public Web sites

Salesforce.com continued developing as "the enterprise cloud computing company" Monday with announcements that it is extending its Force.com platform to Facebook and Amazon Web Services.

The announcements are part of a series of recent moves that include the unveiling this week of Force.com Sites, enabling businesses to utilize the Force.com platform and applications in the creation of public Web sites.

'Social Meet CRM'

Salesforce.com unveiled Force.com Sites on Monday at its U.S. Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. The new tool will enable business customers to integrate Salesforce.com applications into any Web site.

Built on the Force.com platform, the tool will enable businesses to create public Web sites that integrate with -- and utilize data from -- such Salesforce.com applications as customer relationship management, database, work flow, logic, integration, customization and user-interface capabilities. Additionally, businesses can extend data and applications for use on mobile devices.

John LeSieur is in the software business, so he took particular interest when computers seemed mostly useless to his 6-year-old grandson, Zackary. The boy has autism, and the whirlwind of options presented by PCs so confounded him that he threw the mouse in frustration.

LeSieur tried to find online tools that could guide autistic children around the Web, but he couldn't find anything satisfactory. So he had one built, named it the Zac Browser For Autistic Children in honor of his grandson, and is making it available to anyone for free.