davecb writes “The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has recently published two notices for patent examiners relating to patent interpretation, and in particular computer-related/business method type patents saying: ‘for example, what appears on its face to be a claim for an “art” or a “process” may, on a proper construction, be a claim for a mathematical formula and therefore not patentable subject matter.’”
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Microsoft plans to accelerate improvements in Office Web Apps, the browser-based version of the Office suite, adding features like real-time co-authoring of documents and the ability to run in Android tablets via mobile Chrome browser support.
Computerworld News
Microsoft has published a roadmap of sorts for its Office Web Apps, detailing the enhancements and improvements it plans to roll out over the next year and what kind of features users can look forward to. Among them, perhaps most notably, is support for tablets running Android, which will be made possible via Chrome. Users
The man suspected of participating in a large DDoS attack on an antispam organization that caused intermittent Internet hiccups drove around Spain in a van he used as a mobile office, Spain's Interior Ministry said Sunday.
Computerworld News
Google yesterday released an add-on that lets users view Microsoft Office documents within its Chrome browser, another small step in the search giant’s encroachment on Microsoft’s lucrative business productivity turf.
Computerworld News
Microsoft’s Business division, which manages the company’s Office cash cow, recorded a 5% revenue bump in the first quarter over the same period in 2012, an increase driven by a surge in enterprises signing long-term licensing agreements.
Computerworld News
Microsoft on Monday released a public beta of Office 2010 Service Pack 2, the first major update to the suite in almost two years.
Computerworld News
Microsoft today reminded customers running Office for Mac 2008 that support for the suite ends next Tuesday.
Computerworld News
Microsoft’s update Wednesday to its SkyDrive iOS app shows that the software giant has no intention of sharing revenue with rival Apple, and is further evidence it will tie Office on the iPad to its subscription plans, an analyst said today.
Computerworld News
Office 365 has accounted for about 25% of all Office retail unit sales in the U.S. since its introduction two months ago. But the new “rent-not-own” strategy has not boosted overall sales, an analyst said today.
Computerworld News
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has provisionally denied Apple’s trademark application for “iPad Mini” because the term is “merely descriptive” of the tablet’s size.
Computerworld News
Right after it launched the iPad mini, Apple filed a trademark application for the name with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). As Patently Apple noticed earlier today, however, the USPTO will likely refuse Apple’s trademark filing because, the reviewer argues, “the applied-for mark merely describes a feature or characteristic of applicant’s goods.” The letter was mailed to Apple on January 24, but only made public in the last few days. Apple can still respond to this notice and correct its application, though it’s hard to see how Apple could argue against the USPTO’s argument that ‘mini’ is ‘merely descriptive.’ “The applied-for mark merely describes a feature or characteristic of applicant’s goods.” The word ‘mini,’ the reviewer argues, just describes that the iPad mini is indeed “a small sized handheld tablet computer” and just describes the mini’s features. It is not, the reviewing attorney says, “a unitary mark with a unique, incongruous, or otherwise nondescriptive meaning in relation to the goods and/or services.” The USPTO would only grant Apple the trademark to the full iPad mini name if the company could show that the word ‘mini’ has now acquired a “distinctiveness.” In addition, Patently Apple also notes, the reviewer also denied the application for now because Apple should have provided the USPTO with a specimen other than its own product website, even though Apple always uses these for its trademark applications and this was never a reason for a denial before. The reviewer also believes that there is a “likelihood of confusion” between Apple’s existing iPad trademarks and this new iPad® mini application, which, to be honest, doesn’t make a lot of sense. Here is the letter the USPTO sent to Apple in January: USPTO Refuses Apple’s iPad mini Trademark Application
TechCrunch
Microsoft could rake in more than $ 1 billion in revenue in the first year after launching Office for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms, an analyst said today.
Computerworld News
Microsoft’s next generation of Office software looks like it’s going to be a rebel and not follow Microsoft’s new “Blue” codename. The software will instead go by the codename “Gemini”, and it will be composed of two waves that will be released over the next two years. The first wave will be released alongside Windows
jrepin writes “Coffice is a new project that tries to make KDE’s Calligra office suite available on mobile platforms like Android, Blackberry 10, Jolla SailfishOS and Ubuntu Phone. Calligra already has some presence on smartphones, since document viewer on Nokia N9 is based on it. The first release brings Calligra Words viewer for OpenDocument Text documents and is currently available for Android only. Plans for later releases include viewers for spredsheets and presentations. Editing and saving as well as support for proprietary Microsoft Office formats are coming later.”
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There are Twitter accounts for almost everything these days. Some people I know have accounts set up for their pets, then there are toasters, beds, drones and so on. The company itself has a fun account called @Twisitor, which was a project built during one of Twitter’s quarterly hackweeks. There’s a camera in the lobby of Twitter’s new San Francisco office and it will snap a photo of anyone who stands in front of it. Once it does that, guess what’s next? You guessed it, a tweet goes out from the Twisitor account. It’s a great representation of the culture at Twitter, where its employees eat its own dogfood, or in this case…birdfood. Its first tweet was from January 11th, so it’s still relatively new. I’ve been to quite a few tech startup offices and each has its own bit of style and flair. When you go to Facebook, there’s always a video of someone on the team talking about the company, at Google there’s usually some comfy couches to sit on with free WiFi to use but Twitter takes the cake with Twisitor. Here are a few sample tweets from those who have visited the flock: There’s even an account that follows Twisitor, called TwisitorCameo, which points out all of the people that were unnamed in the background of photos. It’s interesting to see internal culture showcased publicly on the service that these employees work really hard on building. The hacked project was built by Mo Kudeki, an International Engineer at Twitter, along with @nick, @wyz, @marcelduran and a few other folks. The neat part about hackweek, I’m told, is that teams are comprised of employees all over the company. I’ve been hot on Twisitor’s tracks for some time, but this tweet from her filled in some color as to where the camera is in the lobby, nestled inside of a birdhouse, where people stand to get their picture taken: If you’d like to see tweets from other parts of Twitter’s office, you can follow Twoffice and Lawrence T. Bird.
TechCrunch
Which is the better value, an Office desktop license that’s good ‘forever’ or an annual cloud subscription? The answer is: It depends on your situation. Our interactive calculator will show you the price for each to help you make the best choice.
Computerworld News
If you picked up a Surface Pro or another pen-friendly Windows 8 tablet, you’re likely eager to wring every ounce of productivity out of that stylus. Microsoft hears your call. It just updated the OneNote app for Windows 8 to give pen customization a shot in the arm: a new radial menu makes it easier to choose a pen’s color and weight while saving favorite pens to quick-access slots. Whether or not drawing’s your thing, Microsoft has also simplified syncing with support for pulling in Office 365 notebooks, not just those stored on SkyDrive. Avid note-takers only need to grab the upgrade from the source link.
Filed under: Tablets, Software, Microsoft
Via: OneNote Blog, The Verge
Source: Windows Store
Collaboration software vendor Open-Xchange plans to launch an open-source, browser-based productivity suite called OX Documents.
Computerworld News
A cloud service broker is pitching Google Apps to enterprises by playing on their fears about recent changes Microsoft’s made to Office. Insider (registration required)
Computerworld News
A group of current and former Uber black car drivers gathered outside the startup’s San Francisco headquarters to protest what they said was unfair treatment by the company. When I arrived at around 5:45pm, a group of 30 or so were chanting, “No respect, no Uber!” every time someone left the building.
The person leading the chants, Rajab Alazzeh of SF Best Limo, had apparently been asked by the other drivers to serve as an unofficial spokesman, and he rattled off a number of demands. He said that Uber needs to lower the company’s payment cut from 20 percent to 10 percent, to designate a specific portion of the payment as tip that’s paid directly to drivers, to offer health insurance (which Alazzeh said had been promised), to make the drivers into full employees with W2 paperwork, and to stop bringing on “unlicensed, illegal, unsafe operators” who don’t have TCP certificates and permits. (Note that CEO Travis Kalanick disputes a number of Allazeh’s complaints — see the update below. Also worth noting is the fact that the California Public Utilities Commission cleared Uber to work with non-commercial drivers.)
Following investigations by the U.S. government, the U.K. is also looking into alleged fraudulent accounting by Autonomy in the lead up of its sale to HP. [Read more]
CNET News
Microsoft on Monday kicked off a two-day promotion that gives college students Office 365 for up to six months free of charge.
Computerworld News
Qualifying students can get three free months of Office 365 University and an extra 20GB of SkyDrive storage space. [Read more]
CNET News
Office 365 University is already pretty cheap, but to get you hooked on the software while also promoting SkyDrive‘s collaboration tools, Microsoft’s giving up to six months worth of free access to US college attendees. It’s promoting the grab using Parks & Recreation’s Aubrey Plaza, who shows a trio of students in one YouTube video (after the break) how they can work together using the Office 365 / SkyDrive combo while staying in their own “creepy dorm” and “unicorn stable” instead of bugging her. Takers will get an extra 20GB of SkyDrive storage and three months of access to the suite, which can be extended to six by sharing the offer on Facebook. If Microsoft decides to include Aubrey and her pithy putdowns in place of Clippy, we’d actually be okay with that, too.
Filed under: Software, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft
Microsoft‘s Office president Kurk DelBene teased us with some comments at Microsoft’s TechForum event about possible new applications for Office 365 subscribers. He also hailed the subscription service, and said that the company likes what it sees in terms of users transitioning from licensed Office to the subscription. He also had some things to say
Microsoft would really, really like us to drop our stand-alone copies of Office in favor of Office 365 subscriptions. Really. Division president Kurt DelBene prefers to lure us in with the carrot rather than the stick, however, and just hinted at the company’s TechForum that there will likely be a “rapid cadence” of upgrades to keep productivity fans happy. There’s even the prospect of new apps coming out for subscribers. While that’s tempting, DelBene also wants to allay fears that we’ll be dragged kicking and screaming into the company’s recurring revenue model. Microsoft will keep making a buy-once-use-forever edition of Office “as long as that demand exists,” the exec says. He hasn’t elaborated on where that threshold rests, but it’s safe to presume that we’ll be voting with our wallets for a good while.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft
Source: The Verge
Microsoft has released a collection of tools that will help Visual Studio 2012 users more easily write add-on applications for Microsoft Office 2013, SharePoint 2013 and Microsoft’s Office 365 hosted service.
Computerworld News
Man was not meant to spend all day hunched over a dimly lit screen; disturbingly high incidences of obesity, joint pain and fatigue is our body’s not-so-subtle way of saying it wants to get up and move around. After piloting a walking desk, a standing desk attached to a treadmill, for a month, I’m convinced they should become the default workstation. Immediately, my daily calorie burn jumped 30.7% and I lost 3lbs and a percent of body fat in a week. I also experienced less joint pain throughout the day. What Is a Walking Desk? The Lifespan TR-1200-DT5 places a square standing desk atop standard size treadmill (74″). Instead of a large front dashboard, a relatively discrete control panel for speed is attached on the body-facing side of the desk. Speed varies from .4 MPH to 4MPH (about the pace of a light run) Getting Started With Slow But Steady Adjustments Migrating to the walking desk was relatively easy: I just plopped my laptop and monitor down on the squarish 46-inch desk and got to work. The intuitive interface lets you choose several tracking mechanisms for calorie burn and distance. The first day I couldn’t walk more than an hour at a time before I felt like I was losing concentration. It also takes some getting used to walking like a tyrannosaurus rex (arms tucked-in and elbows bent at the keyboard). At first, I would work for an hour walking, and then sit for 30. The first day I walked about 4 hours. Now I only rest once a day. It also took a bit to develop the musculature in my upper back to support raised arms for hours on end. This is no longer a problem. After experimenting with different speeds, I now vary between .8 and 1.2, picking up speed in the late morning early afternoon to offset the nature fatigue that preceeds the morning news rush. Every-so-often I have to learn on my elbows or straddle the rails to take a break. Burning More Calories While its intuitive to think that walking for an extra 5-8 hours a day would burn more calories, recent scientific evidence suggested otherwise. A study of “exergames”, video games which require full-body movement, found “no evidence that children receiving the active video games were more active in general, or at any time, than children receiving the inactive video games,” concluded the research
TechCrunch
Microsoft Office 365 is slated to receive updates every 3 months, according to Kurt Delbene, the president of Microsoft’s Office division. He states that, “We already have the mechanisms in place to update the service on a quarterly basis.” The quick updates should make subscribing to Office 365 more appealing to consumers. Delbene was a
Billly Gates writes “It appears Microsoft is following Chrome’s agile development model like Mozilla did. At a recent tech conference, Kurt DelBene, president of the Office division, said they have mechanisms in place to update Office on a quarterly basis. Of course to get these new wondrous features and bugfixes you have to have a subscription to Office 365. Are the customers who most prefer subscriptions (corporate) going to want new things in the enterprise every 90 days? It is frustrating to see so many of them still on IE 7, XP, and Office 2003, which hurts Windows and Office sales and holds back innovation. At the same time, the accountants notice significant savings by keeping I.T. costs down with decade/semi decade updates to their images, while I.T. only puts out fires in between. Will this bring change to that way of doing things, or will Microsoft’s cloud offerings with outsourced Exchange and Sharepoint make up for it using cost savings and continually updated software in the enterprise?”
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The launch of new and revised Office 365 software-by-subscription plans for businesses shows that Microsoft realizes its current licensing revenue is threatened by cost-cutting customers, an analyst said yesterday.
Computerworld News
Nerval’s Lobster writes “As we discussed yesterday, Google is bringing a Quickoffice viewer to its new high-end Chromebook Pixel, with full editing ability expected within three months. According to TechCrunch, Quickoffice-on-Chromebooks comes courtesy of Native Client. If Chromebooks prove a hit (and Google ports Quickoffice onto devices other than the ultra-high-priced Chromebook Pixel), could that mean the beginning of the end of Microsoft Office’s market dominance of the productivity software space? While Microsoft has been pushing into the cloud with software like Office 365, that’s also Google’s home territory. But can Google actually disrupt the game?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft’s top Office executive, Kurt DelBene, yesterday dodged questions about plans to bring its lucrative suite to Apple’s iPad.
Computerworld News
Microsoft’s Office Web Apps are great for those with a SkyDrive account and any device with an IE, Firefox, Chrome or Safari browser who don’t want to lug the full Office 365 suite around. Since functionality can be a tad limited, however, Redmond’s just added more features with the latest update. For starters, you can now copy and paste pictures from the web into Word, PowerPoint and OneNote Web Apps. Other new functions include cursor-following tools in all the programs, the ability to rearrange slides in PowerPoint Web App along with comment viewing, touch-based chart resizing and more in Excel Web App. Microsoft’s posted some sample files that work without a SkyDrive account, so if you want to give it a whirl, hit the source.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft
Source: Office Web Apps
Some major computer makers are pushing Office 365 with their new PCs, but others have stuck with a more traditional bundling tactic of including a factory-installed, single-license trial.
Computerworld News
The company’s latest blog attempts to answer some lingering questions about Office 2013 licenses. [Read more]
CNET News
Microsoft has quietly raised prices of Office for the Mac as much as 17% and stopped selling multi-license packages of the application suite.
Computerworld News
It’s no secret that copies of Office 2013 bind themselves to a single computer, but Microsoft has now confirmed to Computerworld that the software’s license can’t be reassigned to another PC, as is possible with Office 2010. When asked whether a license could be transferred to another machine if the original rig was destroyed, lost or stolen, Microsoft replied with a frosty, “No comment.” However, Redmond did mention that the productivity suite could be reinstalled on the same PC after a crash. Just how Ballmer and Co. will enforce the policy remains a bit murky, but it’s pretty clear they hope folks who have a penchant for switching up computing environments will be enticed by an Office 365 subscription.
Filed under: Microsoft
Source: Computerworld
In an effort to show the rest of the corporate world how “cool” and “spontaneous” their jobs are, hipster office workers around the globe have been making “Harlem Shake” tribute videos this week. Perhaps because we spend the most time online, the startup community is the dryest kindle to viral video fire: In addition to Facebook, Google, Groupon, Path and Intel, yes Intel, have succumbed to the meme.
Fuck, even Huffington Post/Aol beat us to the chase. And, when the Harlem Shake randomly came on in the background of a three-way TechCrunch “performance review” yesterday, I realized that I was old that, lame to the game or not, we had to do one. Voila!
An anonymous reader writes “With the launch of Office 2013 Microsoft has seen fit to upgrade the terms of the license agreement, and it’s not in favor of the end user. It seems installing a copy of the latest version of Microsoft’s Office suite of apps ties it to a single machine. For life. On previous versions of Office it was a different story. The suite was associated with a ‘Licensed Device’ and could only be used on a single device. But there was nothing to stop you uninstalling Office and installing it on another machine perfectly legally. With that option removed, Office 2013 effectively becomes a much more expensive proposition for many.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
rbowen of SourceForge writes with an interesting way to look at the value of certain free software options: “Apache OpenOffice 3.4.1 has averaged 138,928 downloads per day. That is an average value to the public of $ 21 million per day, as calculated by savings over buying the competing product. Or $ 7.61 billion (7.61 thousand million) per year.” (That works out to about $ 150 per copy of MS Office. There are some holes in the argument, but it holds true for everyone who but for a free office suite would have paid that much for Microsoft’s. The numbers are even bigger if you toss in LibreOffice, too.)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Wanted: An entrepreneur or team of rivals who want to stand on stage to present their project to thousands of investors and members of the media. Sounds like you? You’re in luck. TechCrunch is holding Office Hours this week to scope out some potential Disrupt Battlefield and Startup Alley participants. These things usually sell out wicked fast so read on to figure out what to do. Office Hours is one of the best opportunities we can offer to a startup to get featured in our massive Disrupt NYC conference. More than a few of our past Disrupt alumni were discovered during Office Hours. It’s pretty straightforward: you come, we meet for 10 minutes, learn about your product, and give any feedback we may have. Do you have to be at office hours to grab a spot at Disrupt? Absolutely not, but putting a face to the name definitely helps. We’ll hold the meetings in our Aol Ventures office at 670 Broadway on Thursday, February 7, at 1pm. But before you rush over and sign up, there are a few requirements: Since we’re looking for potential Disrupt companies, we ask that you have an unreleased product. That means you’re in stealth mode, or in a private beta. You must be ready to launch in late April/early May. No PR people allowed at Office Hours. You can sign up for a session with John, Chris, or myself right here.
TechCrunch
MojoKid writes “It has been over six years since Apple introduced the iPhone. Millions of apps have been written for the platform in that time, with collective downloads into the billions. Apple’s App Store is a thriving marketplace with a huge amount of software available, except Microsoft Office. There’s a version of Office for iOS supposedly in the works, but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer threw cold water on the idea when asked about upcoming events for the Office suite after launching the new Office 2013 / Office 365 products earlier this week. Revenue sharing is reportedly a major sticking point. Microsoft is trying to push people towards yearly subscriptions with Office 2013 and Office 365, but Apple requires a 30 percent profit share on sales of any app in their store. Microsoft reportedly isn’t thrilled at the idea of sharing that much revenue. It’s ironic — when Bill Gates agreed to port Office to the Mac nearly 20 years ago, it was seen as a lifeline for the beleaguered manufacturer. Now, Microsoft is knocking on the door of Apple’s business and Cupertino seems disinclined to answer.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft this week launched the first two of its new pay-as-you-go subscription plans for Office. Is this the way we’ll get software from now on? Or is it a gamble that could easily go awry? We’ve got the answers.
Computerworld News
Microsoft has announced that Office 365 Home Premium now has Bing Apps for Office, which integrate Bing-powered apps in the office suite. There are a total of five Bing apps that have been added for Excel and Word, adding a handful of functionality that was previously unavailable. The apps have all been rolled out, and
The newly-released desktop application can now be found in Microsoft’s online store for Windows 8 users. [Read more]
CNET News
Microsoft is pinching CIOs by not providing an easy way to run the just released Microsoft Office 2013 on anything except Windows RT. With little cross-platform integration, Microsoft is creating an opening for vendors that have a more clear path for accessing documents on a mobile device.
TechCrunch
Microsoft has released a retooled version of its Office software in an effort to extend one of the company’s most important franchises beyond personal computers.
FOX News
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