Technologizer

Gadget site T3 is reporting that Microsoft has dropped a “hint” that it may be working on a version of Office for the iPad. I hope so–it could be both cool and useful. But the evidence that it’s doing so is paper-thin so far. (I’ve probably asked Microsoft staffers about things they might be working on hundreds of times over the years, and they only rarely say “no comment” or issue a flat denial–their tendency is say that ideas of all sorts sound “interesting.”)

Last April, someone asked a Microsoft exec about Office for the iPhone, and some took his response (“Not yet–keep watching”) as evidence that such a suite was in the works. The only Office/iPhone news since then has been the fact that Office 2010’s Web features will include some basic tools designed to let people view documents on smartphones. Maybe the exec was talking about that. Or maybe Microsoft is working on an iPhone edition of Office. Or maybe he just meant what he said.

Of course, almost thirty years ago Microsoft did become a rabid fan of a new Apple platform, and released a bunch of applications for it. Its enthusiasm seems to have paid off for everybody involved that time around…

Sometimes Microsoft’s biggest competitor is itself. Huge numbers of businesses are still using Windows XP, and Microsoft is acting aggressively to migrate them to Windows 7 by extending a promotion that offers Windows 7 and Office 2007 for half price.

Windows Vista is by many accounts a better operating system than XP, but nearly 90 percent of businesses bypassed the upgrade, and opted to stick with Windows XP, because it was “good enough” for them. Office XP presents Microsoft with a similar problem.

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UPDATED: It’s a nightmare scenario: Imagine coming into the office and not being able to access any of your organization’s vital documents. That scenario became reality today for an untold number of Microsoft Office 2003 customers who use Microsoft’s Rights Management Service (RMS), a technology for controlling access to documents.

Office 2003 users receive the error, “Unexpected error occurred. Please try again later or contact your system administrator,” when they attempt to open or save protected documents. The bug affects Office 2003 products including Excel 2003, Outlook 2003, PowerPoint 2003, and Word 2003. It does not affect Office 2007 or Office 2010 Beta, according to Microsoft.

A spokesperson said that the bug was caused by a Information Rights Management (IRM) certificate expiring.

Microsoft has posted a bulletin to TechNet alerting customers to the problem, and says that it is working “as quickly as possible” to provide its customers with a solution. Further announcements will be posted to the blog.

Microsoft released a hotfix on Saturday. The Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3 update is required for hotfixes to be installed.

Details: Office 2010 for phones.

Office 2010 scheduled for June.

Would you pay for YouTube?

Black Screens of Death: isolated.

Consumer Reports ratings: Sorry, AT&T.

Blockbuster rentals in a box.

Microsoft and Silicon Valley: friends!

Almost a million Droids sold.

The Nook: worth the wait.

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At its PDC developer shindig in Los Angeles, Microsoft is announcing that it’s putting Office 2010, which isn’t due to ship until the first half of next year, into a public beta. You can download the whole beta right here, and if you’re an Office user and are curious what’ll be new in Office 2010, the beta is worth a look. (You can install it alongside an existing earlier copy of Office and leap back and forth, although in my tests, my copy of Office 2007 briefly launched its install program whenever I returned to it after having used Office 2010.)

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Microsoft is planning to release a public test version of Office 2010 next month, reports Cnet’s Ina Fried. The company’s technical betas of the suite and its Web-based version have been open to only a relatively small pool of testers, so the upcoming release will be the first time that anyone with an interest in what’s next for Office will be able to get some hands-on experience.

I’ve spent time with Office 2010 in its software and service incarnations, and while there’s some good stuff in both, I’m still reserving judgement until Microsoft releases more fully-baked versions–the Web suite and other collaborative features in the previews I tried were simultaneously the most (theoretically) interesting new features and the furthest from completion. (Large chunks were still simply missing in action.) Let’s hope the November preview is feature-complete, or close to it…

When Microsoft Office 2010 shows up sometime next year, the most basic version will have an appealing price: $0. Microsoft has announced that it’ll work with PC manufacturers to put something called Office 2010 Starter Edition on new machines. The new version will replace the venerable-but-languishing Microsoft Works, and will provide reduced-functionality versions of Word and Excel that don’t cost anything–and which embed advertising of some sort. PC owners will be able to purchase upgrade cards at retail outlets that let them turn Starter Edition into a full-blown copy of Office.

It’s impossible to fully judge Office Starter Edition until we know (A) just how “reduced” the functionality is, and (B) just how intrusive the ads are. (Companies have often talked about the idea of ad-supported office suites, but I’m not sure if anyone’s done it successfully; unlike Web searching, it’s not obvious how you’d integrate ads into a productivity suite in a way that made sense for consumers and advertisers.)

But if the ads aren’t too obnoxious and it’s easy to uninstall Office if you don’t want it, this could make sense–Microsoft presumably likes the idea of introducing cost-conscious folks to Office at no charge and preventing them from defecting to Google Docs or Zoho. Unfortunately, the free suite will be available preinstalled on new computers, not as a download–but if it becomes as pervasive as Works, it’ll show up on lots of machines.

Microsoft is also saying that there will be an online demo version of Office 2010 that uses virtualization to let you try out the suite without installing it–an important option considering that you can’t install Office 2007 and Office 2010 on the same machine. (When I’m king, there will be a law prohibiting software companies from releasing apps that can’t exist concurrently with their predecessors.)

Office 2007 was originally accompanied by an online demo version that the Office site says is no longer available. Don’t tell anybody, but it’s still accessible here. It works quite well–I wish something similar were available for every major application.

Anyhow, let’s wrap this up with a T-Poll:

Microsoft Word: I can’t think of another application I’d like to have re-written to meet my needs. I’ll kvetch some more another time. Today, I have five tricks to fire up the way you use Word.

Tabs for Word. Cool!

You know how quickly you got used to opening multiple tabs in browsers? It’s a smart way to quickly move among Web pages; without it, browsing is lots like running applications in DOS.

Office Tab is a freebie that works in 2003 and older versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Double-click on the tab bar to open a new a document in a new tab; double-click a tab to close it. A right-click brings up a useful menu where you can save or close all your documents; the Options menu lets you change the look and color of the tabs.

You can save or close all your docs with one click, or right-click the tab to close

Have multiple tabs any way you’d like in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access

The program is from a Chinese developer (his name might be wangminbai) and the Baidu.com site is confusing even using Google’s translation. The program, however, is entirely in English. Read the product description, browse through the FAQ, and download the Zipped Word tool.

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Last October, Microsoft casually dropped a bombshell at its PDC event: It was working on a new version of Microsoft Office that would include browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. The Web version of Office is part of the suite later officially dubbed Office 2010, which won’t arrive until next year.  But it tiptoed a little closer to reality today: Microsoft has released a “technical preview” of the Office Web Apps, a pre-beta, invite-only test version which it’s using to get early feedback from a limited number of users.

If you’re not one of the lucky few, don’t feel too deprived: Microsoft provided me with access to the technical preview this morning, and judging from my first couple of hours with it, it’s a very incomplete rough draft of the Web-based suite to come. Word only lets you view documents, not edit them; Excel and PowerPoint are missing wide swaths of basic functionality; OneNote is missing altogether. Two of the most useful-sounding features–the ability to open documents stored on the Web from within a local copy of Office as if they were stored on your hard drive, and to view documents in phone browsers–aren’t ready yet. And I encountered multiple technical glitches as I tried to use the features which are available.

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The business unit within Microsoft responsible for Mac apps (which Microsoft likes to call the MacBU) is as old as the Mac itself, and it’s never behaved like it had been fully assimilated into the Redmondian Borg. Office for the Mac has long been a distinctly different product from its Windows counterpart–sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. One of the most striking differences has been that Office for the Mac has never offered Outlook; instead, it includes Entourage, a sort-of-like-Outlook, sort-of-different application that got great reviews when it debuted but which has also suffered from iffy compatibility with Outlook and Exchange. It’s also faced increasing competition from within OS X itself, as Apple has beefed up its Mail and iCal apps (and moved to build compatibility with Microsoft’s Exchange server directly into Snow Leopard, the imminent OS X upgrade).

Today, Microsoft announced that it’s working on a new version of Office for the Mac for release by the holiday season of 2010–and that it will dump Entourage for the first version of Outlook for the Mac OS X [there was a previous version of Outlook I'd forgotten which never made it to OS X; this is the first modern one--thanks for correction in comments, Jeff] There was a time when the fact that Mac Office users got Entourage rather than Outlook was widely considered a pro, not a con, and I’m sure some Mac users won’t be happy with this development. But despite any remaining Entourage virtues, e-mail and calendaring are by definition functions which involve working with other people, and with so many Office for Mac users being small fish in large ponds inhabited mostly by Outlook users, consistency probably makes sense. (Although Microsoft said during today’s announcement that Outlook for the Mac will be distinctly different from the Windows edition; if it follows the pattern of other Mac Office apps, it’ll likely be a somewhat simpler program with fewer hardcore business tools.)

The news about the next version of Office for the Mac confirms that Microsoft isn’t planning to discontinue the suite out of lack of interest or desire to make trouble for Apple and Mac users–which isn’t really news, but which seems to be a persistent fear in the back of some Mac fans’ heads. (I’ve heard some worry that Microsoft intended to ditch Office for the Mac once it releases browser-based editions of the major Office apps next year.)

I’m still curious whether Office 2010 for Mac will include integration with the Office Web Apps, and whether it’ll adopt a full-blown version of Office for Windows’ Ribbon interface. (Office 2008 for Mac has a sort of halfway-there version of the Ribbon.) Microsoft didn’t say anything about these questions today. Me, I’d vote for a Mac Office that bore at least somewhat more resemblance to the Windows one, not just for consistency but because Office 2007’s interface is superior to that of Office 2008.

The company did announce some tweaks to the lineup of Office 2008 versions: On September 15th, it’s replacing the current standard edition of Office Mac with a new one called Office Mac 2008 Business Edition, which includes a version of Entourage with better Exchange connectivity; features to let Mac users work with SharePoint and Office Live Workspace services; and new business-oriented document templates. The Home and Student Edition is sticking around, but the Special Media Edition one that bundles its Expression Media graphics package is going away.

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Microsoft Office for Nokia phones.

Knol is looking pretty sad.

Hands on with Zune HD.

Hey, what is Facebook Light?

Unknown Apple product diner shoot.

How to end music piracy.

Nokia dumping Symbian for Linux?

iPhone keyboard vs. Android keyboard.

Special all-Office-2010 section:

Office 2o10 hits BitTorrent. (Surprise!)

Scoble: Office back from dead.

Still waiting on Web apps.

Amazing disappearing Office 2010 site.

Computerworld likes the Technical Preview.

Ed Bott’s impressions so far.

Paul Thurrott: lots to say.

Special no-Office-2010 section:

Windows 7 for businesses: September.

Windows 7 and touch input.

“Seamless XP” in Windows 7.

Most companies skipping Windows 7?

Has Microsoft turned the corner?

Chrome OS: Important. And irrelevant.

Why America doesn’t love Nokia.

Apple tablet rumor. Yes, again.

Today at its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft is announcing that it’s distributing a Technical Preview version of its upcoming Office 2010 suite to tens of thousands of testers. It won’t be a public beta that’s open to everyone who wants a sneak peek; that will come later this year, and the final version of Office 2010 isn’t due until some time during the first half of next year. But for the first time since it demoed some features last October, Microsoft is showing off the new Office and providing more information about its plans. And it’s briefed reporters and provided them with early access to the Technical Preview (including me).

Office 2010 will be the first version of the suite to reflect the era in which upstarts such as Google Docs and Zoho are delivering Office-like features in the browser, and charging little or no money for them. Microsoft’s response to the new challengers is multifaceted. On one hand, it’s introducing the first Web-based versions of the major Office apps. But it’s also stuffing scads of ambitious new features into the traditional versions of the applications, as if to prove its oft-stated (and accurate) contention that local software can still do lots of things that Web services can’t. And it intends to make the traditional and Web versions of the apps into a powerful team that’s more useful and versatile than either standalone software or a purely browser-based suite can be.

Unfortunately, using the current version of the Technical Preview doesn’t tell us enough to come to even a preliminary verdict about whether the final version of Office 2010 will be a no-brainer upgrade. That’s because Microsoft isn’t providing access to the Web applications or an array of new collaboration tools yet–and it’s the online and collaborative stuff that’s the biggest, boldest change planned for Office 2010. Moreover, the Technical Preview, unlike an almost-finished piece of software such as the Windows 7 Release Candidate, is still subject to meaningful revision before it goes out the door. It’s rough around the edges in spots, and Microsoft says it’s still looking for input from testers. So all I can say is that I’m cautiously optimistic about Office 2010 based on what I’ve seen so far.

Okay, that’s not all I can say–read on for my hands-on impressions of the Technical Preview, plus some information on the features that Microsoft isn’t ready to let outsiders try just yet. There’s a lot to chew on, so I’ll focus on the features thagt impress and/or intrigue me most.

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Service Packs are usually limited to fixing bugs, but Microsoft has added some major pep to Office 2007 with Service Pack 2 (SP2). Microsoft says that SP2 is a “major performance enhancement,” and anecdotally, that is what I’m hearing from Office users.

Office 2007 SP2 became available yesterday, and will be available via Microsoft Update in August. It may be downloaded from Microsoft’s Web site.

Jane Liles, group program manager, Office Sustained Engineering at Microsoft detailed the performance tweaks in a prepared statement. “Outlook 2007 SP2 is 26 percent faster than its predecessor on a set of common e-mail tasks and is even faster, 35 percent, with larger mailboxes,” she said.

Further, she added that users now greater control over visual representation of data in Excel, and that Microsoft Office SharePoint Server was given security and performance updates in addition to support for the Firefox browser.

For what it’s worth, a friend that works for a financial company IM’d me today saying that Excel 2007 is now noticeably faster. I’m also seeing similar comments being made in forums across the Web. If you’ve already made the upgrade, feel free to leave a comment here.

Even more importantly, SP2 adds significant support for open document formats. The average user may not notice it, but SP2 makes great strides toward interoperability with support for non-Microsoft document formats such as OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.1, PDF 1.5, and PDF/A.

Now, I just wonder what the incentive will be to upgrade to Office 14. The only thing that I can thing of offhand are the forthcoming Office Web services. That, and Microsoft is holding off support for ISO International standardized Open XML until that release.

Up until now, we haven’t known much about Microsoft’s plans for the next version of Microsoft Office except that they involve Web-based versions of the major Office apps, and that the suite wouldn’t show up in 2009. Today, the company announced more news about the upgrade, including its name (Office 2010) and general timing (technical preview version in third quarter of 2009, final version out the door in the first half of next year). It also released a public beta of Exchange 2010, the server side of its e-mail system, which will enable new Outlook features such as a “mute” button that lets you ignore a message thread.

With apps as venerable as most of the ones in Office, it’s always a challenge for a software developer to come up with significant new stuff that makes for a compelling upgrade. The main thing we know about new Office 2010 functionality remains the browser-based versions (and features in the traditional ones that let them work in tandem with the Web ones). But with Microsoft planning to release a preview version of Office 2010 in a few months, it may not be too long until it’s ready to reveal more. I’m particularly curious whether the radically new “Ribbon” user interface from Office 2007 will receive a major makeover–although the glimpses we’ve seen of Office 2010 so far suggest that any tweaks may be minor.

My taxes? Filed. Whew! You?

More about Zune HD. Maybe.

eBay: we’re spinning off Skype.

Net neutrality? Now now, please!

Amazon.com: a third of e-commerce.

AT&T wants more iPhone exclusivity.

Microsoft patches up Office holes.

Philips: Two dimensions are enough.

I’m afraid to use ATMs.

Miss Circuit City? Just wait.