Google Apps upgrade threatens Office
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InfoWorld - Google pushed further into the communication and collaboration applications market with a major upgrade Thursday of Google Apps, a hosted suite for organizations of all sizes that analysts say could soon become a real competitor to Microsoft Office.
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PC Magazine - Microsoft's Office team downplayed the threat from Google's Web-based word processing and spreadsheet applications, saying they are unlikely to appeal to corporate customers.
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Spreadsheet-focused attack affects several versions of company's Office software, including one for Macs.
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Blog: Database issues are hampering some upgrades to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.1.
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(InfoWorld) - For business users who want Microsoft Office on their cell phones, Windows Mobile 6, the upcoming version of Redmond's mobile operating system to be unveiled next week, will be a must-have upgrade. Mobile 6 comes with mobile versions of Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. With the continuing increase in sales of smartphones at the expense of handheld devices, Office makes a lot of sense, especially for synchronizing with desktop files, according to Rob Enderle, principal at the Enderle Group. Carriers and handset manufacturers who believe they can put the limited memory and storage to better use, however, are out of luck. Microsoft Office still comes with Mobile 6. According to John Starkwether, a product manager in the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division at Microsoft, Office is part of the package. Starkwether conjectured that if a vendor really wants to exclude Office from the operating system, an accommodation might be possible. Additional upgrades to the mobile OS include Microsoft's Direct Push Technology with automatic synchronization of Outlook calendars, tasks, and contacts using Exchange Server. For security and management, Mobile 6 will also give mobile network managers the capability of remotely wiping out all data from a device should it be lost or stolen. Other security features include certificate options and storage card encryption. Business users will also be pleased with the inclusion of mobile versions of the .Net Compact Framework and SQL Server in order to access a company's standard line of business applications remotely. The Office applications are the most robust to date for the limited capacities of a cell phone. Spell checking in Word, though, is not included. E-mail viewing will be easier on the eye with formatting, tables, and pictures viewable as originally generated. One-click options for e-mail, such as "reply all", moving a message to a subfolder and "delete" have been added to accommodate the restricted functionality of a small device. Windows Vista users on the desktop will be able to swap music, pictures, movies and Outlook information between the Vista PC and the mobile device. Windows Live will integrate mail, messenger, search, contacts, and spaces. Call history is now placed inside the individual contact card. Enderle said that although there was "a lot of great stuff" in Mobile 6 Microsoft still has to focus on ease of use. "Compared to the Apple iPhone with its simplified interface, Mobile 6 is still complex to use," Enderle said. Devices with Windows Mobile 6 will ship worldwide in the second quarter.
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Will heavy pocketbooks help Microsoft strangle Google?
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The changes are in response to a complaint by Google that a feature of the operating system is anticompetitive.
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An insistent upgrade alert from AOL is annoying some users of its IM service.
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Update fixes crashes caused by incompatibility with hidden advertising app.
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The newest service pack for Office 2003 kills access to older files -- including some documents created by the company's own programs -- to better protect user security, according to an IT evangelist for Microsoft.
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Executives in Microsoft's Office division seem to be discounting any possible threat to their business from Google's Web-based productivity software, according to Reuters. Antoine Leblond, co-head of the Office division, says the applications are not suitable for corporate use.
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Plus: More Office holes, and a major Adobe problem that affects all browsers.
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Although it has repeatedly denied it has any intention of taking on Microsoft Office, Google on Thursday introduced Google Apps Premier Edition, a fee-based version of its free Web-based word processing and spreadsheet applications for businesses.
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Latest service pack for productivity suite renders older file formats--including those for Word, Excel, PowerPoint--inaccessible.
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IBM, Google, and Yahoo! are crashing Microsoft's Office party.
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It seems that Microsoft&#39;s new upgrade to Windows is making some people nervous. That&#39;s not surprising, as home and office computing environments are just not as friendly as they used to be due to viruses and spyware. Even the software we ...
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(InfoWorld) - With its February security patches now two weeks away, Microsoft is warning of another critical flaw in its Office software. This time Excel is the target. Microsoft confirmed late Friday that its spreadsheet software is vulnerable to a new attack, and said that the problem may affect other Office software as well. The software giant is investigating reports that the flaw is being used by criminals in "very limited," attacks, according to a Microsoft security advisory. This latest flaw affects Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Office 2003, and Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac. Over the past year hackers have increasingly focused on Office applications as a security hole and the attacks based on these flaws are often the same: Criminals send an e-mail that appears legitimate, and trick unsuspecting users into opening a maliciously encoded document. Once the document is opened, attackers are able to install unauthorized software on the victim's system. Microsoft may not have time to patch the Excel flaw in time for its next set of security updates, expected Feb. 13, but, no doubt, it has other Office patches in the works. Over the past few months four similarly critical flaws have been reported in Microsoft Word. None of these has yet been patched.