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Youtube for businesses? Microsoft introduces Office 365 Video

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Office 365 Video still need Sharepoint to work.

Microsoft has announced a new feature called Office 365 video which it calls a "NextGen Portal" and generally characterise go-to solutions that are often put in place by customers using Sharepoint; these include search, dashboard, wikis, company intranets and blogs.

Office 365 Video will allow organisations to post, share and discover video content within a secure perimeter rather than having to post them to an external third party like Vimeo or Youtube.

The service is powered by Microsoft's Azure Media Services and will be available to all enterprise Office 365 users (E1, E2, E3, E4) as well as Academic (A2, A3, A4) with government plans coming at a latter stage.

Videos are stored in the Sharepoint pooled storage and are encrypted at-rest and in-transit. Future improvements to the service, according to Mark Kashman, senior product manager on the Office 365 group, include broader mobile device coverage, recommendations powered by Office Graph and the ability to embed videos anywhere on an intranet.

Microsoft, it seems, is using the Office 365 brand more liberally with a number of services being added lately like Sway and Delve. Video is the first of these "NextGen Portals" that Microsoft will be rolling out for its enterprise users.

Windows 10 will hit every current Lumia handset, Microsoft pledges

Sunday, November 16, 2014

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Windows 10 will hit every current Lumia handset, Microsoft pledges

Microsoft is making amends for the WP7-WP8 transition

You'd think it would be a big deal when a company announces that it won't repeat a mistake that alienated tons of its users, but then again, sometimes those revelations are mentioned quietly by brand accounts on Twitter.

That's how Microsoft revealed that all existing Lumia handsets with Windows Phone 8 will be upgraded to Windows 10 when the new OS arrives.

In response to a question about the Nokia Lumia 930, Microsoft's official Lumia account tweeted that "we plan to upgrade all Windows Phone 8 devices to Windows 10 in the future."

They even added a smiley-face so we'd know they're serious.

There aren't any new details on when Windows 10 will arrive, but Windows Phone diehards who got burned when their WP7 handsets were never upgraded to WP8 should be relieved at this news.

In addition this is more evidence that Microsoft really is calling the next version of its operating system Windows 10 across all platforms, signaling the death of the "Windows Phone" brand and - goodness willing - Windows RT.

Via The Verge

Microsoft hints Cortana may come to other platforms

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Cortana's been cooped up too long

Microsoft's Siri rival Cortana is currently exclusive to Windows Phone, despite plenty of speculation that she should have moved beyond her home base by now.

But that will happen soon enough, judging by comments Microsoft made during a briefing with analysts and journalists recently.

Microsoft Chief Experience Officer Julie Larson-Green took the opportunity to touch on some of the many things Cortana might do beyond her basic smartphone functions.

When asked if that means Cortana is on her way to other platforms, she responded, "the short answer is yeah."

She wouldn't reveal any more details, but that's pretty unambiguous. It won't be surprising at all to see Cortana in Windows 10, but where she might venture beyond that is a mystery we're eager to see solved.

Via Business Insider

Microsoft releases new iPhone and iPad Office apps, Android incoming

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Taking advantage of the increased screen size

Microsoft has released new powered-up versions of its Office apps for iPhone and iPad, covering Word, Powerpoint and Excel, and a preview for the upcoming Android versions is starting imminently.

Until now, the Microsoft Office apps available for iPhones were pretty weak, but Microsoft has updated them to offer the same sort of experience iPad users have enjoyed to date.

This upgrade clearly slots in well with the introduction of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which give you a bit more screen space in which to navigate those super-exciting Excel spreadsheets.

The iPad apps have been updated too, but the changes seem to be subtler.

Android owners don't get left out, but you'll probably have a bit longer to wait. You can sign up for the Android Office app preview programme, but if you're not accepted you'll have to wait until the full launch in 2015.

The Android version is designed to work with Android tablets rather than phones, requiring something with a 7-10.1-inch screen running Android KitKat. Have a Nexus 9? You're out of luck.

iOS versions are much less picky, simply requiring iOS 7.0 or newer. These apps are free to use, and let you both create and edit documents. However, there are not-so-micro transactions built-in that let you sign up to an Office 365 subscription too.

An Office 365 subscription starts at $6.99/£5.99 a month, and that gets you full desktop access on up to five computers.

With 40 million copies of the iPad Office downloaded already, Microsoft is clearly hoping to leverage these free apps to bring a few people back into the Office fold.

"Office applications are what people want to use to get things done" claims Microsoft corporate vice president John Case.

Microsoft Outlook for Mac to look more like Outlook on PC

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

The new interface

If you aren't a fan of Microsoft applications on Apple devices, Microsoft has an announcement with you in mind. The company has updated its Outlook email client for Mac users and it will introduce a new version of Office for Mac by the end of 2015.

The updated Outlook tool features improved threading, a new interface and online archiving that will help you find old emails on the Outlook web platform. The goal of the launch is to provide a more consistent experience across PC and Mac devices, according to Microsoft. The new Mac interface will look and feel similar to Outlook on PC.

The new interface will include improved scrolling and agility when switching between Ribbon tabs, Microsoft said. It will also feature Master Category List enhancements that will enable users to name and color lists that sync between all Outlook clients.

The update is readily available at no additional cost for Office 365 commercial customers and Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal and Office 365 University subscribers.

In the first half of 2015 Microsoft says it will release a public beta for the next version of Office for Mac.

The final release will be available during the second half of the year, the company says. Office 365 commercial and consumer subscribers will get the next version at no additional cost.

Fighting talk: The Microsoft Band is what Apple's Watch should have been…

Monday, November 3, 2014

It's style vs substance

Microsoft pulled a Microsoft this week, by announcing what appeared to be another too-late, competition-cloning, 'me-too' product for no one, in the form of the Microsoft Band health wearable.

The thing is, though, even though it's an easy target, Microsoft is attempting to do a lot more here than Apple's trying with its more glamorous Watch.

For a start, Microsoft Band is open. There's a Microsoft Health app for it already up on the Google Play shop and in Apple's App Store, for example, which means that it's not just for the Windows Phone hardcore. That's a brave decision, although one that makes pretty clear sense given the massive difference between Android/iPhone and Windows Phone user numbers.

A health band exclusively sold to Windows Phone users would sell in numbers so low analysts would be issuing sales forecasts counting quarterly shipped units by the dozen.

But there's more to get excited about than cross-platform appeal. The Band is stacked with sensors. Sure, the health wearable world is built mainly on lies and marketing, as there's pretty much zero use in knowing what your heart rate is at any given moment, not unless you're a professional athlete training to within an inch of your life each day.

And the calculation of calories burnt by counting steps is something overweight people have been doing in their heads since the 1970s, so it hardly worth spending £200 on a watch to do that for you.

People have been able to successfully manually track their sleep by simply remembering how well they slept the following morning; no one needs a gadget to tell them they woke up twice during the night and maybe got a bit a hot and kicked the duvet off in annoyance. If that happened, you know it happened… because it happened. Not everything needs a notification.

At least Microsoft is trying to do more than clone Fitbit. The Band has a built-in UV monitor that might be of some use to more UV-sensitive types venturing out for a run for the first time. It lets you reply to text messages via short auto-replies, and even contains a galvanic skin response sensor that can, allegedly, measure the stress of the wearer.

Stress tests are likely to be another infrequently used guestimator, but still it's something new and interesting, and a shot at doing more than just the usual heart-beat-counting stuff and offering on-wrist notifications.

And in more good news for anyone who's struggling to keep all their wearables and pocketables charged, Microsoft says the Band hardware should be good for two days of normal use.

And that one's the killer. Apple suggests its Watch will need charging every day, so although you get a flashier screen and OS, having half the usable uptime is going to make Apple's first wearable much more of a burden.

The Band screen is smaller and it doesn't do as much as the full-on smartwatches, of course, and you won't look as obviously minted as if you were wearing a thing with an Apple logo on it, but it'll work for two entire days. For that alone Microsoft's engineers deserve some credit.

Apple and Google's wearables are sure to have more fans, greater sales and higher levels of general enthusiasm surrounding them, but Band seems to show Microsoft can mix it with its more fashionable and younger competitors – and could one day come up with some hardware that's actually popular and genuinely innovative.

Fitbit, Microsoft are next to challenge Apple Watch

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Two new high-end smartwatches with a fitness focus are expected to land soon. Meanwhile, another fitness tracker is giving its band away for free.

There are many smartwatch flavors to choose from -- and soon there will be two more. CNET Update goes over the reports on upcoming smartwatches from Fitbit and Microsoft, and we take a look at a fitness tracker that's practically free:

Other stories mentioned in this roundup:

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Microsoft officially dumps Nokia in favour of Lumia

Saturday, October 25, 2014

So long, farewell

Microsoft is set to officially drop the Nokia brand in favour of Microsoft Lumia. The move has been expected for a while, with internal documents leaked last month explaining that the Redmond company would be ditching references to both Nokia and Windows Phone.

Now Microsoft has confirmed to The Verge that the change is official. This means that in future there will be no Nokia Lumia handset, but instead Microsoft Lumia.

Nokia France will be the first region to change to Microsoft Lumia, which will be reflected on its Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts.

Nokia won't completely disappear, with the Finnish company continuing to focus on mapping and network infrastructure. Just don't expect to see 'Nokia' printed on any new handsets.

While Microsoft confirmed it's dumping the Nokia brand, it didn't shed any further light on the future of Windows Phone.

In the same leaked documents that suggested Microsoft would be ditching the Nokia brand it was also hinted that the 'Windows Phone' brand would be dropped. But we'll just have to wait and find out.

Opinion: Should Microsoft follow eBay and HP by splitting up?

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Redmond's hardware division is in danger of impeding its software business

The past month has been notable for split ups of well-known companies into two separate entities, both of which are entirely independent of the other. First off, eBay and PayPal split, creating two publicly traded companies each having a new CEO and new focuses and goals. PayPal can now focus on the threat from Apple Pay, Square and Stripe, all of which have been eating the company's revenue when it was consolidated with eBay.

And then Hewlett-Packard split into two companies after nearly one hundred years of existence. One company will focus on laptop, printing and PC hardware while the other company – headed by current HP CEO Meg Whitman – will be focused on enterprise technology.

Both companies generate tens of billions in revenues and billions in profit with the split enabling each to be more nimble and to focus on the "lightning fast" world of technology that was previously unapproachable as a behemoth company focused on hundreds of simultaneous products.

One company that didn't split up over the past month was Microsoft, despite repeated calls from investors, analysts and pundits over the past decade. The Microsoft of now is incredibly different from the Microsoft of the 80s and 90s which was a force to be reckoned with, creating and destroying industries and generating billions in revenue.

Now, the market changing decisions are made by different giants: Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon. They now rule where Microsoft used to. While the world still does rely on the services provided by Microsoft – Windows, Office, Azure – the move to smartphones and tablets has undermined the core business of Windows and Office.

Microsoft's businesses are essentially broken into two sections: hardware and software. The hardware side (also known as "devices") includes Windows Phone, Surface and Xbox and is supposed to work in synergy with the software side (also known as "services"), which runs Windows development, Office, Azure and so on.

Hardware-wise, Microsoft is little more than a mess. Significant resources have been invested in Windows Phone, which has captured less than 5% of the global market and less than 3% in the US and UK, two highly profitable sectors where Apple and Samsung reign supreme. Despite releasing Windows Mobile in 2000, Microsoft missed the opportunity to create an iPhone-like smartphone operating system early enough, choosing instead to rely on the continued dominance of Windows PCs.

Running in parallel with Microsoft's blunders regarding smartphones have been blunders with tablets, leading to the Surface line – a venture that has lost Microsoft over $1 billion (around £620 million, AU$1.15 billion) since 2012. While the Surface hardware is nice and could rival the iPad, consumers have never warmed to the devices. The idea of a laptop/tablet hybrid is so different from the current convention of computer use – and from the ideas promoted by the iPad – that it has never caught on, leading to poor sales.

In 2014, Microsoft parted with $7.2 billion (around £4.5 billion, AU$8.25 billion) to purchase Nokia's hardware division. Nokia has now been rolled into Microsoft, causing layoffs of thousands of workers and destroying the brand that has adorned phones for nearly two decades.

The layoffs, which were meant to eliminate two people doing the same job, still leave Microsoft approximately 16% bigger than it was before the Nokia deal, bringing the total headcount up to 128,000 as of June 30, 2014. Apple, by comparison, employs 80,000 staff worldwide – 50,000 of which are in the US – most of who work in Apple Stores.

This raises a question: how can a company with 128,000 employees across the world, acting out countless strategies and working on a myriad of products remain nimble in the fast changing technological world of 2014?

The answer is by splitting the company in two. One side would be hardware (devices) and the other software (services).

After gaffe, Microsoft CEO says he was 'wrong' on women's pay

Friday, October 17, 2014

Satya Nadella does an about-face after suggesting women in tech shouldn't ask for raises but instead rely on "good karma." He now wants to lead the tech industry in gender equality.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says he now wants to lead the industry on diversity. James Martin/CNET

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella inadvertently shined a light on gender inequality with a public blunder on Thursday. During an event focused on women in tech, he suggested women shouldn't ask for raises but rather trust that the system will take care of them.

"It's not really about asking for the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along," Nadella said in the interview, which was at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Phoenix. "And that, I think, might be one of the additional superpowers that quite frankly women who don't ask for raises have."

"Because that's good karma," Nadella continued. "It'll come back because somebody's going to know that's the kind of person that I want to trust. That's the kind of person that I want to really give more responsibility to."

Though Nadella's statement has caused an uproar on social media and among gender equality advocates. Vivek Wadhwa, an outspoken author and academic on diversity in the tech world, said the gaffe may actually bring more gender equality to the industry.

Wadhwa corresponded with Nadella on Friday morning. The CEO told him he regrets his statements and now wants Microsoft to be an agent of change in regard to gender disparity in the tech industry.

"He said that he just gave a wrong and terrible answer to the question,'" Wadhwa told CNET. "He wants to now lead the industry on diversity."

Shortly after his statement on Thursday, Nadella took to Twitter to apologize, saying, "Was inarticulate re how women should ask for raise. Our industry must close gender pay gap so a raise is not needed because of a bias." He also penned an email to his employees to say he "answered that question completely wrong" and that "men and women should get equal pay for equal work." He added that "If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask."

Nadella's remarks come just days after Microsoft released its diversity statistics. The tech giant follows Google, Facebook, Twitter and other companies in divulging data on the gender and racial breakdown of its employees. According to Microsoft, women now comprise 29 percent of its worldwide workforce, which is up from 24 percent over the past year. As far as racial data, 60.6 percent of its world staff is white, 28.9 percent is Asian, 5.1 percent is Latino and 3.5 percent is black. These numbers are similar to most other tech companies that have published diversity statistics.

Women and people of color in the tech industry also tend to receive lower pay than white males. Women in technology earn $6,358 less than their male counterparts, on the average, and women with at least one child earn $11,247 less than everyone else, according to a report released last month from the American Institute for Economic Research.

While the tech world is often criticized for its lack of diversity and income equality, Nadella's remarks and subsequent apologies have sparked additional conversation about the topic. Gender equality advocate organization Ms. Foundation for Women has called on Nadella to follow up his apology with concrete actions and to "fix the sexism bug at Microsoft."

"While we appreciate Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's quick apology and admission that his advice to women in tech was flat-out wrong, we're disheartened by the fact that systemic sexism still exists, as women in tech work hard to make strides toward economic security," Teresa C. Younger, Ms. Foundation president and CEO, said in a statement sent to CNET. "Microsoft and the entire tech industry must ensure that women are recruited, promoted and compensated fairly -- receiving the same opportunities as men."

Like Ms. Foundation, Wadhwa is known for criticizing top tech companies and venture capital firms for their lack of gender diversity. He has famously gotten into virtual tit-for-tats with venture capital titan Marc Andreessen and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. Andreessen blocked Wadhwa on Twitter after Wadhwa questioned him about bias toward white males with his fund's investments. And, after Wadhwa criticized Costolo for having few women in management at Twitter, Costolo called Wadhwa "the Carrot Top of academic sources."

However, Wadhwa said he strongly believed Nadella when Nadella said he wants to be a part of the solution.

"I believe that Satya is as supportive of women as I am and know this will make him much more sensitive to the problems that women face," Wadhwa said. "I expect a lot of good to come from this mistake -- with him becoming a role model for other CEOs in fostering equality and diversity."

Dara Kerr Dara Kerr is a staff writer for CNET focused on the sharing economy and tech culture. She grew up in Colorado where she developed an affinity for collecting fool's gold and spirit animals. See full bio

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Is this why Microsoft named it Windows 10?

Monday, October 6, 2014

Seemingly everyone on the Net has a theory as to why Microsoft skipped the name "Windows 9" and jumped to 10. Here's one explanation that actually makes sense.

Nick Statt/CNET

There are quite a few theories floating around out there as to why Microsoft decided to name the latest version of its flagship operating system Windows 10, skipping over Windows 9. On Tuesday, the company unveiled the name and showed off a brief demo of the OS at a press event in San Francisco. The leap from Windows 8 to Windows 10 easily stole the spotlight from any visual design and developmental changes Microsoft has baked in to the product.

So what's the deal? On the surface, it appears to be smart marketing. The Windows 8 brand has been mired in controversy for the last two years stemming from Microsoft's bold yet unfamiliar design language and functionality decisions. So why not scrap any association with an entire numeric leap?

Other theories are that there are 10 major consumer releases of Windows, making this a celebration of that progress, while some feel it should have been called Windows 11 in that case. Some think Microsoft may make future Windows releases incremental, and thus free, after Windows 10 -- the same strategy Apple employed when it switched from numerals to feral cats after the release of Mac OS X. That theory has been bolstered by reports earlier this week stating that Andreas Diantoro, the president of Microsoft Indonesia, reportedly said the company was planning on making its next version of Windows free to current Windows 8 users. (The company declined to talk Windows 10 business models yesterday.)

Yet no explanation seems to come close to matching that of a self-described Microsoft developer who goes by the name cranbourne on the social news site Reddit. The user points the finger at Microsoft's almost 20-year-old releases that helped make the software maker a household name during the rise of the PC:

Microsoft dev here, the internal rumours are that early testing revealed just how many third party products that had code of the form
if(version.StartsWith("Windows 9")) { /* 95 and 98 */ } else {
and that this was the pragmatic solution to avoid that.

"Having worked on the Windows compatibility team before, I have no difficulty believing this," wrote user richkzad in response. There are in fact examples of this on publicly available code repositories.

Essentially, many software programs that have been updated to be compatible with each and every Windows upgrade since 1995 may have recycled a version of this code snippet to allow them to work with both Windows 95 and Windows 98. If Microsoft's next OS had been named Windows 9, such software would have seen that the name starts with "Windows 9" and could have confused the new operating system with Win 95 and 98. That could have created compatibility issues and caused the programs to stop working, or it could have led to version-check errors or other unknown problems.

Examples might include outdated but still-in-use versions of software from Apple, such as QuickTime; scores of word processing apps and plugins; and even large-scale enterprise software from companies like SAP and Oracle that's used to do resource planning, customer and supply chain management and database development. Obviously, this could have been a disaster, one Microsoft would rather sidestep.

Not only does this theory seem to be more probable than other explanations -- countless troves of third-party software were built on the backbone of Windows 95 and Windows 98 -- it also seems to be sprouting up independently among other Microsoft watchers and tech industry pontificators. Here's blogger and technologist Anil Dash with the very same conclusion:

I bet the real reason it's called Windows 10 is because some enterprise app written 20 years ago checks for "Windows 9x". #imaginethemeeting
-- ???? (@anildash) September 30, 2014

There is no way of knowing what Microsoft executives were really thinking for now. Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive VP of operating systems, took a great deal of time at the beginning of yesterday's event to toy with the audience. He first explained why Windows 9 would make logical sense, only to wipe the PowerPoint screen. He went on to say that Windows One was a better choice as it jibed with the company's nonsequential naming scheme for its Xbox gaming console (the company released the "Xbox" and then the "Xbox 360," only to go with "Xbox One" for the gadget's latest iteration). But Myerson joked yet again, saying the Windows One name was already taken and showing a slide of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who oversaw the original Windows 1.0 release.

When Myerson landed on Windows 10, he had to reassure the crowd that he was indeed serious this time. They were skipping 9 -- for real. "It's a name that resonated best with what we'll deliver," Myerson said.

When reached for comment, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "Windows 10 carries Windows forward into a new way of doing things. It is not an incremental change, but a new Windows that will empower the next billion users."

Nick Statt Nick Statt is a staff writer for CNET. He previously wrote for ReadWrite and was a news associate at the social magazine app Flipboard. He spends a questionable amount of his free time contemplating his relationship with video games while continuously exploring the convergence of tech, science and pop culture. See full bio

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Microsoft cuts 2,100 employees worldwide

Friday, September 26, 2014

Microsoft still is planning to eliminate another 2,900 jobs by July 2015. James Martin/CNET

In round two of its previously announced planned layoff of 18,000, Microsoft is cutting another 2,100 people on September 18.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the 2,100 figure, noting that 747 of those laid off will be in Washington state. The remaining cuts will be at other Microsoft locations worldwide, the spokesperson said.

Today's cuts will be across a variety of teams, as previously rumored. The Microsoft spokesperson declined to specify which teams would bear the brunt of the latest round of cuts.

Microsoft officials said in July that the company would be realigning its worldwide workforce by cutting 18,000 jobs, with 12,500 of those cuts coming from employees Microsoft acquired as part of its acquisition of Nokia's handset and services business. Microsoft officials said the layoffs would happen over the course of several waves.

Microsoft cut 13,000 employees total in the first wave back in July. That wave included some, but not all, of the former Nokia employees, my contacts say. It also included employees in the Operating Systems Group and just about every other group across the company. Microsoft also is planning to reduce its dependency on "contingent" (non full-time) employees by 20 percent as part of its realignment.

As of mid-July 2014, Microsoft had more than 125,000 full-time employees on its payroll, a number that included the 25,000 employees it acquired as part of its Nokia acquisition.

As a result of the layoffs, Microsoft officials said the company would incur pre-tax charges of $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion for severance and related benefits costs and asset related charges over the next four quarters.

With 13,000 cut in round one, and another 2,100 today, Microsoft still is planning to eliminate another 2,900 jobs by July 2015.

This story originally appeared as "Microsoft cuts another 2,100 employees worldwide" on ZDNet.

View the original article here

Updated: Microsoft layoffs continue with over 2,000 more jobs cut

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hopes to refocus the company for the future

Update: A Microsoft spokesperson sent TechRadar the following statement confirming the news that the company has laid off an additional 2,100 employees:

"As we announced July 17, Microsoft is reducing our overall workforce by approximately 18,000 positions over the course of the year, with about 13,000 reductions initiated in July. We've taken another step in that process today, with the elimination of about 2,100 jobs which are part of the overall 18,000 number announced in July.

"The reductions happening today are spread across many different business units, and many different countries. We will continue to go through this process in the most thoughtful manner possible, with the deepest respect for affected individuals and recognition of their service to the company. We will offer severance to all affected employees."

Original story below…

Microsoft has announced plans to cut 2,100 jobs as part of its ongoing plan to lay off 18,000 of its 125,000 employees by July 2015.

The company announced the restructuring in July, losing a full 13,000 employees in the first wave.

Today's 2,100 layoffs affect a multitude of Microsoft teams and divisions, ZDNet reports.

While 747 of those laid off today are in Washington state, the rest come from other Microsoft locations around the world.

These 18,000 layoffs mark the largest restructuring in Microsoft's history, dwarfing the 5,800 employees let go in 2009.

Workers absorbed when Microsoft bought Nokia's phones and services division in April make up more than two thirds of the 18,000 that will be laid off by next summer, while the rest come from teams throughout Microsoft.

The initiative will ultimately cost Microsoft up to $1.6 billion (about £977m, AU$1.78b) in severance costs and other charges.

But CEO Satya Nadella wrote in July that he hopes to refocus the company on more future-facing endeavors like the cloud and the Internet of Things.

Between the initial 13,000 and today's 2,100 layoffs, Microsoft still has 2,900 more cuts to announce by next summer.

Versus: Microsoft Office vs Apple iWork vs Google Docs: which is best?

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Microsoft Office, Apple iWork or Google Docs: which is best?

The clash of the office suites is a hard fought battle indeed

The services provided by Apple, Google and Microsoft are becoming more alike, both in terms of use and spread. Apple has revamped its cloud offerings, moving the iWork suite into iCloud and allowing use on Windows machines.

Microsoft is in the process of dramatically increasing the functionality of Office 365, adding additional security and storage space. Google Docs has become one of the go-to web-based services for writing, creating a slideshow and so on, with no subscription or specific operating system needed.

For many years Apple has been seen as a company for those who are "creative", offering top of the range creative software such as Final Cut and Sound Track. As businesses became more interested in Apple's technology – mainly because of the iPad – the company has had to up its game in terms of office software, improving the iWork suite through a serious of both visual and functional updates.

Unlike Apple, Microsoft has never had the problem of being the underdog in terms of businesses using its software and hardware. An increasing amount of Microsoft's revenue comes from enterprise, with over one billion people using Office. That hasn't stopped the company from innovating, adding new visual and functional changes over the years. In 2014, Microsoft brought Office to the iPad, again increasing the reach and usage of the software.

Office for iPad is a very smartly designed app

Google's offering, Google Docs, came about after the firm's success with email. The software is, like all things Google, free to use and relies on a network connection (unless you run the Chrome browser, in which case you can set it up for offline access, albeit with some important features missing such as spell checking, for example).

Google recently introduced the Chromebook, opening up manufacturing to various OEMs just as it did with Android. While some may see the need for an internet connection to be a flaw, it's not so much of an issue with the prevalence of Wi-Fi these days, and faster mobile connections (4G LTE) becoming more and more commonplace, especially in and around cities.

But which of these services is the best? All three of the big companies have stepped up their game, meaning that the differences are becoming more and more difficult to see – but don't be fooled, they are still present. In this article, we're presenting our opinion on who wins and who loses this particular battle.

First off, on the basis of the usability of each service, the three are too close to call. Apple and Microsoft's solutions work fully offline, whereas the same can't be said for Google's, and that is perhaps the one major difference between them all for the everyday user – with the stress on everyday. If you need to write five hundred words quickly or create a slideshow, all three options will work quickly and effectively.

The biggest advantage of Apple's solution, iWork, is that it ties in so well with its other apps and services. iCloud provides constant syncing between the OS X and iOS versions of iWork, which includes Pages, Keynote and Numbers.

The integration also extends to Apple TV, a device that is becoming more and more popular in both homes and the workplace. "Beaming" slides and the whole screen via AirPlay could set Apple's hardware and software apart, especially when the competition has no comparable service.

iCloud's ability to sync between devices means that projects can be started on the go and finished in the office, all without losing a single bullet point. Apple offers a tiered data storage system which boasts up to 200GB of storage for customers at significantly cheaper prices than Dropbox and Google Drive.

Pictures of next version of Microsoft Office 365 emerge

Monday, September 22, 2014

A purported screenshot of Microsoft Office 2015

Microsoft has been distributing copies of the next version of Office to partners and testers and although less glamorous than its operating system counterpart, Windows, the corporation's business suite is still one of the biggest (if not the single biggest) revenue stream for the company.

Sources told The Verge that the "Office Technical Preview", which has yet to be name, will feature a "Tell Me" helper, similar to the one found in its Office Online apps and to the much-maligned Clippy.

Screenshots of Office 16 (which could become Office 2015) show no change to the user interface - the Ribbon UI still is there - but there will be a new dark/black colour theme, one that will be introduced due to popular demand.

The Verge also suggests that Microsoft will add automatic image rotation to Office documents and additional sync options for Outllook email client.

Expect the change log to be significantly longer than this though as the momentum gradually shifts from the desktop to online and mobile.

The current version of Office saw the introduction of a subscription model together with tighter integration with Microsoft's online storage service, OneDrive.

Expect Office 2015 to feature during the Microsoft "Windows 9" event, one that will be held on 30 September.

Opinion: Why Microsoft must ensure Windows 9 is a big success

Sunday, September 21, 2014

According to Gartner, 2013 was the worst year in the history of the PC business as sales plummeted by 35 million units year-on-year.

Rather than giving PCs a shot in the arm, Windows 8 appeared to have put them to sleep: in February 2014, Netmarketshare reported that Windows 7 had 48% of the PC market compared to just 11% for Windows 8. Windows XP, a 12-year-old OS, had 29%.

The good news is that things are looking better this year and PC sales are on the rise. The bad news is that that the reason doesn't appear to be Windows 8.1.

According to August's figures from Net Applications, Windows 8.x is suffering from declining market share – a small decline, but a decline nevertheless.

Sales haven't rallied because businesses have learned to love Windows 8. They've rallied because Microsoft finally pulled the plug on Windows XP. Microsoft needs to persuade businesses not to stick with Windows 7.

That's a terrible indictment of Windows 8, and it puts enormous pressure on Windows 9. To have your most important customers shun one major OS is unfortunate. To have them shun two would be disastrous.

Writing on Windows IT Pro, veteran Windows watcher Paul Thurrott argues that Windows 8 was more of a disaster than Windows Vista. "With Vista, the solution was easy: Just make it faster, lighter, and smaller, and slap a new name on it – Windows 7 – and watch the accolades roll in," he says. "But Windows 8? Oh boy."

Windows 8.1 did improve things, but it couldn't solve the fundamental problem with Windows 8: it's two completely different operating systems bolted together, and it's particularly confusing on the non-touch PCs that most Windows users have.

That's been great news for Microsoft's rivals. We've seen Chromebooks make big progress in education and iPads in enterprises. Apple continues to hoover up the biggest profits in the PC industry, and iOS and Android dominate the mobile device market.

Windows 8 has been a disaster, and come October it'll be the only disaster in town. That's when Microsoft is killing off Windows 7 on new PCs, a year after ending sales of the software. Unless you go for the pricey Windows 7 Pro, come November if you want a PC it'll come with Windows 8.

That's where Windows 9, also known as Threshold, comes in. Its job isn't just to repair the damage Windows 8 wrought – it also needs to persuade Microsoft's largest market, its most important customers, to upgrade to its latest OS rather than stick with a version it's already trying to take off the market. If Windows 9 can't do that, then Windows' future looks awfully like its very recent past.

We're expecting to see Windows 9 at the end of this month, but it won't be available to everybody: according to reports, the "Enterprise Technical Preview" of Windows 9 will be unveiled on the 30th of September but previews for consumer users, including phone and tablet users, won't arrive until 2015.

From the images and details that have leaked so far it's clear that Microsoft has taken some of the Windows 8 criticism on board.

The Start menu has been changed to combine traditional menu items and tiled icons; Modern-style apps can be run in windowed mode in the desktop environment as well as full screen; the much-hated Charms appear to have been binned; there are virtual desktops; and there is a new notification centre.

Speculation also suggests that Windows Phone's virtual assistant Cortana will make the move to the desktop, and leaked images showing Windows Phone devices without the Phone bit underline Microsoft's plan to make a single unified operating system across multiple platforms. That would mean the end of Windows RT and Windows Phone.

Windows 9, aka Threshold, isn't the only Windows on the horizon. Windows 8.1 with Bing, a low-cost version of Windows for small tablets and laptops where OEMs set the default search as Bing (users can still change the default if they wish), is spearheading a wave of low-cost Windows devices such as Toshiba's £103 Encore Mini.

That puts Windows head-to-head with small Android tablets, Apple's all-conquering iPads and Google's increasingly compelling Chromebooks.

One of the most compelling Windows 9 rumours is that Microsoft will do what it did with Windows 8.1: make it available for free.

According to analyst firm Net Applications, the Windows 8.1 update has gained significant market share very quickly: 53% of PCs running Windows 8.x are running the most recent version just seven months after it was introduced. Windows 8's uptake was significantly slower.

Writing in Computerworld, Gregg Keizer suggests that Microsoft may be considering making Windows 9 a free upgrade not just to Windows 8.1, but to Windows 7 too.

If he's right, the effects could be significant: just imagine all the low-cost devices sold with Windows 8.1 with Bing and the corporate computers sticking with Windows 7 all upgrading to Windows 9.

It wouldn't be overnight, but Windows 9 would accumulate significant market share much more quickly than if it were a paid-for product.

That makes Microsoft's job easier, with the bulk of its customers on the most secure version of Windows to date, using its most recent web browser, able to access its Windows Store and using Microsoft's various online services.

That market share would be in the consumer sector at first, because of course businesses are more careful and tend to upgrade much more slowly, but the corporations would eventually get on board too.

In that scenario the money Microsoft would lose on OS sales would be more than compensated by the money it would make from selling services. Perhaps the Threshold codename is prescient: Microsoft could be on the threshold of something very interesting indeed.

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Microsoft Yammer

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Free for basic account; $3 per user per month for Enterprise Network account; $8 per user per month for Office 365 Enterprise E1; $20 per user per month for Office 365 Enterprise 3By Jill Duffy Microsoft's Yammer is an online but private business social network meant to foster communication among employees. Because of its freemium model—with a decent array of features included in a free account—Yammer is appealing to businesses just starting to experiment with giving employees alternatives to email for talking and getting work done.

Yammer's greatest strength is that it's easy to use. Many online business platforms compare themselves to Facebook in ease of use, but Yammer is rare in that it actually delivers on that promise. Yammer is so simple to use in part because it doesn't have much in the way of tools and features for workplace management, project management, scheduling, time-tracking, workflow monitoring, or other common business processes. You can get those kinds of tools and services courtesy of Microsoft with Yammer included in the package (see the Price section for more on that), but Yammer itself is really just a business social network.

If your organization needs nothing more than a place for employees to talk to one another, with a few extra features such as a chat box and polls thrown in for good measure, Yammer is a very good choice. But if you're looking for a tool with the potential to change the way day-to-day work gets done—in addition to serving as a private social network—then I recommend Editors' Choice Podio. Podio has everything Yammer has, plus a suite of apps that specifically support workflows and work management.

Price
As I mentioned, Yammer offers a free account that includes all the basic features, as well as the ability to assign a group administrator. The next tier up, called Enterprise Network, costs $3 per user per month. It lets you add an enterprise administrator who can add custom usage policies, change the basic configuration of Yammer's features and security levels, authorize and manage applications connected to Yammer, make network-wide announcements, and control a few other high-level matters. This tier also gets advanced controls, enterprise integrations, and support.

There are two more options, but to be honest, they sound like pitches for other products and services offered by Microsoft with Yammer thrown in as a perk, rather than the other way around. They are Office 365 Enterprise E1 ($8 per user per month) and Office 365 Enterprise 3 ($20 per user per month). For complete details of what's included in each of the offerings, see Yammer's Pricing page.

Yammer's Design and Basic Features
Yammer really is one of the simplest online business platforms to navigate. After signing up your organization or team and creating an account, you can fill out a profile with as much or as little information as you want. From there, you'll want to explore your network.

Navigation in Yammer is highly streamlined. There are a buttons for home, inbox, and alerts. That's it. You'll find secondary navigation bars on some other pages, but Yammer has really mastered UI simplicity.

Your home page has a stream of content, including status updates and comments on them from around your network. By default, they appear in reverse chronological order with a time and date stamp on each post and comment. You can filter this main feed by top posts, posts by everyone, or posts from people or about topics you're following.

Users can establish groups, which are exactly what they sound like: custom groups of Yammer users, typically used to cluster departments or teams that need to regularly communicate with one another. The person who creates the group becomes the admin (in the free version of Yammer at least; more administrator controls and permission levels are available in the paid version). In business social networks, I'd actually like to see more automated group suggestions, such as everyone who has identified as belonging to the Editorial team, or all New York-based employees, as indicated in their profile, with the option to automatically add everyone who qualifies.

Speaking of profiles, Yammer profiles aren't flashy (there's no big banner image to customize, thank goodness), but they do have a thorough list of fields that encourage users to share relevant information: phone number or extension, current location, interests and skills, various online handles and accounts (LinkedIn, Twitter, Skype, instant messaging app of choice), and more. You can add past information about yourself, such as degrees earned and other places of employment, but it's not mandatory.

All your profile information is consolidated into a downloadable vcard. Vcards are compatible with a many address books and contacts apps, so it's simple to bring someone's contact information with you to other services or sites you use. It's a great feature.

Apples and Oranges
Yammer does have features and functions that let you upload images, attach files, and get other work done, but it really is tightly focused on being a communication platform. Here at PCMag, our news team has used it for a few years to keep track of stories that reporters are covering and their current statuses, which can change by the minute. For that kind of quick-paced communication, Yammer works well.

But it wouldn't work well for other kinds of work. If the news reporters needed a time-tracking tool to record how many hours or minutes they spent writing each story, Yammer wouldn't be a good fit. And it might not be ideal, either, for more nuanced work requiring detailed scheduling, or an in-depth discussion of art and design projects that you might want to annotate directly. You can find a lot of those kinds of tools in other business platforms that are specialized to those ends. For example, Asana is an online tool that focuses mostly on workflow and task-assignment. And LiquidPlanner is another online service that best serves teams with complex scheduling issues related to project management. Yammer doesn't have anything like that.

Podio, on the other hand, does. It's similar to Yammer at the start, but goes far beyond it, with other apps (think widgets, really) you can add on to expand the platform to meet your team's specific needs. This modular approach makes it a brilliant tool that can do whatever you need, without pushing extra tools, features, and apps that you don't need.

One Toe in the Water
Microsoft Yammer is a good business social network that any organization can try out for free. It isn't a complete workplace platform for managing projects, scheduling tasks, or even tracking workflow (though if an enterprise-level corporation pays for some other Microsoft services, Yammer can certainly integrate with those kinds of tools). It's easier to navigate and learn to use than a similar competitor called Jive, but not nearly as comprehensive as Podio, our Editors' Choice. For dipping a toe in the business-social-network water, Yammer is a fine option, but Podio is better if you're committed to implementing a platform with real potential to change how employees communicate and collaborate.

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Microsoft Yammer

Friday, July 25, 2014

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Microsoft Windows Phone 8.1

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Although its precise rollout timing is up to carriers, the release of vastly improved Windows Phone 8.1 is imminent, with support having officially started on June 24. You could say that Microsoft is playing catch-up with its mobile operating system, and in some ways you'd be right. But the company has gone the extra mile to improve and include innovations beyond those offered in Apple's iOS 7 and Google's Android 4.4 with Windows Phone 8.1.

Windows Phone's new Cortana voice-activated digital assistant blends the personality of Siri with the behavioral learning of Google Now. The OS's unique home screen, with live app tiles that are both easier to touch and more informative than the other OS's icons, becomes even more appealing. Wi-Fi Sense and Storage Sense are useful, unique tools. With all these changes, Microsoft has removed most of the barriers to Windows Phone's widespread adoption.

Microsoft first showed off the newest phone OS version at its Build 2014 conference at the start of April. If you can't wait for your carrier to update your smartphone, instructions for getting the Preview version are on this Windows Phone Preview for Developers page. Nokia chief Stephen Elop has stated that all Nokia Windows Phone 8's will be upgraded, but it's up to the mobile carriers to make it happen. And, of course, it will come preinstalled on new Windows Phones, available this summer.

PCMag got an early look at Windows Phone 8.1, running on a spiffy Nokia Lumia Icon—a reasonably priced PCMag Editors' Choice smartphone.

Though Windows Phone 8.1 has a lot of big new features, such as Cortana, new live-tile home-screen options, and a pull-down Action Center notification panel, the update doesn't break existing apps the way the move from 7.x to 8 did. I was able to run its new features and existing apps, such as At Bat and Words With Friends, with very few hiccups.

Cortana
The aim of Cortana, Microsoft's digital-assistant answer to Apple's Siri and Google Now, is to incorporate only the best features of both. Cortana, based on the female AI character in the Halo videogames, also replaces the woefully limited search features of Windows Phone 8. The previous search functionality was just a Bing Web search. Cortana can actually search within the phone for settings and apps (and run them). But Cortana is so much more than just phone search.

Cortana will also (with your permission) scan your email to, for example, find flight reservations and notify you if there's traffic or a flight delay. Cortana gives you more control over privacy than Google Now does, because you decide what personal information to share with her. You do this by entering your interests, locations, and relationships in your "notebook." Microsoft got this idea of the personal assistant keeping a notebook from actual human personal assistant professionals.

You can invoke Cortana by touching and holding the magnifying-glass icon at the lower right of any screen or by tapping her tile. If you do the latter, you'll see her daily summary for you, with the news, sports, weather, and other topics in which you've expressed interest. I only wish you could specify the order of the sections on this page. For some reason, Weather appeared all the way at the bottom.

Your Notebook includes sections for interests, reminders, quiet hours, inner circle, places, and music searches. You choose what to include on first-use setup, but also as you ask her things. For example, when I ask who the Mets are playing tonight, the page showing the evening's schedule also offers to add the team to my notebook as an interest.

You can tell Siri to create a reminder, but with Cortana, I can actually say, "Remind me to buy Ziploc bags when I'm near Costco." You can choose a particular Costco or any Costco. Without fail, when I show up at the bulk warehouse, the message pops up. This ability to use geo-fencing tied to Web and personal information is limited in Siri, though it is well supported in Google Now.

One of the coolest things in Cortana—and it's something not available in iOS or Android—is the ability to remind you about something based on events and conditions, sort of like IFTTT.com. For example, you can say "remind me to ask my sister about her new beau," and she'll pop up text with the reminder the next time your sibling calls or messages. She can automatically notify you about a flight change, and let you know when a good time to leave would be, based on traffic.

Unlike Siri, Cortana comes in only the one voice. On the other hand, one advantage Windows Phone has over iOS is that Microsoft's mobile assistant lets you use text as well as your voice—handy for quiet times. Speaking of quiet times, Cortana gives you the option of letting people in your inner circle contact you when your phone is set to quiet hours.

Cortana is definitely surprisingly smart, but she's young and has a bit to learn. I found that Cortana's speech recognition was nearly flawless and very fast, but the wait while she connected to the cloud servers was occasionally too long. Too often I just got a Web search result, but that's not an unfamiliar state of affairs to Siri or Google Now users, either. Siri is much better now than when it launched, because its servers learn as they are used, and the same should happen with Cortana. The feature is officially a beta (though you'd be hard-pressed to find that fact in the feature or on the Windows Phone webpages) until the second half of 2014.

New Home Screen Options
The tiled Windows Phone home screen was already a unique feature, and with 8.1 it gets even cleverer and more customizable. It now allows three large tiles across, great for those who don't like scrolling a lot. A Microsoft rep said people saw this capability on the big Lumia 1520 phone and wanted it on their smaller phones, too. If you made all your tiles the smallest size, you could actually have 66 on the Start screen without scrolling!

An even cooler new capability is that you can use an image behind these tiles, and tiles can be transparent.

Windows Phone 8.1 Start Screen

Action Center
Cortana and the new start screen may be flashier, but, for me, the Action Center is the most-needed addition to Windows Phone 8.1. Similar to features that appeared in Android and then iOS, Action Center lets you swipe down from the top of the screen to get access to important settings and notifications. Unlike iOS, Windows Phone lets you choose which commands appear in the four large buttons atop the slide-down panel.

Windows Phone Action Center

Easy access to Airplane Mode alone makes this feature a boon, but maybe even more important is that now you can see basic system info like time, battery charge, and connection signal from any screen. When an app was running in Windows Phone 8.0, access to that small strip of info at the top of the screen was completely gone.

View the original article here

Microsoft Windows Phone 8.1

Monday, July 7, 2014

PCMag got an early look at Windows Phone 8.1, running on a spiffy Nokia Lumia Icon—a reasonably priced PCMag Editors' Choice smartphone.

An even cooler new capability is that you can use an image behind these tiles, and tiles can be transparent.

Windows Phone 8.1 Start Screen

Windows Phone Action Center

View the original article here

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