Ideas and reviews for websites, film, business, products, and designMicroblog your ideas and be discovered

The news that Google is buying DocVerse is now official. The reasons why Google bought this small company can be learned by taking a look at the people who started this small company out of Seattle. Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui worked at Microsoft before launching DocVerse in 2007. Sinha ran product strategy for Sharepoint and SQL, 1.6B and $3.0B products, respectively. DeNeui served as program manager on the SQL Server Strategy Team and the program manager for the WinFS ISV Team. Sponsor The two have built a strong company that will help Google in its battle with Microsoft. Sinha and DeNeui know Microsoft products. They know the Microsoft processes and its culture. DocVerse understands the challenges of working on deeply collaborative technologies. That’s a goal for Google as it continues to develop Google Apps. The DocVerse application installs a lightweight plug-in that is installed in the background of the user’s machine. The plug-in opens a widget in the document sidebar that includes a unique link. Any time a user makes an update to a Microsoft docment, the plug-in syncs the web page that is associated with the document. Every modification gets synced. When multiple people work on a document, the updates are made through the plug-in and versions are stored online. Syncing will become increasingly important for companies as more of the workforce uses smartphones. Google does a good job with email synchronization. But enterprise collaboration tools have a higher level of complexity. Co-editing, for instance, has to carry from the PC to the mobile device among mulitple users. Interestingly, Jive Software uses the DocVerse functionality for their product add-on: Jive Connects for Microsoft Office. The competition is getting fierce in the enterprise space. We wonder how this competition will affect the DocVerse relationship with Jive. Discuss

For entrepreneurs trying to form a startup, one of the first challenges they face that persists throughout the businesses life is how to find and keep talented partners and employees. From finding that first co-founder to finding the prolific programmers to fill your ranks later down the line, talent acquisition is always a major step in any business. Just look at some of the deals that have gone down in the Valley; Facebook didn’t buy FriendFeed for their technology, that deal was mostly about getting FriendFeed’s talented employees on the Facebook team. Sponsor A new book from author David Russo, 17 Rules Successful Companies Use to Attract and Keep Top Talent: Why Engaged Employees Are Your Greatest Sustainable Advantage , seeks to make this process more clear for businesses. Russo is the CEO of Eno River Associates, Inc., which is a consulting service that helps business executives build better team relationships. Their portfolio of clients includes American Express, Johnson & Johnson, and the CIA. With his new book, Russo outlines the key strategies he has learned over the years as a consultant and human resources executive that has helped him and others create winning teams. The book doesn’t waste any time getting into its 17 rules; after a brief introduction the entirety of the book consists of one chapter per rule. The rules cover a broad base of topics, including the more straightforward rule #4, “Provide Ample and Appropriate Resources,” to the more abstract rule #12, “Understand Human Capital.” One of the key rules that sticks out to me is #3, “Cultivate Leadership, Not Management, and Know the Difference!” “Whereas managers administrate, leaders have the power to influence, to motivate, even inspire, and those are distinctly different traits,” writes Russo. “Indeed, true leadership is the ability to display attributes that make people want to follow.” Russo points out that leaders need to have passion, vision, and energy, as well as recognize that each employee has value to the success of the business. He likens this value to a tight end in a football game running “a crisp pattern” and distracting the defense despite knowing before the play that he’s not going to be the ball carrier. Another rule which will likely strike a chord with the startup culture is #10, “Make Room for Fun in the Workplace (Nurture Lightheatedness/Levity).” Anyone who has seen the popular workplace movie “Office Space” knows what a bland work environment can do to employees spirits, but I don’t think we have to worry about startups not having enough fun on the job. Aside from being passionate about the job they’re doing, most startup employees are probably used to everyday being “casual Friday” and taking a brain break in a game room. Granted, not every experience is like this, but we all know that many startups are a very relaxed environment, which Russo says is very important for attracting skilled employees and keeping them happy. Other important rules Russo includes on his list include knowing how and when to “cheerlead,” acknowledging and rewarding efforts and contributions, and the lastly, telling the truth. While this book isn’t aimed directly at startups, young entrepreneurs looking to lead their team to success should certainly take a look at this book. One of reasons I would suggest it is that at times, young entrepreneurs who have little or no workplace experience are suddenly thrust into a CEO role. If your company takes off, you might be in charge of a lot of people very quickly, and this book will certainly help keep them happy. Disclosure: A review copy of 17 Rules was provided to ReadWriteWeb by Pearson Education, Inc. Photo by Flickr user madebytess . Discuss

Google Street View has made a few headlines at RWW lately – once for getting itself into hot water in Europe and once, notably, for bringing Street View’s photo-tour features into retail outlets . Now, we’ve learned that Street View will also begin to feature user-submitted photographs. According to a recent Google Lat Long blog post , “We began integrating user photos into Street View last year. User photos allow you to view locations from entirely new perspectives, whether through the eyes of a talented photographer with a knack for capturing architectural detail, or simply taken from locations we couldn’t get to… We’re making it easier to navigate through these images in a way that should feel similar to how you’re used to exploring within Street View.” Sponsor Users can submit pictures from Picasa, Panoramio and Flickr that show different views, times of day or pedestrian-only areas. Here’s an example of what the interface looks like; the square in the top right corner indicates there are user-submitted images for that area. And here is the photo navigation interface. Users can also navigate through photos using new click-and-drag controls to see images from nearby areas, or different angles or crops of the same area. Some have speculated that Google has chosen to highlight and integrate this feature because of competition with Bing. The Next Web recently called Microsoft’s Photosynth, a similar product launched in 2008 and integrated into Bing Maps, “the killer app of the Bing suite” that differentiates Bing from Google in a positive way. “The feature,” wrote Jacob Friedman , “displays collections of photos stitched together into a panorama The results, to put it bluntly, can be spectacular.” While Google’s offering may not have the 3D-esque quality of Photosynth, allowing for more creative images and photos from a larger geographical area to be shared in Street View is a smart move for the company. Let us know what you think in the comments. Discuss

For the past couple weeks, we’ve been following some interesting developments with Twitter – things that most end users probably would not know or care about. As we suspected, the quickly-growing company is putting more emphasis on engineering, taking “steps… to make our engineering division more open and transparent,” according to the team’s infrastructure manager, Evan Weaver . “Much of Twitter’s success has been enabled by open-source software, and we want to give back,” he continues. And there’s a lot of giving back going on, from a new blog to new recruiting efforts. Read on, and let us know your opinions in the comments. Sponsor An Open Source Directory This new directory lists all the public software that twitter’s in-house developers have created or contributed to. “Everyone is welcome to use this software for their own projects,” Weaver wrote, “and if the project is Twitter-related, so much the better.” The Official Twitter Engineering Blog For those interested in the nitty-gritty, day-to-day challenges of developing and maintaining Twitter’s products and features, this blog will keep them up-to-date. Current posts include information on local trends, capacity issues and uses for Twitter’s translation libraries. They’re Hiring! The icing on the cake is Twitter’s new recruitment methods . “We’ve updated our job descriptions to better reflect our company culture and the skills we’re looking for” wrote Weaver. “My team is looking for performance, systems, and Ruby engineers, but the company is hiring across all groups, so check out our full listings.” Twitter also recently launched a recruitment Twitter account with updates on blog posts and new openings. Finally, you can follow Twitter Engineering on Twitter – duh. Discuss

Lifehacker’s founding editor Gina Trapani has just announced that she’s joining Expert Labs , the government-oriented independent think tank led by Anil Dash and funded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her first project: deploying her Twitter-based decision making software called ThinkTank for the White House. The Obama administration announced the joint project with Expert Labs in a blog post earlier this month . As Trapani described it today: “The President has identified a series of scientific and technical challenges that are as important to the future as the moon landing was. And we want to help drive feedback on that list, and even suggest what other items should be on there that haven’t been included.” Sponsor Trapani explained today that the fundamental qualities of ThinkTank are that it leverages existing social connections (today on Twitter, soon on Facebook and later beyond), that it stores the data on your own server just like WordPress does and that it’s open source and community developed. The software sounds like “the WordPress of Twitter data harvesting.” Trapani has been one of the foremost voices in tracking the ways the web can improve everyday life and work. She focuses on making new developments accessible and is also a respected software developer. Discuss