Microsoft on Tuesday will preview a cloud-based application build service and improvements to its Visual Studio IDE to make it easier to build SharePoint programs.

The NoSQL movement has spawned a slew of alternative data stores, all of which attempt to fill voids left by traditional relational database implementations. But while it's easy to fit the various relational databases (MySQL, Oracle, DB2, and so on) under a single categorical umbrella, the NoSQL world is much more diverse, and the NoSQL label is too general. NoSQL data stores such as MongoDB and Cassandra are so vastly different from each other that apples-to-apples comparisons are practically impossible. Thus, within the world of NoSQL, there are subcategories such as key-value stores, graph databases, and document-oriented stores.

Adobe today is announcing version 5.4 of its Adobe WEM (Web Experience Management) suite of content and campaign management tools. Based on the CQ5 content management system acquired from Day last year, Adobe WEM adds a capability to automatically reformat Web pages using Adobe's Device Central technology when displayed on various mobile devices and to handle marketing campaign management across websites, social networking, and other customer conduits. The suite also integrates the user traffic and engagement tracking from Omniture SiteCatalyst, the Web tracking suite that Adobe also bought last year.

Hopeful entrepreneurs and developers attending the Future of Web Apps conference in Miami Beach received a heavy dose of real-world advice from successful peers, including some tips that at first pass seem counterintuitive.

Microsoft and Google have built Web applications designed to highlight environmental problems coinciding with the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen that run through Friday.

It's That Time of Year again, and even if you don't celebrate The Holidays, chances are you have other people in your life who do. There's so much to get done as the end of year approaches, it can be hard to keep track of it all. And while paper might work for your own holiday wish list, these free Web apps can help organize the rest.

A majority of Web sites have at least one major security issue that could be used by hackers for fraud-related purposes, according to a new survey.

The future may be the cloud, but it also may be Microsoft that ushers us into that realm of possibility and imagination. Today, Redmond unveiled as a part of Office 2010 a suite of Microsoft Office Web apps that will compete directly with Google Docs. While Microsoft isn't letting anyone play around with the apps just yet, on paper, Microsoft's Web apps look like they could blow Google's online services out of the water -- beta or no beta.