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 »

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.

Despite being one of the world’s most profitable companies, Microsoft is about to report its first decline in annual revenue in its 23 year public history. One could argue that this decline in sales revenue comes as a result of the slumping economy. While it’s true that many companies are putting off software purchases and upgrades as a way to cut costs and tighten their own belts, there is also an underlying shift in the software world that is beginning to gain some traction: the shift to online alternatives and software as a service (SaaS).

Computers now take on many different forms. Devices like the iPhone and netbooks are allowing the world ways to access software like never before. The Internet now lives in your pocket, and the applications running on these small devices are increasingly based in the cloud. The era of stand-alone PC’s installed with individual software programs is coming to an end. For a company like Microsoft that makes it’s money on selling up-front licenses to its proprietary programs, this shift is disconcerting to say the least.

So what is Microsoft doing to adapt to the changing landscape of personal and business computing? Unlike what it’s down for the past 10 years, Microsoft is going to be venturing into new areas with original ideas. Recent products like the Zune were aimed at simply playing catch-up with already successful products in the marketplace. Most of the time this will result in a massive financial loss. So, this time around, the new leaders in Redmond are exploring ways to stay ahead of the curve.

Microsoft is currently testing the waters in the SaaS market by offering Exchange and SharePoint as a monthly subscription service to businesses. This lowers costs to the end user by eliminating the need for expensive servers, IT workers, and maintenance. It also reduces their up-front costs by not having to shell out for a software license all at once, not to mention the hardware savings. In turn, Microsoft stands to make more money off these SaaS services by providing a complete solution that will cost more than a simple software license. It’s challenge is to find a price point that will work for both parties.

Hosting the software and providing constant support to end users is a monumental task, considering the shear number of companies running Microsoft software. These SaaS services will also increase Microsoft’s costs and reduce its profit margins, despite the fact that it will pull in a larger amount of money on the whole.

Microsoft is also adding new features to the upcoming Office 2010 suites. Applications like Word and Powerpoint will be more web-friendly than ever before. New tools will be unveiled that will allow document collaboration between multiple users, at the same time. Instead of emailing a draft of a document back and forth between members of a team, users will be able to work on different parts of a document at the same time.

There is no doubt that future editions of Office will explore this idea of software plus services even further. It will have to keep evolving in order to keep up with free services like Google Docs and OpenOffice.

Microsoft is not going away anytime soon. Windows still commands an enormous lead in the operating system market. It’s business software division, with titles like Office, Exchange, and Windows Server, is pulling in ridiculous amounts of money. However, in ten years the world of software will be completely changed, and Microsoft is planning its evolution to adapt to those changes.

For further reading, check out these great articles from Business Week:
Microsoft: Beyond ‘Software Plus Services’
Microsoft Defends Its Empire

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Earlier this month Microsoft released the sixth version of its Security Intelligence Report (SIR). This report compiles and analyzes data from hundreds of millions of computers worldwide as well as some of the busiest online services. This very comprehensive report draws out recent trends in software security and indentifies areas of vulnerability. This most recent version used data from July to December 2008.

This Microsoft SIR found a few interesting trends. The first is the proliferation of security exploits using common file extensions. Software and email security has gotten better at blocking dangerous file extensions like .exe, but hackers have recently changed their tactics to exploit common file types like Adobe PDF (.pdf) and Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt). PDF exploits in particular saw a dramatic rise in 2008. Adobe has since addressed this issue with critical updates issued in March.

The Microsoft report also states that more than 97% of all email messages sent across the internet are unwanted spam. This number is down slightly over last year, when spam accounted for over 98% of all emails sent. The top content of all this spam was pharmaceutical ads, which account for 48.6% of all spam messages. In the second half of 2008, sexually oriented pharmacy ads declined dramatically, but the overall number of pharmacy spam remained fairly constant. Maybe Viagra is too easy to come by nowadays? Also worth noting is the dramatic decline in stock market spam and the increase of financial and get rich quick spam. This seems to correlate well with the financial turmoil experienced during the same time.

There was also a dramatic decrease in overall spam phishing impressions in November, due to the McColo de-peering. Levels spiked again in December, presumably because spammers found a new place to send their messages from. It’s also interesting to note that the US hosts more phishing sites than anywhere else in the world, with Texas being the state with the most hosts.

The Microsoft SIR highlights the recent trend in rogue security software. These rogue distributors use fear and social engineerng techniques to lure victims into paying for full versions of bogus security software.

For a summary of this massive Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, download the summary from Microsoft. The full version with 184 pages of analysis is also available at the same link.

Yesterday Microsoft announced that a free trial version of Office 2008 Standard for Mac is now available for download. The trial verion is fully-functional for 30 days, which lets users experience the full range of features found in this suite of Microsoft applications.

Office 2008 for Mac includes popular Microsoft programs like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage, Microsoft Server Exchange Support, and Automator Actions for Workflows in Microsoft Office. A new streamlined interface designed specifically for Mac and new templates with suite-wide themes highlight the 2008 version.

This news comes almost a year after the initial release of Office 2008 for Mac, which makes you wonder why the trial wasn’t available from the very beginning. Perhaps sales have been slumping recently and Microsoft needs to boost its Mac user base.

Download the free trial here, and when you’re ready to buy the full version, check out SoftwareMedia for unbeatable low prices.

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Now that the “doomsday” Conficker virus has come and gone without any major incidents, it’s time to focus on legitimate security threats that don’t receive the same kind of hype.

Microsoft recently released a security advisory about a new vulnerability in its PowerPoint software. There are recent reports of malicious PowerPoint file attachments in certain spam emails that exploit security weaknesses in most all PowerPoint versions. A user must click on the file attachment to activate the malware, but if it is clicked on, the computer could allow criminals to access that system.

While these attacks haven’t been widespread as of yet, Microsoft is investigating the issue and will most likely release a PowerPoint patch in the near future. For now, steer clear of any PowerPoint attachments in emails that seem fishy. Most major security software companies have already updated their virus definitions to include this threat, so once you update your virus software, you should be protected.