The Microsoft Office 2010 beta was released Wednesday, and though there aren't many major changes from the Technical Preview from July, there are some new features and enhancements worthy of note. This post will focus on the changes to the beta, but if you want a larger overview of new features across all the applications, check out our rundown of the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview.
Outlook is the cornerstone of many companies' communications and daily schedules, and as such received a lot of enhancements in Office 2010. In the beta version, Microsoft has added even more ways to connect with coworkers and contacts. The new Outlook Social Connector is an added information pane that gives you more info about everyday contacts. Once set up, you'll be able to view pictures of contacts (even in large cc lists), previous conversations, attachments shared, meetings attended, and much more. Though not complete in the beta, Microsoft says the Outlook Social Connector will soon be able to connect with social Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, so you can follow status updates and more all in one location.
The Office 2010 Technical Preview introduced the Back Stage view, an enhanced File menu (accessed from the Office Icon tab) that lets you manage your documents, set permissions, and share your projects with colleagues. In the beta version Microsoft has decided to return to calling it the File menu, but with all the functionality and flexibility of Back Stage. They also have made it possible to access all the other tabs in the Ribbon, which were previously inaccessible in the Technical Preview, so you can get to the information you want quickly without the added step of exiting Back Stage.
... Read moreA friend pointed out to me the similarity between Microsoft's icon set for the new Office 2010 beta and Adobe's icons for its Creative Suite. Looking at the two sets, it's clear that they are alike in some ways, but that Adobe has gone for the more graphically "pure" design while Microsoft has favored a busier image.
New icons from the Microsoft Office 2010 beta on the left, and Adobe's program icons, introduced two years ago in CS3.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Microsoft's icons retain the rounded edge introduced in the 2007 version, but the introduction of the single, graphically recognizable letter is an obvious nod to Adobe. Ignoring the size discrepancies in my screen capture above, what seems to make Adobe's icons pop off the screen more than the cleanness of the image are the color choices: Adobe's orange and red are more vibrant than the muted shades for Microsoft Office. However, the darker bottom of Adobe's darker-colored icons doesn't seem to play well with the solid-black lettering. In contrast, Microsoft's decision to give the letters gradient shades makes the icons softer, but they appear to stand out more from a cluttered field.
With the larger taskbar in Windows 7, though, the icons may stand out enough anyway. How important do you think icon design and choice is to your software? Let us know in the comments.
LOS ANGELES--Microsoft announced on Wednesday that the beta of Office 2010 is now publicly available from the company's Web site and from CNET Download.com.
Among the features new to the beta is a social networking connector that allows users to bring in Windows Live and other social networking feeds into Outlook. LinkedIn is the first that will take advantage of it--early next year--but there is a software development kit for others to do so.
"I hope that you will all download it," Microsoft senior vice president Kurt DelBene said at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference here.
Microsoft has posted an article noting that Office Mobile 2010 is also in beta and available for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones via the Windows Mobile Marketplace.
The public beta also includes the ability for businesses to start testing the browser-based Office Web Apps within their enterprises. The beta versions, unlike the technology preview of the Web Apps includes editing in Word as well as the OneNote Web app.
The consumer version of the Web apps, however, remains in technology preview in Windows Live. There's no specific timeframe for when the Office Web Apps will hit Windows Live.
Office 2010 is due out in final form in the first half of next year.
The company is talking more about Office 2010 as part of the Professional Developers Conference keynote that is still taking place. Click here for CNET's live blog of that talk.
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)Online-backup company Backblaze (Windows | Mac) announced on Tuesday that it has opened its service up to businesses. Backblaze will charge companies a flat fee of $50 per computer per year.
Backblaze's service mimics other, more popular services like Mozy (Windows | Mac) and Carbonite (Windows). Users need only to download its uploading software to their computers and create an account. Once complete, Backblaze starts backing up the contents of the user's computer to its data center.
Backblaze backs up all files on the computer, except for the operating system, temporary files, apps, or files over 4GB in size. Uploading is encrypted throughout the process and works with Windows PCs and Intel-based Macs.
If trouble strikes and a user loses some or all of his files, he can simply go back to Backblaze's site and download the required files. Backblaze already has a consumer-oriented service that costs $5 per computer per month for unlimited storage.
As compelling as its service might be, Backblaze is competing in a crowded space. Both Mozy and Carbonite are doing a fine job of attracting customers. But by using a flat rate, Backblaze is hoping to set itself apart from competing services that charge based on the amount of data that's uploaded. Mozy, for example, charges companies a standard fee of $3.95 plus $0.50 per gigabyte per month for its service.
While online data storage is becoming more commonplace, it is still a risk. For its part, Backblaze said: "Backblaze goes to great lengths to ensure data is safe and to ensure customers are happy. While we would certainly give a business a refund if data was lost (simply out of good customer service)...we don't believe anything can actually cover for the value of the lost data."
Check out Webware's hands-on review: "Backblaze: Possibly world's easiest online backup"
Updated at 1:15 p.m. PST with comment from Backblaze.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
If you're a regular user of the revision comparison feature in Google Docs, you'll likely enjoy new service Compare My Docs. It comes from the same folks who created TextFlow, the Adobe AIR-based app that spot differences across multiple copies of a Word document or rich text file.
Compare My Docs does many of the same things as TextFlow, including being able to compare up to six versions of the same document to see what's been changed. The big difference though, is that it runs right in your browser and requires no sign-up whatsoever.
Just like TextFlow, Compare My Docs color codes any changes it finds between the different revisions of a document and gives you a quick and easy way to accept, reject, or set aside a change. This means you can cruise through a document and keep the changes or revisions you like, while keeping an active log of what you don't.
When finished, you'll have a new version that has all of those changes, which can be saved either as a Word doc or rich text file back on your hard drive. Although unlike what you can do in TextFlow, with Compare My Docs there's no way to publish the finished product to the Web or save it in parent company Nordic River's servers for safe keeping; something that seems meant to entice users to try out TextFlow instead.
Compare My Docs looks a lot like TextFlow, in fact it basically is, but runs in your browser instead of as an Adobe AIR app.
(Credit: CNET)The service does manage to suffer from some of the limitations in the core technology behind both it and TextFlow, including having photos and charts being stripped out. This means you'll have to add them back in after you've run a few documents through its editor.
Along with Compare My Docs, Nordic River is also finally releasing an API for TextFlow, which will let developers make use of the service's comparison technology in their apps or Web services. This could help make up for some of the service's shortcomings, while augmenting the versioning tools currently offered by some online services. File hosting in particular comes to mind, since places like DropBox and Box.net offer versioning, and version rollback, but in order to see the differences you have to save, then open up each file and look for differences. Those places could now very quickly build tools that let users compare multiple versions of a saved Word or text file from right within the app.
Nordic River says that TextFlow in its Adobe AIR form will remain, but that the site is closing up to new users in a few weeks until it readies a new interface. In the meantime the company will continue its free and paid services to those who have already signed up.
Correction 8:57 a.m. on November 3: This story initially misstated that users could not make edits to the text within the tool. This was due to the functionality not being present in the pre-release version of the site used for review.
IT pros will often tell you that a lot of consumer technology isn't ready for the enterprise. It's not secure, it's not priced correctly, it can't be administered, yada yada. That doesn't stop businesspeople from using consumer tools in their jobs, though. It just stops the people who make the tools from profiting from their use.
Where there are IT administrators, there are budgets, and where there are budgets, there's market opportunity. And I'm not surprised that two very solid personal productivity tools are getting business versions this week and business models to match.
Xobni provides a heads-up display for e-mail.
(Credit: Xobni)The Outlook add-on maker Xobni on Monday released Xobni Enterprise, a new version of the product with links into traditional business data sources. While the free and Plus levels of Xobni will search Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to give users more information about the people who are e-mailing them, the enterprise version will also tap into Salesforce.com, Sharepoint, and corporate directory services. It can also be extended to work with proprietary business apps. This could be pretty cool: users will be able to see latest internal database info from people they're communicating with them, automatically when they're doing the communicating.
And to help IT teams keep their users in line with whatever (ridiculous and restrictive) policies their companies have on employee access to outside data, Enterprise Xobni admins can also turn off access to the app's Twitter features and other parts of the product.
Admins, of course, can provision employees' computers for access to Xobni data from a central console.
Xobni Enterprise starts at $30 a user a year, with prices going down with volume or up for access to enterprise data sources.
The Business edition of SugarSync lets admins pool storage and control access.
(Credit: SugarSync)On Tuesday, the cloud file synchronization product SugarSync gets a business version design for teams. The Business version of the product features pooled storage and central IT control. Customers pay for each user ($10 a month) and for the storage they want, in 100GB increments. Admins have access to all this storage, too. If an employee leaves the company, they can disable access, and then sign on as that person, and recover data. There's no "remote wipe" feature to remove company data from an employee's computer, but CEO Laura Yecies told me she's thinking about it.
A useful feature lets users send files to other people via the SugarSync service, instead of through e-mail. This could compete with the useful, but single-purpose and somewhat expensive product, YouSendIt, except that SugarSync's single-file transfer function can't password-protect files.
In the cloud sync category, SugarSync lagged its major competitor Dropbox in releasing of a free, limited version of the service. There's one now, and Yecies says, "We're finding that free is a good business." She bases this on "conversion" to the paid product, which she says is 5 percent to 10 percent, depending on the offers presented to users.
I use and pay for my own SugarSync account and highly recommend the service. Compared with geek favorite service Dropbox, it's got more flexible configuration options and better mobile device support. The business version freaks me out, personally--I don't want any IT manager getting access to files my hard drive--but this sounds like a good product for the security-conscious IT exec who wants to provide a team file-sharing product along with off-site backup to users.
In an update earlier this week, AbiWord introduced several new features, one of which competitors have long had. In AbiWord 2.8.1, you can finally annotate a document. There's also integration with the new Web-based sharing tool called AbiCollab.net. This extends Google Docs-style sharing to AbiWord fans.
Annotation comes to AbiWord.
(Credit: AbiWord)Other features have been fixed or introduced, too. Smart Quotes, the curved quotation mark, had been implemented before, but they now work as they do in other word processors. A multipage view has been introduced for examining more than one page of your document simultaneously. For users who need robust graphics support in their word processor, AbiWord 2.8 also natively supports true vector images (SVG) as well as WMF images from Microsoft Word.
Further changes are documented here. If you have a favorite word processor, let us know in the comments below.
Microsoft has decided that its Office Accounting product just doesn't add up.
The software maker said on Friday that it plans next month to stop distributing the accounting product line, ending the latest in a series of efforts to take on market leader Intuit.
The accounting product line was launched in 2005 amid some fanfare, but failed to grab much market share and was later pulled from retail shelves in favor of online-only sales.
"We continually evaluate our business strategies to make sure we're working to meet the needs of customers, partners and shareholders," Microsoft said on its Web site. "With that in mind, we have determined that existing free templates within Office used with Excel was a better option for small businesses, and the Microsoft Dynamics ERP products were appropriate for mid-range organizations."
The software maker said it will stop distributing its free Office Accounting Express as well as all of the paid Office Accounting product in the United States and United Kingdom.
Microsoft has been paring back a number of the efforts at the periphery of its product line, including mainstays such as Microsoft Money, which had long been second fiddle to Intuit's Quicken. The company has also discontinued its Windows Live OneCare security software.
Microsoft plans to continue supporting the Office Accounting product, although a number of related services are ending.
"Online sales from eBay and credit profile from Equifax will no longer be available after December 15, 2009," Microsoft said. "However, your customers will still be able to pay e-mailed invoices directly through PayPal. In addition, credit card processing services and the ability to order compatible checks and forms will still be available."
Those who have bought the product in the last 30 days can return it for a refund.
Conventional wisdom is that Intuit's acquisition of the personal finance Web service Mint will mean the end of the line for the company's standalone software app, Quicken. Upstart Mint, which is being acquired by Intuit for $170 million, has a personal finance product more in line with the times, with a younger demographic, a working business model, and a passionate CEO, Aaron Patzer, who's slated to take over the Quicken product line at Intuit once the acquisition closes. It doesn't look good for the old desktop app, Quicken.
It's a shame that we think of Quicken that way, but it's Intuit's own fault that we've gotten here. The product, according to Intuit legend, started at founder Scott Cook's kitchen table in 1983 as he watched his wife struggle with paying bills. The original Quicken, little more than an DOS-based checkbook and register, over time became an ambitious personal finance suite that handled budgeting, retirement planning, loans, public equities and employee stock options. It became more capable but also more complex, harder to use, and much harder to get started with.
Mint got access to investment data a year ago.
(Credit: Mint.)More importantly, as Julie Miller, director of corporate communications for the consumer group at Intuit told me, "Quicken made its way through the organization. We shuffled the Quicken business around. That had a direct effect on the quality of the product." You can see the effect on CNET's own reviews. Users hate Quicken. Few products have user reviews scores as low: none of the variations of of Quicken from recent years have user reviews garnering more than 1 and a half stars out of 5. (Our official reviews score the products higher.)
Another reason that Quicken suffered: Intuit shifted its focus away from the flagship product to new moneymakers, in particular its small-business product, QuickBooks, and its tax software and service, TurboTax. As Miller says, "There were decisions made over time that had the unintended consequence of putting the Quicken business where it was starved for focus and resources."
Finally, though, the light began to dawn at Intuit. Miller: "Our thinking was too limited. We weren't thinking beyond the desktop solution. The way we grow this, we realized, was to look for acquisitions."
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