Just stumbled across this today at the Guardian UK site:
Microsoft is finally putting versions of its Office applications suite online, as part of its move to Office 2010. The new Office Web Applications, demonstrated on video, don’t have all the capabilities of desktop versions, but do feature the ribbon-based user interface. They seem to be far more powerful than Google’s three-year-old online applications, and should offer much better compatibility with Microsoft Office files.
The suite of Office Web Applications - Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote - will be available to consumers, free of charge, as part of Microsoft’s Windows Live service, which has more than 400 million users, thanks mainly to the popularity of Hotmail. However, they are not limited to Windows users: Microsoft demonstrated them running in Firefox and Apple’s Safari browser.
July 17, 2009
Microsoft Office Moves Online
July 9, 2009
July 7, 2009
Cisco is Gunning for Microsoft
Came across this earlier this morning:
As Cisco Systems adds more functionality to its online WebEx conferencing service, it’s ratcheting up the competitive pressure against partner and rival, Microsoft.
Cisco held a press event Tuesday to discuss how it plans to add more to its WebEx service. As the company includes more software into the conferencing service, it is competing more intensively and directly with one of its major partners, Microsoft.
“As Cisco expands this business, the co-opetition between Cisco and Microsoft will only increase,” said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with Yankee Group. “Microsoft is strong on the desktop and Cisco is taking a lot of these software functions into the cloud.”
WebEx is a leading Web conferencing service that Cisco bought in 2007. This was Cisco’s first foray into offering a service. And the product has been very successful. As a result, the company has used the service as the foundation for its emerging big business collaboration tools. Cisco has also recently bought two other companies that it plans to feed into the service.
Read more at : http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10276549-92.html
July 6, 2009
Windows 7 may get a ‘Family Pack’
Microsoft appears likely to offer a “Family Pack” version of Windows 7, according to language in a leaked test version of the operating system.
This week enthusiasts started buzzing over wording in the license agreement in the test build that suggests Microsoft will have an option to buy a license for Windows 7 that covers up to three PCs in the same household.
Read more at CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10278275-56.html?tag=mncol;title
July 2, 2009
From the Farm to Twitter
(CNN) – As he rolls across the wheat fields of his Nebraska farm, Steve Tucker often has his hands not on the wheel of his tractor, but on a smartphone.
Steve Tucker, a Twittering farmer, pauses in front of his tractor in Nebraska.
He sometimes posts a dozen messages per day on Twitter, commenting on everything from the weather to the state of his crops to his son’s first tractor ride and even last night’s cheeseburger.
“Got rained out trying to finish up planting corn. Only 90 acres left. Maybe it will dry up today and I can finish Lord willin’,” he wrote in one recent post.
“Just sold some more wheat, now, I wait for God to provide the harvest so I can fill the contracts,” the 39-year-old said in another. “Eat more bread!”
Tucker is proof that smartphones are starting to put down roots in rural America.
He lives in a 150-person town near Brandon, Nebraska — a place even he calls “the middle of nowhere.” The nearest neighbor to his 4,000-acre farm is about 2 miles away.
Yet, farmers like Tucker are using Internet-enabled phones to gain a foothold on online social networks — both for business and personal reasons. (Follow him on Twitter) MORE AT : http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/02/twitter.farmer/index.html
July 1, 2009
Microsoft starts limited beta of free antivirus product, Microsoft Security Essentials
Last week (as had been rumored earlier in the month) Microsoft started a limited beta of its upcoming free antivirus product which had been codenamed Morro, but was formally christened as Microsoft Security Essentials. The beta was limited to 75,000 downloaders and has currently reached the limit so would-be tire kickers will have to wait for general availability which is expected later in the year.
Frankly, it takes a brave person (or one with a dedicated test machine) to test something as vital and potentially intrusive as PC antivirus software, but so far there have been no complaints that I have seen and in fact, preliminary results from testing company AV-Test GmbH indicate that Microsoft Security Essentials is looking very good:
AV-Test GmbH tested Microsoft Security Essentials, the free software Microsoft launched yesterday in beta, on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, putting it up against nearly 3,200 common viruses, bot Trojans and worms, said Andreas Marx, one of the firm’s two managers. The malware was culled from the most recent WildList, a list of threats actually actively attacking computers.
“All files were properly detected and treated by the product,” said Marx in an e-mail. “That’s good, as several other [antivirus] scanners are still not able to detect and kill all of these critters yet.”
….
AV-Test also examined the program’s anti-rootkit skills and its ability to scrub a system of malware it finds with a limited number of samples and “found no reasons to complain,” Marx said. “[Security Essentials] is able to remove found malware very well, but further tests against larger sets of samples are required before we can come to a final conclusion.”
More can be found at : http://www.hunterstrat.com/news/
June 30, 2009
Pirate Bay Acquired for $7.8 million, Content Providers to Get Paid
According to their blog and a recent BusinessWire release, controversial Swedish bit torrent tracker the Pirate Bay, is being acquired by Global Gaming Factory X AB for roughly $7.8 million in cash and shares (or $60 million SEK).
On the blog, the group hopes to alleviate concerns by saying:
“If the new owners screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That’s the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want it to. And - you can now not only share files, but shares, with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That’s awesome and will take the heat off us.”
And the heat has certainly been on The Pirate Bay. For the last year, the group has been in and out of court battles and has continued to take a strong stance against legal threats regarding copyright violations.
Judging by blog comments, it’s obvious that users are extremely concerned. Global Gaming Factory will be taking over operation of the site in August 2009. As part of this acquisition, GGF can now incorporate the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science’s new data distribution technology - Peerialism. Presumably the service will increase torrent speeds.
Read more at Readwriteweb: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/pirate_bay_acquired_for_78_million_content_provide.php
June 29, 2009
Microsoft Windows 7 Price Cut Seen As Good Strategic Move
Shares of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) fell a day after the software giant said a price cut will be offered as part of its impending release of a new version of Windows.
Microsoft said Thursday it will cut prices for the consumer version of Windows 7, scheduled for release in October, a move that will have the company deferring some $300 million in revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter ending in June.
The price cut is seen as a positive step toward enticing users to upgrade to Windows 7 in broader numbers, following the relatively poor reception afforded to its predecessor, Vista. Consumers who buy a personal computer between Friday and the official release of Windows 7 will receive a free upgrade to the new product, and prices for the Home Premium upgrade version of Windows will be cut by about 10% in the United States.
FBR Capital Markets analyst David Hilal told clients in a note Friday the Windows 7 pricing strategy should help prevent a “stalling” of personal-computer purchases during the back-to-school shopping season.
“The price breaks are a good strategic move,” Hilal wrote, given that Microsoft may be feeling some competitive pressure from Apple Inc. (AAPL), open-source Linux operating systems, and even Google Inc.’s (GOOG) Android operating system.
While Microsoft’s Windows is the dominant operating system currently used in increasingly popular and affordable “netbook” computers, Google’s technology is expected to become available in a wide variety of netbooks in the future.
Citigroup analyst Brent Thill told clients Friday that because retail versions of Windows account for a relatively small portion of overall sales, the Windows 7 price cuts are unlikely to have much of an impact on Microsoft’s finances.
The rest of the article can be found at the Wall Street Journal Online.
May 22, 2009
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