Stories by: Stacy Cowley

As the World Wide Web evolves into a more collaborative platform, the technologies and business models involved in that transition are being swept up into the "Web 2.0" rubric, a term vague enough to encompass almost anything one cares to push under its banner, but catchy in summing up the widespread sense that the Internet is at a tipping point.

A group of top industry vendors plans to announce on Wednesday a new community initiative aimed at popularizing AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and Extensible Markup Language), the nickname given to a collection of software development tools and standards that help Web applications mimic the speed and smoothness of desktop programs.

It took Google more than a year to make the decision that offering a censored version of its search services in China would be a lesser evil than boycotting business in the country altogether, according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

IBM shipped the latest version of its Alphablox analytics software last week, adding deeper integration support for linking the software with its Rational Application Developer and WebSphere Portal Server products.

Google's heft means that where it goes, developers follow. This year, the company has been an accidental catalyst for two major advances in Web application development: AJAX and mashups. Google didn't invent or evangelize either technology. It just quietly began making use of them, and the Web followed in its wake.

What do you get when you hand 320,000 employees the tools and corporate podcasting guidelines to internally publish their audio creations? In IBM's experience, lower phone bills and better, more informal internal communication.

Computer Associates International (CA) is selling its Ingres database technology to private equity firm Garnett & Helfrich Capital, which is forming a new company to develop and market the open-source software. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Plumtree Software this week began rolling out a major new version of its portal software product line, including new bundling options, broader platform support and a new stand-alone product the company intends as the first in a line of customized industry applications.

Oracle scooped up another small technology maker on Friday, announcing its acquisition of Finnish open-source database technology developer Innobase OY. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Bowing to market realities, Microsoft said it will begin working with an ideological foe, open-source development and services company JBoss, on optimizing interoperability between JBoss' middleware and Microsoft's Windows Server software.

For one longtime PeopleSoft customer, last year's Oracle takeover came at a particularly awkward time: the Center for Remote Enterprise Systems Hosting (CRESH) based in South Dakota, was in the process of spinning out from Dakota State University, and was about to sign the first commercial contract for its hosted PeopleSoft applications services.