OpenOffice.org 3.0 is due out in September. But if you just can't wait that long, today the developers released a beta of the open source office suite. Back in March we took a look at a pre-beta version of OpenOffice.org, but the latest build is a bit more stable. And while we wouldn't recommend replacing the software you use to balance your companies books with a public beta, you can just check it out if you're an office suite geek looking for a rush. We won't judge.
So what's new under the hood? Here are some of the highlights:
OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the first version to run on Mac OS X (there are also Linux and Windows versions)
OpenOffice.org Start Center gives you a one stop shop for creating documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, databases, or templates
Support for collaborative spreadsheet editing
Improved Writer notes features
View multiple Writer pages while editing a document
Improved crop features in Draw and Impress
Support for ODF and MS Office 2007 formats
Keep in mind, this is beta software. So while it will probably work properly 99% of the time, don't blame us if it crashes your system or goes crazy and starts messing up the formatting of that manuscript you've been working on for the last 10 years. In other words, remember to backup your documents, and think twice about using OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta to create or edit really important files.
When we last left our favorite evil geniuses at Ulteo, they were diligently plugging away at making OpenOffice.org applications accessible through a browser. Now, they've taken their plans for global domination one step further with Ulteo Application System Beta 1 (codename "Sirius"). For those of you wondering what exactly an "Application System" is: Think operating system.
Yes, Ulteo's Sirius is a Linux distro designed to integrate nicely with the online applications they provide. For instance, saving a document to a specific folder "auto-syncs" with the Ulteo servers online. It's then accessible from other computers through your Ulteo web account.
Of course, that isn't all of Ulteo's new tricks. Allegedly all upgrades, patches and bugfixes for installed applications will be automatically downloaded and installed on your system. You know, without any human intervention. We'll be the first to admit that it's our all-too-human intervention that mucks up a lot of our software, but not always. Somehow, we're just a little uneasy not knowing exactly what our machine is plotting against us with each new update.
Still, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially for people who use their computers for dedicated office work fewer than twenty-seven hours a day and don't want to bother learning Linux (or Windows, or Mac, for that matter). It'll be nice to see this project unfold and emerge from beta.
As predicted almost a year ago, Microsoft has begun offering a free, advertising supported version of Microsoft Works, its office application suite for people too cheap to spring for Office. But it doesn't appear that there's any way to download and install Microsoft Works SE (Sponsored Edition) yourself just yet. Rather, computer makers are starting to install the software on new PCs.
Basically the program works just as well (read that statement however you'd like) as the full version of MS Works, but users will see a small advertisement in the program window, whether they're editing a spreadsheet or text document.
The new version of Works is available to computer makers for free. Of course, OpenOffice.org is also available for free, but you don't see PC makers including that on computers that ship with Windows yet. Works SE isn't available everywhere yet. It's apparently showing up on selected computers in the US, Canada, and a handful of European countries.
DarkCopy is a web-based alternative to programs like WriteRoom and DarkRoom that lets you compose text files in full (or almost full) screen to eliminate distractions like instant messages, Flash games, LOLcats, etc.
You can type in a regular browser window, or go full screen to make most of your screen (except for the browser's toolbar) black with greenish text. When you're done writing, you can save the file to your computer as a plain ole' .txt file.
This is handy if you want to work on a blog post, business idea, school paper, or love note without your attention being lost to something less significant.
It's Microsoft's world and we're all just living in it. As much as you may try to pretend this is true, it becomes readily apparent any time somebody launches a Microsoft Office competitor. Because the first question isn't "does it have all of the features I'd expect from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint?" No, the first question is "can it open MS Office documents and save documents in Office formats?"
Up until recently the answer for Google's online office suite, Google Docs was "kind of." While you could import Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files with no problem, there was no way to export Google Presentation documents as PowerPoint presentations. Now Google has finally rolled out a "save as PPT" feature for presentations. You've always been able to save Word and Excel files.
Google has also added a new saved searches feature which lets you access searches for keywords, document types, or other features from your sidebar.
Office suites like Google Docs and Zoho Office have been busy adding offline access to let you access and edit spreadsheets, text, and presentation documents in a web browser whether you're connected to the internet or not. But paying ThinkFree customers have had this ability since last year.
That's because ThinkFree offers two products: an online, web-based office suite and a Microsoft Office-compatible suite for the desktop. Users can synchronize data between the web service and their desktops. But up until this week, users had to pay $50 for access to the desktop software. Now, as expected, ThinkFree has launched a free version of its desktop software.
Now, here's the interesting thing. You don't even need to sign up for an account to download the desktop software. So if you have no need for an online office suit, synchronization, or 1GB of free online storage space for your office documents, you can just treat ThinkFree Office as a free alternative to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, or whatever you've been using. But you will need to sign up for an account since ThinkFree will only save files if you have an account. Files will also automatically be saved to a ThinkFree folder for synchronizing with the web service. If you don't want to synchronize your files with the server, just never login again.
The applications can open and save documents in a variety of formats including Office 97 - 2007, PDF, RTF, and CSV. ThinkFree Write, Calc, and Show also do a great job of opening documents we've created using other applications, recognizing features like notes in our spreadsheets that other free tools like Gnumeric miss.
How many of the applications you use on a daily basis are web-based as opposed to locally installed native applications? For me, the answer is way more than I ever would have expected.
Had you asked me this question a few years ago, I would have vehemently denied that the future of development is on the web. As much as I could see and understand the value of a ubiquitously available web-based application, there's just no way to approach the level of power and integration (not to mention the ability to be always-available) that is possible with well conceived and developed desktop software.
Of course, back then I didn't imagine that web applications could become as useful as Google Calendar or Remember the Milk. I also didn't imagine that light - yet still useful - versions of these apps would be available from my mobile phone almost wherever I was.
Most of these are probably pretty familiar names, but one is a newcomer in the web space: Evernote. Still in beta, the new version of Evernote contains a full-featured web version, but synchronizes seamlessly with desktop software on either Windows or Mac platforms. And it's a breath of fresh air.
Like the idea of carrying a portable office suite on your USB flash drive, but think that OpenOffice.org and even smaller applications like AbiWord take up too much space? Tiny USB Office provides a ton of useful applications, hold the bloat.
Tiny USB Office started its life as "Floppy Office," an application suite with a footprint so small that it could fit on a 1.44MB floppy disk. You know, if you happen to have one lying around. But the developers have packed so many features into the latest release that there was no way to keep the suite that small. No, Tiny USB Office now takes up a whopping 2.4MB.
Here are a few of the applications included int he suite:
CSVed - Database application
NPopUK - Email Cleint
FTP Wanderer - FTP client
Spread32 - Spreadsheet application
Kpad - Word processor
100 Zipper - File compression utility
PDF Producer - PDF creator
DScrypt - Data Encryption
And the list goes on. As you'd probably expect, these applications are missing some of the bells and whistles you'll find from Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org. But the price is right. Tiny USB Office is free, and we're betting you've got at least 2.5MB to spare on your flash drive.
For those Mac users jealous of the helpful Portable Apps Suite for Windows, the Free Open Source Software Mac User Group (FreeSMUG) has a similar solution called FSuite CD. The application pack comes with a bunch of portable Mac applications for easy mobility of many necessary programs, and it runs on PPC and Intel hardware.
The FSuite CD image includes the installers of over 40 portable apps. In addition to the obvious programs like Firefox, VLC, OpenOffice, etc., FSuite CD also includes things like Adium, Transmission, Audacity, Nvu, Gimp, and Bean. The individual apps are available for download from the FreeSMUG site as well.
To create a handy launcher, you'll have to create a folder on your portable drive, drag aliases of each portable .app to the folder, arrange the icons, and adjust the folder view.
UPDATE: The FSuite CD is merely a collection of recommended FOSS apps recommended by the FreeSMUG group. The FreeSMUG website also has portable apps for download, but the FSuite CD does not include them. The original article combined two separate projects: portable apps for Mac OS X, and the FSuite CD disk image that makes it easy to download a grouping of popular open-source applications.
Google is beginning to roll out offline functionality for Google Docs. What this means is that you can create documents online, share them with collaboraters, and make edits while you're nowhere near an internet connection. So, for example if you're on an airplane, you can work on a report, and as soon as you get back to your home or office, you just visit the Google Docs page again and all of your changes will sync up and your collaborators will see the latest version of the document.
If two people make changes offliine and then try to synchronize the same document with the server, Google should bring up a message letting you know about the conflict and asking which changes to keep.
You'll need to have Google Gears installed in order to use Google Docs offline. Google is doing a phased roll out, meaning that not all users will be able to access their documents offline right away. You should look for a little green arrow in the top navigation of Google Docs to see if you have access.
At first, users will only be able to access spreadsheets in read-only mode, but you'll have full edit capabilities for text documents. Presentation support will come in a few weeks.
Update: Google has posted an official announcement, including a video that will give you a better idea of what Google Docs offline looks like. (Here's a hint, it looks a lot like Google Docs online). Check out the video after the jump.
AbiWord is a great little word processor for Windows, Linux, and OS X. It can handle DOC, RTF, TXT, and HTML files, as well as a few other other formats. And AbiWord takes up an awful lot less disc space than OpenOffice.org. So it's certainly worth checking out if all you need is a lightweight but full-featured word processor.
Version 2.6 is available now for Windows and Linux. It looks like the latest version of AbiWord for OS X is still version 2.4.6. The latest release includes a ton of updates including:
GNOME office plugin that allows you to embed Gnumeric charts in documents
Ability to open files on remote shares using samba, ftp, or ssh shares
Improved language support
Experimental collaboration plugin
Experimental new Office Open XMl import filter
Native Windows vista menus
Drag and drop images in and out of Unix version of AbiWord
For a full list of updates, check out the release notes.
While Google, Microsoft, and Zoho continue their arms race for online office suite dominance, it's easy to forge that these companies aren't the only ones offering robust solutions for editing, storing, and collaborating on documents. ThinkFree has been around for a while, offering a combination of free and premium, online, and offline services including word processors, spreadsheet, and presentation applications.
On April 7th, ThinkFree will launch a major update. While we expect there to be a ton of tweaks, here are some of the key changes:
Offline/Online editing - ThinkFree Manager, an offline desktop suite for Windows, Mac, and Linux will get a major price drop. And when we say major, we mean instead of paying $50 for a license, you'll be able to download the desktop software for free.
New "Note" web-based WYSIWYG editor which lets you create and edit documents while incorporating online content from sites like YouTube and Flickr.
New Mobile Internet Device (MID) version of ThinkFree optimized for small touchscreen devices
Support for Microsoft Office 2007 documents
Support for Windows Vista and OS X 10.5
ThinkFree will have some scheduled downtime the night of April 6th and the morning of April 7th to implement the changes.
Zoho has added an online invoicing application to its ever-growing suite of online office/business products. While Zoho Invoice is hardly the only online invoicing tool around, the application gives users a lot of control over the invoicing process. You can add your own logo to your invoices, add custom messages, and choose from several customizable templates. You can also keep a list of customers, products and services and run reports.
On the down side, you can only create and send up to 5 invoices per month with a free account. For $5 per month, you can send up to 25, while $15 per month will get you 150 invoices, $25 brings you to the 500 invoice level, and if you do a lot of business you can create up to 1500 invoices for $35 per month. Meanwhile, services like Invoice Journal and Invotrak let you create as many invoices as you like for free, but they lack some of Zoho Invoice's features.
The other thing that makes Zoho Invoice worth checking out is the fact that it's just one of more than a dozen online services offered by Zoho. If you like the idea of managing your office documents, web conferencing, and HR management all through the same company, Zoho's got you covered. For a small fee.
Google has rolled out two new features for Google Docs, the company's online word processing application. The first is a new improved menu toolbar. Well, improved might be a subject term. To be perfectly honest, it doesn't appear to add a whole lot of new features. But it looks far more like the menu toolbar you'd expect to find in a desktop application, complete with File, Edit, Insert, Format, Tools, and Table options.
Google has also added the ability to select colors for your labels/folders. This is a feature that Google added to Gmail a few months ago. And we have to say, it's one of those features you didn't necessarily know you needed until you have it and then it's hard to imagine life without it.
If you use Google Docs regularly, these two features, particularly the colored labels could make life a lot easier. But as much as we love us some free Google office applications, we have to say, Zoho Writer still blows Google Docs away in a feature by feature comparison.
OpenOffice.org 2.4 final is now available for download. Just not from the official OpenOffice.org web page, which is still offering a choice between version 2.3. 1 and release candidate 6 for OpenOffice.org 2.4. But you can find a download link for the latest version from Filehippo.
There are no release notes available for version 2.4 yet, but you can check out a list of features that are probably included by looking at the feature freeze testing page on the OpenOffice.org wiki. Honestly, most of the improvements seem pretty minor, unless you get really excited about things like:
Display both in the data point label: value and percentage
When we 
DarkCopy
