Office Software

Microsoft Office 2010 Web apps revealed

One of the biggest new additions to Microsoft Office 2010 (review) is the ability to use Web apps to access your work anywhere. Though they're not as feature-rich as their counterparts in the desktop version, we think many will find them useful for edits, changes, and even sketching out ideas while away from the office.

Microsoft made Web versions of the most used apps in the office suite including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. All offer enough basic features to work on the go, and you can always transfer a document back to your desktop for further tweaks when … Read more

Free PDF reader boasts advanced features (podcast)

There are plenty of free PDF readers available for download including the ubiquitous Adobe Reader from the company that created PDFs in 1993. But Nitro PDF, which publishes the $99.99 Nitro Professional PDF creation tool, is now offering a free PDF reader. Features include include the ability to write comments that can be read by any other PDF reader. Users can also enter text in a static PDF document and insert a graphic, such as a scanned signature. The reader can also be used to create PDFs, though it lacks many of the advanced features available in the professional … Read more

Sizing up Amazon's Kindle in its many forms

On Monday evening, Amazon announced that it would soon be offering a Kindle app for Android. This shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone considering the company already had software applications for the PC, Mac, Apple's iPhone and iPad, and BlackBerry phones. But it is worth delving into how the Kindle apps on these platforms differ, if at all, and which one has the best non-Kindle Kindle experience.

Amazon has not been resting on its laurels when it comes to the Kindle as a platform. While the Kindle hardware itself is only in its second generation, the strength of Amazon's strategy is in getting its digital bookstore into the hands of as many users and on as many platforms as possible. The end goal, you see, is that everyone buys their books from Amazon, even if they're not willing to invest in the Kindle hardware itself.

What becomes clear, though, the closer you look, is that the Kindle software Amazon provides for third-party hardware is universally less full-featured than what one can do on a Kindle proper. Is that by design? Certainly. We'll delve into that a little later on. In the meantime, let's start by taking a look at Amazon's various kindle apps by order of release.

The platforms

Apple iPhone/iPod Touch (March 2009) The iPhone and iPod Touch Kindle application (download) was the first of Amazon's efforts to offer Kindle users a way to read their books on something other than a Kindle device. Amazon released it about a year and a half after the launch of the first Kindle hardware, and just a month after the launch of the second-generation device.

At launch it wasn't the first e-book-reading software for the iPhone platform, nor was it the best. Competitor Stanza, which Amazon ended up acquiring just a month later, offered far more features as a reader, though it was missing a first-party sales library and a way to sync reading sessions, and titles between devices.

For iPhone and Kindle users alike, the release of this software was a big deal, since they could get all their purchased books synced to their iPhone or iPod without having to pay extra. And not so secretly, Amazon was hoping the app would act something like a gateway drug to get users to buy the Kindle hardware in order to get a fuller reading experience.

One problem that was apparent at the release of the iPhone app, and that still exists today, is that you cannot actually purchase books from within the app. Instead, it kicks you out to Safari to browse and purchase. As we go on you'll find this is a bit of a pattern.

Windows (November 2009) Amazon released the PC version (download) of its Kindle reader software to users in early November 2009. Like the iPhone iteration, it did something the Kindle hardware itself could not do, which was display illustrations and digital publications in full color. It also had the rather obvious benefit of being able to use whatever peripherals were attached to your computer, like the mouse and keyboard to turn pages and adjust various options.… Read more

Microsoft Office 2010 review

Microsoft Office 2010 is available today for business licenses, with the public release coming in June, but we've had a chance to put the review copy through its paces. According to Microsoft, the focus of this major overhaul was on three things: to make work flow more efficient; to effectively use Web applications to make your work available anywhere; and to make collaboration with others much easier. In our review of Microsoft Office 2010, we look at the notable feature changes across many of the applications. Microsoft says Office 2010 will let you use your PC, smartphone, and the … Read more

Easy dictation and console-like skateboarding: iPhone apps of the week

As we know, Apple is notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to upcoming releases. The strategy of making everyone wait until the big announcement from Steve Jobs at a carefully timed event has paid off well for Apple over the years, with relatively few foul ups. That's why it's especially shocking to see the iPhone 4G hardware leaked not once, but twice.

By now most people are aware of the details surrounding the iPhone 4G left at a bar by an Apple engineer and the aftermath at Gizmodo. After a fire drill like that one, I would never have … Read more

Office 2010 is almost here

Microsoft Office 2010 is available today for business licenses, with the public release coming in June. According to Microsoft, the focus of this major overhaul was on three things: to make workflows more efficient; to effectively use Web applications to make your work available anywhere; and to make collaboration with others much easier. In this CNET First Take for Microsoft Office 2010, we'll take a look at some of the notable feature changes across many of the applications. Microsoft says Office 2010 will let you use your PC, smartphone, and the Web to make your projects come together more … Read more

EtherPad dies this week: Here are six great clones

At the end of this week, EtherPad shuts down for good, taking user creations with it. The online word processor, whose parent company was acquired by Google last year, has not accepted user sign-ups for months now. But just in case you're one of those users who has not moved on, or is just now discovering EtherPad's strengths, there's good news: the service has been open source for the past five months. As a result, there are a handful of open-sourced clones that provide the same EtherPad experience with a few extra bells and whistles.

One thing … Read more

Microsoft releases critical fixes for Windows, Office holes

Microsoft issued two critical bulletins on Tuesday fixing holes in its e-mail programs and the Visual Basic for Applications programming language implementation built into Office.

Bulletin MS10-030 resolves a vulnerability affecting Outlook Express, Windows Mail, and Windows Live Mail that an attacker could exploit by compromising a mail server, hosting a malicious mail server, or performing a man-in-the-middle attack to intercept communications between the client and the server.

Bulletin MS10-031 fixes a hole in Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) that could allow an attacker to remotely run code if a host application opens and passes a malicious file to … Read more

Microsoft to fix holes in Windows, Office

Microsoft on Tuesday will issue two critical bulletins that will fix vulnerabilities in Windows and Office, which if exploited successfully, could allow a remote attacker to take control of the computer, the company said Thursday.

The bulletins, part of the company's monthly Patch Tuesday fixes, affect Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2003 and Server 2008, Office XP, Office 2003, 2007 Microsoft Office System, and Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications and Visual Basic for Applications software development kit. Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 customers are not vulnerable in their default configurations, however, the company said in a … Read more