offices

Microsoft heads to 'Albany'

Microsoft confirmed Friday that it has started testing for a product code-named "Albany" but would not offer further details on the product, which may or may not be its ad-funded version of Works.

ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley posted a report earlier Friday saying that Albany is a consumer product in the Office family. She didn't get anything concrete out of Redmond either, but has some informed speculation of what it might be.

Microsoft said last year that it plans to test an ad-funded version of Works, following several years of exploring the idea. However, it is … Read more

Extend your Office apps via Live Workspace

I spent Wednesday afternoon getting to know Microsoft's new Office Live Workspace, a free service that lets you store Office files online for easy access and sharing.

Once I got used to what the service isn't--it isn't a way to actually work on the files in a browser--I came to appreciate how easy the service makes it to save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files on the Web, and open them in their original app on any PC with an Internet link.

The biggest downside is how difficult it is to get the service working on a Vista machine running Office 2007. I was uploading and downloading Office 2003 documents on my XP machine in just a few minutes, but I had to jump through a series of hoops to do the same in their Office 2007 equivalents on my newer Vista PC.

I decided to start from scratch by creating a new Windows Live account rather than using my existing Hotmail account. Signing up for the account was a breeze, though I opted out of most of the options the installer presented. For example, I had no interest in downloading Messenger, the Windows Live Toolbar (my browser's cluttered enough already), or anything having to do with OneCare, which single-handedly destroyed my home network when I tried out the beta last summer. Be sure to uncheck the option to make MSN your home page, and you may want to avoid sending Microsoft any more data than the company already helps itself to.

Once the Windows Live installation completed, it took just a few more clicks to get started with Office Live Workspace. You're prompted to give the generic workspace a name and description, which you can change later simply by mousing over the name in the left pane and choosing one of the options that appears.

Of course, there's not much you can do with the service until you get some files uploaded. You can add files from inside the workspace one at a time or in batches, though the batch approach uses an ActiveX control, and thus requires Internet Explorer 6 or higher. Since I normally use Firefox (and had used that browser to create the workspace), switching to IE just to upload a bunch of files at once would have been a major inconvenience. Still, I never intended to use this method to add files to the workspace. Instead, I downloaded the Office Live Add-in, which lets you upload files to and download them from the workspace directly inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

… Read more

Why is Safari using 97 percent of my CPU?

The last few days of my MacBook Air have been a little wonky. I couldn't figure it out until today when I noticed that Safari was using anywhere from 90-97 percent of my CPU. I also noticed a few times when the CPU was running over 100 percent.

Please note that I was using Microsoft Office, but I didn't feel good about it. We have a board meeting tomorrow and I needed to review some stuff. I still can't figure out how to get the formula bar where I want it in Excel 2008 and it makes … Read more

gDocsBar now turns Google Docs into a Web archiving tool

Remember gDocsBar (download), that handy Firefox extension we checked out a few months back? It got a pretty neat update today that lets you do things that might not have been originally intended for Google's Documents and Spreadsheets service. The first is called Webclips, which is a fancy way of saying automatic copy and paste. If you find a big chunk of content you like, you can simple copy it, then drag it into the toolbar. gDocsBar will create a new document out of whatever you've highlighted, and preserve, as much as possible, the formatting and links.

The … Read more

Microsoft updates new Mac Office

Microsoft said on Tuesday that it has released its first update to Office 2008 for Mac, fixes that should boost stability and performance in some areas, while closing some security holes.

In an e-mail, Microsoft said that version 12.0.1 adds "suite-wide stability and performance improvements," along with the security fixes.

On its Web site, the company offered a little more detail, adding, "This update fixes critical issues in Office 2008, including issues that might cause Office 2008 applications to stop responding or quit unexpectedly."

After some delay, Microsoft released Office 2008 in January. The … Read more

Microsoft fixes a dozen Office flaws in four patches; all are critical

Microsoft today released its March 2008 security bulletin, which includes four bulletins, all deemed critical by Microsoft.

The most serious of these affects Microsoft Excel, which alone has six specific "Common Vulnerablities and Exposures" vulnerabilities noted, one of which has been exploited in the wild. The next most serious affects Microsoft Outlook. In that one, a vulnerability in how the software parses "mailto" URIs could lead to remote code execution. A third bulletin affects how various Microsoft Office apps open maliciously crafted files. The final bulletin concerns how Office interfaces with the Web and includes one … Read more

Sun seeks patent protection for OpenOffice with LGPLv3

Sun is shifting the license that governs OpenOffice from the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2 to LGPLv3 in an effort to give the open-source office suite greater patent protection. I'm not sure it's going to work:

By moving from version 2 of the LGPL to version 3, Sun is bringing new language prohibiting the use of software patents to OpenOffice.org. "The most important protection for developers comes from creating mutual patent grants. ... LGPLv3 does this," [Sun's Simon] Crosby noted. In effect, a code issuer using either the plain GPL or LGPL … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 673: Offline is the new online

EPISODE 673

Sanity prevails: IE8 will default to standard-compliant mode http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080303-sanity-prevails-ie8-will-default-to-standard-compliant-mode.html http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9884688-56.html

Survey: Warnings from ISPs could slash file-swapping by 70 percent http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080303-survey-warnings-from-isps-could-slash-file-swapping-by-70.html

Nokia to bring Microsoft Silverlight-powered experiences to millions of mobile users http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1197788

Official Google Mobile Blog: Shifting Google Gears to mobile http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/03/shifting-google-gears-to-mobile.html

What price, Scrabulous? Mergers, acquisitions, venture capital, hedge funds http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/ scrabulous-founders-look-to-score-big-report-says/?hp

Microsoft offers $100K to … Read more

Microsoft goes public with Office Live Workspace beta

Regular readers of this blog know that I don't believe that Google Apps is a viable alternative to Microsoft's Office.

While Microsoft is not releasing a completely online version of its Office on Tuesday, it is releasing Office Live Workspace, an online-collaboration tool for Office that works in cooperation with the desktop application suite.

Workspace enables users to view documents online, even if their computer doesn't have Office installed. However, if they want to make edits, they have to download it and make changes in the appropriate Office application.

For users who have Office installed on their … Read more