publishers

Microsoft Office 2010 is available today for business licenses, with the public release coming in June. According to Microsoft, the focus of this major overhaul was on three things: to make workflows more efficient; to effectively use Web applications to make your work available anywhere; and to make collaboration with others much easier. In this CNET First Take for Microsoft Office 2010, we'll take a look at some of the notable feature changes across many of the applications. Microsoft says Office 2010 will let you use your PC, smartphone, and the Web to make your projects come together more … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--As part of its unveiling of its "Open Graph" product suite at the F8 developer conference here, Facebook is getting rid of the standalone "Facebook Connect" product that it unveiled at the last F8 two years ago.

"We are actually eliminating the Facebook Connect brand," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a press conference following his keynote address. "We figured that 'Connect' is not descriptive for users."

Facebook director of platform product Bret Taylor chimed in. "Facebook Connect was just an initiative to have [the] Facebook log-in work on external Web … Read more

Business relies on PDFs, but the software can be complex and expensive, so there's a strong market for affordable, standalone PDF utilities that simplify specific tasks like document conversion. Peernet's ArcPDF is an example. It's a basic but easy-to-use tool that converts PDF files to Microsoft Word or Rich Text files, one at a time or in batches. You don't need Word or any Adobe software to use it, though.

The program opens with a PDF-based Quick Start Guide and a nag screen that tracks the free trial. ArcPDF's dialog interface has a styled border … Read more

A-PDF offers a wide range of highly specialized, affordable PDF tools that save time by automating and simplifying specific tasks. A-PDF Size Splitter splits PDF files into smaller PDFs. Why would you need it? E-mail file size limitations, for one reason; Size Splitter makes quick work of splitting huge PDFs into exactly the right size documents for file or bandwidth restrictions, or for legal restrictions on maximum file attachment size.

This program has the family look of A-PDF's fairly staggering array of PDF utilities, with a plain but businesslike dialog-based interface. There's a PDF-based Help file that can … Read more

With the iPad's launch just days away, several publishers will begin setting e-book prices on Amazon.com starting Thursday, according to published reports.

CBS' Simon & Schuster and News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers have struck deals with Amazon.com to determine their own prices for electronic titles, according to The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek reports. (CNET is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.) Additionally, Macmillan, Hachette Book Group, and Penguin Group will begin setting their own prices on Thursday, according to a Sony letter cited by BusinessWeek.

Most e-books will cost between $12.99 and $14.… Read more

Yahoo on Wednesday announced that it has decided to close the Yahoo Publisher Network, the company's answer to Google AdSense.

The Yahoo Publisher Network, an advertising platform enabling small Web publishers to place ads on their sites to drive revenue, will officially close on April 30. The service has been in beta testing since its launch nearly five years ago.

In an e-mail sent to Publisher Network users, Yahoo said users of its service might want to consider moving to Chitika, another ad platform that the company says serves more than "2 billion monthly impressions across more than … Read more

We read so that we can experience something true. You remember true--it's the thing you see so little of during a day at work.

So why do so many believe that books, publishing, and even reading are dead? Steve Jobs, after all, made books a considerable feature of his iPad launch presentation a few weeks ago.

Still, the management at U.K. educational publisher Dorling Kindersley asked a production company called the Khaki Group to create a film that showed what publishing would be like in the future, if anything.

The filmmakers came up with an enchanting piece that … Read more

Penguin, the fabled English publisher, is plunging head first into the world of iPad content. Not iPad books, exactly, as these things are not recognizable as books in the normal sense--they are closer to games and full-fledged apps. Even in the case where they are adapting existing print books, there is enough new stuff going on where it diverges significantly from what we normally think of as "book". A Kindle e-book, these are not. Check out the video above for an intriguing peep into what they have planned.

Dan Nosowitz at Fast Company observes:

[P]enguin doesn't … Read more

Created by the developers behind the popular CSSEdit, Espresso is another option for Web developers who want a relatively low-priced, one-window Web editor that also gives you an intuitive code-editing environment along with organizational tools and other extras.

Espresso uses a two-paned, single-window interface organized around a single, logical workflow: the app has Workspace, Files, and Publish sections, and it's easy to drag and drop files and sites. A third Navigator pane lets you view and quickly manipulate the organizational structure of your docs. Espresso also gives you a full set of editing features, including multilanguage support (boosted by … Read more