points

Microsoft has opened the tap on its cloud-based Office 365 and is now offering the service as a public beta for anyone to try out.

Available in 38 countries and in 17 languages, the new beta follows several months of limited testing among a couple thousand businesses that were able to kick the tires on the service. After the public beta, Office 365 will officially launch later this year.

Unveiled last October, Office 365 is Microsoft's attempt to offer businesses a cloud-based alternative to some of its traditional desktop and server products. The service combines Office Web Apps with … Read more

With all the talk lately about working in the cloud, you might think desktop applications were about to go the way of the dot-matrix printer. In fact, running our everyday apps off the desktop remains the norm, especially in organizations. And considering the slow pace of technology change at most companies, the norm isn't likely to change anytime soon.

Still, there's no denying the long-term trend toward Web-hosted applications and storage. Facilitating the transition from local to remote apps is Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office, a toolbar that adds a Sync button to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint … Read more

Microsoft plans to deliver the first service pack for Office 2010 this summer, as scheduled.

"We are on track for delivering Office 2010 SP1 and SharePoint 2010 SP1 in mid-summer 2011," the Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team wrote in a blog post.

The company will release more details about the service pack, including a tentative release schedule, at its TechEd North America conference in mid-May in Atlanta.

The service pack will include language updates for 40 different localized versions of the productivity suite of software. It will also feature a collection of security fixes that have dribbled out … Read more

Microsoft Office has always been outrageously overpriced (and probably always will be). For example, Office Home and Business 2010 has a list price of $279.99, while Office Professional goes for a whopping $499.99. Not in this lifetime, Microsoft.

Fortunately, every now and again a deal comes along--or, in this case, a "steal." Today only (the deal expires at midnight, ET), DailySteals has Microsoft Office Professional 2010 (download) for $99.99.

This version of Office comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, and Access.

Now for the bad/weird news: after you place your order, DailySteals … Read more

A number of people have made off with a chunk of virtual change--an estimated $1.2 million--from Microsoft as part of an exploit that left one of the company's promotional sites spitting out codes for free blocks of Microsoft Points.

The exploit, which was discovered by forum members of enthusiast site The Tech Game over the weekend, centered on a promotion Microsoft was running on a temporary site that offered users a choice of two free days of Xbox Live Gold, a virtual item for their Xbox Live avatar, or 160 Microsoft Points. While a small denomination, 160 Microsoft Points equals $2, which could then be stacked with existing account balances, making the item the most appealing target of the bunch.

The attackers devised a way to tweak the URL of the promotional site to have it repeatedly spit out codes, with most going for the free points. According to games blog Save and Quit, Microsoft shut the site down within hours of the exploit being unearthed (following its buckling under the surge of traffic), but not before enterprising users made off with an estimated $1.2 million in virtual currency. … Read more

In a meeting of solar energy and oil and gas drilling, California start-up GlassPoint yesterday hosted the ribbon-cutting of an oil field partially run by solar-generated steam.

The company claims it's the only operation that uses solar power for enhanced oil recovery, where steam is pumped into wells to draw more oil from existing wells. The commissioning was in Kern County, California and construction of the facility took six weeks.

Right now, oil fields use natural gas steam generators whereas GlassPoint's system uses a series of mirrors in a greenhouse to generate heat. The mirrors reflect the light … Read more

In my experience, digital cameras generally give you 2 to 4 years of service before something breaks--and trust me, they're not worth fixing. (Usually the repairs cost nearly as much as a new camera.)

So if you're looking to replace a busted point-and-shoot or maybe just upgrade your clunky old 4-megapixel model, you've come to the right deal.

An outfit called eCrater has the Canon SD1400 IS (silver) for $159.99 shipped. It sells for $199 most other places, and I've also seen it as high as $229. And if you're into pink, Amazon has the SD1400 IS for $149.99 shipped.… Read more

Everything in IT depends on the network.--and not just in an abstract, "need it occasionally" sort of way. The packets must flow for virtually every operation, every job, every transaction. Whenever packets drop, or links go down, we're disconnected and isolated. Information doesn't flow; apps don't work; users don't proceed. We need the network up and running, millisecond by millisecond, every millisecond of every day.

Our utter, urgent dependency won't lessen in the coming years. It will intensify--redoubling and redoubling again. Cisco calls its vision of the future "together." HP … Read more

Intel said today it would begin shipments of fixed Sandy Bridge chipsets in mid-February.

The chipmaker announced a week ago that it had stopped shipments of the "Cougar Point"--aka, the Intel 6 series--chipset that accompanies its second-generation Intel Core ("Sandy Bridge") processor owing to a flaw that can affect, in a small percentage of systems, access to a hard-disk drive, optical drive, or other device that connects to a computer using SATA technology.

"Intel has started manufacturing on a new version of this support chip. Intel now expects to begin shipping the new parts … Read more