Same message, different Outlook (Credit: Campaign Monitor)
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Some digital publishers are complaining that the new Microsoft Outlook rolls back design standards by half a decade. The 2007 edition of Outlook, the most popular e-mail client for big businesses, ditches Internet Explorer's technology for that of Word 2007 to display HTML messages.

The Document Parts tool can add headers and footers and more.
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The My Day application tracks and color-codes lists.
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Word's Publishing Layout View includes desktop publishing tools.
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Office Art 2.0 uses both Microsoft and Mac graphics abilities.
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Excel 2008's Ledger Sheets are built with home users in mind.
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Windows users are expecting to find the new Microsoft Office 2007 software in stores by the end of this month. But Mac users will have to wait until the second half of the year to get the new Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, which won't look much like their Windows-only counterparts. Microsoft is calling the new set of software Office 2008 for Mac.

As shown in these early screenshots from Microsoft, Office 2008 for Mac lacks the new Ribbon toolbar that's laced throughout Office 2007 for Windows. However, that might be good news for Mac users who don't want to confront a steep learning curve when running the new software.

Among the highlights of Office 2008 for Mac is the new, widgetlike My Day application. It displays a schedule and lets you track and color-code items in a list without requiring Microsoft's Entourage personal information manager.

Word's new Publishing Layout offers basic desktop publishing tools for designing newsletters and business brochures. Microsoft says that Word will better display previews of work in progress. Office 2008's Office Art 2.0 will use the new graphics engine found in Office 2007 as well as Mac's graphics abilities. With household account balancing in mind, Excel's new Ledger Sheets is built to crunch numbers without requiring that you rely on memorized formulas.

Unfortunately, as with the new, Office 2007 file formats, you'll need to take extra steps to open and edit documents between the old and new Mac versions of Office. Tools to allow older Office software to read the new, 2008 files are not expected to become available until a few months after the public release of the software package. Beta tests of the file-conversion download may become available this spring.

Will Apple loyalists buy Microsoft software for their Macs? There are plenty of alternatives to Office. In the meantime, rumors abound that iWork '07 will include a new spreadsheet application, making the package a stronger foil to Microsoft Office.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs did not announce expected updates to the popular iWork and iLife suites during his Macworld keynote address. Nor did he mention the Leopard operating system.

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Microsoft Office 2007 in the box
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Today ushers in a new era for Microsoft Office--and with it, a sweeping set of surprises for users. Businesses now have the green light to download multiuser suites of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and associated software that will save your work in new, XML-based file formats by default.

Changes to the code of Microsoft Office 2007 are complete today, and the renovated software is set to become available to corporate customers by the end of this month. The consumer editions of Microsoft Office 2007 are expected to hit stores in tandem with the Vista operating system early next year.

We've followed the development of Microsoft Office 2007 for more than a year, test-driving various rough-draft versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and companion applications. We've found that the fresh face of Office takes some time to get used to, but it also surfaces tools that used to be buried within drop-down menus. Among the sweeping changes are ground-up interface rebuilds and new file formats. Office 2007's XML-based files will squeeze more data into fewer kilobytes. However, as with the release of Office 1997, you won't be able to open a file in the new format immediately when using earlier versions of the programs. This could cause grief if you've got the new software but need to share work with people who haven't upgraded. The 2007 applications let you save backward-compatible files, but not by default. Those running, say, Word 2003 who need to open a Word 2007 DOCX file will first have to download a one-time Compatibility Pack.

Office 2007's other notable features include a strong emphasis on style templates, with the ability to preview changes to fonts and graphics on the fly. There are more options for dressing up documents with the sorts of charts, diagrams, and pictures usually offered by desktop publishing software. New shortcuts for analyzing information within Excel let you display patterns of data as a colorful heat map, for instance. There's new support for blogging within Word. Outlook gets deeper search and task management abilities in addition to SMS text messaging. And Office 2007 features easier-to-manage document security overall.

Oddly, however, Microsoft won't let you easily access, author, or edit those letters, reports, spreadsheets, and presentations within a Web browser. Microsoft and Google are battling to win over small-business users with free, Web-based services. But there is no Microsoft equivalent to the online Google Docs & Spreadsheets, just as Google's productivity services don't match the depth of features within Microsoft Office software.

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook will make up the $399 Office Standard package, while Office Home and Student for $149 will come with the same applications, though trading Outlook for OneNote. The $449 Office Small Business, $499 Professional, and $679 Ultimate editions will throw in more services for businesses, including Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Publisher, and Access. Office 2007 is supposed to work the same whether running on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Vista.

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Most weekday lunch hours, the lobby at 101 Second Street is one of the calmer spots to eat a bag lunch and watch people in downtown San Francisco. But a secret surveillance operation there two weeks ago upset the usual stillness. Armed with digital cameras, several dozen artists circulated through the atrium for a few hours snapping pictures of each other, of strangers, and of the building's hidden cameras and bewildered security guards. This covert action aimed to test the boundaries of public surveillance.

"The camera breeds an atmosphere of fear and intolerance, and reinforces the idea that there's something to be afraid of," said John Bela, cofounder of the Rebar Group art collective that planned the action. Cameras are planted at nearly every corporate lobby, checkout corner, and subway stop, but is Big Brother less menacing when anyone with a cell phone camera can watch the watchers? Bela and fellow Rebar founder Matt Passmore are presenting their results today at a privacy symposium at the University of California at Berkeley.

The effects of last month's action seemed subtle to this undercover observer. It wasn't as if masses of Weegee wannabes suddenly descended upon the unwitting public like paparazzi on Pitt. Strangers posed for the Rebar infiltrators' cameras without question. Building security eventually discouraged the Rebar posse, whose members later said that the lack of immediate opposition nevertheless made them feel empowered.

Rebar chose the Second Street address because it's one of San Francisco's 14 privately owned public spaces, formed when city officials and real estate developers open part of a building to the public in exchange for perks, such as bonus square footage. "Part of our goal is to broaden the sense of behaviors that people find in these places," Passmore said.

The people behind Rebar aren't just merry privacy pranksters; they've also brought guerrilla yoga classes, rooftop kite flying, and other playful activities to various privately owned public spaces (including the lobby of CNETs headquarters). And on their PARK(ing) day, Rebar players roll out sod and benches at metered parking spots to chill out as long as the quarters last.

So what does this have to do with CNET? Rebar's whimsical infiltrations can make you think twice about a life gone digital. We might pass dozens of hidden cameras in a day without blinking. And we easily get immersed in binary worlds of social networking, Webcam-enabled instant messaging, and online role-playing, where we invite strangers into inner realms and suffer if security threats invade our hard drives. But unlike the all-seeing eye of Orwell's Big Brother, our society's surveilled, shared spaces--virtual and real-world ones--might be more like the Panopticon, a prison whose captives are watched without even knowing it. Still, we can reclaim these spaces, bit by bit, with a little wit--and "little brother" digital recording devices are one way to start.

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To go on a proper energy diet, first you'd have to measure the power consumed around the house, outlet by outlet. Just like counting calories, that would take all the fun out of gobbling up electricity. But if you're really geeked about saving money and greening your home, then you might follow the lead of one Silicon Valley engineer who crusaded around his apartment with the Kill-a-Watt energy meter, measuring the appetite of nearly every appliance.

Eric Boyd calculated that over a year, his refrigerator, desktop PC, and iMac used the most electricity. He estimated that his stove, oven, and air conditioner demanded a bit less energy than the computers. (Government figures, on the other hand, list heating and cooling as the biggest energy gobbler.) The toaster, microwave, washer, and dryer were hungrier for watts than anything else in Boyd's home, but their infrequent use led to low operating costs overall. Lighting didn't cost much because he already used compact fluorescent bulbs instead of ravenous incandescents. And in case you needed more motivation not to clean the floor yourself, his Roomba ate up a piddling 43 cents of his annual electrical bill.

Unfortunately, Boyd concluded that he'd barely notice a dent in his utilities bills if he conscientiously unplugged every gadget from the wall when not in use. But various studies show that standby power drained by those dormant appliances might quietly eat up as much as one-tenth of your energy expenses.

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Splice's online community lets you share and remix free tunes.
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The Splice sequencer lets you work with eight channels per song
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Splice lets you share work and network with other users
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Splice is an online music production community for editing, mixing, tagging, and collaborating on original songs. Its Flash-based audio sequencer lets you throw together beats and melodies even if you've never edited music before, then share the results with other users. Automatic beat matching allows you to layer, say, a house groove onto a hip-hop track in a matter of moments. Mixing very different tempos can yield some wacky results.

An amateur could use Splice, for instance, to compose a soundtrack to a homemade YouTube video. Or an electronic musician on the road could grab some original loops and preview how they'll sync together by logging onto Splice. This song took about 10 minutes to make.

Creative Commons licensing means that everyone's work is fair game for the Splice community to use, as long as you give credit where it's due. So far you can peruse the profiles of about 120 of Splice's more than 5,000 registered users, but you can download from the larger pools of DRM-free tunes at CCMixter or Freesound, and then mash them up in Splice.

Splice displays waveforms to help you line up beats, allowing you to drag and nudge sequences and use keyboard shortcuts, such as the spacebar for playback. It handles basic time-stretching and looping functions, with up to eight channels per song. You can upload MP3, WAV/AIFF, OGG, FLAC, and other file types to your account or download MP3s from Splice; ID3 tags are coming soon. You can even record directly to the site using your computer's built-in microphone.

Personal profiles include a picture of yourself (with Che Guevara as the default) and a description of your musical tastes to encourage mingling with other users. Since MySpace has become a sounding board for musicians of the moment, imagine if it put mixing in all of its users' hands like Splice does.

This beta service is built for Firefox but also works in Internet Explorer and Safari. Any song you save will be available for other users to remix; unfortunately you can't hide your work. For now, Splice is a bit slow and lacks some essential editing functions such as zooming. But music aficionados and would-be producers can have a lot of fun surfing other people's creations and concocting new tunes.

Source: Music Thing (thanks, Miguel)

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Curiously, a lot of desktop Web design software still doesn't make blogging easy. Instead, many bloggers continue to use the online tools offered by their hosting service to compose and edit entries, which can be a problem with an unstable Internet connection. However, Adobe just released its simple Web publishing app Contribute 4, with new support for blogging at TypePad, Blogger, and WordPress.

The $149 Contribute 4 also integrates with Microsoft Office and Dreamweaver. Site editors can maintain Dreamweaver's user permissions within Contribute 4. Plus, you can drag and drop Flash movies into pages and blog posts designed with Contribute. These changes indicate the deepened integration among tools from Adobe and Macromedia since the companies wed last year. Luckily, Contribute 4 will still work on Windows 2000 in addition to XP and Mac OS 10.3.9.

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The Google Groups beta lets you create a basic shared Web site
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The Web page editor, based on Google Page Creator, is simple
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As with a wiki, you can upload and manage files
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You can locate like-minded people and intriguing events within Google Groups, but until now its interface has been pretty ho-hum. For instance, I tend to rely on Google Groups' messages within my Gmail account and never visit the online arm of the service. But Google is aiming to offer members of Groups an attractive, shared destination on the Web. The new features, which remain in beta testing, let you make a quick multipage Web site in a few steps with the WSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface of Google Page Creator. You're no longer stuck with a few predesigned templates. Plus, you can upload your own logo and add a welcome message. You can check out the Google Groups 3 beta at groups-beta.google.com.

Whether you're looking for fellow Liberace fans, planning a fondue party, or setting up a business meeting, those blanket e-mail messages your group shares can now point to common pages and personal profiles. The uncluttered interface of the Google Groups 3 beta lets you manage discussions, files, and members with a minimal number of mouse clicks. This service has some of the features of a wiki, à la JotSpot, but without the wiki label that may stump newbies.

You can chat from the group page or within Gmail and upload files to the group site. To show your face, just upload a picture and bio to your own profile. And of course, Google's search engine can dig up stuff within your group or any other public groups. There are some low-key text ads within the interface, no big deal. While Google Groups isn't yet a finished product, we'd like to be able to tag our files and discussions the way Gmail allows. And so far, we don't see a way to incorporate databases or events the way Yahoo Groups allows.

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A bundle of little companies have been creeping into Microsoft's territory by serving up free online word processors that are simpler and often easier to learn than Microsoft Word. Google already took note by buying Writely. Microsoft seems to be waking up and sniffing the opportunity. The oft-overlooked Microsoft Works software, which bundles Word with Money, Encarta, and more, might be getting an online component, reports CNET News.com.

Microsoft's had its hands full building the new Windows platform and Office suite for next year. Despite the Web 2.0 focus of its Windows Live services, Microsoft generally hasn't prioritized creating no-frills, Web-based versions of its office software staples (although there is an online test version of the Office 2007 beta).

We've kicked the tires of some of the top Web-based word processors, finding that some are elegant to use and indispensable if you travel a lot, as long as you've got solid Internet access. However, most people won't even consider entrusting their documents to an unfamiliar brand name. But if Microsoft uses its long marketing arm to convince its huge pool of customers to try a Web-based Works, the popularity of online software could quickly accelerate--if users don't mind putting up with ads in the interface.

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