and the 3-D Internet to improve business performance.

The Recording Industry of America’s (RIAA) website was attacked – again – over the weekend.

According to numerous breaking news stories it seems a lack of proper security controls enabled some to take parts of the site down, and tweak its pages. Get serious.

It looks like a plain vanilla SQL injection vulnerability was publicized on the social news network site Reddit, and the attacking escalated from there.

The RIAA.org Web site appears fully functioning now, but that probably won’t last too long if history is any indication. During the past five years the site has reportedly been defaced and has undergone several denial-of-service attacks.

Things got really sticky a few years ago when Senator Orin Hatch proposed to give the entertainment industry the right to attack systems used by illegal file swappers.

How about a search warrant?

Other than a laugh, these more recent hacks aren’t going to push their argument against the RIAA, its lawsuits, or the demise of DRM any further.

Energy would be better placed by hounding Congress to improve the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and boycotting the purchase of DRM enabled music files and CDs.

Speaking of DRMed music files, they’re already starting their fade into oblivion.

Nearly every, if not every, major record label is already starting to release DRM-free files. In fact, defacing Web sites is about as petty as trying to sue your customer-base to save a dying business model.

Speaking of petty: why won’t the RIAA spring for the occasional server assessment?

Yahoo will support digital identity framework OpenID 2.0 in beta form January 30.

Yahoo announced this morning that it would support the technology, which allows users to consolidate their Internet identities. Plaxo and JanRain are working with Yahoo so users don’t have to create separate IDs and logins at the Web sites, blogs, and profile pages they visit — as long as the sites support OpenID 2.0.

The OpenID Foundation and community also helped create specifications to improve security and convenience of OpenID.

Users can customize OpenID identifiers on me.yahoo.com or type “www.yahoo.com” or “www.flickr.com” on sites that support the platform.

Yahoo said users will be protected by the company’s sign-in seal while they surf the Web. Web sites can also add an option to allow users to sign in with their Yahoo ID. E-mail and instant messaging addresses are withheld as users log in, and that creates a barrier to phishing or other attacks, Yahoo said.

“A Yahoo ID is one of the most recognizable and useful accounts to have on the Internet and with our support of OpenID, it will become even more powerful,”

– Ash Patel, EVP of platforms and infrastructure.

Scott Kveton, chairman of the board for the OpenID Foundation, said Yahoo’s support of “an open Web” validates the OpenID movement and immediately triples the number of people who can use OpenID. Yahoo has 248 million users.

“With Yahoo actively engaged with the OpenID Foundation and its community to promote OpenID, Yahoo’s users will be able to more easily access the many sites across the Web that support the standard, and the potential for access to Yahoo’s vast international user base will create an even more powerful incentive for additional Web sites to begin accepting OpenID users.”

– Scott Kveton, chairman of the board for the OpenID Foundation.

Joseph Smarr, chief platform architect of Plaxo, said the move also supports data portability for various Web services.

Larry Drebes, founder and VP of engineering for JanRain, said that secure, portable, digital identities are keys to advancing Web applications.

More than 120 million URLs and 9,000 sites support Open ID, created by open source developers.

Source: Yahoo! Press Release