SAP is planning to release a "virtual war room" decision-making tool dubbed Constellation, which could be a potential rival to Google's heralded Wave collaboration platform.

Constellation will consist of a cloud-based tool accessible via a Web browser, as well as an on-premises component, SAP official David Meyer said during a private webinar conducted recently for a group of SAP "mentors," the company's term for particularly active and valued community members.

The cloud tool is now in private beta under the code name 12Sprints. While SAP executives provided glimpses of the application during events earlier this year, the Web briefing provided new details into Constellation's workings and SAP's go-to-market strategy for the product.

Meyer, vice president of emerging technologies in SAP's BusinessObjects division, demonstrated how users can collaborate in real time on problem-solving "activities" that employ widgets called "methods." As examples, he showed a tool for cataloging the pros and cons of a scenario, and another for conducting analyses using the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) methodology.

IE's share falls to new low; Firefox, Chrome and Opera post solid gains
Internet Explorer's market share ebbed again last month, a Web measurement firm said today, more proof that Microsoft's release of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) hasn't stopped desertions to rival browsers.

Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome and Opera Software's Opera all posted solid gains, according to Calif.-based Net Applications.

Overall, IE dropped to a 63.6% share, a new all-time low, as it lost just over 1 percentage point of market share. November marked the third straight month Microsoft's browser has declined by a point or more; in the last year, IE has fallen 8 percentage points.

Only eight bugs block beta, but several features will be AWOL

Google is closing in on a beta for the Mac version of its Chrome browser, according to a list of still-to-be-addressed issues.

Just eight bugs are holding up the release of Chrome for the Mac, Google's bug tracking database showed Monday morning. Of the eight, only two are marked as Priority 1: Both involve crashes when the browser tries to render content for Adobe's Flash media format.

Three weeks ago, a product manager on the Chrome team said that Google would deliver a beta for the Mac in early December.

But several features available to Windows users of Chrome will not make it into the Mac beta. As TechCrunch first reported in a story published Monday, they include the bookmark manager, App Mode and bookmark synchronization. The beta will also not include support for extensions, a feature enabled in the Windows edition, although Google has yet to take its official extension gallery public.

The bad news for Microsoft: Internet Explorer market share just dropped again, to the lowest point ever, at 63.6%. The good news: There are things it can do to stop the slow bleeding. Here are five ways Microsoft can save Internet Explorer, including the unthinkable: releasing it as open source.

Add-on, add-ons, add-ons

In an infamous moment captured several years ago on video, Steve Ballmer danced around the stage like an insane asylum escapee on crystal meth, screaming "developers, developers, developers!" Well, "add-ons, add-ons, add-ons!" needs to be the mantra for IE. There are thousands of Firefox add-ons that do everything you can imagine in a browser and more. There's barely anything available for IE. Microsoft isn't just fighting Firefox, it's fighting the collective creativity of thousands of developers. For IE to hold its own, Microsoft needs to develop an add-in architecture, and get developers to write for it.

Make it faster

I know that Microsoft claims that in tests that IE is faster than the competition. All browser makers claim that. But I've used and reviewed all the major browsers, and personal experience tells me that it's slower than Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. It's this simple: To keep up, IE need to be faster.

Facebook will soon make major changes to the social-networking site's privacy settings as it tries to make it easier for users to know what personal information and photographs they're sharing.

Facebook will eliminate "regional networks," or groupings of people based on where they live, wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on his company's blog on Wednesday.

Networks were created to allow people belonging to the same school, club or company to be grouped together. The feature was popular, and Facebook eventually allowed networks of people based on geography, such as the "London" group or "India."