From an innovation standpoint, Juice’s integration of drag and drop technology with Web-based research is a useful idea. The notion of dragging and dropping a word or phrase into another window that automatically conducts a multi-source Web search is attractive. But after downloading the Beta version, Juice’s service hurt more than it helped. The sidebar cluttered my browser, and the turning in my stomach eventually made me kick the interface to the curb. Perhaps Linkool International’s next release will not be as agitating.

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“Today is Election Day. Go Vote .”

That is the statement on Facebook’s Welcome Page today. An entire Election 2008 page has been created especially for the months leading up to now, and even on its last active day there are useful elements to encourage the gigantic number of newly registered voters to follow through. As a special, last-minute push, the site has made this the default start page for signed-in users.

“Be sure to take the time to vote! Use the map below to find your polling place and what time the polls in your state open and close. You can also see the nearest Ben and Jerry’s where you can get a free ice cream cone on election day.” Election 2008 provides a simple Google Map interface with links to coverage, election maps, and mobile alerts.

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Doubts against the Internet giant’s privacy problems have once again been raised, this time by the Santa Monica-based consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog.

“[W]ith Chrome’s release, Google is now also on the inside sending information out. With this Chrome software inside individuals’ computers, Google’s role as sender and receiver of data has become uniquely powerful and threatening to the privacy of users,” says the group.

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Augmented reality (AR) is the superimposition of computer-generated data onto the physical world to add information and enhance perception. Currently it is media mediated, laying a strata of data over video images, and is promising to become a vital part of the mobile and gaming markets.

While augmented reality has thus far been specialized and theoretical, several AR devices have been recently been announced or released for the iPhone and Android, and it looks like mainstream adoption AR is around the corner (OK, it’s a long corner, but it’s still a corner).

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Gartner expects enterprise software-as-a-service revenue (SaaS) to more than double by 2012.

There has been a 27 percent increase in SaaS revenue this year, up to $6.4 billion.  “The popularity of the on-demand deployment model has increased significantly within the last four years. Initial concerns over security, response time, and service availability have diminished for many organizations as SaaS business and computing models have matured and adoption has become pervasive,” said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner.

The advantages of SaaS are IT affordability, shorter implementation cycle, reduction of IT costs, and scalability.

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With all the focus on Windows 7, Microsoft’s Monday announcement that it was entering the world of cloud computing seemed to come out of nowhere.

Azure is the foundation of the Azure Services platform, which Microsoft says will make the development of cloud applications simple. The release was announced at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.

Despite recent high-profile pronouncements by Richard Stallman, Larry Ellison, and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer companies like Amazon and Google are showing the potential for cloud computing.

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In tandem with the release of the G1 through T-Mobile last week comes the full Android Market. With a fledgling collection of applications available, the list is not that impressive, but there already seem to be some userful and/or entertaining options available. An extensive list of reviews are available on the AndroidApps YouTube channel from San Francisco-based AppVee, an application review site currently in beta. A selection from AndroidApp reviews, without Brian’s Ben Stein-styled narrative, follows:

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Technology stocks have been shaky due to the credit crisis and other financial woes that Wall Street has been facing. Many have been asking just how vulnerable the tech industry is to what will become a global economical development. Even the largest technology stocks have been hit, with the Nasdaq dipping nearly fourteen percent in the last thirty days. The CNET Technology Index , which tracks 66 publicly traded tech companies, saw huge stock selling from the bigger companies, including Google.

Technology projects are “normally more resistant to credit problems,” says Iain Cockburn, a professor of finance and economics at Boston University. “Tech tends to be less reliant on short-term credit.” Different types of companies will suffer different effects, according to ABC News. In the short term, smaller companies will be able to weather this economic downturn. But projects involving new technology, heavy capital and equipment will all be in trouble.

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New data was released Tuesday reveals that most people will sit through a fair amount of advertising in order to visit Web sites. Including pop-ups, out-of-frame ads, floating ads, etc., 61 percent of US adults using the Internet would watch between one and five online ads for free Web content per hour in 2007 with a median response of 2 per hour.

66 percent of those polled thought that the amount of over-content ads on the sites they visited had increased over the last six months, up from 57 percent in 2005. The Center for Media Research said Internet users thought they were seeing more interruptive ads because they visited a wider array of sites, which exposed them to a greater variety of ads and ad types.

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After a strong second half Monday, tech stocks continued their free fall Tuesday. We’re really starting to get an idea of how analysts erred on the side of optimism believing the technology sector was insulated from the market’s troubles.

At the 4:00 pm trading deadline, Dell had dropped 6.39%, from 15.04 to 13.55. Apple fell 9.15% to 89.16, Microsoft dropped 6.74% to 23.23, and Cisco ended the day at 18.84, down 7.92 from Monday’s close.  Sun Microsystems dropped 10.45%, from 6.61.

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