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By silicon.com, 10 July 2009 16:48

Despite the best attempts of the political correctness lobby, appearance and image are very important, especially to middle-aged men working in corporate IT.

Yes, personality counts but unless you've got a lot of stickers on your side telling the world how official and accredited you are, there's just no point showing up in the office.

This epiphany occurred to the Google team this week, presumably as they were taking a break from working out how to most annoy Microsoft.

The result of this is that after years of being in 'Beta' mode many of Google's apps are now officially launched.

The reason behind this is apparently the insight that if they want to be taken seriously by enterprise IT types they need to get rid of the torn jeans and start wearing a tie. Which means no more beta-maxing out. Ho Ho.

In other words, the beta label is not looked on favourably by people who also spend millions of dollars on Microsoft, IBM and Oracle products.

So no more beta-ing about the bush: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Talk are all now fully fledged members of the Google family of products.

Google said the removal of the beta status means those products have all reached unspecified internal metrics in terms of reliability and usability.

Anyway - the term 'beta' has long been one of the symbols of web 2.0 software and truth be told it's become a bit of a joke. Even the Number 10 website had 'beta' stamped on it until recently and you know if Gordon has ditched the label it's time to move on.

Still, beta late than neverÂ…

Venerable social network Facebook hit the headlines this week, stealing some badly needed column inches back from Twitter. Take that you microblogging pretender!

The one-time darling of the technology press has been a bit quiet recently but happily it's back in the headlines again.

Unfortunately, it's back in the news because of some indiscretion around the personal information of a civil servant, but hey, at least it's some publicity.

Civil servants and spies have long been warned over the importance of protecting private information and not carrying around USB sticks. However, in this case, the civil servant in question - Sir John Sawers - was not the person responsible for leaking personal information into the public domain - it was the wife.

And he's not just any civil servant but the incoming head of MI6. So posting pics and other details of him on a Facebook profile is perhaps not the greatest idea.

Even worse, Lady Sawers failed to add any privacy protection on her account, meaning that any Facebook users in the open-access London network could access the entries.

It's hard to imagine James Bond grappling with these problems although his Facebook status updates would be interesting.

James Bond is in a relationship
James Bond is single
James Bond is in a relationship
James Bond is single
James Bond threw a sheep at Ernst Stavro Blofeld
James Bond become a fan of Walther PPKs
James Bond is in a relationship
James Bond is single and attending a funeral :-(

And that's just an average Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the BBC: "For goodness' sake, let's grow up."

Referring to one of the published photographs, he said it was not a state secret that Sir John wore skimpy Speedo swimming trunks on family holidaysÂ…

But back to Google again. As well as getting rid of the beta, Google has shocked the IT world and no doubt further annoyed Microsoft by revealing it is developing its own operating system which it plans to release for netbooks in 2010.

The news has been widely anticipated by the industry for some time and marks the latest milestone in GoogleÂ’s plan to ride roughshod all over Microsoft's hallowed ground. With an OS based on its Chrome browser no less.

The company announced Google Chrome OS on its blog on Tuesday night, promising that netbooks from some manufacturers will run it in the second half of 2010.

Linux will run under the hood of the open source project but the applications will run on the web itself. The web OS is not a new concept of course, Microsoft itself has its own Azure project aimed at doing much the same thing.

The writing was on the wall with the release of a set of web-based office apps, Gears (which allows users to access web apps offline) as well as the release of the Chrome browser late last year.

Google's motto to do one thing really well is pretty much blown out of the water if it wasn't before.

Meanwhile, irrespective of how likely this plan is of being successful, stress levels in the Seattle area are likely to rise dramatically over the next few days.

And finally - it's been a year since Bill Gates left Microsoft.

A year is a long, long time in an industry so obsessed with innovation, so you may not remember him. But, you know, the guy with the jumpers?

Anyway, if your memory stretches back at least 365 days you might like to check out five ways in which Microsoft has changed since Bill Gates, and enjoy some vintage shots of Bill through the ages while you are at it.

Elsewhere on silicon.com this week: more evidence, if any were still needed, that the ID cards project is a pile of old pants.

Where's our present, then?