Google Docs is now providing offline access to editing files on an experimental basis -- as of now this only works with Docs, rather than Spreadsheets and Presentations, but it is definitely a start in a direction that may have far reaching results in the way we all use computing.
ChannelWeb provides opinions from many users about this new feature that works on Google Gears, an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality.
Even with Docs, this option has not been made available to all Google accounts, so if you don't see this functionality yet, you might have to wait a little while longer. I'm waiting to see how Google implements this technology into the Presentations component of Google Docs. And while many sites and bloggers seem to indicate that this might be a big blow to Microsoft Office, I think there's so much more to wait and watch before making a blanket statement of that magnitude.
A standards committee will next week begin the next stage of the process that could see Microsoft’s new Open XML formats formally adopted as a global standard – or not. A vote by standards bodies from 87 countries last September went against the immediate adoption of Open XML as an ISO standard. This gave an immediate boost to the Open Document Format (ODF), which is already an ISO standard, but it did not rule out the Microsoft formats.
Microsoft Corp. on Thursday responded to continued regulatory scrutiny by reiterating promises to make information about its products more easily available to software programmers, while vowing not to sue those who use such information for noncommercial purposes. The move underscores an ongoing shift for the tech behemoth, as it has sought recently to present its technology as increasingly open to outside developers and compatible with competing products. It also comes only days before delegates from an international standards body are scheduled to convene in Geneva to discuss Microsoft's Open XML file format, which has been derided by critics as insufficiently accessible.
David Salaguinto (pictured to the left) is a writer on the Office User Assistance team at Microsoft who uses comics he creates to have fun, and to connect with readers -- see his Office Online Web Comic blog. In this conversation, David discusses how he got started, and where he gets inspiration from.
Geetesh: Tell us more about your work at Office Online. And how did you get started with the web comics blog? David: Mostly, I write about Visio for the people who use it, although I do occasionally write about other Microsoft Office programs if a team needs my help. Every month, we look at the feedback we receive from customers, and we try to address it. Sometimes it means we write new articles or update existing ones. Sometimes it means we produce a video demo or online training. Sometimes it means we try new things. They don’t always work, but we like to think we learn from our failures.
One of the things we wanted to try was a comic. A colleague of mine found a fascinating article about comics being used in unusual places. What if we did a comic for Office Online? I thought it sounded like a fun idea, so I jumped at the chance to create a comic using Visio. For my first comic, I did a rather simple one about printing:
I personally thought it was kind of corny, but my coworkers seemed to like it, so I made more. Pretty soon, I was posting them online. You can read more about how I got started in this column I wrote for Office Online.
Geetesh: I love all the content you put up on the Office Online Web Comic blog -- what inspires you for all the ideas based on Microsoft Office applications.
David: I get a lot of my ideas from my coworkers. Sometimes, someone will send me an idea for a comic, but more often than not, I’ll read something in an e-mail or overhear something in a meeting that strikes me as a possible source of humor. It turns out that jokes aren’t that hard to write. Finding irony and surprise in everyday things—like Microsoft Office—now, that’s hard. For example, I was reading something written by a coworker about how a PowerPoint deck can have multiple slide masters. I immediately thought of the saying, “No man can serve two masters,” which lead me to this comic about PowerPoint and Marketing:
That’s where the ideas come from. As for the punch lines, well…I don’t actually know. They seem to come out of nowhere, but only after throwing out dozens of bad ones. You’d cringe in horror if you saw some of the bad punch lines I came up with for the preceding comic.
Geetesh: Tell us about some favorite posts you have put up, and why they are your favorites?
David: I think my favorite comics are the ones with the little pink girl in them. I have two young daughters myself, and I love the way they talk and how they look at the world. For example, I‘ve noticed that a lot of kids have started using PowerPoint in their school projects, which lead me to this comic:
For this comic, I spent a lot of time crafting the words so they would ring true and sound believable. I also wanted to capture the excitement in the child and the caring in the father. In so far as the comic succeeds, I think it succeeds because of that (and not just because of the jibe at marketing—although that certainly helps). As you can probably tell, I have a lot of fun creating these comics—probably even more than you have reading them.
Katherine Murray is the author of more than 50 books on technology and writes articles for various Microsoft sites. She also writes and edits the Microsoft Mindshare newsletter and contributes articles to CNET's TechRepublic. In addition to books and articles, Katherine publishes BlogOffice, a blog sharing tips and ideas related to various versions of Microsoft Office.
Will online applications ever replace the ones we use on our desktop? Will Google's slew of online programs shake the Microsoft juggernaut of Office programs? There are no clear answers yet -- but the battle lines are getting drawn more distinctly now as Google prepares to launch it's presentation program in direct confrontation to PowerPoint.
However, there's a larger question there waiting to be asked: will users be able to play these presentations offline, and project them? That's going to be a more important issue for presentations than for documents and spreadsheets since presentations are projected or broadcasted to hundreds and thousands of users.
I'll look for those answers and share them with you. Meanwhile, there's more information on Google's so called PowerPoint killer.
The Inquirer reported that "it’s been known for a long while that Google will at some point take on PowerPoint with a web-based presentations package. The breaking news is that the coming-out party for the software is any day now. Called Presently, the slideshow program is likely to be based in part on code Google bought through the acquisitions of Zenter and Tonic Systems earlier this year".
Microsoft has announced on Wednesday, a $60 web-based version of the company's Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 software that will be exclusively available to college students. Microsoft dubbed their latest promotion as the "The Ultimate Steal" and will run until April 30, 2008. The promotion already started in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and will be available to France, Italy, and Spain starting September 20, 2007.
Microsoft and Google are expected to ramp up their competition in the emerging hosted office productivity market at the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco. Google is expected to unveil a wiki component to its Google Apps service, as well as a hosted PowerPoint competitor, while Microsoft is expected to deliver a bundle of software and services apps under its Windows Live brand.
Apple announced iWork '08, a new version of its productivity suite.
This includes a new version of Keynote, their presentation software. New features in Keynote include Instant Alpha, a process that removes the background from placed images without having to use masking tools in image-editors like Adobe Photoshop. Another new feature is Smart Builds, an option that makes it easy to add animations. Keynote also adds new transition types, and text effects enhancements. All these options except Instant Alpha are already available in PowerPoint -- and Microsoft's upcoming version of Office 2008 for the Mac can only add more catch-up to do on both the Apple and Microsoft fronts.
As if that was not enough, Apple adds Numbers, a spreadsheet program to iWork '08, thus making it a more even contender to Microsoft Office for the Mac.
Pages, the page layout program adds more word processing options.
What's next? Is there an iWork for Windows coming up?
Microsoft has released a new version of Microsoft Works. Microsoft Works v9, the red-headed stepchild of Microsoft Office, is a free, ad supported office package offering word processing, spreadsheet and slideshow (PowerPoint) functionality.
Microsoft Works 9 may also someday be available as a Microsoft-hosted low-end productivity service, possibly through the company’s Live services, which would put it head-to-head with Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Zoho. But for the moment, Works 9 will be limited to the desktop.
Your presentations always influence others to take some kind of action. The action might be to listen carefully and learn new information or it might be to drift off toward Dreamworld. The way in which your presentation delivers information has everything to do with how well it will be received. Here are some quick ideas for livening up your presentations to keep the after-lunch crowd awake in their seats.
Under the name Sun ODF Plug-in for Microsoft Office, Sun has released its import/export filter for the OpenDocument format (ODF), which the ISO has recognized as a standard, for versions 2000, XP, and 2003 of Microsoft's Office suite; the plug-in can be downloaded via our software repository. The extension allows users of MS Office to read and create text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in the free OpenOffice suite and its commercial version called StarOffice.
Microsoft's hugely profitable Office software is about to get a more rounded competitor from nemesis Google.
The search giant, via a series of acquisitions and some internal development, looks like it will soon have the technology to challenge Office's dominance with its own suite of applications that run over the internet.
RibbonCustomizer, the add-in product for Microsoft Office 2007 that allows you to customize the tabs within the Ribbon has now been updated to version 1.1 -- the new update is free for all users. See screenshots later on this page.
New features include:
Classic UI tabs for Excel, PowerPoint, and Word 2007 in English and German.
These are available in the Starter Edition already, and therefore can be used without purchasing RibbonCustomizer.
Vista standard user support: Standard users in Windows Vista can now install and use RibbonCustomizer.
Support for Vista with User Account Control (UAC) turned off. Users with administrative rights were previously unable to use RibbonCustomizer if User Account Control was off.
RibbonCustomizer can now be used with the Office setting requiring application add-ins to be digitally signed.
The biggest feature in Microsoft's new Office 2007 suite is most certainly the interface. Gone are the menus and the toolbars -- now all the commands are available in the various tabs of the Ribbon. The Ribbon is much more intuitive -- but for seasoned users who have been working with Microsoft Office applications for more than a decade, it does involve a serious amount of unlearning.
An interesting add-in for Office applications like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel now brings back the menus and toolbars -- all inside a new Ribbon tab called "Menus"! The add-in is called Classic Menu Manager.
Microsoft Corp. last week released the final part of a free tool kit designed to help corporate users convert their existing Office files to Office 2007's new Open XML file format. The new technology, called the Office Migration Planning Manager, combs through networked PCs to discover and report back on how many and what kind of Office files exist on the systems. The OMPM's availability was quietly announced Friday on the blog of Brian Jones, an Office program manager at Microsoft.
If you use MathType with Word or PowerPoint, and then upgrade to Office 2007, you will find that you no longer have the icons or buttons to insert a MathType equation in Word 2007 or PowerPoint 2007.
You'll find instructions on bringing them back in Word 2007 on this link -- it works the same way for Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007.
