AllThingsD » Excel

The Writing on the Tablet

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:03:03 +0000

I’d like to purchase a tablet for use in the classroom and group meetings. I’d like a tablet that can take written notes in PDF and PowerPoint files, has a Web-browsing experience similar to that on a laptop, and can at least open Word and Excel files. With the iPad 3’s impending release, I’m tempted to jump in but I’ve also heard there are some interesting Windows 8 and Android Ice Cream Sandwich tablets coming out later this year. What do you recommend?

I can’t make a recommendation now, since none of these tablets is out. However, I can make a few observations. Even on the current iPad, you can annotate files and take written notes in various apps. But the iPad isn’t designed at heart for freehand note-taking and annotation, and you’d have to buy an add-on stylus. Some Android devices—even without Ice Cream Sandwich—have integrated note-taking and the stylus as a core feature. The latest is the Samsung Galaxy Note, a ginormous phone that is really a small tablet. As for Windows 8, it is designed to run the full version of Office. And the preview device Microsoft has supports handwriting and has a stylus in the box.

I use Adobe Connect for online training, and want to use the iPad. I’ve been using the Adobe Connect iPad app. I find it okay but not great. I had high hopes for Online Live Desktop. I purchased the subscription and entered the Adobe Connect Meeting room without incident. When I attempted to activate the iPad camera and microphone, I couldn’t. Why?

OnLive doesn’t interact with the iPad’s native features—even the virtual keyboard. I hadn’t tried the camera or microphone, but I am not surprised you couldn’t make them work. OnLive essentially uses the iPad as a terminal for a copy of Windows that is running on a remote server. The company is working on tapping the iPhone’s native features.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

eBay Is the Most Recent Bay Area Transplant to Seek Access to Seattle's Talent Pool

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:00:23 +0000

EBay has opened up an office in the suburbs of Seattle, where it has aggressive plans to double the number the employees it has there, to 150.

The e-commerce giant (a term typically reserved for Amazon in these woods) is one of the larger examples companies from the Bay Area that are setting up shop here and looking to soak up some of the Northwest’s rich engineering talent.

Other companies with satellite offices in the Seattle area include Google, Facebook, Zynga and Salesforce.

“I’m surprised I ended up at eBay, but the story is compelling,” said Ken Moss, who was hired in November to be eBay’s VP of managed marketplaces technology; Moss is GM of the Redmond office.

A long-time Microsoft employee whose claim to fame includes inventing the Pivot table in Excel, Moss more recently co-founded CrowdEye, a start-up focused on search technology and later on stock market prediction.

He said eBay’s dedication to the region is one of the biggest selling points for recruitment.

Most of the 75 employees that currently work there were hired over the past few months, and a small team has been here for seven years. Among the newbies I met were a number of Microsoft veterans who had been there for 12 to 15 years.

Moss says he will report directly to eBay’s CTO Mark Carges, which is “a signal to the whole company that diversified development is for real.”

“We are first-class citizens,” Moss said, referring to sometimes strained relationship between remote workers and a company’s headquarters.

Eric Brill, VP of eBay’s research labs, is also based in the Redmond office, and has been working part-time there since joining the company in 2009.

Moss said eBay will be looking to hire a range of technologists, from college graduates to senior leaders, including developers, testers, researchers, data miners and other positions.

While I was at the office on Tuesday, the mountains were peeking out from the clouds and were easy to spot from the floor-to-ceiling windows on the fourth floor. It was easy enough for everyone to have a window seat in the open-floor plan.

Although the employees just moved in on Monday, a sign outside the building already announced eBay’s presence. Inside, workers were busy putting the final touches on the space to make it feel like eBay. Primary colors of red, blue, yellow and green highlighted the office walls; with a bit of Seattle flair, conference rooms were named after Northwest tribes such as Puyallup and Quinault (and other names that might be difficult for San Jose-based employees to pronounce).

But missing were some of the perks that some recruits expect these day — no shuttles to and from work or fancy cafeterias, for instance.

In fact, eBay has a long way to go to compare with what Google has done here. Since entering the market seven years ago, Google has hired more than 900 employees, spread across two locations, a spokesperson confirmed.

One office is in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood; the other is on the Eastside.

The two offices are geographically divided by Lake Washington, which can be crossed by one of two floating bridges — or by boat, if you are crafty enough. The traffic bottlenecks make for a horrendously notorious commute, so having two locations that straddle both sides is a huge perk — like having offices in both San Francisco and San Jose.

Because of Google’s size here, many of its perks are similar to its Mountain View headquarters, including free meals prepared by chefs, frozen-yogurt bars and other, mostly food-based, luxuries.

In eBay’s case, the new digs are located deep on the Eastside, a couple of miles past Microsoft in Redmond, and roughly 15 miles from Jeff Bezos’s empire in downtown Seattle. Recently, Amazon relocated its headquarters to a brand-new campus in South Lake Union, a neighborhood being revitalized by former Microsoft executive Paul Allen.

Other outside companies that have also established sizable tech centers here include Facebook and Zynga. A couple others have gained offices through acquisitions. Electronic Arts, for instance, now has a large office here, after acquiring PopCap; EMC now has big expansion plans here, after purchasing Isilon.

And Geekwire, a Seattle-based technology blog, is good at keeping an ongoing tally, including recent moves into the area by Jawbone and SweetLabs, a San Diego-based start-up, based by Intel Capital and Google Ventures.

Two years ago, Facebook opened an office in the heart of downtown Seattle. It plans to move soon to a 27,000-square-foot space that will have room for about 135 employees. The 70 or so engineers in the office today have worked on projects such as video calling, the Facebook iPad app and other big issues, such as security.

Last April, social game maker Zynga opened an office in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square neighborhood, hoping to absorb some of the game talent here, spawned from Xbox and Nintendo, and cloud-computing knowledge from Amazon. It has 50 employees today, but declined to say how many it planned to hire in the near future.

As with most of these companies, eBay believes it can find a diversity of talent here that can’t always be easy to hire in the Bay Area.

As a Seattle native, and having covered tech here for the past 12 years, including an eight-year stint at the Seattle Times, I might not be the most unbiased on the subject. But I’ve seen first-hand the breadth of talent here, from Microsoft, Amazon, Expedia, T-Mobile and many others, including a strong start-up pool.

Despite that, the local tech community often suffers from an inferiority complex when it compares itself with the Bay Area, which is much larger. Still, it seems that Silicon Valley companies are finding a number of excuses to travel north to drink from the area’s plentiful tech waters.

Working in Word, Excel, PowerPoint on an iPad

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:04:34 +0000

Although Apple’s popular iPad tablet has been able to replace laptops for many tasks, it isn’t a big hit with folks who’d like to use it to create or edit long Microsoft Office documents.

[ See post to watch video ]

While Microsoft has released a number of apps for the iPad, it hasn’t yet released an iPad version of Office. There are a number of valuable apps that can create or edit Office documents, such as Quickoffice Pro, Documents To Go and the iPad version of Apple’s own iWork suite. But their fidelity with Office documents created on a Windows PC or a Mac isn’t perfect.

This week, OnLive Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif., is releasing an app that brings the full, genuine Windows versions of the key Office productivity apps—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—to the iPad. And it’s free. These are the real programs. They look and work just like they do on a real Windows PC. They let you create or edit genuine Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.

I’ve been testing a pre-release version of this new app, called OnLive Desktop, which the company says will be available in the next few days in Apple’s app store. More information is at desktop.onlive.com.

The OnLive Desktop app stores documents in a cloud-based repository.

My verdict is that it works, but with some caveats, limitations and rough edges. Some of these downsides are inherent in the product, while others have to do with the mismatch between the iPad’s touch interface and the fact that Office for Windows was primarily designed for a physical keyboard and mouse.

Creating or editing long documents on a tablet with a virtual on-screen keyboard is a chore, no matter what Office-type app you choose. So, although it isn’t a requirement, I strongly recommend that users of OnLive Desktop employ one of the many add-on wireless keyboards for the iPad.

OnLive Desktop is a cloud-based app. That means it doesn’t actually install Office on your iPad. It acts as a gateway to a remote server where Windows 7, and the three Office apps, are actually running. You create an account, sign in, and Windows pops up on your iPad, with icons allowing you to launch Word, Excel or PowerPoint. (There are also a few other, minor Windows programs included, like Notepad, Calculator and Paint.)

In my tests, the Office apps launched and worked smoothly and quickly, without any noticeable lag, despite the fact that they were operating remotely. Although this worked better for me on my fast home Internet connection, it also worked pretty well on a much slower hotel connection.

Like Office itself, the documents you create or modify don’t live on the iPad. Instead, they go to a cloud-based repository, a sort of virtual hard disk. When you sign into OnLive Desktop, you see your documents in the standard Windows documents folder, which is actually on the remote server. The company says that this document storage won’t be available until a few days after the app becomes available.

To get files into and out of OnLive Desktop, you log in to a Web site on your PC or Mac, where you see all the documents you’ve saved to your cloud repository. You can use this Web site to upload and download files to your OnLive Desktop account. Any changes made will be automatically synced, the company says, though I wasn’t able to test that capability in my pre-release version.

Because it’s a cloud-based service, OnLive Desktop won’t work offline, such as in planes without Wi-Fi. And it can be finicky about network speeds. It requires a wireless network with at least 1 megabit per second of download speed, and works best with at least 1.5 to 2.0 megabits. Many hotels have trouble delivering those speeds, and, in my tests, the app refused to start in a hotel twice, claiming insufficient network speed when the hotel Wi-Fi was overloaded.

The free version of the app has some other limitations. You get just 2 gigabytes of file storage, there’s no Web browser or email program like Outlook included, and you can’t install additional software. If many users are trying to log onto the OnLive Desktop servers at once, you may have to wait your turn to use Office.

In the coming weeks, the company plans to launch a Pro version, which will cost $10 a month. It will offer 50 GB of cloud document storage, “priority” access to the servers, a Web browser, and the ability to install some added programs. It will also allow you to collaborate on documents with other users, or even to chat with, and present material to, groups of other OnLive Desktop users.

The company also plans to offer OnLive Desktop on Android tablets, PCs and Macs, and iPhones.

In my tests, I was able to create documents on an iPad in each of the three cloud-based Office programs. I was able to download them to a computer, and alter them on both the iPad and computer. I was also able to upload files from the computer for use in OnLive Desktop.

OnLive Desktop can’t use the iPad’s built-in virtual keyboard, but it can use the virtual keyboard built into Windows 7 and Windows’ limited touch features and handwriting recognition. As noted above, I recommend using a wireless physical keyboard. But even these aren’t a perfect solution, because the ones that work with the iPad can’t send common Windows keyboard commands to OnLive Desktop, so you wind up moving between the keyboard and the touch screen, which can be frustrating. And you can’t use a mouse.

Another drawback is that OnLive Desktop is entirely isolated from the rest of the iPad. Unlike Office-compatible apps that install directly on the tablet, this cloud-based service can’t, for instance, be used to open Office documents you receive via email on the iPad. And, at least at first, the only way you can get files into and out of OnLive Desktop is through its Web-accessible cloud-storage service. The free version has no email capability, and the app doesn’t support common file-transfer services like Dropbox or SugarSync. The company says it hopes to add those.

OnLive Desktop competes not only with the iPad’s Office clones, but with iPad apps that let you remotely access and control your own PCs and Macs, and thus use Office and other computer software on those.

But, in my tests, I have found those tricky to use. They require you to leave your computers running and either install special software or learn to use certain settings.

Overall, I found OnLive Desktop to be a notable technical achievement, but it has so many caveats that it’s best for folks who absolutely, positively need to use the full, genuine versions of the three big Office productivity programs on their iPads. For everyone else, the locally installed Office clones are probably good enough, and simpler to use.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

Microsoft Office on iPad

Walt Mossberg — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 23:37:09 +0000

Which app do you recommend for using on the iPad 2 for opening Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint?)

If you literally just want to open the documents to read them, you don’t need any apps. The iPad comes with built-in viewers for Microsoft Office files. However, for opening, storing and editing the files, I like two products. One is called Quickoffice Pro HD, which costs $20 and handles all three types of files you cite, and more. The other is the tablet version of Apple’s iWork suite, which is sold as three separate apps for $10 each—Pages for word processing, Numbers for spreadsheets and Keynote for presentations.

This also would be a good place to note that there are reports, unconfirmed by the company, that Microsoft is considering releasing an iPad version of Office itself. I have no evidence this will happen.

Do any of your recommended Ultrabooks run Office?

All Ultrabooks run Microsoft Office. While Ultrabooks are thin and light, they are full-blown Windows laptops running the latest Intel processors, and in my tests, they ran Office very well, just as well as many heavier, thicker laptops I’ve reviewed.

My son was told by an Apple phone representative that the iCloud service cannot handle our full iTunes library of 6,000 songs, and it will only sync with your hand-held, wireless devices.

That’s inaccurate. ITunes Match handles 25,000 songs and syncs with Macs, PCs (if they’re running iTunes), the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Walt is on vacation and his Personal Technology column will return Jan. 5. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Microsoft: The $71 Billion Cloud Underdog

Nick Mehta — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:31:52 +0000

If I say “cloud computing,” what companies come to mind? Amazon’s innovative Amazon Web Services Cloud? Google’s cloud-based collaboration tools, Google Apps? Salesforce.com, the pioneer in moving business applications to the Web? Facebook because, well, it’s Facebook? How about Microsoft? Before you laugh and close your Chrome browser, hear me out. While perhaps lacking the sex appeal (and stock price appreciation) of the other companies I mentioned, Microsoft is the dark horse that will bring the benefits of the cloud to mainstream businesses. How can I make that claim? Well, if it pleases this jury, Microsoft has the motive, means and opportunity to win the enterprise cloud.

Motive

As the saying goes, people are motivated by either greed or fear. I think for many big companies, it’s more the latter. And Microsoft has a lot to be scared about.

If you poke behind its $71 billion in revenue and 39 percent operating margins, 30 percent of the goldmine comes from multiyear volume licensing agreements, which Microsoft calls Enterprise Agreements (EAs). According to industry analyst firm Forrester Research, “these profitable agreements bring in the kind of regular revenue preferred by financial-market analysts that monitor Microsoft’s performance.”

What motivates a customer to sign up for an Enterprise Agreement instead of simply buying Microsoft products, like Office, off the shelf? Well, historically, Microsoft pitched EAs as a way to ensure you can cover your workforce with Microsoft products at a discounted price level.

With companies investing in post-PC devices like smartphones and tablets, and evaluating alternatives to Microsoft productivity solutions, such as Google Apps or Salesforce.com, CIOs are starting to wonder whether renewing their EA is still a top priority.

In response to this threat, Microsoft is now pushing its Software Assurance (SA) licensing model, which allows customers to upgrade to newer products and also use its cloud services. The reason for the possible shift, Forrester says, is that “the twin revolutions of client mobility and cloud servers will kill device-based licensing, which is Microsoft’s existing model.”

So if Microsoft doesn’t embrace the cloud in a big way, the EA gravy train could come to an end.

Means

Apple is cool. Facebook is friendly. And Google isn’t evil. Yet look across a sea of computers in a typical company, and you’ll still see Microsoft everywhere.

And I’m not just talking about Windows. Microsoft has two key assets that will help it win the enterprise cloud:

Office: While the Web and Web-based apps are fabulous for consuming content and even collaborating around it, Microsoft Office is still the standard in productivity to create corporate content. Love or hate those PowerPoint presentations, but they are still how most companies run. And for flexible analysis, Excel is unmatched. Heck, the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft (which is primarily Office for Mac) is a $350 million business on its own.
Outlook/Exchange: For many workers, Microsoft Outlook (with Microsoft Exchange Server on the backend) is the first thing they boot up to start their workday, and the program they remain in all day long. According to industry analyst firm Radicati, 301 million corporate mailboxes used Outlook in 2010. Indeed, some companies have switched from Microsoft Outlook/Exchange to Google Apps and back, because users are too addicted to the interface and functionality of Microsoft Outlook.

So Microsoft still owns two of the key ways “knowledge workers” work with knowledge.

Opportunity

Microsoft isn’t working from a standing start. It actually jumped into the cloud relatively early in 2008 with its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), a hosted platform for collaboration. While BPOS suffered from many challenges, mainly because it was based on a platform that wasn’t designed for the cloud, Microsoft made it clear several years ago that they are “all in” as a company in the cloud.

This year, after many delays and much anticipation, Microsoft finally announced its first platform built for the cloud, Office 365. The new version of Exchange is finally on par with its on-premise alternative. Microsoft SharePoint Online is now flexible enough to meet many enterprise use cases. And Microsoft Lync Online, a real-time chat and videoconferencing system, could be a game changer for company productivity.

In parallel, Microsoft is working away on Windows 8, its big bet on the tablet revolution. With all of Microsoft’s failed past attempts at mobility and tablets, some level of cynicism is expected. But some believe Microsoft’s conviction is real. If Microsoft even gets it 80 percent right on tablets, they will likely win in enterprises that are used to the manageability of Windows, and will be attracted to the inevitably deeper Office integration.

Conclusion

Don’t get me wrong: The innovation in the cloud is coming from all over, mainly from start-ups. For many of these start-ups and other non-enterprise organizations, a non-Microsoft approach will likely be the winner. But for the millions of you working in corporate America, Microsoft is probably the one bringing the cloud to a desktop near you.

Nick Mehta is CEO of LiveOffice and has served in senior operating roles in the enterprise and consumer technology markets for much of his career. He spent more than five years at Symantec Corporation and Veritas Software Corporation (now Symantec), where he served as vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Vault information archiving and discovery software business.

Exclusive: Microsoft Strategy Exec Hank Vigil to Depart, Will Remain Advisor

Kara Swisher — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 21:31:44 +0000

Microsoft’s SVP of Strategy and Partnership Hank Vigil will be leaving the software giant to focus on investing in and advising for early-stage start-up companies, according to an internal email from CEO Steve Ballmer.

But the 25-year company veteran, who will departs Microsoft in the fall, will also become a “strategic advisor” to Microsoft.
That’s probably a good idea, since Vigil is one of the company’s most visible and well-liked execs in the tech community, especially in Silicon Valley.

He also is Microsoft’s best-dressed exec, if I might be so bold to say.

Vigil has had wide-ranging jobs all over Microsoft in his many years there.

He has most recently been working directly with Ballmer, according to his company bio, “developing and managing strategic relationships, mergers, acquisitions and investment partnerships with media, consumer electronics, telecommunications, software and Internet companies.”

In that role, Vigil has worked on a range of deals, including with Facebook, Nokia, News Corp. and many others.

Previously, he worked on Microsoft’s digital TV strategy, including the acquisition of WebTV. Vigil also did marketing and business strategy for Office, Word and Excel.

In other words, Vigil knows where all the bodies are buried up at Microsoft’s Redmond HQ! And, presumably, he’ll be keeping that to himself.

Here’s the internal email from Ballmer about Vigil’s departure:

After 25 years at Microsoft, Hank Vigil has decided it’s time to open a new chapter in his life.

Hank has covered a lot of ground, from launching Excel 3 and Office 95, to our early investments in ITV, to helping restructure our relationships with Sun, Time Warner, and Real Networks, to his more recent work helping to drive new investments and partnerships with companies like Yahoo!, Facebook, and Nokia. He’s been a critical strategic advisor and bridge-builder on some of the biggest industry opportunities we’ve dealt with in recent years.

He’ll be staying on until the fall, then he intends to do some early stage investing and advising start-up companies.

While Hank is leaving the company, he’s not going too far. I’m pleased to say that Hank will continue to provide his industry insight and strategic counsel going forward as an advisor to the company.

Please join me in congratulating Hank on a quarter-century of great work, and wishing him the best of luck in his new adventure.

RSA Explains How It Was Hacked

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:00:07 +0000

In the end, even computer security companies suffer from the kind of human failings that make securing computers such a challenge. That’s at least one lesson to draw from the explanation from RSA, the company which makes the widely used security tokens like the ones in the picture. It disclosed last month that it had come under an “extremely sophisticated attack,” and that some information concerning the tokens has been taken by unknown attackers.

Initially, it released no details about how the attack was carried out. Now, RSA–which is a unit of storage giant EMC–has gone into some detail concerning how its systems were breached, in a blog post by Uri Rivner, whose title is Head of New Technologies, Identity Protection and Verification. It all started with phishing emails. Over the course of two days, two groups of emails were sent to a small group of employees, none of them high profile, nor apparently especially senior. Though RSA doesn’t spell out who received them, the emails may well have gone to the human resources department or some other quiet corner of the company. The emails contained an Excel spreadsheet attachment entitled “2011 Recruitment Plans.” Naturally it was created to look just believable enough that one of the employees who received it fished it out of the spam folder to which it was initially directed and opened it. You can probably fill in most of the blanks from here.

The spreadsheet contained a Zero-day exploit that took advantage of a weakness in Adobe Flash, which has since been patched. Through that hole, attackers were able to install anything they wanted on the target machine. They chose a version of a program called Poison Ivy RAT, and in this case RAT stands for “remote administration tool,” a program that is used to control one computer from another in a different location.

Armed with remote access to the target machine, the attackers then set about gaining deeper access to RSA’s corporate network. Like a person masquerading as a real employee searching a company’s building for a set of master keys, these attackers carried out a series of attacks designed to escalate the level of access they had to the system. They gathered login credentials from the relatively low-level accounts they compromised at first, including usernames, passwords, and domain information, then went after higher-value accounts with more access.

Once that was done, they started working on the real job: Finding the data they wanted to steal, and then extracting it from RSA’s systems. They gathered what they wanted, collected it in a “staging area,” compressed it, and then downloaded via FTP.

Still unexplained at this point: What information was taken, and does it in any way affect the integrity of its own security products? When the attack was first disclosed, the company said that some information about its SecureID products was taken by the attackers. This has led to a lot of questions and speculation by security pros who naturally have to think about the worst-case scenario, and frankly, there are many for which the adjective “worst” would apply.

The big looming question is whether or not the attacker gained access to the seeds–the random keys embedded in each token–that are used to generate the constantly changing numeric codes that appear on the device’s display. For instance, in one scenario described by David Scheutz of the Intrepidus Group, the attackers might have found a list of seeds and token serial numbers. Once you have the serial number of an individual token, you can then create your own token that would allow you to impersonate that user on whatever systems they use.

That scenario, which is only one of four on Scheutz’s list, is potentially pretty scary. As of 2009, some 40 million RSA tokens were in use securing networks at companies large and small and at numerous government agencies. And aside from the hardware tokens, software that mimics them runs on some 250 million smart phones.

When it first revealed the attack, RSA said it was “confident that the information extracted does not enable a successful direct attack on any of our RSA SecurID customers,” though it did say it thought the information taken would make attack easier. Hopefully RSA has more to say about all this in the coming days.

Separately, EMC said today it has acquired privately held NetWitness, which specializes in network security analysis. NetWitness provides “precise and pervasive network visibility” which gives companies the ability to detect and cope with “advanced threats” while automating the investigation process. NetWitness will operate within RSA. Financial terms have not been disclosed, but judging by the description of this attack, it seems like a timely acquisition.

DocVerse–Now Google Cloud Connect–Head Shan Sinha Talks About Web-Based Biz Apps

Kara Swisher — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:00:22 +0000

Earlier this week, I motored the Mini down to the Googleplex in Silicon Valley to visit with entrepreneur Shan Sinha.

He headed the start-up DocVerse, which was acquired by the search giant in March for a reported $25 million to $30 million.

Since then, Sinha has been ferreting away on scaling up DocVerse’s product, which allows users of Microsoft Office documents to collaborate in real-time on the Web.

Its new name: Google Cloud Connect.

About 4,000 companies quickly signed up to be early testers in the preview program, and Google said it had thousands of requests to be notified when it becomes available, which will be in a few weeks.

DocVerse was founded in 2008 by Sinha and Alex DeNeui, who both used to work at Microsoft. It raised only $1.3 million in venture funding from Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal and Naval Ravikant.

Google’s acquisition of it was yet another shot across Microsoft’s software bow, along with a range of mashups of cloud computing and productivity applications.

For example, Google has been pushing its own cloud-based Google Docs to compete against the Office juggernaut.

For its part, Microsoft has committed itself to moving its hugely popular productivity suite–which includes Word, PowerPoint and Excel–into the cloud, in order to protect its software hegemony.

Why? Simultaneous group-editing and collaboration online is the future of Office.

Clearly, the race for productivity applications is in the cloud.

So–along with Cloud Connect –Sinha has been put in charge of deploying a $50 a person package of them, including Sites, Gmail, Docs, Calendar and Video, to millions of business users.

Here is Sinha talking about all of that and more in the video interview I did with him:

[ See post to watch video ]

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Using Phones Globally

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 22:40:27 +0000

My Motorola Android phone does not work outside of the U.S. Does the Samsung Galaxy have the same problem? Will the forthcoming Verizon iPhone work in Europe?

I combined two reader questions here, because they both touch on a common source of confusion. I presume that the Motorola Android phone that only works in the U.S. is sold by either Verizon or Sprint, because they use network technology that is primarily found in the U.S., and not, say, in Europe. Thus, phone makers like Motorola and Samsung tailor their Verizon and Sprint models to this U.S.-centric technology, called CDMA.

However, both Motorola and Samsung also make Android phones for AT&T and T-Mobile, which use a network technology called GSM that is standard in most of the rest of the world. These models should work outside of the U.S. There are a few “world phones” sold by Verizon and Sprint, which include both network technologies. For instance, Verizon sells two Android phones, the Droid Pro and the Droid 2 Global, which fall into that category.

As for the reported forthcoming Verizon iPhone, I don’t know if it will be limited to CDMA, which would make it essentially a U.S.-only device, or whether it will also be compatible with GSM, which would make it a world phone.

I live in South Africa, and want to buy the Samsung Tab to make my job easier, but to do that I must be able to work with Microsoft Excel documents. Editing and using dropdown boxes is essential. Can this be done?

The Tab, and other Android devices, can view and edit Excel documents using either a built-in mobile office suite (ThinkFree was pre-installed on the Tab I tested) or one you can obtain through the Android Market, like Quickoffice. You can also use online spreadsheet apps.

However, as with the same or similar apps for the iPad, these are limited compared to using Excel on a PC or Mac, and I cannot say whether they’d have the features and two-way document fidelity you personally might require. I didn’t test editing Excel documents on the Tab.

I am considering purchasing the iPad but have learned that it does not allow users to create folders in which documents can be stored. This would be incredibly useful for me for business purposes while I travel (i.e., separate client folders with client-specific documents in each). I have heard that Apple’s new operating system upgrade might make this possible, but I haven’t been able to confirm it. Do you happen to know whether that is the case?

The new folder feature coming to the iPad is meant for grouping apps, not documents. Apple’s operating system for its mobile devices, called iOS, doesn’t have a global document folder capability.

However, individual iPad apps, such as the very powerful GoodReader, do allow you to create folders that can hold all manner of documents, and you can name and organize these folders as you wish. But these folders are only accessible from within the app that creates them.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

New Nook Brings a Little Color to E-Reading

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 22:44:47 +0000

Book lovers nowadays fall into one of two camps: They either eschew e-readers altogether, preferring the look and feel of print books; or they dive wholeheartedly into e-books, instantly downloading and racing through more titles by the handfuls. If you count yourself in the latter category, you’re in luck.

[ See post to watch video ]

Starting this week, Barnes & Noble will ship its $249 Nook Color (nookcolor.com), a luxury model in the e-reader world currently dominated by the $139 monochrome Amazon.com Kindle. While the original Nook offered a gray-scale reading screen and a thin, color touch strip for browsing the bookstore, this model is one big color touch screen. It connects to the Web using only Wi-Fi and costs $100 more than last year’s comparable Wi-Fi Nook, but a Barnes & Noble spokeswoman said that preorders online and in stores are far exceeding company expectations, with over twice as many as for last year’s Nook.

I’ve been testing the Nook Color over the past week and I like its book-size build and stylish design. Its user interface is inviting and its digital bookstore is redesigned to make shopping for books enjoyable. Nook Color is aimed at people who are primarily focused on reading but crave the iPad’s color and some of its versatility.

Like the Kindle, the Nook Color has a Web browser and some apps but no dedicated email program or way to access an app store. A spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble says a full email program and app store are expected early next year.

The Nook Color is unapologetically focused on reading. It accesses Barnes & Noble’s library of two million downloadable books and over 100 magazines and newspapers (fewer were available during my pre-release testing). The reader has a feature called ArticleView that displays magazine articles in a clear, readable format. You can highlight passages from books and then share them with friends through Facebook, Twitter or a limited, in-book email system. A LendMe feature gives users an easy way to digitally lend their books to friends for 14 days. And for kids, there’s a feature where popular stories are read aloud by people rather than a computer voice.

The Nook Color is more than just a bright, color screen: It’s built on the Android 2.1 operating system—the same mobile OS used to run many smartphones. This gives the device access to a full Web browser for tasks like reading favorite sites or checking Facebook, which I did easily. Early next year Nook Color will upgrade to Android 2.2, allowing it to play Flash videos.

The Nook Color

Eight apps found in a section called Extras come loaded on the device including apps for Pandora Internet Radio, chess and Sudoku. I logged into my Pandora account, quickly retrieved my saved list of stations and played a QuickMix of music. I was able to work on a crossword puzzle or read a book or magazine on the Nook Color while still listening to Rihanna on the music app. Quickoffice software for Word, Excel and PowerPoint comes built into the Nook Color so users can view—but not edit—documents in these programs if they’re loaded onto the device with a MicroSD card. Until the Nook Color’s app store launches early next year, there’s no way to download free or paid apps.

Navigating around the Nook Color is a cinch. A tiny “n” just below the screen returns you to the home screen, which can be customized with photos loaded via a MicroSD card. The Daily Shelf is a dedicated horizontal section at the bottom of the home screen that updates whenever possible with new versions of newspapers (daily), magazines (weekly or monthly, if you subscribe) or books lent to you by friends. Anything on the Daily Shelf can be dragged out onto the home screen, placed anywhere and resized by pinching two fingers out or together. A Quick Nav button displays the Nook Color’s six sections: Library, Shop, Search, Extras, Web and Settings. A helpful “Keep Reading” prompt at the top of the home screen shows the last thing you were reading; selecting it sends you to right where you left off.

Nook Color weighs just under a pound, or twice as much as the Kindle but still a half-pound lighter than Apple’s larger iPad. It felt a bit heavy in my hands as I read from it for a long period of time, but I solved that by leaning it against a desk or pillow.

While reading Stacy Schiff’s “Cleopatra: A Life,” I found a particularly interesting tidbit about first-century B.C. marriage contracts requiring wives to vow not to add love potions to their husbands’ food or drink. I highlighted this passage by tapping once on the screen and dragging highlighter handles around it, and then sent it to friends via email with a built-in shortcut for sharing through email, Facebook or Twitter. I selected another passage and posted it on my Facebook wall for friends to read. All these posts had links to buy books from Barnes & Noble.

I really enjoyed reading magazines on the Nook Color because these appeared much as they do in print. Brightly colored pages appeared one at a time when I held the device vertically, or two pages at a time in horizontal view. Magazines can be bought per issue or via subscriptions; a single current issue of House Beautiful was $4.50 or $1.99 with a subscription. The Quick Nav button works in magazines, too, so you can flick a finger right or left to skip ahead to specific sections or articles.

If you love reading and want to share your books with friends or reading updates with social networks, the Nook Color has you covered. It will also give you a taste of tablet computing with functions like browsing the Web, using some apps and eventually, full emailing. Just remember that Nook Color is laser-focused on e-reading.

A correction was made to this column on 11/17/2010 to reflect that Quickoffice is not owned by Microsoft.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Live from Facebook's Email Messages Launch

Liz Gannes — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:04:49 +0000

Facebook has called the press to yet another launch event, this time in San Francisco for a new Facebook email system. Luckily, they brought their own cafeteria chairs so our butts will feel right at home after a long summer of launches at the company’s Palo Alto, Calif., office.

At the St. Regis hotel in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg says young people say email is too slow. They prefer Facebook or SMS.

Zuck: IM or SMS are much simpler, and people want lighter-weight things that they can use all over the place. So we need…a modern messaging system.

350 million people actively use messaging on Facebook, in part because it’s really simple. Four billion messages are sent per day. This is “private, private sharing.”

Next-generation messaging would be: seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal and short. (Those are a lot of synonyms, no?)

“This is not email. Email is one way that people will use this system, but it’s not even the primary way we think they will use it.”

Now a three-panel slide is up showing the key topics of the announcement–”seamless messaging,” “conversation history” and “social inbox.” Zuckerberg promises, “We can do some really good filtering for you to make sure you only see messages you really care about.”

Zuck brings on Andrew Bosworth to demo the product.

So this is actually a relaunch of the “Messages” tool. Not email-specific. Takes all correspondence between two friends and puts them in one place.

Everyone gets an @facebook.com email address with their username. “As much as we’re providing an email address, the system’s not email,” says Boz–more like instant messaging.

Boz uses convo about dinner plans as an example, with messaging across different platforms, including IM on Facebook, email, iPhone notifications, etc. The example restaurant is Piccino in San Francisco, where, fun fact, I was for a short time the Foursquare mayor. No longer though.

Integrates with Jabber, IMAP and one more I missed. (Sorry, first time liveblogging with this tool!)

Boz shows the history of Facebook messages with his girlfriend of the last four years. But doesn’t include their instant messages and other communication. Individual messages may not be profound, but collectively they provide a narrative about someone I care about, says Boz.

Facebook rebuilt infrastructure for this project, because it’s especially important that messages don’t get lost.

Instead of Cassandra (which FB created for email search and then open sourced), the company chose something new: HBase. They also used Haystack, Thrift, ZooKeeper and memcache.

This is the biggest engineering team Facebook has ever put together for a launch–15 people, Boz says.

Users have three categories: 1) Messages: Conversations with actual people. 2) Other: Email lists and the like. And 3) Junk.

The big idea is “picking up where you left off” no matter what device or medium.

This project has been in the works for the last 15 months.

Zuck: “This is not an email killer. This is a messaging system that includes email as a part of it. We don’t expect anyone to wake up tomorrow and say, I’m going to shut down my Yahoo account or my Gmail account and switch to Facebook.”

(Read: You silly press, we’re not competing with Gmail, we’re bigger than Gmail!)

Rolling out slowly over the next few months, starting with an invite system (ha! how Gmail!).

Oh, about IMAP: No support yet, so users can’t synch with other email systems. But Facebook wants to add later.

Interesting: Facebook messages won’t have subject lines. You just have a single messaging history with each person.

If you have been interacting with someone through email, then we’ll send replies back to email. You can indicate that you want a message to go directly to their phone. If you’re online, you get a message as an IM.

Boz: This is the end of “BRB” or “GTG.” Follows you wherever you go. (Sounds ominous when you say it like that.)

Question from audience: Will you add voice or video?

Zuck: For now only SMS, IM, email and FB messages–all are text. “We think this is a pretty big step by itself, and one we just wanted to take before we get started on the next set of things.”

Question from audience: Will you have contextual ads?

Zuck: Yes, ads work the same as on the rest of Facebook, but not targeted specific to content in a message.

Zuck on Gmail competition: “They have a great product. Email is still really important to a lot of people. If we build a great product that people want to use, then people will use it.”

Question from audience: Can users go off the record like in Gmail?

Boz: Users can delete any message.

Zuck: Off the record like in IM doesn’t make sense because users may be receiving messages in a different way than you send them. If someone gets something in email instead of IM it would be unnatural to have it off the record.

Question: How will this treat communication with people who are not on Facebook?

Boz: You can communicate with whoever you want to, and will have access to all that history of the conversation.

Zuck: If you’re not a part of the FB system and outside the social graph, your emails to FB users will go into “Other” folder to start off with, rather than the main. Once the recipient says you’re an important person, you’ll go into the main folder.

Question: What about silly joke emails from your mom? Can you filter those?

Zuck: There’s only one thread with every person.

Question: What about Facebook employee email addresses?

Zuck: “After a long discussion, the Farm Bureau has agreed to give us fb.com. And in the terms of that we have agreed not to sell farm subsidies.”

Facebook hasn’t mentioned this, but Microsoft just emailed to make sure people know they’re involved.

“As part of Facebook’s new messaging system: http://apps.facebook.com/facebooklive/ –Microsoft is integrating the Office experience. Over the coming months, customers will be able to access and share Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents as attachments to their Facebook messages. Sharing new ideas, key points of inspiration and important information just got easier–even when the need to access or share that content strikes in the middle of your latest status update.”

Question: Can you fill in the blanks of associating email addresses with Facebook friends?

Boz: Not yet, but it’s imaginable.

(Uh-oh–how is this going to work when people have multiple contacts for themselves?)

Question: Storage?

“If you’re a good user, you have no concern. For people who try to find limits, they will find them.” Another ominous comment from Boz.

Okay, they’re cutting us off.

Here’s the Facebook blog post on the announcement.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Mac Users Are Getting New Outlook From Rival

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 02:03:34 +0000

A new, faster, better version of Microsoft Office is coming out Oct. 26. But it isn’t for Microsoft’s own Windows operating system. It is for the Macintosh computers made by the software giant’s archrival, Apple. And, among other things, it will bestow upon the Mac a benefit heretofore available only on Windows: Outlook. The popular email, calendar and contacts program is finally arriving on the Mac in a version that looks and works very much like the Windows version.

[ See post to watch video ]

The advent of a robust, full-featured Outlook for the Mac isn’t all that’s new in Office for Mac 2011, but it’s a big deal, especially for Mac users, or those wishing to switch to the Mac, who work in companies where Outlook is the standard. These folks already have been able to use the Windows version of Outlook on their machines, using special software that lets the Mac run Windows. But now, they can use a native Mac version of the program that can import data directly from Windows Outlook.

I’ve been testing this new version of Mac Office—in fact, I’m writing this column in its new edition of Word—and I like it a lot. While it isn’t an exact clone of Office for Windows, I found in my tests that each of its key components—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—has been significantly improved and made more compatible with its Windows sibling.

So, even Mac Office users who don’t use Outlook will be pleased by the changes. And, while there are some features in the Windows version still missing in the Mac edition, there are also some new Mac-only features. In general, there’s now more parity between the two.

Like the prior Mac version, Office 2008, released nearly three years ago, the new Office 2011 uses the same file formats as the Windows version. It can read and write Office files without any conversion or translation, so a document produced in, say, Word for the Mac, can be read by a user of Windows Word without the latter even knowing it was created on a Mac—and vice versa.

Unlike the 2008 version, the new Mac Office can seamlessly interact with Microsoft’s new stripped-down, free, online version of Office, called Office Web Apps. And it can save to, and open documents from, Microsoft’s free online SkyDrive file repository, or its SharePoint online service for businesses.

The first thing Mac Office users will notice about the new 2011 version is its speed. While the 2008 version was faster than its predecessors, this latest version is dramatically snappier. In my tests, all the components launched much, much faster than their 2008 counterparts, and opened even large documents much more quickly.

A new full screen view in Word shows just a single line of minimal tools.

High Fidelity

Another big plus is fidelity with Windows documents. Because the Windows and Mac operating systems are different, fidelity isn’t perfect, but, in my tests, it was much better in this new version. For instance, some fancy Word layouts and font treatments created in Windows that formerly looked wrong when opened on a Mac now look the same. This is especially noticeable in Excel, where charts and layouts on complex spreadsheets sometimes didn’t carry over. In my tests, I found that many of these incompatibles have been banished.

These fidelity improvements, however, are much better with documents created in the latest Windows version, called Office 2010, and are weaker with those created in older Windows versions. Also, the new Mac version has restored the same macro system present in the Windows version, so automated actions created by power users and companies in Windows documents can now be used in the Mac version.

There still are some things the Windows version does that the Mac version doesn’t. These include pivot charts in Excel, full video editing in PowerPoint, and the new “backstage” feature that presents printing and other options in a large, easier-to-use mode. But there also are some Mac-only features, including the ability to dynamically reorder PowerPoint slides in a 3-D view, plus a new Full Screen view in Word that allows reading and editing documents with no toolbars, or with just a single line of minimal tools.

The radically different Ribbon toolbar that appeared in Windows Office several years ago—a series of tabs organized by function—is also in this new Mac version. But, unlike in the Windows version, the new Mac Office retains the familiar menus and toolbar icons, and the Ribbon can be turned off completely, except in Outlook. However, unlike in the latest Windows version, you can’t add custom tabs to the Ribbon.

Outlook replaces a Microsoft (MSFT) email, contacts and calendar program in Mac Office called Entourage, which itself succeeded an old, very limited version of Outlook for the Mac produced years ago. Many users found Entourage clunky and complicated, and it couldn’t directly import data from Outlook on Windows.

Microsoft strove hard to make the new Outlook look and work like the one on Windows. There still are some Windows Outlook features the Mac version lacks, such as side-by-side calendars and task status reports, but, overall, I found it worked well.

Microsoft strove hard to make the new Outlook look and work very much like the one on Windows.

The Sync Situation

I was able to import a nearly 3-gigabyte Windows Outlook data file with no problems. And I was able to easily and perfectly import all my messages and settings from Apple’s own built-in Mail program and to sync with Apple’s (AAPL) built-in Mac address book. But Microsoft is still working on syncing with Apple’s iCal calendar program, and the Outlook calendar can’t sync with Google Calendar. Also, while the new Mac Outlook can import Windows Outlook data, it can’t export its data to Windows yet. Microsoft says it is also working on that.

In general, Outlook on the Mac proved fast and capable in my tests. It doesn’t work exactly like its Windows counterpart, but Windows users will find it very similar. And it has some Mac-specific features. For instance, its contents can be easily searched by the Mac’s built-in universal search feature, Spotlight, and can be backed up by the Mac’s Time Machine backup system.

Office for Mac 2011 will be available in two versions for average consumers: a $199 Home and Business edition, and a Home and Student version, which costs $119, but lacks Outlook, whereas Entourage was included in the $149 similarly named 2008 package. Prices on both new editions are higher if you want to install them on multiple machines. There is also a $99 special academic edition, mostly aimed at college stores, that includes Outlook, but has no option for multiple installations.

Microsoft’s new Mac Office is by far the best Mac version of the suite I’ve used, and I can recommend it.

Find Walt’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

Windows Phone 7: There's an App for Some of That

John Paczkowski — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:15:36 +0000

How many Windows Phone 7 apps will be available when the first devices running the OS ship? Microsoft refuses to say (“Thousands that people are developing right now” seems to be the closest it’s gotten to a hard number), but I’m told it will be plenty.

Or, as one exec told me, “enough.”

Obviously, that’s tough to quantify. That said, the list of apps announced today is a good start, even if it does seem pretty short. On the mobile A/V front, there are Netflix (NFLX), IMDB, Slacker, I Heart Radio and MusixMatch. T-Mobile users will get T-Mobile TV, while AT&T (T) users will get U-verse. For the moment, WP7′s big social media app will be Twitter, though I imagine there’s a Facebook app on the way. For e-commerce, there’s eBay (EBAY), Fandango and Travelocity. And finally, there’s a growing list of games (60+ at last count) that includes Monopoly, Need for Speed Undercover, Tetris, The Sims 3, Star Wars, Bejeweled, Assassin’s Creed, Fast & Furious 7, Guitar Hero 5 and Halo Waypoint.

Add to that Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bing search engine and an Office Hub that provides mobile versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as SharePoint integration, and you’ve got the beginnings of a decent ecosystem. Remember, when Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes App Store first launched it had about 500 third-party applications. Today it boasts more than 250,000.

Which is not to say that the development of the WP7 app ecosystem will be as quick or tremendous. Clearly, there’s much ramping-up yet to be done. But there will be enough marquee apps available at launch that the device certainly won’t seem lacking, as some other mobile operating systems did when they debuted. Netflix, Twitter, eBay, a groaning board of games and a mobile office productivity suite is enough to get anyone started, particularly if they’ve only just decided to trade up from a feature phone to a smartphone.

FURTHER COVERAGE:

“Delightful” Windows Phone 7 Coming November 8

Windows Phone 7: It’s Now or Never

Microsoft Office Simplified For the Web

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 01:03:00 +0000

I am writing this in Microsoft Word, hardly an unusual way to author a document. But I’m not using Word as you know it—part of the large, complex Microsoft Office suite installed on your computer’s hard drive. Instead, I am using a new, streamlined version of Word that for the first time resides on remote servers you reach through the Internet.

[ See post to watch video ]

This new version of Word is used inside a Web browser. It works on both Windows PCs and Macs, and via the newer versions of the major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. It’s free and it doesn’t require you to have regular Office on your computer.

Word isn’t the only Office component that’s now available in a free online version. Microsoft (MSFT) has created similar simplified versions of Excel, PowerPoint and its OneNote note-taking program as part of the free online suite called Office Web Apps, which is available at office.live.com. To use the new online Office, you’ll need a free account for the company’s broader Windows Live online service.

Microsoft is also releasing a new version of its traditional desktop Office for Windows next week, called Office 2010. But in my view, the online edition is the most interesting new development for consumers in this round of updates. It’s part of the broader trend toward cloud computing—doing tasks online rather than with desktop programs. And it’s meant to help the software giant compete with rival online office suites from competitors like Google (GOOG) and Zoho.

I’ve been testing Office Web Apps on both Windows and Mac computers, and in all four major browsers, and I like it. It has some downsides and is still a work in progress. It lacks many of the more sophisticated features of the local, desktop version of Office. In fact, Microsoft—apparently trying to protect its profitable desktop suite—refers to Office Web Apps as a “companion” to desktop Office, for “light” work.

The Office Web Apps version of Word is used inside a Web browser.

But these are capable, if simpler, programs that look and feel like their desktop counterparts and they will likely meet the needs of many consumers who produce basic documents, even if they don’t own desktop Office. Also, the new Web Apps are connected to a generous 25 gigabytes of free online storage for your documents, via a companion Microsoft online storage system called SkyDrive.

Another big benefit: Microsoft boasts its Office Web Apps produce documents that use the same file formats as the desktop programs and thus, look fully accurate when opened in desktop Office. The company calls this “fidelity.” In my tests, this claim held true, at least on my Windows PC. (A revised version of Microsoft Office for the Mac, tuned to work with Web Apps, is in the works.)

The new version of the desktop Office suite also has many new features, but a lot of these are for power users or corporate users, and, overall, it isn’t nearly as big a change as its predecessor, Office 2007. Among the new desktop features consumers will notice and use are the extension of the consolidated top tool bar called the “Ribbon,” introduced in the 2007 version in most Office programs, to Outlook; a new unified view for printing, sharing and previewing documents, called “Backstage”; and richer graphics. You can also now customize the Ribbon.

In my tests of the streamlined Office Web Apps, I was able to use a variety of fonts and styles, insert and resize photos, and create tables. And I was able to view my documents, though not edit them, on an iPhone and iPad. This also works with other mobile devices.

One glitch I ran into in the Word Web App was that, if you use a tab to start a paragraph, it changes the left margin of each subsequent line. Microsoft says this is a bug and it is working to fix it.

Another downside for some users may be that the Web Apps only directly open documents from, and save them to, your online SkyDrive storage, not your hard disk. So you have to upload files from your hard disk to SkyDrive to edit them in the Web Apps. And, like most cloud-based programs, they can only be used when you’re online.

There are numerous things you may be used to doing in desktop Office that can’t be done in the online version. For instance, you can’t drag photos by the corners to resize them, embed videos, create slide transitions or add new spreadsheet charts.

You can, with one click, open a Web version of your document in the full desktop program, to take advantage of richer editing. However, this only works with certain combinations of browsers and desktop Office versions.

Two of the Web apps, Excel and OneNote, allow multiple users to log on and work on the same document together. The others don’t yet. In fact, in my tests, I couldn’t open a Word document locally until I had closed it online, and vice versa. Microsoft says it is working on expanding simultaneous use to all the apps.

Office Web Apps are a good start for Microsoft at bringing its productivity expertise to the Web, and may be all many consumers need for creating simple documents.

Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos, free, at walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Making Hotmail Hot Again

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:07:27 +0000

Like it or not, your personal email address says something about you. Gmail tends to be considered the cool email to have today. Apple’s (AAPL) .Mac addresses (now .Me) identify users who own Macs and don’t mind paying $100 a year for email and related services. AOL (AOL) emails are tied to adults who haven’t changed their address since the dial-up days. And Hotmail is seen as old school.

[ See post to watch video ]

Since its debut in 1996, Hotmail has soared to 400 million users world-wide. But it also lost users along the way—particularly in 2008—due in part to a general perception that Hotmail wasn’t as modern as other email services.

Starting this week, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) will try to change the way Hotmail is perceived by rolling out a revamped version. The company, which bought the program in 1998, has scrapped its attempts to get people to use its site for social networking, acknowledging that companies like Facebook and Twitter are already doing the job. And it has cleaned up its once confusing nomenclature: Hotmail is the sole name for Microsoft’s Web email program.

To spread the word, Microsoft recently launched a massive marketing campaign, involving online, radio and outdoor ads running through the end of the year, that will cost the company tens of millions of dollars, according to Microsoft general manager, Brian Hall. Mr. Hall says that “The New Busy” campaign is intended to demonstrate how Hotmail’s organizational features help busy people with full lives. Part of the campaign will focus on reintroducing current Hotmail users to new features.

But should you really consider reviving your old Hotmail account or opening a new one? I’ve been using this new version of Hotmail for the past few weeks and I’ve found it handled large files with ease, performed browser-like tasks within the inbox and integrated third-party social networks and email accounts. Though the Hotmail name still conjures up frustrating memories of too much spam and the belief that storage was restricted, Microsoft has revamped its old email service into one that’s smart, robust and reliable. It deserves a second look.

The new Hotmail displays more on one screen, including photos.

Hotmail is still big on sorting emails according to your existing “Contacts” versus everyone else. This works well if you’ve taken the time to add all of your friends to the Contacts list, a procedure that takes a couple seconds per person and is done as you send emails to people. This prompting can be a bit of a pain, but if you haven’t done it, you might miss emails from people you care about. A Microsoft representative said that by the end of this summer, users will be able to opt out of this sorting.

At first glance, the new Hotmail doesn’t look dramatically different. But a closer look reveals intelligent organizational tools. Shortcut tabs at the top of the inbox display only messages from social networks (think of all those email notifications from Facebook and Twitter), pre-made email groups or contacts. Many other email programs only do this if users manually set up folders.

Another organizational tool is called Quick Views. It automatically sorts four types of emails into folders: Flagged, Photos, Office Docs and Shipping Updates. These categories come preset and cannot be customized.

Quick Views saved me from digging through my inbox for specific emails and from dragging certain emails into folders for saving. When I ordered gifts online for a friend’s wedding, the shipping notification emails from the delivery service arrived in my inbox and were also viewable in the Shipping Updates folder. Emails with attached Office documents were neatly sorted into the Office Docs folder.

Behind the scenes of the revamped Hotmail, Microsoft is powering all inboxes with Windows Live SkyDrive—an ever-growing, server-based storage repository that guarantees you’ll never be asked to clean out your inbox. (As with many Web-based email programs, Hotmail stores your emails on servers rather than taking up space on your hard drive.)

SkyDrive also gives Hotmail users more freedom when sharing photos: Images can be quickly uploaded to SkyDrive and shared with friends via a Web link. One message can include up to 200 photos of 50 megabytes each, or 10 gigabytes total. Meanwhile, Gmail limits attachments to about 25 megabytes per message.

When Word, PowerPoint or Excel documents are attached to any message received, they are opened right in the Web browser, without having to open another program. This works thanks to a program called Office Web Apps, which functions regardless of whether or not Office 2010 is installed on the computer. Just as photos are shared from Hotmail using a SkyDrive link, so, too, are Office documents.

Hotmail’s inbox now has a Sweep feature, which lets you move or delete all emails from a particular sender. (A similar option in Microsoft Office 2010 wipes out all emails sent prior to the last message in a thread.) Another option for tidying up your inbox is Conversation View, which sorts all emails sent in the same conversation into one group. Users can opt in or out of this, unlike Gmail, which offers only threaded emails.

Tough spam filters caught every Viagra-related email sent to my Hotmail address. And if you identify a piece of mail in the Junk folder that isn’t actually spam, Hotmail remembers this and sorts differently in the future.

Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, now plays a role in Hotmail. It’s built into the search box as an option for scouring Web content directly from the inbox. It can be accessed while composing a message: A small “From Bing” drop-down menu in the email you’re writing lets you search for content to add to emails, like maps, videos, images and movie show times. This content appears in a right-side panel and can be embedded in email messages with one click.

To keep people from straying away to different Web pages while using Hotmail, Web functions can be performed from right within its inbox. These functions include watching videos from YouTube or Hulu, or viewing photos from Flickr or SmugMug. I clicked on YouTube links in emails and watched videos in a handsome overlay screen. And if an email includes codes for tracking packages using the U.S. Postal Service, the package’s real-time shipping status appears within the email. A Microsoft representative confirmed that FedEx and UPS are in the works.

I added my Gmail account to my Hotmail account, so I could check several personal email messages on the same Web page. In a similar manner, Hotmail can pull multiple contacts from several networks—like phone numbers and emails from LinkedIn or birthdays from Facebook—into a single Contact list.

Hotmail may have burned you in the past, but this beefed-up new version saves you time and is a pleasure to use.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg. Email Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Online Help for Parents Who Volunteer

Pui-wing Tam — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 01:03:29 +0000

It takes a lot to organize a classroom of 20 children. It can take even more to organize the kids’ busy parents—and that often means turning to technology to get everyone on the same page.

Over the past nine months, my first-grader’s school has seen that in spades. Like many elementary schools, ours relies on parent volunteers to help out with one-on-one reading with students and math exercises. In my 6-year-old’s class, at least two parent volunteers are needed a day. In the past, volunteers were organized the old-fashioned way on paper, with parents signing up for their preferred time slots for the month on a calendar sent home with their children.

But in recent years as more schools and families have gone digital, parents are opting for an online solution to organizing volunteer class time. And a host of volunteering and calendar services have popped up on the Web to oblige them. When I asked our school’s room parent which online sites people were using to organize volunteering, he blasted out an email to poll his network of room parents. The informal survey yielded one conclusion: Each classroom was using different services, each with their own perks and drawbacks. Among the hodge-podge of choices were well-known applications such as Yahoo Inc.’s Yahoo Groups and Google Inc.’s Calendar, as well as less familiar names including VolunteerSpot Inc.’s VolunteerSpot and Doodle AG’s Doodle.com.

All are easily accessible on the Web and are free (though some charge a fee for premium users). All allow a central organizer to set up a master calendar or group online and invite other people to join, thereby getting everyone onto the same technological platform.

VolunteerSpot lets an organizer create a calendar, with tasks parents could volunteer to do.

Each also has limitations. Some make it difficult to print a volunteer schedule. Others don’t have automatic reminders to notify a participant that their volunteer session is coming up, or they make it tough to export the calendar to be integrated with, say, your calendar at work.

Of all the technologies our school’s parents are using, Yahoo’s Groups has been around the longest. Launched in 1999, Yahoo says it now hosts more than 10 million groups that are accessed by some 120 million members. Signing up to create a Yahoo Group is a breeze—with a few clicks, people can name a group and invite others to join. Once set up, parents can post comments, send photos and other attachments to the group, and sign up for spots with an integrated calendar application. Over the years, Yahoo has added new features, including tools to help build an event and to gather RSVPs.

But some parents complain that using a Yahoo Group creates unnecessary spam when some people forget they’re communicating with a group instead of one on one. In addition, Groups’ calendar application is difficult to import and export. Yahoo says that later this year, it will roll out a refresh of Groups that will “enable smaller groups to do things more efficiently.”

Google Calendar, launched in 2007, got a fresh new look for the application last month. The application is also easy to create and to invite people to join. Other parents can share the calendar, see at a glance what volunteer spots are available and fill in the ones they want. Reminders are built in, and Google Calendar can sync with Microsoft Outlook or other calendaring systems.

One of our school’s first-grade classes, though, faced a hurdle when it came to joining their Google Calendar. Some parents said they couldn’t join because they didn’t have a Gmail email account and didn’t want to jump through the hoops of creating one. Google says people don’t have to have a Gmail account but adds there is often confusion between a Gmail account and a plain-vanilla Google account, which only requires people to enter a username and password.

No such puzzlement should exist with Doodle.com, which doesn’t ask users for their email. Launched in 2003 by a developer in Zurich, Doodle.com allows people to quickly get on a calendar, select dates and times for an event, then send out the link so people can fill in when they want to volunteer. But Doodle.com is designed primarily for setting up a business meeting, the company says. Organizing a month’s worth of classroom volunteers thus requires clicking each specific date to create a volunteer spot for it. In other services, you can bring up a month’s calendar. Printing out a Doodle.com calendar also entails someone first exporting the calendar to a PDF or an Excel spreadsheet.

One parent, who is a Doodle.com fan, says she finds the application is better used to organize one-off events such as a school field trip rather than maintaining an ongoing volunteer calendar.

VolunteerSpot was launched early last year by entrepreneur Karen Bantuveris, who says she was aggravated with the lack of tools to solve volunteer-coordinating problems at her child’s preschool. VolunteerSpot allows an organizer to create a calendar, use a tool called the planning wizard to choose tasks they need people to volunteer for, and then send the link out so people can chime in for what slots they can fill.

VolunteerSpot has gotten mixed reviews from our first-grade class. While our parent-volunteer coordinator said the website is very “usable”—with reminders automatically sent two days before a volunteer session, among other things—it was less smooth in some areas.

VolunteerSpot doesn’t allow people to see a month’s worth of volunteers at a glance; people have to click on each day to see who is volunteering, for instance. Printing a calendar isn’t easy. When I clicked on our class calendar, I could print out only my volunteer slots and not the entire class’s since I wasn’t the calendar’s administrator.

My first-grader’s teacher was particularly frustrated by those things since they prevented her from easily seeing who was volunteering when and from printing out a calendar to prompt laggards to volunteer. She says it meant she often had to bug our parent-volunteer coordinator for updates and to make changes to the calendar.

Ms. Bantuveris says the site is constantly adding features and that more than one person can be a calendar’s administrator, which allows them to make changes to a calendar’s settings. She adds that the site in February added an option allowing an administrator print out a master calendar.

Still, there’s one thing these technologies can’t overcome: parental resistance. One of our school’s first-grade classes started the academic year with VolunteerSpot—but quickly abandoned it. Instead, they switched to a paper calendar. “We just couldn’t get anyone to sign up online,” says the room parent for that class. With a paper calendar, she adds, the volunteering has gone much more smoothly.

Walter S. Mossberg will return June 10.

Write to Pui-Wing Tam at pui-wing.tam@wsj.com

Confirmed: Google Acquires DocVerse in Office Faceoff With Microsoft [UPDATED]

Kara Swisher — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:12:39 +0000

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

[UPDATE: Google confirmed the deal in a blog post, which you can read below, as well as in interviews BoomTown did today with execs at DocVerse and Google.]

Continuing its acquisition spree, Google has snapped up DocVerse, a start-up that allows users of Microsoft Office documents to collaborate in real-time on the Web, said several sources.

Sources said the price was in the $25 to $30 million range.

Founded by two ex-Microsoft (MSFT) execs in 2008, Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui, San Francisco-based DocVerse has raised only $1.3 million in venture funding from Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal and Naval Ravikant.

It’s yet another shot across Microsoft’s software bow by Google (GOOG), along with a range of other digital arenas such as cloud computing and mapping.

Google has been pushing its own cloud-based Google Docs, but it struggles against the Office juggernaut. Thus, a link with Office via DocVerse is a smart move.

Jonathan Rochelle, group product manager on the Google Apps team said that while some perceive the search giant as trying to compete directly with Office (a claim I openly scoffed at during the interview), Google did hear from customers that it wanted cloud-based functionality with Office.

“We heard from customers that there is a great need for help in the cloud,” he said. “This acquisition helps users move over the to cloud and expands our product.”

DocVerse CEO Sinha said his small company–under 20 employees, who will be moving down to the Googleplex HQ in Mountain View, Calif., immediately–had been talking to Google for a while.

“We were gaining traction in the product in large enterprises…so, it made sense, because we have a vision of a world of Web-based collaboration,” he said.

While Sinha said he admired what Microsoft had done with Office, he noted there is a need for more, and a hook-up with the powerful Google will help DocVerse do that sooner.

“Microsoft is doing a lot of great things for its customers who use its stack of software,” he said. “But we see a whole other world interested in the Web-based approach that is not being served very well right now.”

For its part, Microsoft has committed itself to moving its hugely popular productivity suite–which includes Word, PowerPoint and Excel–into the cloud, in order to protect its software hegemony.

Why? Simultaneous group-editing and collaboration online is clearly the future of Office.

In fact, yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a significant statement related to cloud computing in a speech, noting, “This is the bet for the company. For the cloud, we’re all in.”

In an interesting side note, this is the third company that Harrison Metal has invested in that has been acquired by Google over the last several months. Other sales have included AdMob for $750 million and Aardvark for $50 million.

There had been a post in TechCrunch back in December that the deal was nearly done, but it was apparently not completed until now.

Here is the blog post on the deal from Google:

Google Docs welcomes DocVerse

Friday, March 05, 2010 at 10:48 AM

?The future of productivity applications is in the cloud. We’ve always believed the web is the best platform for creating and sharing information, and Google Docs has already helped millions of people become more productive. But we recognize that many people are still accustomed to desktop software. So as we continue to improve Google Docs and Google Sites as rich collaboration tools, we’re also making it easier for people to transition to the cloud, and interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office.
?
For example, we recently made it possible to use Google Docs to store and share any type of file that you have on your computer, not just the ones you create online. Today we’re excited to announce another step towards seamless interoperability: we have acquired DocVerse.

DocVerse is a small, nimble team of talented developers who share our vision, and they’ve enabled true collaboration right within Microsoft Office. With DocVerse, people can begin to experience some of the benefits of web-based collaboration using the traditional Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint desktop applications.

A huge “welcome” to the DocVerse team and their customers! Current DocVerse users can keep using the product as usual, though we’ve suspended new sign-ups until we’re ready to share what’s next. Stay tuned!

Posted by Jonathan Rochelle, Group Product Manager, Google Apps team

Almost Famous: Pat Hanrahan of Tableau

Drake Martinet — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:16:20 +0000

A feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.

This week: We dropped by the Gates Computer Science building at Stanford University for an interview with Pat Hanrahan, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, as well as chief technology officer at Tableau, a business intelligence start-up with Ph.D level chops in data visualization.

Who: Pat Hanrahan

What: Chief Technology Officer

Why: Last Thursday, Tableau launched a public version of the data visualization product it sells to the likes of Microsoft (MSFT), eBay (EBAY) and Google (GOOG). Tableau Public is a free service aimed at journalists, bloggers and academics who want to create original, data-driven graphics similar to those from major news outlets.

Where: tableausoftware.com (Web site); @tableau (Twitter); Seattle and San Francisco (analog places)

Who else: Tableau competes directly with huge enterprise software companies like Oracle (ORCL), IBM (IBM) and SAP (SAP). Tableau Public, on the other hand, signals its entrance into a new market where the field is wide open.

Five Stats You Won’t Find in His Facebook Profile

Worst Job Ever: I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve had mostly good jobs. I guess the worst was when I worked in a paper mill in college. I’d be on fire duty, which meant standing around with a hose and doing nothing. That said, if you go a week in a paper mill without a fire, you are doing well. All that dust accumulates and practically becomes explosive.

Geek Crush: Francis Crick, the molecular biologist. I got my Ph.D in biophysics, and he was one of the only physicists ever to be successful in biology. He also brought theory to biology at a time when it was unheard of, and I thought that was a really big thing. This was back in the late 1970s when it was basically impossible to be a theoretical biologist. I’m a big fan of the mixing of theory and practice. He kind of brought the two of those together.

Gadget of the Moment: You know, I’m a little bit of a gadget guy, but I’m more of a maker type. I like electronics, mechanics, chemistry–lots of things. My favorite recent project was building a cat wheel. It’s like a hamster wheel, but giant, four feet in diameter. I’ve got a Bengal cat. He’s very energetic.

Secret Fame: Pat has two technical Oscars for his founding work on the RenderMan software at Pixar.

Secret Shame: He can’t sing or dance to save his life.

Bio in 140 Characters

Pat grew up in Green Bay. Wisconsin made him a Ph.D chess champion. A self-taught programmer, now he’s a CS professor and entrepreneur.

The Five Questions

You say Tableau is in business intelligence, but what do you really do?

Well, Tableau’s center is really about answering questions with data. A lot of data visualization research is really about making pretty pictures, but we worked with psychologists and graphic designers to understand how people deal with visual data and process it. Let’s say you could answer a question by making a picture that shows the answer. If you want to know what the maximum selling product is, you make a picture where maximum stands out. If you want to know spatial distribution, you make a map. We create pictures that answer questions, but we do it for businesses that want to know things about their own metrics. It has been termed visual analysis–sort of doing a Q&A with data and images.

Who is using it well?

I’ve been really surprised by how many businesses use the sorts of metrics that work well with Tableau. We sell to category managers at eBay, for instance. Google uses us a lot for managing its data centers. We are not really vertical at all. Tableau is useful for anyone who has data.

A really interesting example is our relationship with Xbox. They record all the game play and then offer data through us to their game developers so that the developers can see what the actual game play experience is like. When are people dying? Are players spending time where the developers think they should? Stuff like that.

It is really everything. Some churches use us to keep track of who is donating what on Sundays. Most of our users are the Excel user; maybe they have data, but not a way to visualize it. It’s amazing to me how quantitative so many people are.

So how does Tableau Public differ from your enterprise product?

Well, the market we’re going after right now is individual content producers who might want to put data online. The New York Times (NYT) is often held up as an example of these good graphics, but an individual blogger doesn’t have a huge graphics department.

We offer the service for free, with some limits on number of views, and if the graphics take off, then maybe we’ve earned a paying customer. Also, on the free version, the data is public. It’s good for us because we get exposure, and it’s good for others because they get free access to the technology.

We aren’t immediately concerned about making money with Tableau Public. We already have a robust business selling to other businesses, so we sort of came to the freemium model backwards of most start-ups.

Can you guys really compete with the likes of IBM, SAP and Oracle?

Well, one big reason we get our customers is the whole visual analysis thing that is at the core of what we do. It’s unique to us. We’re also really well known for being easy to use and easy to deploy. A lot of times, what happens in enterprise software, you get these monolithic, giant systems that can be clunky and painful to add new features to. This can be true especially in the analysis arena.

The Dallas Cowboys are a good example. The sales manager there would go to his data guy and say, “I want to know how many jerseys I sold yesterday.” And they’d start giving all these technical answers about the data cube not being connected to the servers and so on. He was sold on us because he could plug in a complex spreadsheet, and we could tell him that answer in a very concrete way in a reasonable amount of time. It all goes back to having that Q&A with your data.

You are a professor of computer science and electrical engineering; you must have a pretty amazing early technology memory that turned you on to the sciences.

For me, it was just science in general, just being a nerd and a scientist. I remember when I bought my first chemistry set from a company now called Elemental Scientific. I remember that I was about eight or so, and most of the research I did was just so I would know what to buy. I saved up all my money and went to the store with my grandmother and came out with this giant box of retorts and flasks and all kinds of stuff. I had a great time the rest of the summer just doing reactions.

The other big thing with me and science was chess. I was the Wisconsin state chess champion in high school, and that is what taught me to really study things. I’ve always been more interested in ideas than technology I guess.

The In Living Color Interview

[ See post to watch video ]

Touch-Up: Apple's iPad Improves Multitouch and Gesture Capabilities

Beth Callaghan — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:19:09 +0000

Apple’s iPad, announced this morning, will definitely make waves in the e-reader market. Undoubtedly, much of its appeal will lie in its color display and ease of use. Much like other OS X applications, the user interface looks intuitive and appealing–very book-like. As seen on the big overhead screens at the presentation in Yerba Buena Center this morning, pages look as if they are written on paper.

“We use the e-pub format, the most popular open-book format in the world,” said Steve Jobs. “We think iPad is going to be a very popular e-reader not just for bestsellers, but for textbooks as well.”

Technology developed for the iPad’s e-reader application has already benefited other Apple programs. A new version of iWork, for example, was developed specifically for the iPad. Keynote, Pages and Numbers have all been optimized for multitouch. Numbers, in particular, has been souped-up; it now boasts a data-entry keyboard along with some 250 built-in functions. The software’s gesture capabilities put Excel to shame.

Apple is going to charge $9.99 for each program, and all three are compatible with their Mac versions.

Apple iPad Event Liveblog

John Paczkowski — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:00:40 +0000

After months of feverish speculation and as many years of wishful thinking, Apple uncrated its tablet computer–the iPad–at an invitation-only event in San Francisco this morning.

Liveblog

9:13 am PT: Quite a scene here this morning; the queue for media credentials is nearly as long as some of the iPhone 3G launch lines I saw a few years back. Moments ago, an Apple PR rep slipped through the doors of the Yerba Buena Center to ask that the press waiting outside take two big steps back. The last time that happened to me, I was at a Jesus Lizard show.

9:54 am: The doors open and the press enters the event hall. Initially, at least, the scene is pretty crazy. “This is like the subway in New York,” an attendee behind me jokes. More like the subway in Tokyo, I think to myself.

A Bob Dylan soundtrack plays as media and guests file in. It’s momentarily interrupted by a “please take your seats, our event is about to begin” announcement.

10:00 am: Interesting stage set-up today: Instead of an empty stage or a simple table, there are a black leather chair and side-table. Lights are dimming….

And Steve Jobs takes the stage to a standing ovation.

“We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical product, but first a few updates….A few weeks ago we sold our 250 millionth iPod…I didn’t want to let that moment pass without recognizing it.”

10:05 am: Jobs offers a quick overview of Apple’s retail operations and some of the new stores it has opened recently before moving on to the iTunes App Store. “A few weeks ago we announced that three billion applications had been downloaded from the App Store–that’s in 18 months…amazing.”
He notes, as he did in the company’s earnings release the other day, that Apple is now a $50 billion company.

Apple is a mobile devices company, says Jobs, “the largest mobile devices company in the world now. Larger than Sony’s mobile device business, larger than Samsung’s and, astonishingly, Nokia’s as well.”

10:07 am: A quick historical overview now. Jobs touches on the first PowerBook, introduced in 1991. He moves on to the MacBook and then the iPhone.

“All of us use laptops and smartphones, now. And the question has arisen lately: Is there room for a device in the middle?…We’ve pondered this question as well.”

This “middle” device, says Jobs, must be better at doing certain tasks than either the laptop or smartphone. If there’s going to be a third-device category, it must be better at browsing the Web, video, photos, music, etc.

“Some folks say this device is a netbook…. The problem is, netbooks aren’t better at anything.”

10:10 am: But we have something that is, says Jobs, “and it’s called the iPad.”

Photos of the device appear on the giant screens. Very thin. Very slick. “IPad offers the best Web browsing experience there is–way better than laptops.” There is no camera that I can see. That’s not going to go over well with folks hoping for a device that supports video iChat.

10:13 am: Further details: The “iPad is a dream to type on,” Jobs says, pointing out its life-sized onscreen keyboard. It’s also an awesome way to enjoy media. iTunes, iTunes University and YouTube HD support are built in.

10:14 am: Jobs sits down to demo the device: “Using this thing is remarkable. It’s so much more intimate and capable than the laptop.” He loads Safari and surfs over to the New York Times (NYT). The iPad loads quickly and Jobs is able to easily navigate the page, loading stories and zooming in on articles.

10:15 am: Demonstrating landscape and portrait now. “This device adapts to the way I want to use it.”

Definitely an impressive browsing experience. Fast and elegant.

Now, an overview of Mail. Also elegant. Nice split-screen presentation. Hit compose, and a nice onscreen keyboard pops up. Jobs types out a message to his colleagues at Apple. Seems relatively easy.

10:19 am: Moving on to iPad’s photo capabilities. It supports iPhoto’s Events, Faces and Places features. It also offers built-in slideshows complete with soundtracks and transitions.

Running a slideshow demo, Jobs pauses and looks out at the audience with a Chesire Cat-wide grin. He’s clearly relishing this moment.

10:22 am:: The iTunes experience on iPad is much as you would expect. Similar, if not identical, to what the software currently offers. Calendar and Contacts apps are also nice and, again, similar to what you’d find on a MacBook or iPhone.

10:24 am: Demoing Google Maps now. The iPad supports Google Street View and the implementation is very slick.

10:25 am: Moving on to video. Jobs calls up an HD clip from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube and displays it in both portrait and landscape. That finished, he fires up iTunes and loads “Star Trek” to demo the device’s video features, scrubbing, etc. Then he shows us a clip from Pixar’s “Up.” Tap to go full-screen. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

10:27 am: Watching that is nothing like actually having one in your hands, says Jobs.

iPad is one-half-inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds, and comes with 9.7 inch IPS display–“very high-quality display”
Full capacitive multitouch
16GB-64GB flash storage
iPad is powered by our Apple’s custom silicon–“We did it inhouse and it just screams,” says Jobs.
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accelerometer, compass.
Battery life: 10 hours.

“And in addition to 10 hours of battery life, iPad offers a full month of standby time,” Jobs notes. “It’s also a good environmental citizen,” he adds, noting that it’s a very green device.

10:31 am: Jobs invites Scott Forestall to the stage to talk about apps on the device.

“We built the iPad to run virtually every app in the App Store right out of the box,” Forestall says.

Evidently, a built-in pixel-doubling feature automatically scales iPhone apps to full-screen iPad apps.

10:35 am: Forestall runs an unmodified racing game from the App Store. He first demos it in the screen size of an iPhone. Then, using the pixel-doubling feature, he blows it out to full screen. Very slick.

“So you can buy the iPad, take it home, hook it up and download all your iPhone apps and run them with no problem at all,” he says.

Forestall announces a new iPhone software development kit specifically geared to the iPad. He notes that iPad-specific applications will be featured “front and center” in the App Store.
He then invites Gameloft’s Mark Hickey to the stage to demo some new games the company has developed using the new SDK.

Hickey notes that the iPad’s additional screen space is a boon for developers, particularly those building games. He demos a first-person shooter that showcases this. “We’re now able to interact with the game world in ways that we weren’t able to before.”

10:40 am: Next up, the New York Times. Martin Nisenholtz takes the stage to talk about its iPad effort.

After talking up the Times iPhone app, Nisenholtz segues to the the paper’s new iPad app: “We think we’ve captured the experience and essence of reading the newspaper.”

The app is largely what you’d expect. Tap to resize text, zoom, breaking news updates, video. “This is everything you love about the paper and everything you love about the Web.”

10:44 am: Now, a painting application called Brushes that was famously used to create a New Yorker cover.
The app is impressive enough on iPhone; it’s even more so on the iPad. It supports “playback” of paintings, and as the presenter notes, brings us one step closer to a real virtual painting studio.

10:46 am: EA’s Travis Boatman take’s the stage. The topic of his presentation: Need For Speed.

“Building for the iPad is a little bit like holding a high-def TV screen a few inches from your face,” he says.

The iPad version of Need for Speed boasts a number of touch-activated enhancements: Tap on the car to view its interior, tap on the rear-view mirror to look behind you.

10:52 am: Up next: MLB.com’s Chad Evans. He demos the outfit’s iPad-optimized app, which uses the device’s additional screen space to display video excerpts and MLB TV.

MLB TV can be streamed like and enhanced with onscreen stats and data. “This big display really allows us to create a much more immersive experience,” Evans says.

10:52 am: Forestall returns to the stage to make another brief plug for the SDK before Jobs takes over for him.
“Let me show you another one of our apps that we’re very excited about,” Jobs says. “An e-book reader.”

Behind him a photo of Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle appears. “Amazon did a great job with their reader and we’re standing on their shoulders here….Today we’re announcing the iBooks store,” says Jobs, adding that it will be supported initially by Penguin, Simon & Schuster and a number of other big publishers.

The iBooks Store interface begins with a simple bookshelf view. Tap the screen and it loads a more iTunes-like view. Purchase a book and it’s added to your bookshelf with a slick little animation.

The reading experience seems very appealing. Much more book-like. From where I sit, the pages look like they’re written on paper.

“We use the e-pub format, the most popular open-book format in the world,” says Jobs. “We think iPad is going to be a very popular e-reader not just for bestsellers, but for textbooks as well.”

10:58 am: And here’s another new product announcement: A new version of iWork tweaked for use on the iPad. Jobs invites Phil Schiller on stage to demo it.

“We have a completely new version of Keynote, a completely new version of Pages and a completely new version of Numbers–all optimized for multitouch.

Schiller demos Keynote first. Creating presentations appears intuitive and simple–a slide navigator on the left, tap to load individual slides in the main window, drag to rearrange.

Nice use of multitouch gestures to enhance the app. Pinch to resize photos, tap to insert animations and transitions. These are all fairly advanced techniques and the device seems to handle them well.

11:05 am: Moving on to Pages now. Also impressive, though creating a written document on a tablet device like the iPad seems like it might be a drag. A nice tool for editing, though. Simple controls.

11:07 am: Moving on to Numbers. This application also makes good use of multitouch gestures and boasts a data-entry keyboard along with some 250 built-in functions. The software’s gesture capabilities makes Excel look antediluvian.
Powerful and fast.

So what’s Apple going to charge for iWork? $9.99 each, says Schiller, who notes that all three applications are compatible with their Mac versions.

Jobs returns to the stage, grinning. “Isn’t that great?” he asks for what’s easily the 10th time. iPad, he says, will synch to Mac or PC via USB.

11:14 am: Evidently, there will be two iPad models–one with Wi-Fi-only and one with Wi-Fi and 3G. The 3G device will come with two plans: 250 MB per month for $14.99, unlimited data for $29.99.

And who’s the carrier? AT&T.

A small groan ripples through the audience.

Jobs allows that AT&T is also throwing in free Wi-Fi at its hotspots. He follows that up by noting that there are no contracts for the iPad. You can cancel at anytime.

All iPad 3G models are unlocked and they use new GSM micro SIMS, so chances are they will just work, Jobs says, after noting that Apple hasn’t yet worked out international carrier deals.

11:16 am: Now a quick overview as a wrap-up. Jobs touts the overall tablet experience along with the new iBook app and iBook Store. “This is an amazing product with tremendous breadth. What should we charge for it?…When we set out to develop the iPad we not only had aggressive UI goals, we had aggressive price goals, because we wanted to put this in the hands of as many people as possible….IPad pricing starts not at $999, but $499,” Jobs says to a huge round of applause.

$499 for 16GB base model.
32GB for $599.
64GB for $699.
Adding 3G requires an additional fee.

Apple will ship Wi-Fi models in 60 days and 3G models in 90.

11:20 am: Apple has created new accessories for the iPad: A standard dock and a second dock with a keyboard attached to it. “Keep one of these in your den and you can write the next “War and Peace” on it.” The final accessory, a new case that doubles as a stand.

Running a video now. It features a number of Apple execs enthusiastically talking up the iPad.

11:25 am: Let me circle back here for a moment to pricing. Adding 3G to iPad requires an additional $130. So we’re talking $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for the 32GB and $829 for the 64GB version.

Designer Jon Ives on the iPad: “In many ways iPad defines our vision, our sense of what’s next.”

11:32 am: Jobs returns to the stage and recalls the “middle device” scenario he mentioned earlier today. “Can we create this new category? The bar is set pretty high, but we think we’ve got the goods.”

“This is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price,” he adds. “The reason the iPad is going to be so great is because Apple has always strived to be at the junction of technology and liberal arts.”

And with that he concludes. Lights go up and Dylan begins playing over the speakers again.

View the slideshow

PREVIOUSLY:

Apple’s Tablet: A $2.8 Billion Business?

Apple’s Tablet: MacBook Airbus?

Apple Announces Jan. 27 Special Event: “Come See Our Latest Creation”

Major Apple Product Announcement Set for Wednesday, Jan. 27

Apple Pitching Tablet to Publishing Industry; Spring Launch Expected

Time (Finally) for the Tablet? Apple Developers Supersizing Their Apps for January Event.

The Apple Tablet Is Delayed? So What?

$1.9 Billion in Capex? What’s Apple Planning?

Apple’s Tablet: Read Different?

Imaginary Demand for Mythical Apple Tablet Exceeds All Estimates

Apple Tablet Coming to AT&T?

New From Piper Jaffray Analyst Gene Munster: The Apple iPad

Rumored Apple Netbook Actually an E-Book?

iTablet: Apple’s Killer App for Higher Ed

iFugly

Plastic Logic (Finally) Shows Off The Que, Its (Very Expensive) Kindle Competitor

Peter Kafka — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:27:21 +0000

After promising to deliver its take on Amazon’s Kindle for a couple of years, Plastic Logic is finally delivering: Here comes the Que proReader, which the company promises is “more than an eReader”–it’s a “paperless briefcase.”

So what does that mean?

At this point, Plastic Logic, which has raised more than $200 million from investors, is well behind Amazon (AMZN), Sony (SNE) and even Barnes & Noble (BKS). So the company is trying to distinguish the Que by positioning it as a “business” device. Which also means expensive: Plastic Logic is asking consumers to pay up to $800 for the initial versions.

The big idea: Not only can you read your books and newspapers on the device, which features a touchscreen and e-ink display, but you can work on Microsoft (MSFT) Word, Excel, etc., documents. Plastic Logic also promises “interoperability” with Research In Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry, though it is a little vague about how this will work.

That is, the company is positioning the Que as something akin to a netbook that happens not to have a keyboard (this sounds familiar).

In CEO Richard Archuleta’s words: “The e-readers that you see today are great reading devices. They’re great for reading ebooks. They’re great for casual reading. But what about folks who need to read”–that is, grownups who need to get some work done?

The device is neither thinner nor lighter than competing e-readers, which for Plastic Logic was a conscious choice. It is, however, much more expensive: A four-gigabyte version will go for $649 and an 8GB version will cost $799.

Amazon’s Kindle goes for $259, as does Barnes & Noble’s Nook; Amazon’s larger DX device costs $489. Sony’s “Daily Edition” reader sells for $399.

As previously announced, the Que will connect to an electronic bookstore run by Barnes and Noble. The more expensive version will feature a wireless connection provided by AT&T (T). Plastic Logic says the devices will ship in mid-April.

Notably absent from a long list of publications that have agreed to provide versions for the reader: The New York Times (NYT). Also missing, at least right now: Condé Nast and Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. News Corp.’s (NWS) Dow Jones unit is offering both Barron’s and The Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones owns this Web site).

More on Plastic Logic here. Press release here and below:

Introducing the QUE™ proReader
More than an eReader, QUE is uniquely designed as an essential tool to lighten the workload of mobile professionals.

Sleek industrial design, intuitive user interface, powerful applications and QUE Store define a premium business reading experience. | 7 January 2010
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW, LAS VEGAS, NV – JANUARY 7, 2010 – Plastic Logic today unveiled QUE™ (pronounced “Q”), the world’s first proReader. More than an eReader, QUE is designed specifically to provide a premium reading experience and access to content anywhere anytime, while simplifying the multi-faceted lifestyle of business professionals–and to literally lighten their workload.

With its sleek 8.5 x 11 inch form factor, crisp large touchscreen display, intuitive user interface and powerful tools, QUE stands out in the crowd. QUE is currently on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (Central Hall of Las Vegas Convention Center at Booth 11840 anchoring the e-Book Techzone).

“Today we are introducing two major advancements: the birth of a new market category, the proReader, and a milestone in the evolution of plastic electronics,” said Richard Archuleta, CEO of Plastic Logic. “The QUE proReader was built from the ground up for people who need to read. Starting today, mobile professionals can look forward to a paperless briefcase, a lighter load, and a better way to work.”

Like paper, only better?: The inspiration for QUE was an age-old but perfect business tool: a simple sheet of paper. QUE was designed to have the benefits of paper, but without the weight and clutter. Just like paper, QUE is easy to hold and feels good in your hands. But it’s easier to search and find exactly what you’re looking for.

The size of a pad of paper, about 1/3 inch thick, and weighing less than many periodicals (about a pound), QUE features a 10.7-inch shatterproof plastic display–the largest display in the market.

Exclusive plastic display technology: ?The patented plastic display technology in QUE has been 10 years in development, since Plastic Logic’s founding by researchers from the renowned University of Cambridge (UK) Cavendish Labs. The unique plastic displays are produced in Plastic Logic’s world-first commercial scale plastic electronics manufacturing facility in Dresden, Germany. Combined with E Ink Vizplex® technology, they produce an outstanding reading experience that looks and reads just like paper even in direct sunlight.

QUE Design: A celebration of black and white print. ?Designed through a unique collaboration between Plastic Logic and IDEO, the QUE design was inspired by black and white print—a communications standard that is both classic and timeless. In addition to being the easiest to read, black and white is often the most visually striking combination.

“We wanted to highlight the optical qualities of plastic,” said IDEO’s Caroline Fagiello, who serves as Plastic Logic’s acting creative director. “Think of pools of black ink captured in a glass ink well against a crisp sheet of white linen paper.”

Plastic Logic created QUE to feel as natural in your hand as a pad of paper, while conveying the level of premium quality craftsmanship of a fine pen. Its proprietary user interface is as intuitive and easy as paper and ink.

The simple, but powerful QUE user interface is uniquely designed for functionality in the day-to-day world of the business professional. Its signature home view provides your appointments for the day and all of the information you need, including a customized view of your content–your daily newspaper, magazines, and other essential materials–as well as immediate access to the QUE Store to get what you need whenever you need it.

All your content, all the time?Designed for more than good looks, QUE provides instant access to the content busy professionals need at their fingertips all day long–all their content anywhere any time: Read a newspaper over morning coffee. Review your appointments imported from Outlook. Have every document you need when you need it. And at the end of the day, relax with a good book.

In addition to highly valued business and professional newspapers, periodicals and eBooks, QUE supports reading and annotating document formats business users need (including PDF, Microsoft Office, ePub documents and more). With the QUE software, it’s easy to quickly convert and transfer content from your PC, Mac™ computer, or BlackBerry® smartphone to your QUE.

The standard 4GB QUE model can hold up to 35,000 documents or the equivalent of up to 35 filing cabinets worth of documents. If your paper-laden briefcase and file cabinets are bulging at the seams, the 8GB model holds up to 75,000 documents or the equivalent of the contents of up to 75 filing cabinets¹.

Powerful tools for interacting with your content?. Storage means nothing if you can’t easily access your documents. Thanks to its proprietary touchscreen interface, QUE makes it simple to find reports, spreadsheets and presentations with just a few taps of a finger. And QUE is always on when you need it: its battery can last days, instead of hours.

QUE has integrated reviewing tools and features that maximize efficiency. Add a note and use the virtual keyboard to include your comments, highlight text, scribble free form, and even add a stamp to emphasize a point. No stylus needed. And if that massive spreadsheet with the tiny font is too small, just zoom in for a close-up view. With QUE, it’s easy to instantly go back and forth between documents.

Wireless access to leading publications, professional content on the QUE Store?The QUE Store offers a rich collection of reading material especially geared to the business professional. QUE users will be able to connect to fresh content on-the-go, on the QUE Store: to search, purchase and download wirelessly via Wi-Fi and AT&T’s 3G network².

Powered by Barnes & Noble, the QUE Store offers instant access to the world’s largest eBookstore, in addition to many business and professional newspapers, books, and periodicals. Additionally, Plastic Logic is partnering with Olive Software and premier publishers to give QUE users a richer content and reading experience that is optimized for QUE.

Today, Plastic Logic is announcing new partnerships with some of the leading business publishers and publications, including the Down Jones company and the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and All Things Digital, as well as Forbes and Fast Company. Rounding out new partnerships are the Sporting News and major regional newspapers, including the Sacramento Bee, Miami Herald, and San Jose Mercury News.

These publications join previously announced strategic partnerships with Financial Times, USA Today, the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, MIT Technology Review, Popular Science, and IDG publication titles including CIO, Network World, and Computerworld. A full list of content partners can be found at PlasticLogic.com.

Publications on the QUE Store are available ranging from one-time use to ongoing subscriptions.

EXCLUSIVE: QUE truVue–Setting the standard for eNewspapers?The QUE proReader enables newspapers, magazines, and other types of content to have a richer reading experience that is symbolic of their print editions, complete with photos and formatting. The QUE truVue standard, enabled by the Adobe Reader Mobile SDK, provides the familiar look and feel of print publications, and makes eReading easier and more enjoyable.

“Since our inception 27 years ago, USA TODAY has offered a reading experience that millions of people rely on and enjoy, so it’s really exciting that there is an eReader platform that delivers our content the way it’s supposed to look and feel,” said Dave Hunke, president and publisher of USA TODAY.

“Forbes has always been at the forefront of embracing and adopting new media and new platforms; eReaders represent that next generation platform to deliver our content,” said Nina La France, Vice President Consumer Marketing for Forbes. “The QUE proReader caters to our audience: people who are busy, active, mobile, time-starved, and consume content at a great clip. The proReader gives them the full content experience and new capabilities to stay ahead.”

The QUE starts here?Beginning today, preorders for the QUE proReader may be placed at the QUE Store. Beginning in mid-April 2010, QUE will be available for shipping. Later in 2010, QUE will be available through the Barnes & Noble stores nationwide and online at Barnes & Noble.com QUE.com.

The price for QUE will range from $649.00 for the 4GB QUE model with WiFi that holds up to 35,000 documents, to $799.00 for the 8GB QUE model with WiFi and 3G that holds up to 75,000 documents.

To complement its iconic look and profile, Plastic Logic has also designed an entire line of QUE premium accessories, including three carrying cases to match any busy lifestyle. In addition to their classic elegance, the cases protect your QUE from dust, scratches and everyday wear and tear. QUE accessories are available on the QUE store at QUE.com.

Additional information, including high resolution images, are available at PlasticLogic.com.

Opening a Window on the Mac

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:13:05 +0000

‘Tis almost the night before Christmas, and plenty of households are hoping Santa will slide down the chimney with a new computer in his pack. For longtime Windows users who receive new Apple (AAPL) computers, the unfamiliarity of the Mac operating system could leave them pining for their old PC.

I’ve put together a quick and dirty guide for new Apple users that explains some of the ways the Mac operating system differs from Windows. It’s true: The way you’ll quit programs is different, the keyboards are set up a little differently and even the mouse is different. But once you adjust to these changes, you’ll be fine. Here’s some help:

[ See post to watch video ]

Key to the Keyboard

Your keyboard is missing a Backspace button, so just use the Delete button, which is set up by default to work as the Backspace button does on a Windows keyboard.

If you want to delete forward on a Mac laptop or a new iMac, hold the Function key (FN) while pressing Delete. And for keyboard shortcuts like pressing Control+C to copy or Control+V to paste on a Windows keyboard, use the Command key, which has a flower-like symbol, in place of Control. Likewise, use the Option key rather than Alt to type special characters.

If you miss Control+Alt+Delete, you can end frustratingly slow applications on the Mac by pressing Command+Option+Escape to force programs to quit.

Mousing Around

The mouse on a desktop Mac looks like it has only one button, and the trackpad on most Mac laptops has no visible buttons at all—the whole pad is a single, large button. These designs send people who usually use two-button mice into a tizzy about how to right click.

Never fear, right click is still near! On Mac laptops, right click by placing two fingers down on the trackpad (it’s easiest with your pointer and middle fingers) and click the trackpad with another finger (like your thumb). New MacBooks also will right click when you place two fingers on the trackpad and press down. Using a one-button Apple mouse, just press Control and then click to see the same right-click functionality. On the Mighty Mouse, enable right-click functionality in System Preferences, then just touch where the right-click button should be and it will work.

If you’re sick of these new shortcuts, just plug in a mouse with a real right-click button and it will likely work on the Mac.

Scroll up or down on any screen by placing two fingers anywhere on the trackpad and motioning up or down. New MacBooks have a large, glass trackpad that responds to iPhone-like multi-touch gestures like pinching to zoom in or out on a screen. Four fingers on the trackpad initiate one of three gestures: Swiping up clears everything off the screen to show the desktop; swiping left or right opens the application switcher view so you can select which application you want; swiping down launches Exposé, which shows all opened windows.

Maximize, Close, Quit

In Windows, users can hit one button in the top right corner of each window to maximize the window; Macs have a small green circle in the top left corner that makes a window larger, but not maximized, so this can be irritating.

Windows lets users close an application by hitting the “X” in the top-right corner; the Mac version of this is a small red dot in the top left, but clicking it only closes a window rather than quitting the application. To do that, you’ll need to press Command+Q or choose to quit from the application menu at the top left of the screen.

Where’s My Stuff?

Rather than opening My Computer as you would on a Windows PC, double click on the desktop icon representing your hard drive to see all files, folders, applications and software programs. Spotlight, located in the top right corner of all screens, can be used to search for anything on your Mac. The Dock, located by default at the bottom of the screen, replaces the taskbar to hold applications, folders and files.Items can be dragged into the dock for quick access. Applications are located on the left side of the Dock; Stacks are on the right and these enable instant folder access from the Dock.Two built-in Stacks come pre-loaded for Documents and Downloads.

The Apple menu, represented with a small apple icon in the top left of any screen, works like parts of the Windows Start menu.

System Preferences in the Mac Dock works much like the Control Panel on a Windows PC. Here, you can change your screensaver, desktop picture, mouse and keyboard settings, energy-saving options, parental controls and network setup.

An optional Mac version of Microsoft Office runs Word, Excel, and PowerPoint programs that are compatible with Office files from Windows PCs. Instead of Outlook, Microsoft (MSFT) includes in Mac Office a program with similar functions called Entourage. Macs come out of the box with Apple-produced programs that include Mail, Address Book and iCal. Mail works with a range of email services.

Where’s Internet Explorer?

Instead of Internet Explorer, Apple comes loaded with its own Web browser called Safari, represented in the Dock by a blue and red compass. Browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox or Google (GOOG) Chrome will work on the Mac if you want to download and install them, but Internet Explorer still runs only on Windows.

Ejecting Hurts

On a Windows PC, anything inserted into the computer—from memory cards to USB flash drives—can be pulled out almost anytime with no repercussions. On a Mac, you must first eject these items before you yank them out. Ejecting can be done by dragging the icon representing that item from the desktop into the Trash, Apple’s version of the Windows Recycling Bin, or by selecting an Eject button beside its name. If you delete something on your Mac, it’s tossed into the Trash, and an option in Trash will empty it just as you can empty the Recycling Bin in Windows. Macs offer a Secure Empty Trash command in the Finder that securely deletes files so no part of them can be recovered.

Ask at the Store

If you buy a new Mac, Apple retail stores will recycle your old computer free, and if you buy Apple’s $99-a-year One to One membership, you can take your PC into an Apple retail store to have its data transferred to the Mac or to get personal tutorials. Stores also offer free workshops. More information is at apple.com/findouthow/mac.

–Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Erasing Computers for Donation, Office on Netbooks and Installing Windows 7 on an iMac

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:43:03 +0000

I have an old but serviceable Apple eMac that I would like to give to charity. I have deleted all my files (I think) but am leery of having some of my personal info still retrievable. Would deleting and reloading the OS be of value, or are there other steps to take?

A: For peace of mind, you should use a secure file-wiping utility and erase the entire drive using it. Then, presuming you have the original disks, you can reinstall the operating system.

A file-wiping utility erases files, and then overwrites the portions of the hard disk they occupied, as well as free space on the drive, multiple times, usually with zeroes, so the original contents can’t be recovered.

I don’t know which version of the Mac operating system you have, but the original disks that come with most Macs contain a program called Disk Utility that can do this, if you select the “Erase” option and then the “Erase Free Space” option. You will have to first boot the computer up from the operating system disk.

I just got a netbook and need a free or cheap package to read, edit and create Word, Excel, PowerPoint-compatible files. Would Open Office or Google Docs work? I am open to using an online package.

A:Yes. In my limited testing of both, they have done a good job with typical, basic Microsoft Office documents. I can’t say how they’d perform if your documents are especially complex, but, as the programs are free to use, it’s certainly worth a try.

Can Windows 7 be installed on an iMac? Since many of my old files are from a Windows XP computer, would it be better for me to just purchase and load a copy of Win XP on my new iMac instead of trying Windows 7?

A: Windows 7 can indeed be installed on an iMac. Both the Parallels and VMWare Fusion programs that create virtual Windows computers on Macs now support Windows 7.

As for the data files from your Windows XP computer, there is no reason they shouldn’t run in programs under Windows 7 unless they require some older Windows program that isn’t compatible with Windows 7.

However, if you install Parallels or Fusion, you can also opt to set up two virtual Windows machines, one with Windows 7 and one with Windows XP. The only downside is that you’d have to buy and install copies of both versions of Windows.

I should also note that most common file types, like MP3 music files, text files, Microsoft Word files, and JPG picture files, can be handled by Mac programs without installing Windows.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Snow Leopard, Windows 7 and Netbooks

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:56:01 +0000

Am I correct that my iMac G5 can’t use Apple’s new Snow Leopard operating system? And, if so, why isn’t this just as bad as Microsoft’s making it hard for Windows XP users to upgrade to its new Windows 7 operating system?

Yes, you are correct. Snow Leopard is the first Apple OS version that runs only on Intel-powered Macs, and your iMac runs on the G5 processor, which isn’t an Intel chip.

As for the comparison with Microsoft’s policy: In one way, Apple’s approach is much worse. It is totally cutting off some of its user base from the new OS, including some folks with machines as little as 3 years old. Microsoft isn’t making it impossible for XP owners to move to Windows 7— it’s merely making it so painful, tedious and complicated to upgrade that many non-techies who want Windows 7 may give up and feel compelled to buy new PCs. On the other hand, Apple’s policy affects a smaller proportion of its customers. Only about 20% of its users still use older, non-Intel-based Macs. By contrast, Microsoft’s policy affects a much greater percentage of Windows users, since, despite its advanced age, Windows XP is still the most commonly used version of its OS.

A few years ago Microsoft used a code name of Longhorn for the operating system which ultimately was released as “Vista.” Will Windows 7 have a real name upon release?

The real name of Windows 7 is: Windows 7. It’s not a temporary code name, like “Longhorn” was. The product will be officially called Windows 7 when it comes out on Oct. 22.

Is it possible to connect a netbook directly to a larger PC to transfer data? The data I am interested in would be Word documents, Excel files, a limited number of photos and music files, and other personal files.

While I haven’t tested it, I assume that, since a netbook is just a small, cheap, standard Windows laptop, you could use Microsoft’s built-in file-transfer utilities to accomplish this, provided you use the right cable. In Windows XP, the operating system on most netbooks and most other PCs in use, this is called the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. In Vista, and the forthcoming Windows 7, it’s called Windows Easy Transfer.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Microsoft, Nokia Take Aim at BlackBerry

Nick Wingfield — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:51:29 +0000

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Nokia Corp. (NOK), once bitter rivals in the mobile market, formed an alliance to strengthen their positions at a time when other competitors have become far more troublesome.

The deal between the two companies will bring Microsoft’s Office programs and other software to Nokia phones. It is aimed squarely at the professional market that Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) targets so successfully with its BlackBerry line of smart phones.

For Microsoft, the deal is an attempt to increase the appeal of Office–a lucrative franchise that includes Word, Excel and other productivity programs–to a business audience that is being courted by competing products from rivals that range from Google Inc. (GOOG) to Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO). Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

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