Beyond Binary

Those who can't wait until next week for the beta of Office 2010 can apparently find the code already on torrent Web sites.

According to Neowin, the beta code has popped up on peer-to-peer sites in recent days.

Meanwhile, another enthusiast site has posted screenshots of what it says is the beta of Office 2010 and its source--Microsoft itself. Craving Tech said that it got the code on a flash drive from the software maker, and the site has posted a number of screenshots.

Microsoft is widely expected to release the updated test version at next week's Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles. Microsoft has said that it will have a beta of Office 2010 this month and has hinted on its Twitter feed that it will have big Office news next week, all but guaranteeing the release of the beta.

The beta is an update to the technology preview of the software that was released in July. That version also leaked to the Web ahead of its official release.

In addition to the desktop versions of Office 2010, Microsoft is also prepping browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. It has released a preview version of the Web apps (except for OneNote), but it is unclear if those will see an update next week.

For its part, Microsoft is staying mum. "We have not officially released the beta code of Office (2010)," a representative said. "We recommend that people do not download code from unauthorized sources."

Among the features of Office 2010 is a "paste preview" function that lets people see what different options will look like before they paste text from the clipboard.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Aiming to turn more new PC buyers into Office users, Microsoft has announced plans for several new ways to obtain the software, including an ad-supported "Starter" edition that can come loaded on new PCs.

In a blog posting Thursday, Microsoft said the starter version of Office will have limited features and include only Excel and Word. The starter version will be part of the Office 2010 family, due out next year, and will only be available on new PCs.

"Office Starter 2010 will provide new PC owners with immediate exposure to the Office 2010 experience on new PCs right out of the box," Microsoft said, adding that it can be upgraded to one of several full versions of Office with a new upgrade card to be sold at retail stores.

The product is a replacement for Microsoft Works, which was Microsoft's low-cost option for PC makers that wanted to include basic productivity software. Microsoft had also quietly tinkered with a free, ad-supported version of Works in recent years.

Office Starter, as opposed to Works, will have full file compatibility with Office as well as features like the 'Ribbon' user interface.

"It really is a replacement for Works," Microsoft corporate vice president Takeshi Numoto said in an interview on Thursday. "It is not a mere renaming of Works. It is an Office product."

Microsoft is trying several ideas to better compete with free rivals such as Google Docs. With Office 2010, Microsoft will also offer a free, ad-supported version of Office that runs in a Web browser. That product, which went into a technology preview last month, requires connection to the Internet at all times.

"It's a way for us to reach customers who may have not experienced Office before, (for them) to get a taste of it," Numoto said.

For years now, Microsoft has grappled with new ways of selling Office, which, along with Windows, is one of the company's two main profit engines. Although Office boasts half a billion users, there are lots of folks that use pirated copies of the software or don't have Office at all.

Several years back, as part of a ThinkWeek paper seen by CNET News, Microsoft workers recommend that the company scrap Works in favor of an ad-supported product, saying Microsoft only got a couple dollars of revenue per PC when Works was included.

Numoto would not go into financial details for Office Starter, but did say that it is a "royalty-bearing" product for Microsoft, as Works was. In the past, though, PC makers have had an opportunity to earn back money if customers upgrade from a trial version of Office to the full version. Numoto wouldn't detail how that might work with Office Starter.

Microsoft is also trying out a new method for those that already have a PC to try out Office 2010, once it is available. Called "Click to Run," it brings the notion of streaming to software. Instead of waiting for the whole product to download, users can click a button and start using the software as soon as some of the basics are downloaded. The rest of the product then gets downloaded over time.

Microsoft has already seen the Web increase as a means for getting its software. Numoto said that in the last fiscal year some 23 million downloads of the Office trial, nearly double the number from a year earlier.

Still, he said, downloading a big file means a long wait. "We know we could do a lot better to streamline that experience," he said.

An additional benefit of the Click to Run installation is that it is done through application virtualization. That allows the code, even though it is still being run locally, to run side-by-side with an existing version of Office. That would allow, for example, a user to run a trial version of Office 2010, without getting rid of their existing Office installation.

Like many who spend their days trapped inside a cubicle, Microsoft Office probably dreams of living a more exciting life. Perhaps, when it was just a beta, it thought maybe it would grow up to be a policeman.

Well, in "Crush," a new crime novel, the mundane piece of software gets its chance. Office, or at least one key Office document, ends up playing a central role in the pursuit of a serial killer.

Without giving away too much of the plot, it's fair to say that a certain PowerPoint file becomes a key piece of evidence, with a worker at Microsoft finding central clues within the document's metadata.

"Technology is such a part of my life," the book's author, Alan Jacobson, said in an interview. "It's part of the fabric of my life, so invariably it spills into my writing."

(Credit: Alan Jacobson)

Crush, which went on sale this week, is the follow-up to "The 7th Victim," another book where technology plays an important role. Both feature as the heroine Karen Vail, an FBI profiler who seems to have a knack for attracting murders.

Gadgetry infuses the pages of Crush. While Office has the starring role, a number of products make cameos, including Windows Live, Surface, Outlook and even RoundTable, which Microsoft handed off last year to Polycom. In fact, there were so many Microsoft products, I thought perhaps it was some sort of paid placement.

Jacobson assured me that he's just a fan of Microsoft, whose products he has used for the past 23 years, ever since switching from a Mac Plus to a PC when he opened his chiropractic practice. From then on, he said, he has purchased every version of Word and Office, along with many other of the company's products.

"I really appreciate what Microsoft does," Jacobson said. "They create incredibly complex software that is incredibly easy to use."

I pointed out that it is usually Apple, and not Microsoft, that earns that kind of praise. Jacobson said he is aware but puzzled by that fact. "I am surprised at the animosity that exists on the blogs (toward Microsoft). They write a lot of nasty things."

While nearly all the tech in the book is from Redmond, the main detective does spend lots of time on her BlackBerry (it seems Windows Mobile has a tough time getting market share in the fictional world too).

The Microsoft worker who helps Karen Vail is not a fictional character but rather Tomas Palmer, a real-life program manager in Microsoft's security unit. Jacobson met Palmer through an executive at Microsoft. In part to thank him for his technical assistance, Jacobson decided to have Palmer play a part in the book.

Jacobson said it makes sense that his characters turn to technology for help.

"I think that way, so some of them think that way too," said Jacobson, who worked for years as a chiropractor before finding a new way to tingle spines.

Microsoft has several tools for real-life law enforcement, including COFEE (Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor), a USB key that can be used by cops to find information stored in the cache of a suspect's computer.

Jacobson said that he was introduced to a Microsoft executive during a Seattle stop on his last book tour.

"I asked if I could get a tour of the campus," Jacobson said. The executive agreed and Jacobson flew back to Seattle last December and got an in-depth look at some of the latest products Microsoft is working on.

"It was fascinating," he said. "I kept thinking Microsoft has such great technology and nobody knows about it."

The technology preview of Office Web Apps allows users to edit Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations and view (but not edit) Word documents.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft plans on Thursday to start public testing for the first browser-based version of Office, although the technology preview is at least as notable for what it doesn't include as what it does offer.

The limited test of the so-called Office Web Apps includes versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but not the OneNote note-taking application. And while Excel and PowerPoint offer the ability to edit and create documents, the current Web-based version of Word can only be used to view documents, essentially the same capability it already offers as part of its current Office Live Workspace product.

Microsoft said the Web versions of OneNote and Word share "the same editing surface," and that the technology is still being worked on.

"We made the hard decision to turn off editing in the Word Web App at Tech Preview, in order for people to have the best experience at this early stage," Microsoft said.

Microsoft plans to offer the Web Apps preview first to users of Windows Live SkyDrive, giving them 25GB worth of storage.

The Office Web Apps are scheduled to be launched along with Office 2010--the next version of Office, with both browser-based and desktop programs due out in the first half of next year. The Office Web Apps will be made available to consumers as a free, ad-supported part of Windows Live, while businesses will be able to offer them to workers via their own SharePoint servers or through the Microsoft Online subscription service.

Microsoft said it will have editing abilities for Word and a version of OneNote by the time the Office Web Apps launch in final form. The current technology preview will be made available to tens of thousands of users, with a broader beta planned for later this fall. However, Microsoft would not commit to offering editing abilities for Word by the beta release.

Once finished, the browser-based versions will all offer editing, though not all of the capabilities of their desktop counterparts. Excel and OneNote will feature live co-authoring abilities, while all the Office Web Apps will work only while a user is connected to the Internet.

Microsoft also takes a different approach when it comes to sharing documents than do its rivals. While Google Apps lets users share a document directly, Office Web Apps enables sharing at the folder level--meaning that to share a document, a user must save it into a folder on Windows Live SkyDrive and then share that folder.

Forrester analyst Sheri McLeish said that the Office Web Apps do appear to be more complicated than rivals such as Google Docs or Zoho Office.

"Google and Zoho are very easy to get started on today, requiring just a step to register before being able to work on a document or spreadsheet," McLeish said. "Microsoft's Office Web Apps do not seem to match that level of ease to get started."

On the plus side, McLeish noted that Office offers a depth not found in its online rivals.

"Once you are in the Web Apps the experience is very much the same as the desktop suite," McLeish said. "And for enterprises, deployment choices to host the Web Apps themselves on-premise is a big differentiator from Google and Zoho."

As for the current release, Microsoft noted that it is still in pre-beta form and has a number of known issues.

"It's still going to be rough around the edges," said Ural Cebeci, a senior product manager in Microsoft's Office unit.

The Office Web Apps are being certified to work in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari, and may also work in Google's Chrome--although Microsoft isn't guaranteeing Chrome compatibility.

Microsoft had previously indicated on several occasions that the Safari compatibility meant that users would be able to edit documents on their iPhone, but Cebeci said that iPhone users will only be able to view documents--capability similar to that offered on other smartphones.

With Windows 7 having been finalized, I realized that my main work set-up was utterly lacking in the unfinished software department.

Clearly, that couldn't stand. So, last week, I installed the technical preview of Office 2010 on the Windows 7 machine I have been using every day. For the foreseeable future, I'll be trying to see how the new applications stack up in handling my day-to-day work.

As for my early impression, I think my colleague Rafe Needleman said it best in a tweet he wrote earlier this week, while tying out the new Office.

"I wish Outlook/Office 2010 tech preview would do something weird and dumb so I could write about it. Sadly, it just works."

Microsoft has a tradition of internal testing of its products, which it dubs "dogfooding." Here at Beyond Binary, we like to do a bit of dogfooding ourselves, despite the fact we have two cats and no canines.

Although I have installed all of the main Office applications--Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and OneNote, I really only use Word and Outlook on a daily basis.

The most noticeable change for me is in Outlook, particularly its new conversation threading feature. Although the concept is familiar to anyone who has used Gmail, it is quite powerful to see the notion applied to the hundreds of e-mail messages that land in my in-box on any given day.

I have a few minor quibbles. Office 2010 is good at bunching together e-mails even if the subject line changes, but its grouping has some false positives in joining disparate conversations just because the subject lines are the same. For instance, it tends to put all of my messages with the subject "Hey there" together, even though that's a standard subject line for me. Similarly, it puts all of my "(no subject)" e-mails together.

That said, I really like the feature overall. It definitely saves me time and makes finding those earlier messages in a thread much simpler.

On the Word front, there are features I am interested in trying out, but few that I have noticed in my casual use. Of course, my use of Word is somewhat atypical. I basically am only looking for a text editor with really good save capabilities. The first thing I do is turn off the smart quotes, hyperlinking, autocorrect, and all of the other features that help distinguish Word from, say, WordPad.

I wrote earlier about one feature I am excited about--paste preview--which helps one see what the different paste options will look like before you commit. That's helpful because usually what I want is the "paste unformatted" option (see above section where what I really need is a text editor), but every now and then I am looking to preserve more of the formatting and it is nice to see what I will get ahead of time.

As a photo nerd, I am also keen on playing around with the artistic effects that Microsoft added to Word. In the past, I needed Photoshop, or at least a program like Photoshop Elements, to do things like turn a photo into a watercolor painting. But now one can do that straight from Word.

Let's see, what else? I'm not a huge fan of the Ribbon, but given that it is here to stay, it is nice to see it has made its way into all of Outlook, as well as to OneNote.

Microsoft Office 2010 technical preview (screenshots)

I'm more fond of the Backstage view, which is new to Office 2010. Essentially a replacement for the file menu, the backstage view offers a more contextual and visual way to do tasks like opening recent documents, creating new ones or printing the document you are working in.

But the thing that I am most interested in, the browser-based versions of Office, I will have to wait a little bit longer for. Although Microsoft released the technical preview of the desktop versions in July, we're still waiting on the Web apps. The official word is they should be out in test form "later this summer."

If I were Microsoft, I'd work to get a Web-based Office out there pronto.

The fact that many customers are shifting from running their own e-mail servers to getting mail as a hosted service doesn't have to spell doom for Microsoft, insists Rajesh Jha, the man who heads the Exchange business.

In an interview on Monday, Jha said that, although many see the rise of services as more of a benefit to companies like Google, he sees it as an opportunity for his business.

Microsoft's Rajesh Jha, shown here in his office earlier this year, says the shift from a world of servers to a world of services need not spell trouble for the Exchange business.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)

"I feel we will grow our share overall with the move to services," Jha said. In particular, Jha said that Microsoft has a better option for small and midsize businesses than it did when its only option was for those companies to run their own Exchange servers. "I think we have a huge opportunity for growth. I don't think we are in a defensive position at all."

In a year in which many software businesses--including a number within Microsoft--took a hit, the Exchange business continued to grow last year, Jha said, saying that revenue for the product nearly hit $2 billion and has 70 percent market share among corporate users.

Jha acknowledged, though, that competition for the in-box is definitely heating up.

"It is where people spend more of their hours," Jha said. "It's become a real critical part of the day. Our competitors are smart. They see it too."

In addition to Google, IBM continues to push its Lotus Domino/Notes combination while Cisco has said it will have a Linux-based e-mail offering based on last year's Postpath acquisition.

Sounding a familiar refrain, Jha said that he expects customers to warm to Microsoft's strategy, which lets them have the option of running Exchange themselves or purchasing it as a subscription hosted service.

"With Exchange, we don't give them any kind of technology ultimatum," Jha said. "We don't say 'Thou shalt move to the cloud.' "

Microsoft has shifted its priorities, though. Unlike past versions of Exchange, Microsoft developed Exchange 2010 as a service first, and only later has it done the work on the server product. That server product, which has been in testing for some time and reached the beta stage in April, is now ready in a near-final "release candidate" form.

Among its features is one that lets users "mute" an e-mail thread that they are no longer interested in being part of.

Jha reiterated that the final version of Exchange 2010 should be done later this year.

"I feel pretty good about how we are tracking," he said, noting that half of Microsoft's in-boxes--some 80,000--are now on the new version of Exchange. " We'll definitely be ready this year."

Microsoft is expected on Wednesday to announce a partnership with European mobile giant Nokia to help get its Office software onto that company's mobile phones, CNET News has learned.

With the next version of Office, Microsoft is trying to expand its desktop hold on the productivity market into one that spans the PC, Web, and phone, and this deal is seen as a significant move in that last category.

The software maker has already said that, with the next version of Office, it plans to offer browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Those programs will be able to run inside Safari and Firefox in addition to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. That means that Office, for the first time, will run on Linux-based machines.

On the phone side, Microsoft has shown the ability for Office 2010 documents to be displayed on a variety of mobile phones. So far, the only phones that have their own native versions of Office have been those running Microsoft's Windows Mobile software.

Microsoft is looking for ways to strengthen its Office franchise into one that maintains its relevance and market share even as the PC becomes just one of many devices people use to access their information. Office is also vital to Microsoft's fiscal health, with much of the company's profits still coming from Windows and Office.

Microsoft released a technology preview of the PC-based Office 2010 applications in July, although it has yet to start publicly testing the browser-based versions. The final version of Office 2010 is due next year.

Although Nokia and Microsoft have long been rivals in the phone business, the two have also struck deals at times. Nokia already has a license that allows its phones to connect to Exchange Servers using Microsoft's ActiveSync protocol. In 2007, Microsoft also struck a deal with Nokia to have Windows Live services run on the Finnish company's phones.

The deal comes even as Microsoft is trying to figure out how to keep its Windows Mobile operating system in the game amid stiff competition from Nokia in Europe as well as Apple's iPhone, RIM's BlackBerry, and an emerging threat from devices running Google's Android operating system.

Expanding Office to other mobile devices may help that business, but at the same time takes away one of the areas where Windows Mobile had a leg up on rivals--its direct compatibility with Office.

Update: The two sides aren't talking details, but they have confirmed a press conference on Wednesday to discuss an alliance. It will start at 8 a.m. PT and CNET will have live coverage.

Also, as TechFlash's Todd Bishop points out, Microsoft's Mac Business Unit has scheduled an announcement for Thursday. Do you think we'll see Office for the iPhone this week?

In a reversal, Microsoft says it will now charge all small businesses an annual domain registration fee, even those companies it had promised free Web site registrations for life.

Starting October 1, all customers will have to pay $14.95 a year to renew their custom Web address. Microsoft offers Web site registration as part of its Office Live Small Business service. In some ways, it's understandable, given that Microsoft has to pay fees each year in order to keep renewing the domains.

However, the move does mean the software maker is going back on a promise it made last year. As part of a series of changes made in February 2008, the company said that new customers of Office Live Small Business would have to pay for domain renewals after the first year, but promised that early customers of the services would get their domains registered for free "in perpetuity."

In a statement, Microsoft acknowledged the shift.

"Yes, it is a change," Microsoft said in a statement to CNET News. "As you know, we made a decision in February 2008 to begin charging $14.95 (per) year for custom domain name renewals for new customers. Now, we're asking all customers to pay this same fee once their domain comes up for renewal."

Microsoft did say that the price is quite competitive and noted that the majority of its Office Live small business services are still offered for free. Those that want a Web site for free have the option of moving their site from a custom domain and onto their own portion of the Office Live domain.

However, Microsoft notes that while the Web site will transfer, other data could be lost.

"All e-mail accounts on the expired domain name will be automatically removed and e-mail messages will not be saved," Microsoft said on its Web site, adding a link to a page offering methods of backing up such data.

The move comes as Microsoft is shifting more of its online attention toward bringing the full Office suite on to the Web, as opposed to ancillary services. Free, browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote are coming next year as part of Office 2010.

The Office Live Small Business tools date back to the earliest days of Microsoft's Live push, first announced in late 2005 and released in final form in November 2006.

As noted by blogger Long Zheng, Microsoft has snapped up the Office.com domain.

The address would seem to make for a logical home for the forthcoming Web-based version of Office, though Microsoft declined to say how it plans to use the address.

"At this point it's too early to share details on our plans around www.office.com," a Microsoft representative said on Thursday. Microsoft launched a technical preview of Office 2010 last month, but the Web-based versions aren't slated to start public testing until later this year. Microsoft has said that the browser-based Office Web Applications will be a free part of the Windows Live service and will work with Safari and Firefox, in addition to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

As for Office.com, Microsoft appears to have acquired the domain from ContactOffice, which has its own Web-based suite of tools. As of Thursday morning, a message on the Office.com site warns users that they are being moved to the ContactOffice.com domain.

"As you know from the recent email we sent you, we will be transitioning the operation of your Virtual Office account to ContactOffice.com during the next 30 days," reads the current message on the site. "As part of this transition, on Monday, June 29, 2009, we changed email addresses in the office.com domain to ones in the contactoffice.com domain."

Microsoft declined to offer any details about its acquisition of the Office.com domain. A representative of ContactOffice did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Update: Robin Wauters at TechCrunch notes that the Office.com site wasn't owned by ContactOffice itself, but operated under a revenue-sharing agreement with the U.S.-based owner of the site.

(Credit: CNET News)