Random catch up 22nd Feb

  • Article

Skydrive comes out of beta

Beta is over for https://skydrive.live.com and the new version increases the storage by 4Gb to 5Gb! I use this to put my presentations in on the right column on the blog - easy to imbed the link with the icon

Interoperability announcements

there is a lot to read about here.

The one thing I wanted to pull out:  Steve Ballmer says:

Second, in the area of data portability, we recognize that different users definitely support different file formats for different reasons. And we have consistently supported multiple file formats and user choice. But, as part of today's announcement specifically, we're announcing that we're designing new APIs for Word, Excel and PowerPoint that will allow developers to plug in additional document formats, and enable users to set those formats as their default for saving documents.

New Microsoft Office Live Small Business launched

Office Live Small Business

Simple Windows Live ID signup process. No need to validate with a credit card any more !

Used by nearly 600,000 customers worldwide, Office Live Small Business is available in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan. The service also provides an excellent environment within which partners can build industry-specific solutions.

Office Live Small Business is now available with :

  • Full Firefox 2.0 support for PC & Mac
  • Easy-to-use Website Designer tool or use html/3rd party design tools
  • Outlook Connector for offline synching of email, calendar, contacts & tasks
  • Mobile access to email, calendar and contacts from Windows-Powered SmartPhones or PocketPCs
  • Solutions Packager for Web designers

FREE when you sign up :

  • Domain name *
  • 500MB fully hosted Website
  • Up to 100 email accounts
  • Contact Manager
  • Document Manager
  • Project Manager
  • Workspace

* (.co.uk free for the first 2 years or .com, org, net, .eu free for the first year)

Additional affordable features :

  • E-mail marketing beta
  • Search marketing
  • More storage, users and tools

What are you wating for ? Read more details and signup now at : smallbusiness.officelive.com

There is also a partner portal at https://dev.officelive.com/

Gates hints at our plans for Office 14 on the web

Like the plot of Lost, answers are coming.. but just not yet and not here

https://www.infoworld.com/article/08/02/11/Office-14-to-be-more-Web-friendly-Gates-says_1.html

New SharePoint deployment whitepaper

sure to be a popular resource, the new "Plan to deploy Office SharePoint Server globally" section on technet.

Office books

[Book cover]

People are asking a lot about what books we are publishing about office so here is a useful link to see all the books we have. 

Humans can only think about 4 things at once

People who think they can do more are probably just doing them badly says a new report