Random roundup.. June 5th 2007

"Open battle will boost compatibility"

writes the Guardian computer editor, Jack Schofield in a computer weekly article

Open XML will never win over ODF proponents: nothing would. However, the new formats are more open, more accessible and more standardised than the old binary ones. Pragmatists, at least, will welcome them as a step in the right direction.

probably a cool new tool that lets you search copyright books at https://books.live.com except the link seems to be down so I can't test it.  Presumably they'll get it working again soon.

Good Groove positioning post

Nice post by Simon Jackson positioning Groove, SharePoint collaboration.

Picture of policeman and computer screens

Hampshire Police use Office 2007

The police force currently has a manual approach to records management and is looking at how it can improve the process by using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.  Read the story at computing.

Google goes offline

Google Gears is an open source plug-in for browsers, which the firm hopes will lead to the creation of new web standards.  Prize to Michael Gartenberg, Jupiter Research, for best quote about it:

"A word processor with less functionality than WordPad isn't going to upset anyone's business model, online or off"

SharePoint awarded DoD certification

SharePoint Server 2007 receives DoD 5015.2 certification, which is nice.

Microsoft Office Interactive developer map

no more posters of the object models, instead a lovely interaction wpf application.  sounds good.