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Mayer, Google’s VP  of consumer products local, maps and location  services, spoke Wednesday night in New York about the future of the Internet search giant under co-founder Page, who took the CEO reins from Eric Schmidt last year.

In her view, Page’s decision to streamline Google’s product line has focused its teams on services that really meet user needs.

Money quote:

Larry is very focused on product and on users, and I think that you can feel that … Having a CEO in a more product-oriented role ultimately makes everyone think about what they’re building and whether it is beautiful, it’s excellent, and it’s a seamless user experience.

I take Mayer at her word and would suggest that Google get to work on its productivity applications. The old Google knew how to do elegant design — as the spare, white search page attests. So what explains the nightmare that is GMail?  And, to put it gently, Microsoft Word doesn’t have that much to fear from Google Docs. (This is coming from someone who is not enamored of Office’s bloated feature set.)

So to reiterate Erica Ogg’s plea for a better Google Docs in GigaOM last year, please Google, I’m begging you,  put that project on the front burner. Please.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Adam Tinworth

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It’s this last phrase, that something is coming in the next few weeks, that has set off a new round of speculation that perhaps Microsoft intends to reveal Office for iPad on stage at Apple’s iPad 3 event, which is rumored to be taking place in early March. But would Microsoft use an Apple keynote to demo Office for iPad?

Dan Frommer from SplatF comes out heavily in favor of Microsoft being involved in the iPad event, with Apple using Office for iPad to showcase the capabilities of the iPad 3, which would further lock up Apple’s lead against competing tablets in the workplace. John Gruber doesn’t quite agree, mostly because he feels that Apple doesn’t need to share the spotlight.

Frankly, I’d love to see this happen if only to see Steve Ballmer appearing by satellite (or Skype, now that Microsoft owns them?) to announce Office for iPad, much as Bill Gates did in 1997 to announce a new version of Microsoft Office for Mac. [In the video below, skip to 4:47 to see Bill.]

Back then, Apple desperately needed Microsoft to infuse some cash into the organization and some confidence into its customers at a time when it was nearly bankrupt. Nearly 15 years later, the roles are neatly reversed, and Apple is in the driver’s seat for both the phone and tablet markets, while Microsoft is looking to stay relevant with its still-important Office business. In 1997, Apple was eager to cement their relationship with “meaningful partners” like Microsoft, to borrow a phrase from Steve Jobs’ presentation video, embedded above. In 2012, even though Microsoft is nowhere near bankruptcy, that relationship might well look quite different.

If these two things end up being true — that Office for iPad is real and that Microsoft will announce it at the iPad 3 event — here is how to tell exactly where everyone stands:

Where will Office for iPad save its documents?

Would Office for iPad save documents to Apple’s iCloud? Or will it use some Microsoft technology like SkyDrive, Office365 or Sharepoint servers? Or will it be some combination of all of the above?

Office is critically important to Microsoft. It still generates enormous revenues and, more importantly, huge profits for the Redmond, Wash., company. For Office to stay relevant in today’s always-connected workplace, a successful mobile strategy for shared documents is critical. ICloud is great for the independent user that wants to keep their own documents in sync, but it does not provide a complete solution for team collaboration in an enterprise environment. Sharepoint is central to internal collaboration tools in the enterprise market, and SkyDrive and Office365 are part of Microsoft’s hosted collaboration solutions.

If Microsoft were to adopt iCloud for users to save personal documents and Sharepoint integration for team collaboration, that would signal that Microsoft is willing to concede the personal market to get Office on the iPad in order to keep iOS devices plugged into the workgroup and enterprise solutions from Microsoft.

As Gruber put it, “if Microsoft does get a demo slot on stage during the iPad 3 keynote, Microsoft would be getting much more out of it than Apple.”

If Office for iPad only saves documents to iCloud, then Microsoft plainly agrees.

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Today Nokia announced that it would be adding a sweetener to its Symbian devices running the newest version of the OS, codenamed Belle: the devices will come loaded up with Microsoft’s productivity apps.

This will be the first time that Microsoft will allow its software to work as native applications on any mobile platform other than its own.

But this is not the first time that Nokia and Microsoft have collaborated to integrate Microsoft services onto Nokia devices. They began working together years ago, including in 2006 making Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync work on Nokia Series 60 devices.

The apps are largely aimed at enterprise users — or “prosumers” that might use their devices for work. Applications will include popular services like Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as several enterprise-focussed services like Lync, OneNote(TM), PowerPoint Broadcast and Document Connection. The first set of these — covering Lync, OneNote(TM), PowerPoint Broadcast and Document Connection — will get rolled out in Q4 2011; the rest will come online in the first half of 2012.

The app porting is a significant sign of how the two companies are collaborating together these days, but it is also a canny move for the future.

Even though Nokia has indicated Symbian will not be its main platform for smartphones in the future, it still has a huge user base, including a significant amount of enterprise users, to serve on the devices today.

It will want to keep those existing Nokia users happy until it’s time for them to upgrade, at which point Nokia hope they will remain loyal to the brnd. Putting Microsoft apps into the device will also help get Nokia Symbian users accustomed and possibly addicted to the apps — giving them another reason to stay with Nokia even as it moves ahead with a new OS.

Nokia says the Microsoft apps will be available as either software updates over the air or via PC downloads. Devices supported will include the Nokia N8, C7, C6-01, E7, E6, X7, 700, 701, 600 and Oro.

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To get going, you upload a document, determine the subdomain you’ll use for your workspace (so you could have webworkerdaily.agilewords.com, for example) and provide a username and password. You’ll then be taken to an online version of your document; I’ve tried uploading a few, and Agileword’s rendering seems to be pretty accurate. You can edit the text directly by selecting  a paragraph and hitting the “Edit” button on the left, and add comments by selecting a paragraph or highlighting some words and hitting the “Comment” button on the right. There’s a large “Invite” button at the top of the screen to invite your colleagues to review the document; you also get to specify their access level as “author” (can edit the document and add comments) or “reviewer” (can only add comments).

Comments and changes are marked in the document as color-coded highlights, so you can see at a glance who commented or edited what, with little tabs on the right of the document that you can click on to get more detail. Comments are also listed on the right of the screen, and clicking a comment there will highlight its position in the document, and also bring up a little overlay window with a discussion thread, where you can also add your own comments. With edited text, you can hit a button marked “show diff” in the overlay window, which highlights the changed words in that paragraph.

Agilewords isn’t quite as powerful as Redliner, a similar editing tool I reviewed a while ago, particularly when it comes to things like accepting or rejecting changes. However, it works well, and because it’s fairly simple and well designed, its interface is intuitive and really easy to get to grips with, which is important if you’re likely to want to send documents to less tech-savvy members of your team. It also has some neat additional features, like the ability to set a review deadline. I should note that from my testing it does appear updates aren’t quite real-time: if you add a comment it won’t necessarily instantly appear on everyone’s else’s version of the document.

Agilewords is currently free for a limited time (the company is considering adding subscription charges in the future). The app only works with Word documents.

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The word processors I’m going to look at in this post all have a short learning curve because they stick to Mac interface standards, so you’ll be able to be productive quickly, which is always a good thing.

Take a good look at the documents you produce and the features you need; one of these word processors might be a ready alternative for you, especially if you are working on an older Mac and don’t want to invest in a costly Microsoft Office license.

Bean. This free word processor has a light footprint which can be important if you don’t need all of the features (and bloat) that Microsoft Word brings with it. It requires a Mac with a PPC or Intel processor running OS X 10.4 Tiger, OS X 10.5 Leopard, or OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, so it can even be an option if you are trying to bring life to an older Mac. This is a great alternative word processor if you don’t need features on the level of Microsoft Word.

Mariner Write. This word processor was part of the last MacHeist offering, and includes a well-designed menu structure, spelling/grammar checker, and support for many document formats, inlcluding Mariner Write (a proprietary format), Stationary, RTF – MS Word, RTF – Mariner Write, Text, SimpleText, TeachText and PDF. While I liked Mariner Writer during my testing, its incomplete support for Microsoft Word — a standard document format for many of my client projects — makes unlikely to adopt it for my professional writing projects. It costs $49.95.

Pages ’09. Part of iWork ’09, Pages is a very capable word processor that includes a wide range of templates, advanced features like table of contents, tables, shapes, sharing via iWork .com (covered by Imran), and the option of saving documents in MS Word format. My testing of conversions to Word format were hit or miss so I recommend testing for yourself through the software’s 30-day free trial prior to purchasing it ($79.00).

Nisus Writer Express. This Mac word processor comes with Nisus Thesaurus as part of the same download package. As a word processor, it includes a document manager, paragraph sorting, document styles, tables and macros. It does not include a table of contents feature (unfortunately, a deal breaker for me). It costs $45 (a free trial is available).

What is your Mac word processor of choice? Share it below.

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Here are some tips to help better manage document reviews at a distance:

Establish review guidelines. Truth be told, many organizations don’t know how to review and approve a document. As such, it is important to set out how you want your reviewers to check over each document. Your review guidelines should:

• Instruct the reviewers to follow procedures step-by-step. Tell them to point out incorrect steps and identify why the step is in error.
• Encourage the reviewers to look for better ways to present data, or identify if a different function or listing that would work better in the same situation.
• Instruct reviewers to check to see if the artwork (listings, figures, illustrations, tables) corresponds with the references in the text.
• Tell the reviewers to test  each line of program code and describe any problems.

Designate document stakeholders. Have a designated document stakeholder check over the document(s) undergoing review to help set review priorities and free up resources to ensure the document review happens on deadline. The stakeholders can also tie the document review into the overall project plan, if needed.

Identify primary and backup reviewers. This is a commonsense first step when project teams span multiple time zones, and even continents. If the primary reviewer is unavailable to resolve a question, then the team can always go to the backup reviewer.

Set a realistic review schedule. It is rare that a stressed and harried project team can make a full document review in just one pass. So depending on your project schedule, take the initiative to manage expectations and set a review schedule that ensures reviewers are going to add value to the documents they are reviewing.

Use online collaboration and version control. WebWorkerDaily regularly covers the latest in collaboration tools. Using one of these tools can help you better manage the review process with your team.

Use electronic document review tools. With Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat you can mark up and comment on electronic documents just as you can with pen and ink on a hardcopy document — there’s no need to fax documents any more. If your team is reviewing an XML-based document, look towards a solution like LiveTechDocs (I reviewed it for WWD).

LiveTechDocs Application

How do you manage document reviews?

Image credit: svilen001 from sxc.hu.

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This post is going to give an overview of some Word 2007 features you can use to ensure that documents you send outside your organization are secure and aren’t going to release any confidential information. Save your document prior to launching any of these tools.

Inspect Document

Word 2007′s Document Inspector consolidates many of the tasks performed by a number of Office 2003 add-ins that you would have to download. Inspecting your document should fall into the tail end of your publishing cycle, just like running spelling and grammar checks and generating the Table of Contents.

Choose “Prepare,” and then “Inspect Document.” The Document Inspector dialog box launches:

This dialog box controls inspection tools you need to run to ensure the Word 2007 document you send externally is secure and devoid of any confidential information. The Inspect Document dialog box includes the following options:

• Comments, Revisions, Versions, and Annotations. This option inspects document metadata, including comments, revision marks, annotations and versions. There are many stories floating around on the Internet about Word documents that have been released to external parties containing embarrassing comments or previous revisions that shouldn’t have seen the light of day. Consequently, you need to pay attention to the results when you run this inspection on a Word document.
• Document Properties and Personal Information. Depending on your organization’s line of business, you may not want your author name and related information going outside your firewall. If  your organization is dutiful about filling out document properties and personal information then selecting Document Properties and Personal Information means that third parties won’t see this information if they explore your Word document’s metadata.
• Custom XML Data. If your organization is using an XML-based publishing system with Word documents then it is going to be important for you to inspect what custom XML data external viewers can access.
• Headers, Footers, and Watermarks. Run this inspection and you’ll discover any metadata residing in your Word document’s headers, footers, and watermarks.
• Hidden Text. Word can hide text. Use tis tool to find it and make surre it doesn’t contain confidential or embarrassing information.

Mark as Final

As a long-time Microsoft Word user and a technical writer, I was never one to mark a Word document as final electronically. However, organizations looking for a structured publishing process that doesn’t rely on a big bucks content management system could use Mark as Final as the last stop for the document.

Encrypt Document

Using Word’s document encryption can be tricky decsions, because it can become more trouble than it is worth if you don’t manage it carefully. There is nothing worse than not being able to open an important encrypted document, and if you lose a password, Word 2007 doesn’t let you recover it.  However, document encryption can be a useful tool for publishers requiring document restriction for a group of select readers.

Choose “Prepare,” and then “Encrypt Document.”

In the past, when I’ve had a client request to encrypt a Word document, I always keep a written record of the password in a safe place (a password management tool would be a good choice).

Word 2007 Document Security and You

It is easy to dismiss Word document security as unnecessary because you don’t think your documents are leaking any secrets. However, instituting a policy of running Document Inspector isn’t going to add much time to your publishing cycle and potentially could save you from letting potentially embarrassing information slip out in stray metadata.

Do you run Document Inspector when finalizing your Word documents? Do you regularly encrypt Word documents?

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New applications or enhancements to existing ones can provide big efficiency benefits, but there are also many simple tweaks, unsung tips, and new ways to think about the tools that you already use that can help you work better. In this post, I’ll share five ways that can help you accomplish more and experience less hassle. You can take advantage of many of these tips in minutes.

Double Up On Monitors. We’ve covered the efficiency benefits of using dual monitors before. While some users like sitting in front of one giant monitor these days, for the same cost you can buy two (or more) reasonably priced monitors, put them side-by-side on your desktop, and use the displays as one fluid desktop. I recently switched to this kind of setup, and I’ll never go back. The time I save simply loading web pages and applications is substantial, and it’s also just easier to work this way. Windows XP and Vista both offer dual-monitor support out of the box, as does Mac OS X. Give it a go if you haven’t tried it.

Flex Your Mouse Muscle. Some of the most surprised comments I’ve ever gotten for any post on this blog came in response to a post called, “Nine Ways to Make Your Mouse Roar.” I made the point there that you may well spend more time with your mouse each day than you do with any person, and yet, a lot of people install a mouse without ever consulting the documentation and finding out what it’s capable of. Do you have a mouse with a scroll wheel? If so, in any tabbed browser, just click your scroll wheel while hovering over a link on the web to open it in a new tab. Or try this: In the middle of a web page you’re looking at, click once on your scroll wheel. Your cursor should change shape. Moving up and down with the mouse will let you scroll the page, and do speed scrolling. If your eyes are tired, hold your Ctrl key down and lightly push your scroll wheel up a few notches. The size of the text on the page you’re looking at will increase, and you can  hold Ctrl and scroll back down to return it to normal size. There are many more of these tips in the original post.

Become a Word Power User. There are plenty of nifty ways to squeeze more productivity from Microsoft Word and make it easier to use. For example, if you need to leave a document but want to have your cursor sitting right where you left it in the middle of an editing session when you return, you don’t have to leave your document open. Go ahead and close it. When you reopen it to resume editing, hit Shift+F5 to take your cursor back to precisely where you left it. Do you have multiple Word documents open and need to take a break? To rapidly save all open documents, hold down the Shift key and go to Word’s “File” menu. The usual “Save” menu choice will show up as “Save All.” There are many more of these tips in the posts above. Check out this post and this one for more essential efficiency tips.

Get More Out of Outlook. While it’s almost nobody’s favorite email application, many of us must use Microsoft Outlook for work. If you do, you’ll find eight good efficiency tips for it in this post. For example:  Do you often forget to respond to important Outlook messages? To set a reminder — visible in your Inbox — to act on or reply to any message, right-click on the message you want to set the reminder for, select Follow Up, and choose your Due By time and date. When you click OK, the message will be flagged for you to remember to respond to it.

Reboot Your Wi-Fi. In this recent post, I described how important it is to do a regular, cycled reboot on your home Wi-Fi setup. I also described how the combination of the cycled reboot and changing Wi-Fi channels can eliminate dropped signals and other common problems. Several readers provided comments with Wi-Fi efficiency tips of their own, including free, open-source firmware applications that can give you much more control over your Wi-Fi router, and better performance through boosted signals. Many of us are very dependent on Wi-Fi all day, so look into how a few simple tips can help you be more wirelessly efficient.

Share your tips for boosting efficiency in the comments.

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