Microsoft Office in Web Browser Finally – Slideshow

Microsoft announced this morning at its PDC conference that the next release of Microsoft Office will include browser-based versions of some of its main office software products – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. These will be “lightweight versions”, but Microsoft told us yesterday that they’ll still have rich functionality and will be comparable to Google’s suite of online office applications. The apps will enable users to create, edit and collaborate on Microsoft Office documents through the browser. The apps will work in IE, Firefox and Safari browsers (no word on whether Google Chrome will be supported). Update: Commenter Sean, who says he works on the project, said that this will be 100% HTML + AJAX – rather than Silverlight or a proprietary MS plug-in.

Click here to watch the slideshow

The online versions will share the same names as their desktop counterparts (Word, Excel, etc), although unfortunately they don’t fully escape the awkward and confusing branding that Microsoft gives to most of its Internet apps. The collective name for these apps is “Office Web Applications”. To remind you, there is also an Office Online (a separate Microsoft site where users can download templates) and an Office Live Workspace (for sharing office files between desktop and Web – our coverage).

The “Office Web applications” will be available to consumers through Office Live, a service which has both ad-funded and subscription options. Business users will be offered Office Web applications as a hosted subscription service and through existing “volume licensing agreements”. There will be a private technology preview of the Office Web applications later this year.

Last month we ran a poll asking which word processing tool you primarily use. We got over 2,600 separate votes and a resounding 49% of people still use Microsoft Word as their main word processing tool. Its open source desktop equivalent OpenOffice got 16%. Google Docs was the best placed Web Office app, with 15%.

The results showed that there is still a big place for desktop Office apps. Nevertheless, with the announcement yesterday of Microsoft Azure – a so-called cloud computing OS – Microsoft is clearly serving a growing demand for browser-based office software. We expect these apps to become more full featured over time.

Click here to watch the slideshow

(original feed)

What is the Azure Services Platform?

The Azure™ Services Platform (Azure) is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities. Its open architecture gives developers the choice to build web applications, applications running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.

Azure reduces the need for up-front technology purchases, and it enables developers to quickly and easily create applications running in the cloud by using their existing skills with the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and the Microsoft .NET Framework. In addition to managed code languages supported by .NET, Azure will support more programming languages and development environments in the near future. Azure simplifies maintaining and operating applications by providing on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web and connected applications. Infrastructure management is automated with a platform that is designed for high availability and dynamic scaling to match usage needs with the option of a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Azure provides an open, standards-based and interoperable environment with support for multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and XML.

Microsoft also offers cloud applications ready for consumption by customers such as Windows Live™, Microsoft Dynamics™, and other Microsoft Online Services for business such as Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint® Online. The Azure Services Platform lets developers provide their own unique customer offerings by offering the foundational components of compute, storage, and building block services to author and compose applications in the cloud.

Click here to know more about Windows Azure

Azure Services Platform

Google Earth on Apple’s iPhone

Announced on Sunday, the application allows users of Apple’s handset as well as those of the iPod Touch to zoom in and out of a virtual globe. Google Earth has been available on the desktop for three years, and has been downloaded more than 400 million times, but the iPhone deployment marks its first mobile version.

The closest comparative product for mobile phones is Google Maps for Mobile (GMM), which focuses more on localised street mapping and less on a visual reproduction of the earth’s topography. GMM is already available on the iPhone and most other mobile platforms.

According to a blog post by Peter Birch, product manager for Google Earth, the iPhone’s touch interface allows a user to “swipe [their] finger across the screen and… fly to the other side of the globe”, while the in-built accelerometers make it possible to adjust the viewing angle by tilting the phone. Zooming in is achieved in much the same way as it is in using the iPhone’s browser: by pinching fingers together on the screen.

Also included in the iPhone version of Google Earth is the ‘My Location’ feature, which takes the user to their current location, and the geo-located Panoramio photos that desktop users can already see when they use Google Earth.

The handset version of Google Earth is available now as a free download through the iPhone App Store.

(source: zdnet)