A British startup is preparing to launch an enterprise version of a Web-based collaboration service with a screen-sharing feature that lets a person interact with an application on someone else's computer.

The company, called Yuuguu, means "fusion" in Japanese. It combines several collaborative features aimed at making it easier for employees to work on projects, hold online meetings and communicate, said Anish Kapoor, who founded the company with Philip Hemsted.

[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]

Yuuguu is entering a field with well-established competitors such as Citrix's GoToMeeting, Microsoft's Live Meeting and Cisco's WebEx.

Yuuguu's strengths are its ease of use, said Kapoor, who spoke on the sidelines of the Future of Web Apps conference on Thursday. Also, a basic version of the service is being offered for free for up to 30 users with no time limit, which beats other trial offers from bigger players.

The primary feature is its screen-sharing. People who wants to share their screen download a small client program. Others who want to view the desktop of that computer just need a Web browser running Flash and the appropriate log-in details. Yuuguu works with Windows, Apple's OS X or Linux operating systems, and users of different platforms can interact.

A remote user can also be granted the right to control the application on that desktop, such as a SAP program or an Oracle database, Kapoor said. A button allows the person whose PC is being controlled to disconnect or connect remote users.

Other features include secure IM (instant messaging). Yuuguu's Web-based IM program is compatible with Google's Talk. Contacts from both services can be added into the other's application. Yuuguu also offers a phone conferencing service with a per-minute charge which in effect subsidizes Yuuguu's free version.

Screen-sharing and IM data is encrypted using 128-bit SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). Yuuguu doesn't store screen-sharing information on its servers but can archive instant messages for compliance purposes, Kapoor said.

In the next month or two, Yuuguu will launch an enterprise version that allows more people to join plus other features such as IM archiving. It will cost around $10, or £5 per month per user, Kapoor said, with volume user discounts available.

So far, about 100,000 individuals are using Yuuguu's free version. Half of those users work in companies with more than 500 employees, and the other half in smaller organizations. Some of those companies are also using services such as WebEx but supplementing it with Yuuguu, Kapoor said.

Perhaps in contrast to other technology companies, Yuuguu sees the global economic downturn as beneficial. Companies are tightening budgets and looking for ways to be more productive online to cut back on travel.

"For us, oddly enough, that's a very good opportunity," Kapoor said.

IBM on Wednesday reported a 20 percent increase in net income for its third quarter and said its profit outlook for the full year remains on track.

The preannouncement came one week before IBM is due to report its full financial results on Oct. 16 and may help calm technology investors, who have been pummelling stocks amid fears of a spending slowdown caused by the U.S. financial crisis.

[ Learn more about how the financial crisis is affecting IT and the high-tech industry, plus what IT can do to help, in InfoWorld's special report. ]

On Monday, software vendor SAP said concern about the financial crisis among its customers led to a "very sudden and unexpected drop in business activity" at the end of its third quarter.

IBM suggested that the broad scope of its business will help it to better weather the crisis.

Our results demonstrate that the combination of a steady base of recurring revenue and profits, investments for growth in emerging markets, a range of products and services that deliver value to clients, and a strong and flexible financial foundation give IBM a competitive edge in good times and tough times, Sam Palmisano, IBM's chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement. We remain confident in our full-year outlook.

IBM reported revenue for the third quarter of $25.3 billion, up 5 percent from the year before, including 3 percentage points from favorable exchange rates. Net income climbed 20 percent to $2.8 billion, with earnings per share up 22 percent to $2.05.

The earnings beat the expectations of financial analysts by $0.03 per share, but the revenue figure is considerably lower than the analyst forecast of $26.5 billion.

IBM reaffirmed its full-year outlook for earnings per share of at least $8.75, which would be an increase of 22 percent over fiscal 2007 and one penny short of the analyst forecast. IBM didn't provide a revenue estimate for the full year.

Shares in IBM were down 5 percent at the close of normal trading Wednesday, at $90.55. They had climbed 4 percent in trading after hours at the time of this report.

A surge in demand for netbooks is helping drive business for Linux, as the devices are designed to be low-cost with smaller storage, according to Novell's chief technology and strategy officer for Linux.

"People typically don't care what operating system is on the netbooks, because they don't buy them to run a suite of applications like Microsoft Office, but to be on the Web using a Web browser," Nat Friedman said in an interview with IDG News Service. Novell's Suse Linux is already being pre-loaded with laptops from vendors including Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo. The company is now in negotiations with Lenovo and HP to start offering its Linux distribution on their netbooks as well, he added.

[ Track the latest trends in open source with InfoWorld's Open Sources blog. And for more on products in the hot mini-notebook category, check out our hands-on looks at Asus' Eee PC 901 and 1000, the Cloudbook Max netbook, Elitegroup's G10IL mini-laptop, MSI's Wind low-cost laptop, Giga-byte's M912X mini-laptop, HP's Mini-Note netbook and Acer's Aspire one. ]

Netbooks are a new category of computing devices that are low-cost and designed for continuous Internet connectivity.

In June, Novell announced that Micro-Star International of Taiwan would pre-install Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on its Wind netbook.

Most of the low-cost netbooks will run Linux, to avoid the higher cost of the Windows operating system, and also because most of them have about 2GB of flash storage, for which Linux is more suitable, Friedman said.

The benefit of pre-loaded Suse Linux for the user is that Novell works with the computer vendor to ensure that all the Linux device drivers are there, and the user has a far better experience than if he were to try to install the operating system on a variety of hardware, Friedman said.

Making software installation easier is also a key element of Novell's software appliances strategy for servers. Installing the operating system and applications on a computer can be labor-intensive, and sometimes requires expertise, Friedman said. "This slows down the sales cycle, because if I want to sell some software, and the first step is for the user to install it and it is a difficult and long process, it makes it difficult for me to make my sale," he added.

Novell announced in April a Suse Appliance Program to enable ISVs to create appliances combining their applications with the Suse Linux Enterprise platform in an integrated package for end-customer deployment. Novell also announced the beta release of Suse Linux Enterprise JeOS, a minimized version of the Suse Linux Enterprise platform that ISVs can embed in appliances.

Competitor Red Hat has also announced a strategy around software appliances.

The operating system will become an embedded component, rather than something that the customer chooses, said Friedman. " When you buy a car you don't typically choose the engine, or what type of transmission it has," he added.

Using virtualization technology, the software bundle can work on a variety of platforms running a virtual machine, and also share hardware with other appliances, Friedman said.

The software appliances model will enable the ISV to for example create a virtual machine image which contains the application and the operating system pre-installed, and the user can take the file and run it in a one-step process on the virtual machine he has installed, Friedman said. Post-sales support issues will also get reduced, as most of them arise because the original installation was not proper, he added.

Novell has developed Suse Studio, an online Web-based tool that enables ISVs to quickly build, configure, and test software appliances, even if they don't have operating system expertise.

Microsoft got in line with several other organizations that are taking steps to get paid for products and services provided to Washington Mutual, the largest bank to fail in U.S. history.

On Tuesday, Microsoft filed a document with the Delaware bankruptcy court handling the WaMu case asking to be sent copies of all proceedings in the case.

[ Learn more about how the financial crisis is affecting IT and the high-tech industry, plus what IT can do to help, in InfoWorld's special report. ]

"Microsoft filed a notice of appearance because we have existing contracts for software licenses and consulting services with Washington Mutual and we want to make sure those contracts are properly administered through the bankruptcy process," said David Bowermaster, a Microsoft spokesman, in an e-mailed statement.

Microsoft would not describe the size or duration of its contracts with WaMu. The bank is a beta tester and early user of its products, and last year a WaMu executive joined Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on stage at a launch event for Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007.

Microsoft isn't alone in its efforts. On Tuesday Siemens filed a motion asking that JP Morgan, which is taking over WaMu, either reject or assume an IT services contract it has with the bank, worth US$5 million to $6 million each month. Siemens said it had supplied about $10 million worth of IT services to WaMu that have not been paid for. Siemens has about 400 employees and contractors providing services to the bank, it said.

And Tata Consultancy Services, the Indian outsourcing and IT services company, filed a motion similar to Microsoft's asking to be kept apprised of proceedings.

Government regulators seized WaMu in late September and let other companies bid to take over the bank. JP Morgan had the winning bid. The economic crisis in the U.S., driven in part by a housing slump, hit WaMu particularly hard because it was one of the country's biggest providers of home mortgages, including risky loans.

Amid the troubles in the financial sector, many analysts say that the surviving financial organizations will still need to rely heavily on technology, so IT vendors may not be hit too hard by banking failures. While the wider economic meltdown is sure to slow IT spending overall, many analysts still say that they expect most of the big vendors to be able to weather the storm.

Mozilla will use a several-week delay it recently added to the Firefox 3.1 schedule to build a private browsing mode and beef up the browser's address bar, the company said today. Three weeks ago, the company said it would insert four to five more weeks into the timetable, part of a reaction to changes in the browser market, including the introduction by Google of its Chrome browser. Then, Mozilla said it would probably use the time to add a privacy mode and to punch up its TraceMonkey JavaScript engine performance.

A private browsing mode and fast JavaScript execution were touted by Google last month when it launched Chrome.

[ For more on Google's open source Chrome browser, check out InfoWorld's special report. ]

In meeting notes published on its Web site today, Mozilla said it planned to add the privacy feature in Beta 2, which would likely be released in November according to Mozilla's current schedule.

Dubbed "porn mode" by some, privacy tools limit or entirely eliminate what the browser records as it travels the Internet. Typically, URLs are not recorded in the history, cookies are not saved and other evidence is purged from the computer at the end of the session. Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8, Chrome, and Apple's Safari all have private browsing built in.

Also set for debut in Firefox 3.1 Beta 2: changes to the already-available "Clear Private Data" tool that would let users select time and data ranges for retroactively erasing their browsing tracks, changes to the address bar to add privacy-related tagging and tab search, and a restoration of the plug-in installation process used in Firefox 2.0.

Already slated to appear in Beta 1, Mozilla said today, were support for the video HTML tag, tab bar tweaks, and the ability to drag a tab to the desktop to open a new browsing window.

Mozilla is also mulling over several other additions to Firefox 3.1, but has not committed to working them into the release. The most prominent would be an Opera-esque "Speed Dial" feature that would show user-selected or most-recent sites as thumbnails when the user opened a new tab. Google's Chrome sports a similar tool.

The developer who has taken charge of the proposed Firefox feature cited a pair of existing add-ons, Speed Dial and Fast Dial, as examples of what he was considering.

Mozilla made it clear, however, that those last-wave changes would not have priority. "We're also considering reviewed, solid, tested patches for some other small improvements but we will not hold Beta 2 for these," the meeting notes said.

Beta 1 is on track for release next week, while Beta 2 will be locked down Nov. 4 and released several weeks after that, Mozilla said. It has not committed to a ship date for Firefox 3.1, but has said it will shoot for a late-2008 or early-2009 release.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.