• By far the most interesting tidbit this week was the appearance of a large amount of Internet traffic coming from Google with an unidentified operating system. Lots of conspiracy theories swirling around this one. This Google Watch post is a must read.

• This ars technica post takes a peak at the breadth of Microsoft's recent Window Live web service offerings including mail, blogging, file sharing, event management, social networking, photo sharing, and on and on. All free.

• I do almost all my on-line shopping at Amazon.com and my customer experience has been universally positive. Their most recent innovation is amazing. Using a new Amazon iPhone  application, you take a digital photo of things you are interested in buying (in a brick and mortar  store or anyplace else) and Amazon will try to find that item for you in their online store!

• This ZDNet blog post has has some great inside info on the status, features, and release targets for Microsoft's Office 14. A private alpha build is slated for sometime this month, with a ship date in late 2009 .

• While on the topic of Microsoft products, Ed Bott on ZDNet reports that the Windows 7 Beta 1 is appears to be targeted for mid-January, with a possible  announcement by Prez Steve Ballmer at CES a week before.

• There was lots of buzz on the Internet recently regarding a variety of initiatives to open up the various social networking platforms so that they can leveraged on other web sites. Google's approach is called "Friend Connect" and as described in their press release, allows Web site owners to insert social features to make "any app, any site, any friends" a reality.

• The final Google tidbit is the announcement of "Native Client", another way to for Web applications to harness the power of the desktop, ala Flash, Java, Silverlight, and others. Given Google reach, this could be something worth keeping and eye on.

More next week...

Jim