Outside innovation is a systematic process for sourcing, evaluating, and driving ideas through to funding and measuring success but it starts with understanding your internal innovation process. Innovation is an important topic for most companies, it is the essential source …

It seems like only yesterday that Salesforce was talking up Cloud 2. Now, today, they’ve unveiled Service Cloud 3, the company’s next-generation social contact centers, which will let companies interact with customers on "any social community". That means Facebook, Twitter, and any other social network via social media monitoring software Radian6. However, it’s just supporting Twitter out of the box, from the sound of it. 

Google announced that it’s rolling out an updated version of Gmail Contacts for Google Apps. In addition to improvements made to Contacts for regular Gmail users last summer, the new version comes equipped with some business-specific features. 

Google has announced the worldwide availability of Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. The product was first announced in November, spawned from the company’s acquisition of DocVerse, which specialized in real-time sharing and editing of documents. 

Cloud Connect lets Office users automatically sync and backup their documents with Google Doc, so they’re always accessible on the web, and able to be shared with others. 

I just saw a short online article summarizing results of a survey sponsored by CareerBuilder.com. The article had the provocative headline “Survey: Cutting business travel cuts business.”

It opened with two bullet points in bold face on a highlighted background:

Using Google Latitude is and should be a personal thing – only to be used with people you trust. I use Latitude with my friends and make sure to only confirm close friends. However, recently I met a woman that works in marketing for a health organization.

One of the huge issues you’re going to see play out starting this year is the movement and flux of those that work within the digital marketing and PR industries.

It’s not often talked about, but believe me, it’s a major concern for agency owners and businesses. How do you retain your top digital talent? How do you keep them happy? And, how do you keep your eye on the next hire?

When Facebook Groups was unveiled last year, I was skeptical. Facebook tinkers with its platform so much (to its credit) that I sometimes just tune out. Professionally, I need to know about these changes. And, more importantly, I need to know how they impact my clients. But, this one just didn’t do much for me.

Until I started revisiting the tool recently.

One of the essential hires for companies that want to affect real change as a social media savvy organization connecting with people and communities is a Community Manager.  During the social media discovery and initial learning phase the addition of a dedicated person is often unlikely, so the tasks a Community Manager would handle can be performed by a combination of a truly competent outside agency and moreso by multiple people within the company.

Social media and marketing have become synonymous over the years. At the same time, social media is placing the customer back in customer service. Each movement represents important and overdue (r)evolutions within business, but this is just the beginning. With every step toward progress we make in social media, we uncover what’s necessary to make real headway in the progress of progress.

Listening. It’s a mantra we’ve heard PR, marketing and social media consultants preach to brands for the last two years. But, how many brands are really listening to their customers online?

I’m not talking about responding to comments on Facebook or Twitter. That’s fine, but at this point, it’s table stakes, don’t you think?

Update 3: Now CEO Tony Bates has provided further explanation and apologies. 

Update 2: Parkes provided another update on the issue today:

Holy cow! 2011 is right around the corner. This is the time when entrepreneur’s thoughts (aside from those focused on preparing for the holidays, of course) turn towards growing or changing their businesses in the New Year.

Smart. Because unless you want to be exactly where you are now, doing exactly what you’re doing today, you need to do something different. Otherwise, you’re guilty of insanity. And, to paraphrase the great ski film maker, Warren Miller, “…you’ll be one year older when you do.”

Google announced a new feature of Google Docs today, called Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. The feature comes from Google’s acquisition of DocVese, a company that specialized in the real-time sharing and editing of documents, earlier this year. They paid $25 million for it, and it could turn out to be a huge piece of the puzzle in winning over Microsoft Office users. 

Google has widely expanded Google Apps to incorporate many more of the company’s offerings so that businesses and other organizations can use and administrate them more efficiently. Before Google Apps users only had access to a few of Google’s products like Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, and a few others. 

Coming up with a social media plan isn’t always the easiest thing to do for businesses. There are so many factors that come into play, even beyond the landscape of communities that actually exist. For example, business leaders need to ask questions like: How much time should be spent interacting with social media sites? How many people should be representing the company on social sites? How much of their time should be dedicated to it? Should it be the full-time job of one person? The full-time jobs of more people? Only part of the job for a lot of people? Etc. Etc. Etc. 

Microsoft has unveiled Office 365, a new cloud-based service that brings together Office, SharePoint, Exchange, and Lync for organizations. The company is opening a limited beta program for it in 13 countries and regions.  

Rackspace has just launched Appmatcher, a "matchmaking engine" for businesses to locate apps tha can assist them in their duties. Businesses can use AppMatcher to find apps for everything from accounting to project management and human resources. 

It’s interesting because it aims to match apps to businesses based on their profile information. RackSpace tells WebProNews it will will "revolutionize business apps".

Salesforce has just announced Chatter 2, the next generation of its Chatter product, which has often been referred to as "Facebook for the enterprise". The new version includes a number of new features, including a desktop app. 

Microsoft isn’t the only one doing interesting things with its browser. Mozilla’s Aza Raskin has an interesting proof-of-concept video for searching on Firefox Panorama. 

There’s a new kind of personalized, social search available that may trump any effort we’ve seen from Google to date in this corner of search.

Greplin is a new site that searches through "all your online data in one place, really fast" – or at least your the online data you have in the services that it supports, which is likely far from all of your online data. Still, the concept behind the site is pretty noteworthy, and it will likely add more services as time goes on.