Microsoft has finally made downloads of Office 2010 beta available, for both Windows on your desktop and Windows Mobile 6.5. Project 2010, Visio 2010, and SharePoint Server 2010 are also available on the Office 2010 download page, and you can get the mobile version of Office via the Windows Mobile Marketplace. Microsoft says the portal for all things 2010 is http://www.microsoft.com/2010/, but the first live download links I've found are right here.

Because we apparently need social networking in every app these days, one of the things Microsoft is pushing about Office 2010 is the new Social Connector, which "brings communications history, business collaboration and social network feeds directly into Outlook, with support for Windows Live and SharePoint Server." LinkedIn has been announced as the first social network that will plug in to this new feature.

More on Office 2010 soon, as Microsoft is getting ready to demo it at their Professional Developers' Conference as I write this. Happy downloading!

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]

AbiWord is a light weight, open source word processor for Windows and Linux that can create and edit documents in a variety of formats including DOC, RTF, TXT, HTML, and ABW. The word processor is often overlooked in favor of the fuller featured OpenOffice.org.

But if you don't need a full office suite that takes up hundreds of megaybtes, AbiWord is worth checking out -- and the latest version released today includes a handful of interesting new features including integration with the new AbiCollab web-based service for sharing documents with friends, colleagues, or the general public (you can set your account to be publicly visible or private).

AbiWord 2.8 includes a number of new collaborative features including the ability to highlight text from different authors in different colors. You can also upload documents to AbiCollab.net, where you can store files, share them with contacts, and convert from one file format to another. You can't actually edit documents on AbiCollab.net, so it's not exactly a Google Docs killer. But you can create a document which users can then download and edit with AbiWord before saving and/or uploading their changes. And when you open a file from AbiCollab, it will automatically open in AbiWord on your desktop. When you hit save, it will be saved to the web.

The latest version of AbiWord also supports multi-page views, annotations, or comments in documents and scalable vector graphics. There's also improved support for ODT and DOCX documents.

Work on Microsoft Office 2010, the next major release of Office is coming together quite nicely. A few screenshots and more information about the suite of productivity apps has started to leak out into the wild.

This release, (build 14.0.4417.1000) is the "Mondo edition" which has stood for an "Ultimate" version in the past. Strangely enough, ArsTechnica points out that all references and SKUs to Ultimate have been removed. This is also the first build that references the applications as "Beta" signifying that Microsoft may be much farther along than originally expected.

According to a Microsoft Office employee, the "Mondo" name is used for testing purposes only and is never planned to have an associated SKU.

Office 2010 will be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions and will be released on one DVD. Office includes: Office 2010 includes Access 2010, Excel 2010, InfoPath Designer 2010, InfoPath Filler 2010, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Project 2010, Publisher 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010, SharePoint Workspace 2010, Visio 2010, and Word 2010.

A public preview of Office 2010 is expected to be released later this year and you can sign up to receive an early copy through legitimate channels.

Tabbed browsing might be the greatest thing since sliced bread. In fact, after having tabs for so long, it's frustrating to try using an older browser that doesn't support them. We still deal with it in our office applications, though. Granted, it's rare to have as many Word documents open as we do webpages, but even 4 or 5 can turn into a mess. OfficeTab helps out by adding tabs to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, so you can save screen real estate and switch between docs more easily.

You can choose to add tabs to some or all of the apps OfficeTab supports, in case you want them in Word, but not in PowerPoint, for example. OfficeTab doesn't take up much space, it just keeps your tabs in a standard-sized toolbar. You can even view your documents side-by-side in the same window, which is handy for comparing drafts. OfficeTab works in Office 2003 and 2007 on Windows XP, Vista or 7. It's made by a Chinese developer, so both Chinese and English versions are available.

[via Slashnow. Thanks, Ben!]

Microsoft plans to launch stripped down, web-based versions of its Office applications including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint soon. When the company first unveiled the upcoming web apps, Microsoft announced that they would work with Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. Now, in an official blog posting, Microsoft has stated that those three browsers will be the only ones officially supported by the Office Web Apps.

In other words, if you use Google Chrome, Opera, or another web browser, you may be out of luck. It's worth pointing out that Microsoft hasn't said that other browsers won't work. It's just that the company isn't going to take the time to support additional browsers.

According to the blog post, the Office Web apps will be designed to work without any plugins installed, but Microsoft recommends installing Silverlight, which will help the web apps load faster and perform better. The text will also be easier to read, and PowerPoint animations will be smoother with Silverlight installed.

[via InfoWorld]

Microsoft has already announced plans to launch an online version of Office that will compete with Google Docs, Zoho Office, and other online office applications. And now we have a pretty good idea of where it will be hosted. Microsoft acquired the Office.com internet domain this week.

Up until recently, the domain belonged to ContactOffice. It looks like ContactOffice began transferring its service to a new web site in June, so the acquisition has probably been in the works for a little while, but the transfer officially went through on August 4th.

Single-word domain names like Office.com don't come cheap. But the move was probably a smart one on Microsoft's part. The company's current homepage for MS Office is office.microsoft.com, which isn't quite as easy to remember.

Many of you already know about sandboxing and why it's useful. For those of you who don't, a sandbox (wikipedia article) provides an added layer of security on your computer by running unfamiliar code in an isolated space. Security threats change rapidly, and it's become virtually impossible to stay ahead of the bad guys (or even hot on their heels).

Sandboxing can help level the playing field. Several popular applications make use of a sandbox - Google Chrome, for example - and many programs can offer that kind of protection for your whole system.

Office applications are becoming an increasingly popular target for malware developers. As Microsoft puts it on their Engineering blog, "as the security landscape has been changing, Office has had the misfortune of becoming one of the next big targets for hackers to attack. They have been going after many of our file-format parsers and how we read Office files. They're looking for ways to exploit bugs and to get their code running on your machine."

The time to add some updated security kung fu to Office 2010, and Microsoft has decided on sandboxing. "We have done a lot of work to find and fix bugs, but we can't find everything. We have to take a more proactive approach and build Office to be more resilient to attack."

Office 2010 will feature a "a layered defense that Office documents have to go through as part of the File Open process." Even if you were to receive an Excel worksheet with malicious macros, Office 2010 should prevent them from doing anything shady.

It's certainly encouraging to see companies getting proactive about security. Here's hoping we're witnessing the start of a trend.

[via The Register]

You may not have read much about Lotus Symphony - OpenOffice.Org casts a pretty big shadow over other free Office competitors. Like OpenOffice, IBM's cross-platform office suite is based on the Open Document format and is a very capable alternative to Micorosoft Office.

Symphony doesn't provide the same number of tools as Office or OpenOffice, but it does handle word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tasks. The latest release adds a much needed piece of functionality to Symphony - the ability to open files created using Microsoft Office 2007 (though files can only be saved in 2003 or 2000 formats). A Flash-based presentation of Symphony's features is available for viewing, and there's also a transcript available if you would rather read them yourself.

One I particularly like is the tabbed interface. As with the tabs in my browser, it keeps my workspace just as tidy whether I've got a single document or dozens open at the same time.

The suite is roughly a 200Mb download for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and is available from the IBM web site. There's also a large, online library of clipart for you to utilize in your documents.

This weekend I finished setting up a fresh triple-boot install on my MSI laptop. With my operating systems ready to go, the time had come to start reinstalling applications. While it wasn't a conscious decision, I noticed that the majority of my apps were Open Source - so I decided to keep the ball rolling.

Even if you haven't just gone through a reformat, these are great applications and well worth installing. If you have, then hopefully this list will provide you with a solid base of programs to get you started with your fresh, new Windows install!

Web Browsers: Chromium, Firefox
They excel at different things, so I install both browsers by default. Chromium is great for all-purpose surfing, while I use Firefox and my favorite extensions to tackle my daily web-based work.

Office: OpenOffice.Org, Sumatra, PDFCreator
For lightweight PDF reading and creation from any Windows app, Sumatra and PDFCreator are solid options. OpenOffice.Org, well, it's the name to beat in open source suites.

At last, Microsoft has released the much-anticipated SP2 update for Office 2007, and it's currently available from the Microsoft Download Center.

The 290Mb download includes more than 600 fixes and improvements. Two key additions include support for the Open Document formats in Word (.odt), Excel (.ods), and Powerpoint (.odp) and the option to save as PDF in all applications. In my limited testing, PDF output was very true to the Word and Excel originals.

Excel's charting mechanism has been been retooled, as has chart integration with other Office applications. Digital Inspiration notes several improvements to Outlook, including better IMAP and RSS support and faster startup, searching, and synchronization. Microsoft also touts general performance gains and better quality print output across the entire suite.

For a detailed look at what Office 2007 SP2 is all about, check the Office Sustained Engineering blog post. There's also a good roundup on Microsoft Support.

[via PC World]

It's been almost 17 months to the day since Apple last made significant (paid) updates to their flagship iWork productivity suite, but the company has announced that iWork 09 is now available.

All three iWork applications have seen updates, and Apple has also announced an iWork.com Public Beta allowing users to view and comment on iWork documents.

Among the changes to the desktop applications, Keynote allows you to animate objects automatically, whilst the Smart Move option allows you to slickly animate objects between slides. Pages, the iWork word processor, now ships with a built in 'Full Screen' mode for full-focus writing, and outline mode for project organization. There's also another 40 templates for your documents in this new version. The Numbers spreadsheet application allows you to categorize data far more quickly than in previous versions, includes an enhanced function browser and a formula list to quickly jump around your documents.

iWork '09 is available for $79 from the Apple Store.

By now, many of you are probably using web-based office suites like Zoho, Google Docs, or Thinkfree as your primary office applications. If you do and you're a Firefox user as well, you'll probably love the OpenIT Online addon.

I mentioned it previously in my list of 14 extremely useful addons, but it's been updated quite a bit since then.

When you install the plugin, the configuration wizard will help you create file associations. You're not limited to one suite, either. If you'd rather open spreadsheets with Zoho and documents with Thinkfree, OpenIT can handle that. Zoho viewer is also supported and is a nice, fast way to view files you don't need to edit.

OpenIT adds two context menu entries (which you can see in the screenshot above): one to open a file with your default viewer/editor and a submenu that provides access to all available options.

This is a great extension to add to your portable Firefox install. It's an excellent way to make sure you can open a wide array of documents on any computer.

Microsoft has launched a new online store, cleverly titled the Microsoft Store. I know, who woulda thunk? The fact that Microsoft is selling software like Windows Vista and Office 2007 as well as hardware like the Xbox 360 isn't particularly surprising. But what is new is the fact that Microsoft is offering customers the option of purchasing physical media like CDs and DVDs or downloadable software. And that covers all Microsoft software that's available on the site, including Windows upgrades, full versions of Windows, and Office.

Microsoft charges the same price for downloads as it does for softwar that comes on a disc and stuffed in a box. I would have expected Microsoft to charge a few bucks less for the downloadable version since there are no shipping or packaging costs. But the company apparently decided to go another way.

The other surprising thing? The fact that it's 2008 and this is the first time Microsoft has sold these products as digital downloads.

[via Profy]

Want to check out OpenOffice.org 3.0 but don't want to download the 142MB installer just to see if you like it? No problem. You can run it in a web browser thanks to Ulteo.

Ulteo takes an interesting approach to online desktop and office suites. Unlike other online desktops that offer some storage space and a few simple, browser based apps, Ulteo offers access to a virtual Linux-based operating system complete with a desktop and full Linux apps like OpenOffice.org. In other words, you get a lot more features from Ulteo than you do from Google Docs, Zoho Office, or EyeOS.

On the other hand, Ulteo relies on Java, takes a while to launch, and has a freemium model. You get 1GB of storage space for free, but sessions are limited to 25 minutes. If you want more storage space or more time per session, you have to pony up some cash for a subscription.

I first looked at Ulteo last year when the company began offering access to OpenOffice.org 2.3. While it's nice to see that Ulteo is continuing to develop its technology, some of my initial complaints still stand. It's a bit awkward to switch between program windows. And it takes too long to load. But if you're just looking for a way to check out OpenOffice.org 3.0 before you download it, Ulteo will let you do that. Or if you want to be able to access OpenOffice.org and your saved documents on any computer with a web browser and Java, Ulteo may be for you.