Man bites dog: Microsoft Outlook.com embraces Gmail users
Well, embrace is too strong a word, but Microsoft says it’s making it easier for colleagues and friends with different mail accounts to chit chat. Read more »
The week in cloud: Google picks Debian; AWS console for Windows; Adobe faces wrath
photo: Shutterstock / Gena96
Google picked Debian as the default OS for the Google Compute Engine; AWS builds console to enable Windows IT admins to manage on-prem and AWS workloads, Adobe feels artists’ ire. Read more »
Microsoft Office 365 hits pothole
photo: Flickr / ToddABishop
Just days after the Microsoft Office 365 Premium launch, the service goes down for many users. Read more »
Wait, Google Apps for Business is a “real” business?
Updated: Google reportedly earned $1 billion from Google Apps for Business last year. While that pales in comparison to Microsoft Office numbers, it’s still not chump change. Read more »
Google+ ready for business with IT-friendly bells and whistles
Google is rolling out business-friendly features for its Google+ social networking service. That paves the way for a paid-version next year or beyond and escalates the battle between Google and Microsoft for the corporate desktop. Read more »
New Microsoft Office ropes in Skype, Yammer, SkyDrive
As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off the company’s latest Office software Monday, he hit all the right marks — a touch interface, cloud storage, VoIP integration and social networking tie-ins. They had to. But a very different interface might spook current Office users. Read more »
Clippy’s dead, but KeyRocket resurrects the good bits
What use are hundreds of shortcuts if you don’t know them? Berlin’s Veodin has come up with a free tool called KeyRocket, which trains users in the way of the shortcut with more relevance and less irritation than Microsoft’s hated old Office assistant. Read more »
BetterCloud raises $2M to make Google Apps better
New York City-based startup BetterCloud has raised $2 million for its quest to bring better business-oriented management, reporting and other capabilities to Google Apps. The funding comes from BetterCloud CEO David Politis and unnamed angel investors. Read more »
Subscriber Content
A look back at mobile in Q1
Smartphone sales surged both in the U.S. and worldwide, carriers struggled to cope with the ever-increasing consumption of mobile data, and the fight for spectrum remained front and center in the first quarter. Our latest quarterly wrap-up analyzes these trends and more. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Symbian gets better with Microsoft Office. Is it really dead?
Eight Symbian handsets gained Microsoft Office support on Tuesday. There’s no question that Microsoft’s software — both Windows Phone and Office — are helping Nokia manage a transition to the modern smartphone age. But is Symbian’s death greatly exaggerated or is it a Plan B? Read more »
Microsoft OneNote on Android: nice but late to the party
Microsoft added Android support for OneNote, enabling Android users to take notes from their device and sync them in the cloud. But a few key features are missing that appear in competing apps. Is this space owned by Evernote or can OneNote succeed on Android? Read more »
Subscriber Content
NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
OnLive brings cloud-based Windows apps to the iPad
The new OnLive Desktop app making its debut at CES this week will let users stream their full-featured — and resource-intensive — Microsoft Office applications to their Apple iPads. The company runs virtualized versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint on its data centers in the cloud. Read more »
Iongrid brings Office apps securely to iPad
Iongrid’s new Nexus software promises to bring your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets to your iPad with what it calls “pixel perfect” fidelity and in a way that won’t give IT or the compliance department a collective heart attack. Read more »
General Motors deal would be huge coup for Google Apps
If General Motors, a big Microsoft shop, ends up going with Google Apps, it would be a huge validation of Google’s productivity applications in the enterprise. Google Apps targets the Microsoft Office juggernaut, but has had trouble getting traction in big, corporate accounts. Read more »
Microsoft takes on Google Apps, finally launches Office 365
Microsoft has now launched Office 365, its suite of collaboration and office tools that aims to take on Google Apps for Business. But with a product that costs more than Google’s offering and is coming much later to market, will Office 365 be a success? Read more »
Don’t be left behind: 5 Mac apps that won’t make the Lion cut
Apple is dropping Rosetta from OS X Lion, which means PowerPC-only apps won’t work on Macs running the operating system. It might surprise you how many still-useful and used apps that will leave out in the cold. Here’s a few, and some replacement suggestions. Read more »
KnowledgeTree Debuts Android App for Cloud Document Management
KnowledgeTree, a service that lets businesses collaborate on and manage documents in the cloud, is now offering an app for Android phones and tablets, and automatic synchronization between mobile and desktop devices. KnowledgeTree lets organizations manage documents, and it specializes in collaboration within Microsoft Office. Read more »
Google Docs Gets a Real-Time Upgrade
Google’s ongoing effort to turn Google Docs into a formidable competitor with Microsoft Office continues with a new feature that allows users to hold discussions in real-time while working on shared documents. The new feature lets users of its productivity service discuss shared documents in real-time Read more »
OneNote for iPhone Review: Overly Simple Note Taking
Yesterday, Microsoft launched its first Office app for iOS, a mobile version of the digital notebook application OneNote. If you’ve never heard of it, it may be because you’re using the Mac version of Office, which lacks OneNote, greatly reducing the usability of the iOS app. Read more »
iPhone OneNote App May Mean More Office Apps to Come
While the iPhone has received a couple Microsoft apps like Bing and Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft Office programs have been no shows — until now. Microsoft announced today it is releasing an iPhone version of OneNote, it’s note-syncing app for the iPhone. Read more »
LibreOffice: An Idea Whose Time Has Come (and Gone)
The OpenOffice community has staged a coup against project owner Oracle, but to what effect? The Document Foundation promises little more than a tired retread on an outdated office productivity meme. It’s time for the open-source community to ditch OpenOffice and instead embrace the web. Read more »
Central Desktop Adds Cloud Collaboration Features to Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a tool found in most offices, so a tool that makes it easy to not only share documents through the cloud but to collaborate on them is a logical choice for many businesses. Central Desktop for Office is such a tool. Read more »
Google Rewrites Docs, Makes Them Quicker & Richer
Google today is unveiling a rewritten Google Docs, tweaked to present information in real time as well as to enable better syncing across browsers — the goal being to persuade CIOs that instead of upgrading to Microsoft Office 2010 they should switch to Google Docs. Read more »
Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps Beta Available to SharePoint Users
To coincide with the release of the desktop Office 2010 beta, Microsoft is finally embracing the web office with today’s release of Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps beta, a web version of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that augments or even replaces the desktop version […] Read more »
