releases

Press releases are a form of online marketing that we don't discuss very often. They don't have the new and exciting appeal of social media or even search engine marketing, but they've been around a lot longer and are still working. In fact, they can play right into those other forms.

Opera has announced the release of its Beta 3 release of the Opera 10 browser. The company says this version is ready for "heavy work" on the web. Opera has run over 10 million tests on the beta and has received plenty of feedback. They say performance and stability were prioritized in this version.

Google has released a couple of enhancements to Google Apps Directory Sync, which is a tool that helps businesses sync the user and directory info in their LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) systems with Google Apps. Google Apps Directory Sync now helps sync employee contact info as well as non-employee info listed in the central LDAP directory. This means customers, partners, vendors, etc. can easily be looked up.

Yesterday YouTube unveiled the newest way to view the sites content, simply called YouTube XL. Basically YouTube XL is a redesigned version of the YouTube website, optimized for televisions and large computer monitors.

Today Adobe announced the launch of some new beta releases for the Adobe Flash Platform. These are Flash Builder 4 (formerly Flex Builder), Flash Catalyst and the open source Flex 4 framework SDK.

Brightcove has introduced its newest version of its online video platform, Brightcove 3, which has been in beta testing with customers since June.

It’s kind of astonishing how swiftly society can shift these days. In 2005, when I started covering this industry, the guys at the local pub would look over the tops of their sports sections with blank or puzzled faces if you uttered the word “blog.”

Some people interrupted their workdays on Thursday, and others lost a bit of sleep that night.  But folks who didn't participate in Google's Webmaster Central chat live can now catch up at their convenience; the company's released presentations and an audio transcript.