Over the past few years, Microsoft has had to contend with increasing competition from free, web-based office suites such as Google Docs and Zoho Office. And when I say contend, I mean, maybe start taking notice of. There's no doubt that MS Office is still the 800 pound gorilla in the word processing, spreadsheet, and database field. But free competitors including those online applications and desktop solutions including IBM's Lotus Symphony and and the open source OpenOffice.org can't make the folks in Redmond very happy.

So it probably shouldn't be that surprising that Microsoft Online VP Ron Markezich referred to Zoho, Google Docs, and Zimbra as services that offer "fake Office capabilities."

What was a bit surprising is how well the Zoho team took that idea and ran with it. Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu wrote a blog post about the topic yesterday. And today the company launched FakeOffice.org, a site that compares Zoho's application suite with Microsoft's.

Not surprisingly, Zoho points out a number of features that it's products offer that Microsoft's doesn't. Clearly, MS Office has a few features up its sleeve that you won't find in Zoho Office, including 100% compatibility with all those Office documents your friends and colleagues keep sending you. But it's worth checking out the site for the Fake Office "work online" music video, and the little comments such as the Twitter gadget, which is powered by "Fake MS Access."

Zoho has actually been an innovator in the online office space for a while, and most of the company's web apps offer far more features than competing Google Docs. But it's tough for a company with an unusual name like Zoho to take on the big guys like Microsoft and Google. Maybe Vembu should think about permanently changing Zoho's name to FakeOffice? It does have a nice ring to it.

Unfortunately FakeOffice.com has already been registered, which is why Zoho had to grab a .org address for their site.

[via Instant Fundas]

Microsoft's online efforts against the likes of Zoho and Google Docs has officially kicked off - with Redmond announcing that they're slowly rolling out a Technical Preview of the online applications for your and I to test. Initially, the testing places are limited - and as it's really a Beta, some things will potentially not work (or missing entirely in the case of OneNote).

Keen to ensure we don't write off this (admittedly-late) foray into the online office arena, Microsoft is of course working hard to remind folks why Office Web Apps is different from Google Docs: the ability to seamlessly move from the desktop apps you know to 'The Cloud'. As the desktop integration is something that Google hasn't really focused on (and, let's face it, Google aren't the ones with a pre-eminent office suite to integrate with), the Web Apps are planned to be fully integrated with the forthcoming Office 2010 release.

If you're feeling plucky and want to get using the Office Web Apps preview, Microsoft are now accepting signups via the Office 2010 website - and plan to release Office Web Apps officially early next year. You'll need Windows Live Skydrive to get involved in the Technical Preview, and Microsoft are intending to make OneNote Web App and other services available 'at a later date'.

[via PC World]

Update: And just like that, the Technical Preview is closed (at least for now) due to 'high demand'. We'll let you know when it re-opens.

Don't have the $400+ to pick up a copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007? It looks like the software maker has decided to take pity on you -- if you happen to be a college student.

Microsoft is offering an "Ultimate Steal" promotion allowing college students to pay just $60 for the software. We're not sure that's a "steal," considering you can get OpenOffice.org for free. But $60 is still a lot cheaper than $400.

If you're outside of the US, you'll also be able to get an even cheaper 1-year subscription version of the software for £12.95/€ 18.00/C$22.00.

The promotion runs through April 30. Students in the US, UK, and Canada can participate immediately, while students in France, Italy, and Spain will be able to buy the cheap(er) software next week. You'll need a valid college or university e-mail address to get the discount.

[via CNet]

Sometimes when you're trying to figure out how to embed a table in a Word document, you need a little help, and you turn to a paperclip. Clippy, the animated paperclip has been Microsoft's way of providing MS Office users with assistance and annoyance ever since Office 97. But on his tenth birthday, Microsoft has finally put Clippy out of his misery, leaving him out of Office 2007 altogether.

Sure, he also had a tendency to pop up while you were typing and wouldn't go away no matter how many times you told him to, but that's what annoying friends are for, right?

AppScout has an interview with Office's Group Program Manager Jensen Harris. Some interesting Clippy facts:

• Microsoft's been phasing out Clippy since Office XP. In Office 2003, he was turned off by default.
• While there's been little negative feedback about Clippy's death, Harris says some users have complained that they miss Microsoft's animated dog.
• The goal wasn't so much to kill Clippy as to have a single way for users to find help, rather than including menus, toolbars, and an animated office assistant.
  

[via Engadget]

Dealing with spam in Microsoft Outlook used to be a pretty big problem. Outlook has had the "Junk Mail" feature forever, but until Outlook 2003 it was pretty terrible at comprehensively eliminating spam from your inbox. Outlook 2003, however, is a different beast when it comes to spam detection and elimination. In fact, it's gotten so good that I no longer advocate running a third-party spam filter in Outlook.

Part of the reason it's so good now is the ability of users to report email as spam back to FrontBridge, which is owned by Microsoft. FrontBridge will then analyze the reported email and if they determine that it is in fact spam, it will be added to their signatures to ensure the best protection possible for all Outlook users.

If you happen to be an Outlook user, I'd suggest setting your Junk Mail detection settings to High, and remember to scan your Junk Mail folder for the occasional non-spam message that gets filtered there. In my opinion, it's faster to scan through a folder of spam looking for an occasional message that you'd like to keep than it is to constantly have to be weeding out spam from your inbox.

To take part in reporting junk mail back to Microsoft, download the Junk Email Reporting Tool (which thankfully doesn't require you to run the "Windows Genuine dis-Advantage" utility).

[Via Windows Fanatics]

Corel tends to take a back seat these days with their low-cost, small business alternative software, but they are still out there and moving steadily with their IPO this year. Corel Corp. just hit the news again with their recent acquisition of the makes of WinDVD, InterVideo, in a rumored $196 million deal. Corel is best known for their WordPerfect software which is up against Microsoft's Office, and Corel Draw and Paint Shop pro pitted against Adobe's products. Will Corel ever hit the top of the software food chain? Most likely not, but they do offer some interesting alternatives.

[via cnet]

Last week Microsoft released Office 2007 Beta 2 to the world, and had somewhere over 500,000 downloads in the first two days. The primary reason for releasing this test version of the software so early is to get as much feedback from the Office using community as possible, soon enough that final product decisions can be made before it is released to manufacturing. 

To that end, the Office team has released a utility called Send a Smile. Once installed, it offers both a happy face and sad face icon in your system tray. The idea here is that when you find something in Office that you want to make a positive comment on, you click the smiley face, and if you find a problem you click on the sad face. Jensen Harris reports that in the past features that were thought to have been rarely used would be removed, only to find out that many people enjoyed the use of that feature. Sending a smile is offered as a way to effectively vote for your favorite features, to ensure they make the cut when Office 2007 is finally released. 

Chris Pratley is they guy that is in charge of OneNote at Microsoft, so when he talks about OneNote features, we listen. Today he's got a great post on his blog about the different ways in which OneNote 2007 and Outlook (both 2003 and 2007) are more tightly integrated than ever before. For those of you that haven't had the pleasure, OneNote is a dark corner of Microsoft Office that many people don't know about, but should. It's a note taking application, but to characterize it in that way is to do it a disservice; it's really an information collection and organization framework. Do yourself a favor and acquaint yourself with OneNote, and you'll soon find why it is very interesting to see why OneNote and Outlook have become "best buddies".

Edward Tufte is a master of communication. In particular, his books on visual communication are classics, and should be standard readings for anyone in the field. Well I happened to find an essay on Tufte's site about PowerPoint, and specifically, how the slides used in a presentation on the dangers to the shuttle Columbia might have led to the death of its crew. Tufte analyzes the PowerPoint presentations made to NASA, by Boeing engineers. He points out deficiencies in the communications, and how the optimism in the presentation (not necessarily in its content, if you read it all) led NASA to not ask the DOD to take high-res pictures of the underside of Columbia while it was still in space. I still have an old book called "How To Lie with Statistics" from the 50's. Anyone in the dot-com boom can tell you how easy it is to lie with PowerPoint (or in Steve Jobs' case, Keynote). But the possibility of a miscommunication when lives are at stake makes PPT's a little more suspect. Perhaps, as the author suggests, PowerPoint isn't always the best tool for the job...