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SmartScreen is a killer would-be iPhone add-on (it’s not would-be if you’re jailbroken), Microsoft cries foul, claiming Google Chrome Frame makes IE less secure, and Gmail’s mobile site for iPhone and Android gets a couple of small updates.

• Note to Apple: Please Put This in the iPhone, Now
  An iPhone jailbreak app called SmartScreen brings iPhone widgets to the locked screen, allowing you to get a heads up on various widgetized data without unlocking your phone or launching an app. [Gizmodo]
• Microsoft: Google Chrome Frame makes IE less secure
  The folks at Redmond hit back at Google for releasing Google Chrome Frame, claiming it makes Internet Explorer less secure. [Ars Technica]
• The Iterative Web App: ‘Move’ and ‘Enhanced Refresh’
  The Gmail Mobile interface for iPhone and Android phones adds a Move feature and an Enhanced refresh feature that “auto-refreshes when you switch back to Gmail from another tab or application.” [Google Mobile Blog]
• three more WebGL demos
  They’ll only work with the nightly builds of Firefox, but if you got excited when you saw what WebGL-powered graphics can bring to Firefox, Mozilla is showing off three more demos. [Hacks.Mozilla]
• Google Sidewiki: Danger
  Google fanboy Jeff Jarvis doesn’t like the idea behind Google Sidewiki one bit. [BuzzMachine]

Originally posted 2009-09-24 22:50:18. Republished by Old Post Promoter

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: 5pm

Quick Pitch: 5pm is a web-based project management tool

Genius Idea: There are lots of different web-based project management tools out there. Of the big names, 37 Signals’ Basecamp is probably the most well known. 5pm offers a similar featureset, but also offers stuff like custom report creation, time tracking as a standard feature, a free desktop time tracking widget, and a strong mobile interface.

We like that you can try 5pm for 14 days without having to use a credit card. That’s always a nice plus, especially since the only way to really evaluate a project management service is to actually use it. 5pm has its own SOAP API and can integrate with iCal, import Gmail contacts and import Google Docs.

You can also create project groups, share files and customize the interface. Using the 5pm demo, I was struck by two things: 1) how awesome the “Office Space” references are, 2) how easy the system was to use without any sort of primer. Pricing starts at $18 a month for 5 users and there are multiple pricing tiers.

5pm is attractive and packs a good featurset. If you are on the lookout for a web-based project management tool, give the free trial a shot.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: 5pm, project management, software

URL shorteners have been around for years, but they were mostly afterthoughts rather than legitimate businesses. That all changed with the rise of Twitter and short-form, 140-character blogging. With limited space for tweeting, the URL shortener business has boomed. Bit.ly has grown tremendously, companies like Coke have even made their own and even Digg has gotten in on the action.

Bit.ly has not had any major threat to its market share, but that’s about to change. We’re learning that Facebook now has its own URL shortener. It’s unclear how long fb.me has been operation. What is clear, though, is that it’s appearing more and more in mobile links and within the Twitter stream.

Currently, Fb.me seems to be rolled out on a limited basis. As Inside Facebook points out, the Facebook URL Shortener is already in use on the mobile interface. Whenever links are shared within a mobile interface (i.e. an m.facebook.com link), it is now automatically shortened using fb.me.

It’s also active for Facebook usernames. For example, the short URLs fb.me/mashable and fb.me/benparr will take you to the Mashable fan page and my profile page respectively. This works for any username in the Facebook system.

It seems clear to us that Facebook has bigger plans for fb.me. It could be that any content coming out of Facebook could utilize the fb.me URL. It could even offer integrations with Facebook analytics, Facebook Connect and other Facebook tools — something that should concern Bit.ly.

Our guess is that you should expect to see a lot more of fb.me very soon.

Tags: facebook

The competition among URL shorteners seemed to have subsided, with bit.ly emerging as the leader thanks in large part to support from Twitter. But some big tech players could shake things up — Google and Facebook are both experimenting with shortening services of their own, called goo.gl and fb.me, respectively.

The point of a shortening service is to transform a long, convoluted URL into a short one. This is particularly useful on Twitter, where long URLs eat up precious characters, but I also see it use in emails and websites, where long URLs just look ugly.

Google has two blog posts today announcing its new shortening service. For now, only users of the Google Toolbar and the company’s RSS service FeedBurner can use Goo.gl, though the company says, “If the service proves useful, we may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future.” Google also highlights three benefits its service offers over most URL shorteners — stability, security, and speed.

Meanwhile, Facebook hasn’t made any official announcements, but it has begun shortening URLs that appear in its mobile interface. As with Google, if this proves successful, we can probably expect to see broader implementation.

Now, URL shorteners aren’t difficult to create from a technical perspective, but they can be costly to maintain for a small organization. The shutdown of some shorteners, such as Tr.im, has raised concerns about whether using a shortener will mean all your links become broken in the future. That would be less of a concern with Google and Facebook — and the perception that we can “rely” on links from Google, especially, could be trouble for bit.ly (not that bit.ly has been particularly unreliable). It will also be interesting to see if the companies decide to contribute to 301Works, an archive of shortened links.

Besides the saved space of URL shorteners, they can provide useful data and analytics about what people are clicking on. Google and Facebook might make use of that data themselves, and they may want to pass it on to customers and partners, such as blog publishers and businesses with Facebook Pages.

[Thanks to Kim-Mai Cutler for contributing to this post. Oh, and the photo is from flickr/Jonas B]

Windows/Mac/Linux (Adobe AIR): Waver allows you to keep a single-column view of Google Wave open on your desktop at all times from which you can read, compose, and keep an eye on what’s happening in your Wave inbox.

We’ve featured ways to keep on top of your Wave inbox before, but if you’re not the type to keep things open in your browser (or you don’t use Firefox), free Wave client Waver is a decent alternative. The client is merely a standalone version of Google Wave’s mobile interface, but it works perfectly as a compact, out-of-the-way client. You can view your inbox, search for waves, view them, reply to them, create new ones and even manage your Wave contacts, all from inside the app.

Waver isn’t the only Site-Specific Browser (SSB) to integrate with Wave. For those that want a full, multi-column Wave-focused client, free app Waveboard aims to tightly integrate Wave with OS X, adding, for example, support for Growl notifications.

Waver is a free download for all platforms, and requires Adobe AIR.

Grabbing Dropbox files from a web browser got a bit easier overnight, as the file synchronizing service added search, bulk operations for separate items, Gmail-style keyboard shortcuts, and a mobile interface for non-iPhone browsers to its web site.

The site as a whole got a visual overhaul, actually, but what established Dropbox users are going to most appreciate is the ability to create new ZIP-ed packages of different files—a few files, one or two folders, and maybe that picture, all at once—and grab them. The Dropbox team also added a search bar and “Gmail-style keyboard shortcuts,” although we haven’t seen a guide to those shortcuts as of yet.

Update: Reader Samuel points out that keyboard shortcuts are something you have to enable from the “Other Preferences” section of your Account settings on Dropbox’s web site. Once you do, hitting “?” brings up the shortcut list you see here. Very Gmail-like indeed.

The non-iPhone mobile version, assuming I’m seeing it on my Android model, works fairly well, providing quick access to files and recent changes. We’re still waiting on a dedicated iPhone app—submitted for Apple’s approval about four weeks ago—but these changes, mobile and otherwise, are a nice step forward for grabbing files when you’re at a non-synced computer or on your mobile device.