"Wordoids", which are words that are made-up, but sound right. They follow the rules of phonetics, and if done properly, roll off the tongue. The need to have an online presence has increased the need for unique product and company names and has led to these wordoids. Yet, even with a made-up name, it's important for the name to convey something about what the product or business actually is. Now you can do it very quickly using a website called, appropriately enough, Wordoid.

For example, I gave Wordoid the shortened acronym we use for Download Squad when talking on our internal mailing list, which is DLS. The first option Wordoid presented is dlsident, and it informs me that the related domain dlsident.com is available. While it doesn't look like much, if you spell out the first three letters as we do when using the acronym, this name actually rolls off the tongue quite nicely. It's like a subversive version of the name. Other options it came up with are dlsider, dlsidad, dlsidends, and dlsidanila. Certainly, they're not all winners, but I bet they're better than you expected.

You can tell Wordoid where to place your seed word - at the beginning, end, or anywhere including in the middle of the text string it returns. This gives you a ton of flexibility to guide your wordoid's creation to include useful information, but still come up with something unique, easy to say, and with an available domain name.

How hip are you? Are you on the cutting edge of what's being talked about by those in the know? You know, the "twitterati"? (Sorry, I just gagged a little there.) If you enjoy stock market-based games, and tracking the trending topics on Twitter, you might want to have a look at Pretweeting.

Pretweeting is a virtual stock market where the commodities that you buy and sell are trending words on Twitter. As words become more popular, they gain value, and as they become less popular, they fall. Now, I should make this clear: this is a virtual game, no real money trades hands.

When you sign in to Pretweeting using your Twitter account, you are given $5,000 virtual dollars. You can then choose to research the current price for trending words, and buy shares in them.

Unfortunately, like other "viral" games, by allowing Pretweeting access to your Twitter account, you are allowing Pretweeting to post tweets on your behalf, a practice that I'm personally not a fan of. For example, when you buy shares in a trending word, Pretweeting automatically posts a tweet to your account like the following when I purchased 500 shares of the word "minute" using my test Twitter account:

@pretweeting buy 500 minutes -> see price at http://pretweeting.com/w/minutes

Yuck, right?

It's too bad that an otherwise fun game is handcuffing itself by being a less than stellar netizen. (Wow, first twitterati, then netizen. I feel dirty.) I would wholeheartedly recommend this game to friends if it weren't for the spammy messages every time you do something in the game. There's a prominent "Like this game? Tell your friends!" link that auto populates a tweet for you to tell your friends about the game. That one's fine; it's up to the user whether they want to do it. But auto-spamming messages based on activities is just plain user abuse, and won't do Pretweeting any favors in the long haul.

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!]

At high noon, Microsoft and US District Court Judge Leonard Davis met on a dusty stretch of Texas road. The wind whistled past, carrying the occasional tumbleweed. A Walmart bag danced in the updraft. As the clock struck high noon, not a sound could be heard except for the jangling of spurs as each combatant shot a steely glance at the other.

Right arm at the ready, fingers flexing. Suddenly, Microsoft reached for its holster, grabbing at the Word 2010 Technical Preview. They didn't count on the lightning-fast reflexes of Judge Davis. With his first gavel he knocked the software back ten paces. Microsoft reeled, and turned to retrieve the case. A second gavel to the knee left Microsoft quivering in the dirt.

"Now listen hear, you slippery rattlesnake," he said, "XML patents is sacred 'round these parts, and we don't take kindly to people violatin' 'em." He tipped up the brim of his hat to reveal his stern brow and continued "I'm givin' you sixty days to come up with $290 million in gold bullion. And I don't want you bringin' that trash around here until you can abide by the laws of the great US of A."

Microsoft looked up with chagrin. "We are disappointed by the court's ruling," they said, breaking character rather suddenly. "We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid. We will appeal the verdict." Well, of course there will be appeals - which means Microsoft will likely never have to stop selling or testing Word in the United States.

Who will win in the end? Unfortunately, that will be decided by lawyers in fancy suits, not gunslingers.

[via Seattle PI]

Have you ever wondered why you can't simply author PDF files directly in a word processor? Most word processors like Microsoft Word use their own proprietary format, or a standard format like RTF. But Adobe's PDF format is the recognized standard in cross-platform page layout file formats; if you send someone a PDF file, you can be virtually guaranteed that they will be able to open and view it. And better yet, what they see will be exactly what you intended.

Though it may not seem like the world needs another word processor, the folks at PageHand decided that the ones that are currently available left something to be desired. And thus, PageHand, the word processor, was born.

PageHand has to be the most approachable word processor I've ever seen. When you first launch it, a sample document opens that is essentially a written tutorial. You are encouraged to change and edit the sample document as a way to get comfortable with PageHand's features, and can always revert back to the original sample document right from the Help menu item. With this tutorial, a new user could be comfortable navigating PageHand and using its various features very quickly.

TUAW previously covered PageHand prior to its release during WWDC, when they posted a first-look preview video. It's now in release, and is available for a limited time for $39.95, after which it will go back to the regular price of $49.95. There is a 30 day trial version available, and a money back guarantee.

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]

Textflow is an Adobe AIR-based collaboration app that allows you to incorporate changes from several different people into one Word document. Sending your draft to everyone you're working with, and then manually combining all of their versions is a pain. With Textflow, you can just drop in each person's document and see a side-by-side view of the changes, and then put everything in order with a little bit of dragging. The app is now in public beta.

If you've used track changes in Word, Textflow's "choose or refuse" interface will be familiar to you. But textflow is like track changes on steroids, if you'll pardon a cliché. Besides the ability to handle several sets of changes from several separate Word files at once, it's also a lot easier to tell at a glance who's changed what, and decide which version to use. There's even a scrapboard to store ideas you're not sure about yet. The best part is that your collaborators don't even have to know what Textflow is for you to use it effectively.


[via Go2Web20 Blog]

Every Word file can contain a fairly large amount of metadata. This is stuff like the revision logs (for tracking changes), name of the author, last time edited, and last time printed. All that information is there for a reason, but embarrassing incidents have been known to occur when people don't realize what they're sending in their metadata. If you want to avoid that, you could delete it all by hand, or you could get Doc Scrubber, a free metadata-removal app.

Doc Scrubber can quickly tell you what all the "hidden info" on your docs says, or just delete it for you. It'll handle multiple docs at once, and is compatible with Word 97, 2000 and XP files. It doesn't do DOCX files, but those also don't handle metadata the same way, so they're less likely to expose your info.

It looks like Microsoft is finally prepared to launch its answer to Google Docs, Zoho Office, and ThinkFree Office. About a year after launching Office Live Workspace, which is really just a service for people to store and share documents created using desktop apps, Microsoft has announced plans to go ahead with true web-based versions of MS Office applications including Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

The Office Web applications will reportedly be stripped down versions of the desktop apps. And it looks like Microsoft will offer at least two tiers of service, with an ad-supported version and a subscription based option for business customers.

The next version of Microsoft Office for the desktop will include the ability to synchronize documents over the web for access on the go. So Microsoft clearly expects customers to continue paying for the offline version of Office. Somehow I suspect the company will also set aside at least a few special features that are only available in the desktop version.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Thanks Microsoft. No seriously, thanks. As far as I can tell, the new .docx default document format in MS Word 2007 and 2008 (for Mac) does nothing to make my life easier, but has certainly made it more of a pain. Although my office predominantly uses Office 2003, our users are starting to receive documents saved in the newer .docx format, and are unable to open or edit them. Since I happen to be running Office 2007 and 2008 on my machine (it's a Mac with VMWare Fusion for running Windows), I get to play the role of "mister file converter".

Well, no longer.

Thanks to our pals over at TUAW, I can now redirect my office mates to Zamzar's free online file converter. We've written about Zamzar before, but this is the first I had heard that it supports Office file formats.

Tag clouds are a great way to visualize content. Sites like Flickr, del.icio.us as well as a little blog called Download Squad use clouds. The larger the word, the more popular it is compared to the rest.

Now what if you wanted a cloud of your very own? One way to go about this is to enlist the help of Wordle. Put in a bunch of words or enter your del.icio.us user name and based on the information you've provided Wordle will generate a cloud for you.

The clouds generated by Wordle are for display purposes only. You won't be able to click on a word and have it go to a particular site. It's just mainly for fun. And you got to admit, a bunch of words all mashed together looks rather interesting.

So you love Mac OS X. We love Mac OS X. But you don't have the money to pony up for Office 200whatever, or maybe you don't even like it. Microsoft Office is overkill for most people who just need a simple word processor. We've used Open Office, but it's probably too much to play around with if all you want to do is write a document.

Enter the Bean.

We've mentioned Bean before, along with other Mac "toolkit software", but a new version came out late in April (version 1.2.0)l, so we felt it deserved another look.

What's the first word processor you remember using? Word, WordPerfect, Works or something else altogether? On the one hand, word processing has come a long way in the last two decades. On the other hand, the image above shows Microsoft Word 1.0, which is almost 20 years old. And you know what? You could still use it to write most of your daily correspondence if you really wanted to.

ImpressionSoft@Work has an overview of the history of MS Word, from version 1.0 all the way up to Word 2007. Do you remember when Microsoft added real-time spell checking or the ability to draw to Word? What about the first version to include the annoying paper clip pop-up assistant?

If the trip down memory lane is making you nostalgic, don't forget that you Microsoft made Word 5.5 for DOS available as a free download a while back. And the download link still works.

[via WinBeta]

For those looking to convert a Word document to a PDF file, there are a large number of solutions out there. But how about vice versa? There haven't been many programs brave enough to try and convert a PDF to a Word document.

One program that has stepped up to the plate is PDF to Word Converter 1.1, a free tool that converts a PDF back to a Word document for editing, removing and adding elements, and more.

The program is a small download (about 1 MB), and installation is straightforward. The user interface is straightforward as well: you select the PDF you wish to convert, choose where you want the Word document to be saved, and you're ready to go. Options include the number of pages to convert (you can select all or portions of the document), choice of a default font, and the option to retain shapes and images.

In our test, PDF to Word converter worked flawlessly, quickly and neatly converting a 5 page PDF file in about five seconds.

PDF to Word converter is a nice desktop solution, though it is limited to one conversion type. If you can get online, you might be better served with Zamzar, the online file conversion tool with support for a huge amount of conversion types.

[via Confessions of a Freeware Junkie]

We covered Live Documents, the new online office documents competition last month, that is about to make a move to steal some market share aware from Zoho, ThinkFree and Google.

Live Documents has released some screen grabs from its interface, giving a little more insight into what they are all about. The Flash based interfaces do resemble what Microsoft currently has on the market, but add the ability to collaborate. Screenshots include Presentations, Spreadsheets and Documents.

Live Documents does reference Microsoft, and Microsoft's Office applications quite a bit when talking about its own suite, and the look and feel closely resembles what MS offers, so we have to assume that they have relied heavily on Office as a starting point. Is this a bad thing? Not if you're looking to quickly build and sell the business.

We'll have to test Live Documents when it becomes readily available to see what its winning points are, and whether or not it will become a major player in the online office space.