14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, Microsoft announced what seems to be the most important release this year after Windows Vista's launch on January 30: the availability of a web-based flavor of Microsoft Office which is obviously the software giant's reply to Google's evolution into this market. Office Live Workspace is pretty similar with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, which recently received a presentation tool, allowing the customers to manipulate the documents and store them online. The only difference would be that the only consumers who will be able to access Office Live Workspace will be the ones who already installed a downloadable version of Microsoft Office on their computers.
"Office Live Workspace will provide anywhere-access to Office documents, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. In other words, these documents will go wherever people go when they're away from their usual desktop. People will be able to work on documents from any Microsoft Office-equipped computer with an Internet connection - or review and comment on documents on devices that only offer Web access," Microsoft Business Division President Jeff Raikes said for the official website of the Redmond-headquartered company.
Just like the Google technology, Office Live Workspace will be focused on the collaboration functions which allow the consumers to view, share and work on documents from different computers connected to the Internet.
"People also will be able to collaborate on documents and share information with friends, colleagues or classmates simply by sending an e-mail and inviting them to a password-protected online workspace. This will help people avoid the pain of trying to find the latest version of a document, or having to pull together multiple versions of documents. They can also easily post files to their dedicated password-protected online workspace directly from the Office application in which they're working."
It's a well-known fact that Microsoft's Windows operating system is one of the most affected technologies when it comes to software piracy. But the Redmond company doesn't seem to accept this idea and tries to do anything is possible to change it. On Tuesday, Cori Hartje, director of Microsoft's Genuine Software Initiative, talked with the Microsoft PressPass folks about the counterfeited versions of Windows and about the importance of having a genuine version of the operating system.
"We know there are people out there who probably wonder why Microsoft spends so much time and effort ensuring consumers and businesses have access to fully licensed, genuine software," she started. "For starters, the economic effects of software piracy are staggering, and it's a financial issue that plagues everyone from Fortune 500 companies to family-owned businesses."
But how does Microsoft plan to stop this? Besides the famous WGA technology, the Redmond software company struggled to create a new platform, which is already implemented into Windows Vista, able to stop software pirates from distributing illegal copies of the operating system.
"The new Software Protection Platform (SPP) built into Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, the forthcoming next generation of Microsoft's server operating system, incorporate new anti-piracy technologies and tamper-resistant features that help close this loophole for previously leaked license keys," the Microsoft representative added.
If you would like to read the entire interview with the Microsoft official and find out more information about Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts, feel free to click on this link.
On Wednesday, Microsoft rolled out a new version of Windows Live Messenger which is supposed to fix the recently reported flaws and bring better functionality for the chat addicted users. The WLM version 8.1.0178 has at least 17.2 MB and a maximum of 35.2 MB, depending on the components you choose to install. Microsoft's instant messenger is fully compatible with Windows Vista, the latest version of operating systems powered by the Redmond company.
"Windows Live Messenger is the next-generation MSN Messenger. It has everything you already love about Messenger-your contact list, emoticons, and instant access to your friends via text, voice, and video-plus new ways to connect and share photos and documents effortlessly. As always, it's free to download Messenger and use most of its features," Microsoft states on the main page of the application.
Although the software company releases updates for its instant messaging client every once in a while, almost everybody waits the Vista-compatible flavor of Yahoo Messenger which is supposed to come out soon. Although the preview page was first launched a long time ago, the Sunnyvale giant Yahoo didn't say a thing about the release date or about the application.
If you want to download the latest version of Windows Live Messenger, you can take it straight from Softpedia using this link.
Since Microsoft officially rolled out Live Search, the Redmond company tried to improve the search engine so it would be able to compete with the web leader Google. However, Live Search didn't manage to challenge the Mountain View company and the recent reports revealed that Google is still the giant when it comes to the search engines. On Thursday, Live Search reached a new goal as the official blog of the search engine announced the technology indexes no less than 20 billion web pages. "This is 4 times the size of our previous index," the post reads.
"Well, one more thing - we now have the infrastructure to easily add billions (yes, billions) more with relative ease. This ensures we are always pushing the envelope with regard to the amount of human knowledge in our index."
Moreover, the folks working for Live Search strive to make the search engine more powerful against spam links which harm the users' searching experience. "Spam is an arms race. A game of cat and mouse. We're always going to be fighting people who threaten the integrity of our results by using illegitimate or malicious techniques. With this release of Live Search you should find the amount of spam is down quite considerably."
At this time, most Windows users are expecting two products: Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1. None of them seem to come as the parent company Microsoft keeps delaying them every once in a while. One month ago, it was rumored the Redmond giant will release a testing version of the packs to the testers in order to discover and fix potential issues. Nobody confirmed these speculations and time passed by. But on Friday, after approximately 1 month, Microsoft sent a new message to the registered testing consumers, which now includes Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 testers.
"As is standard practice for operating systems nearing the end of their sales period, Microsoft will be releasing a final Service Pack for Windows XP in the first half of 2008. Microsoft is pleased to announce the availability of Windows XP Service Pack 3 Beta Preview, to Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 beta testers."
"Please obtain the update package for Windows XP SP3 Beta Preview in English, German or Japanese, as well as Release Notes. You can use your current bug logging tools to file bugs; we request that you preface bugs with [XPSP3] in the title," the message sent to the users read as ZDNet reported.
