Microsoft Office 2010 has been in beta for some time. It’s also been free to try out for some time. In a press release from Microsoft, senior vice president of the Microsoft Business Division, Chris Capossela said, “Office 2010 is the premiere productivity solution across PCs, mobile phones and browsers.” Office 2010 definitely gives more heed to mobile computing, social media and collaboration.

In fact, an article from Inc. announces that Office 2010 will be rolling out with free versions of Word and Excel to compete with Google Docs and Spreadsheets. These “stripped-down online programs,” says Inc., “will be accessible on computer browsers and Web-enabled mobile phones.” Continue reading at Inc.com.

Ina Fried over at CNET’s Beyond Binary blog posted a tip about a “technology guarantee” for Microsoft Office 2010. Cut straight to the chase, Ina reports how Microsoft may be offering a tech guarantee (later purchases of a product about to head for the grave are given a free upgrade to the inevitable new product being released soon) for those that buy Microsoft Office 2007 from March 5 to September 30. The tip was a quickly concealed leak from an Microsoft employee and Microsoft does not confirm anything, but it’s likely to hold true. Read the Beyond Binary post for full details.

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Not too long ago, a judge gave Microsoft 60 days to halt sales for Microsoft Word 2007. And since Microsoft Office 2007 also contains that same Word program, it only seems logical that the injunction applies there too. The order came down due to patent infringement — a Toronto-based developer’s custom XML tagging patent.

The permanent injunction “prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCS or DOCM files containing custom XML,” explains the plaintiff’s attorneys. In addition, Microsoft is forbidden from testing, demonstrating or marketing any Word products containing the patent. More information about the legal proceedings can be found at CNET or Wired.

Continue reading about how this affects Microsoft Word users >>

A few reviews of Office 2010 for browsing:

• ZDNet UK
• ZDNet
• PCWorld
• ComputerWorld
• IT Pro
• Popular Mechanics

Tell us what you think of the Office 2010; we’d love to hear your opinions!

Easter eggs are amusing features or displays in an application, left behind by the developers for users to find. They are sometimes as simple as a funny message, or as elaborate as an entire flight simulator game, such as could be played way back in Excel ‘97.

Here are some of my favorite recent Easter Eggs in common software.

Windows XP

Candy Cane Pipes: Turns 3D Pipes into candy canes

1. Right click desktop, click Properties, click Screen Saver tab
2. In the Screen saver pull-down menu, select 3D Pipes, and click Settings
3. In the Surface Style category, turn on Textured, and click Choose Texture button
4. When the Choose Texture window comes up, Click cancel, and the Pipes should now be candy canes.

Pinball game:  How to cheat

1. Open the Pinball game.
2. Type: “hidden test”
3. Right click the ball.
4. Now left click and hold, and you should be able to move the ball with your mouse.

Notepad: Anti-Bush? Strange and pointless… I’m not sure if this is intentional. Anyway.

1. Open Notepad
2. Type “bush hid the facts” Read the rest of this entry »

Seriously.  Who owns, personally owns, all the software they need?Nevermind want. No one does. No one I know at least.  Adobe, Microsoft, Corel all rock. Of course.  They’re great.  But they might as well be Pretty Pony  Design Software, as far as my home computer endeavors are concerned.

Thank god for freeware. There is some pretty damn impressive software out there of no charge, that can handle most of our domestic computer needs competently, if not sometimes a little awkwardly. Here’s a list of some of my favorites, plus some popular ones I’ve heard good things about. Check into when your 30-day Adobe Whatever CS4 trial is up.

1. GIMP [freeware graphics editor.] It is amazing this is free. If don’t have PhotoShop or an Adobe equivalent, and have been screwing around in Microsoft Paint (futile, isn’t it?) for 4 hours, then go Gimp. Gimp was originally developed by two students in 1995 at Berkeley as a semester-long project. Since then, it has steadily improved and expanded, spawning numerous variations, sister programs, derivatives, and is now, by far, the most powerful freeware graphics editing program around.

2. Audacity [free audio recorder and editor]. Audacity is a digital audio editor and recorder; the best freeware substitute I’ve found for recording and editing audio.  It was developed by a grad student at Carnegie Mellon University, and released in 2006. It supports multiple tracks, each individually editable, and imports and exports most kinds of sound formats.  It also includes noise removal tools, loads of effects, an unlimited undo, and the capacity to change speed without changing pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

Adding to our last post about customers switching to Google Apps, CNET News has just reported that Los Angeles is ready to make the switch. The city, like many government agencies, has had security concerns over making the switch. The concerns were brought to light “after the poor e-mail practices of an employee at Twitter and an easy password reset mechanism at Yahoo gave a hacker access to sensitive Twitter documents stored on Google Apps.” While this has nothing to do with the security of Google Apps, it did raise questions about cloud computing in general.

Despite concerns, L.A. appears to be moving forward with the 5-year, $2 million contract. The main driver appears to be cost. Meanwhile, the city will keep Microsoft Office on PCs that already have it, and future additions will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

What do you think of the country’s second largest city making the switch to Google Apps?

You read that right. Over 1.75 million companies have moved their email, scheduling, and document creation software into the cloud with Google Apps. Every day, more and more IT departments decide to leave email hosting and software upgrade cycles behind in favor of “Going Google”.

Google Apps is a web-based collection of email, communication, and collaboration applications designed to help business work more efficiently. The core of Google Apps is Gmail. With Google Apps Premiere Edition, Gmail is customized to your company and seamlessly integrates with your contact lists. Tools like message grouping (to keep replies to the same email in the same place) and message tagging let you keep on top of your inbox and never lose important emails. Also included in Google Apps is Google Calendar (for easy task management and scheduling that integrates with your email), Google Voice and IM chat from your inbox (with chat logging), and Google Docs (for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations).

So why are so many companies switching to a hosted software solution like Google Apps? One of the main reasons is cost. Google Apps Premiere Edition for business only runs $50 per user, per year. Compared to expensive Microsoft Office Suites and email hosting servers like Microsoft Exchange, Google Apps is a true bargain. There is no hardware to buy up front, because Google hosts all of the services. And, all software updates are integrated without any input from your IT department or users. And, there is no cost associated with upgrading to newer versions of Google Apps. It just happens automatically as new features are added.

Google Apps has other advantages like access to all of your emails, chats, documents, and calendars from anywhere, on any device. There is no extra cost for terminal services or BlackBerry integration. Almost any device with an internet connection will work with Google Apps, right out of the box.

Many companies are hesitant to trust all of their important emails and documents to a hosted solution based on remote servers. However, many secure government agencies have dissected Google Apps and found its backup and security capabilities to be more than sufficient.

I have a feeling we are only seeing the beginning of cloud-based software solutions like Google Apps. As high-speed internet and wireless broadband access becomes the standard, and users begin to trust hosted software more and more, we will see even more companies moving from the standard software license and hardware solution. It is just too cost effective to pay a yearly service fee to take care of all your software and hosting requirements. Google Apps even has a calculator to determine how much you could save by Going Google.

SoftwareMedia.com is working on Google Apps to our customers as an alternative to traditional software licensing. Stay tuned for further details.

For more information on Google Apps, check out the official site.

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Yesterday, Microsoft released the second Service Pack (SP2) for Office 2008 for Mac. This update makes some stability and speed improvements to this version of Office, as well as adds some new document collaboration features.

The developers of Office 2008 for Mac SP2 listened to customer feedback to improve on this very popular software suite for the Mac. With this update, program such as Word and Powerpoint will launch faster. Excel also features speed improvements, most notably with faster calculations. Users can also customize their default Themes to include their preferred fonts, color schemes, layouts, etc.

The biggest improvement brought by SP2 is in the area of document collaboration and file-sharing. Office 2008 for Mac now supports seamless integration with Microsoft Office Live Workspace. This free file-sharing network now supports Safari 4 and Firefox, which will make it easier for users on all platforms to access their documents. Microsoft SharePoint, the enterprise level document sharing server, now has a better user experience for collaboration with Mac documents.

To download Office 2008 for Mac SP2 for free, check out this direct link from Microsoft. For a free trial of Office 2008 for Mac, check out this previous blog post.