Article by Eric Kidd

“There’s no query – Microsoft is responding to Google’s danger,” said Whit Andrews, analyst at study firm Gartner.’Microsoft world’Google and Microsoft have more and more started to stray into every single other’s regular markets.Microsoft has thrown its total weight behind its lookup engine Bing, whilst Google is about to kick off its individual running system, acknowledged as Chrome OS.The battle for the Workplace software package market started out in 2006 when the research large launched the initially components of its Google Docs.”Till Google emerged with a credible suite of networked apps, Microsoft was not compelled to do something.”Google Docs now gives word-processing, spreadsheet computer software and a presentation tool, among other individuals. Corporations can pay for top quality versions.By contrast, Microsoft dominates the office computer software room, with a sector share of far more than 94%, in accordance to Gartner. The huge majority of sales are to enterprises.Enterprise “is even now overwhelmingly a Microsoft world”, mentioned Sheri McLeish, analyst at Forrester Study.Microsoft retains its dominant placement irrespective of the totally free offerings from Google and other alternate options such as Zoho or the totally free office suite OpenOffice.org.Forward of Microsoft’s launch Google posted a web site urging corporations to switch to its software program, claiming that it represents a genuine alternative”.”If you’re contemplating upgrading Office with Workplace, we’d motivate you to think about an alternate: upgrading Office with Google Docs,” it read through.Regardless of, Google’s focus on organizations, Mr Andrews said its communication and computer software had been probable to appeal to more youthful individuals, who have not always grown up utilizing Microsoft items.”If all your content is created in the Google apps program and it lives there, you would want to have a really great explanation to transfer,” he informed BBC News.Social software programOffice Web Apps offers a free model of programs such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.The service will allow individuals to access and edit documents from within a net browser, as well as reveal and collaborate on files.It lacks the complete gamut of functions found in the desktop versions, but is created, in part, to entice customers to try out Microsoft’s products, said Mr Teper.”An individual of the motives why we are so fired up about the Workplace Website programs for no cost…is the appeal to customers to get new people today to attempt the newest versions.”Microsoft has said that the suite will be offered totally free to its 400 million Windows Reside end users.”It is vital that Microsoft captures end users who are not tethered to the very same desktop Personal computer just about every day,” stated Mr Andrews.”They require to be ready to serve the increasing netbook local community and individuals working with their phones.”The firm has also integrated the social net into its software package in a bid to entice new buyers and hold the desktop software applicable in an more and more on the internet planet.Its Social Connector provider enables individuals to suck information from social networks this kind of as LinkedIn and MySpace into the Workplace Outlook e-mail program.The firm has also released a trial edition of its on the internet apps that integrates with Facebook.

Article by Chris Holgate

Whilst Google Docs has been around for sometime my lack of experience with it has prevented me from covering it in these articles. However when opening our new trade counter in Newton Abbot I found myself creating several spreadsheets to get constantly changing information like store pricing and booked holiday in one place for all my staff. Ever since then I have been solving an increasing amount of issues using my new friend ‘Google Docs’.

To get started, set up a free Google Account (if you don’t already have one) at http://docs.google.com. From there you will now be able to create an online Document, Spreadsheet or Presentation. As well as then giving you access to these documents from wherever you are in the world, you also have the added advantage that you can choose to share them with any number of different people. Those that you trust to make their own changes can then also edit the document, even at the same time as another user.

There are three primary types of file that you can work with:

Word Processed Documents

* Either create a document from scratch or upload an existing Word, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or plain text file. Files can also be saved back in to these formats for distribution in more conventional formats.

* Files are created using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. Those familiar with Word should have no problems using this and similar formatting and insert tools are provided.

* Each document has a maximum size of 500kb and a 2mb limit for embedded images.

Spreadsheets

* Documents can be created from scratch or imported from Excel, OpenOffice, CSV or a plain text file. In the same way as with documents, work created in the Spreadsheet can also be saved back in to those formats.

* The layout and navigation is very similar to Word and the previously mentioned formatting and formula editing tools are provided.

* The spreadsheets you can create can be up to 256 columns, 200,000 cells or 100 sheets; whichever is reached first.

Presentations

* Work can be imported and exported in PowerPoint format along with the facility to save as a PDF file.

* A familiar looking WYSIWYG editor is provided to allow you to easily format your slides as well as inserting images and videos. Those used to using Word or PowerPoint shouldn’t have any issues.

* Presentations can be a maximum of 2mb in size when uploaded.

The remarkable thing you’ll notice about Google Docs is how fully featured the applications are, despite the fact that you don’t need to download or install any software. The service comes in to its own with the share functionality which is incredible; it’s quite surreal to be working on the same document as another and seeing the changes they are making in real time. Any changes are stored in a revision history so you can track any work that has been done on a document as well as rolling it back if required.

As all work is stored online there are potential dangers with regards to privacy and security however I don’t believe that most would have any real cause for concern with Google’s track record of providing a secure service. Members of government may want to consider sticking to conventional offline storage methods for the time being, although that having been said, it is much harder to leave an online document on the train?

Article by Lakerorlaker

Google has released a slick new Android application for Google Docs that makes managing documents easier and adds the ability to convert images into text.

Editing documents is still done exclusively on the web, but the added functionality provided by the native Android app greatly improves the user experience of Google Docs on mobile devices.

Google also acknowledges that documents are meant to be shared and thus has added support for widgets that access stored contacts easier. It’s these kinds of improvements could reasonably lure people away from using traditional office suite software.

But perhaps the most notable addition is the new ability to convert words found in images into a document with editable text via Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This feature breathes new life into printed text and may prove deadly to old school book stores that invite customers to lounge around sampling its books and magazines.

The Google Docs app is consistent with the company’s overall strategy to attract new users by seamlessly integrating all of its services into the Android platform, which many have said makes Android devices more desirable than the competition.Apple said that the amount of data that the iPhone stores is “a bug that we uncovered and plan to fix shortly”. The company said that another bug meant that the iPhone would sometimes continue to update location data even when Location Services were turned off in the device settings. It said this would shortly be fixed too.

Martyn Ruks, technical director of security consultants MWR InfoSecurity, said: “The things Apple is saying are entirely credible.”

He said that the iPhone needed to track and store a certain amount of location data so that applications would work. He said: “The technical solution they’ve implemented to very quickly find your location involves those things.”

Mr Ruks said that as technology grows more complex consumers face having to deal with the fact that their gadgets could be doing things that they don’t know about or simply not use those gadgets at all.

In a strongly worded court filing, B&N denied all of Microsoft’s allegations, questioned the validity of Microsoft’s patents and demanded a jury trial in the federal case. It seems B&N is standing up to Microsoft, which has admitted its preferred venue for fighting Android is the courtroom.”Indeed, Microsoft is misusing these patents as part of a scheme to try to eliminate or marginalize the competition to its own Windows Phone 7 mobile device operating system posed by the open source Android operating system and other open source operating systems,” B&N said in a court filing Monday. “Microsoft’s conduct directly harms both competition for and consumers of eReaders, smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile electronic devices, and renders Microsoft’s patents unenforceable.”

In October, a few days after suing Motorola for allegedly using its patented technology in Android devices, Microsoft essentially told Android phone makers to pay up or get sued.

Currently, the Docs app is only available to devices running Android 2.1 or higher. But even if Google makes a version available for other platforms, don’t expect the same user experience Wholesale Battery