Category: Tech

SkypeKit is a new collection of APIs that will allow Skype voice and video calls to be integrated into internet-connected device or application. Up to this point, Skype has been able to integrate with some devices (phones, TVs, mobile devices) through direct partnerships, but SkypeKit will open the floodgates for integration with just about any consumer device from any manufacturer.

At Skype, we believe that every connected device is, potentially, a communications device. We envision a future in which you’ll see and converse with the people in your life no matter where you are or what you’re doing — sitting in your car, watching TV in your living room, or just checking the time.

SkypeKit gives developers all the features of Skype in the background while allowing developers to handle the actual presentation and user interface. SkypeKit goes well beyond the current Skype API. It currently supports Linux, with Windows and Mac support to follow in the next few weeks. SkypeKit is targeted at consumer electronics companies and desktop application developers.

This is a good move for Skype. Many consumer devices come with some type of internet connection and this will make it easy for device manufacturers to integrate Skype into their products. While Skype is easy to use for most, there are still some consumers that don’t grasp the concept or have trouble getting it working. By integrating directly into the hardware, Skype can become a new standard of communication and will be accessible to a wider range of customers.

The SILK audio codec is an important piece of this new set of APIs. SILK is the audio codec preferred for Skype calls and they are making it available royalty-free in hopes that it becomes the standard. “The value of the codec is in the breadth of its adoption,” says general manager John Christensen, “we want it to be a common codec.”

SkypeKit is in beta and only available to a limited number of developers so far. If you are a developer and want to integrate Skype directly into your products, you can request an invite to the SkypeKit Beta Program here.

Online video content is a booming business. People just love to watch videos and other people love creating videos. The problem is, some of those videos are just not that good. It may not even be the content itself, just that it doesn’t get to the point or trails off at the end. We’ve come to a point where we don’t have time to wait. Your fans, customers, potential customers, and future business partners grow impatient. This is where editing comes in, but this usually requires software and a somewhat technically inclined person.

So what do you do? YouTube suggests their new online video editor, now available in TestTube. TestTube is the staging area for ideas YouTube is just trying out. While the online video editor is simple, this is also it’s greatest strength. Most of the time, you just need to do a quick edit on a video to cut out the fluff. You might also just want to take a few videos you’ve made and splice them together into one production. Do you really want to fire up a fancy software program for something so simple? Do you want to learn how to use that program? Probably not.

With YouTube’s online editor, you can easily edit your existing videos, cutting out the parts you don’t need. You can also add multiple videos to the project to make one compilation. This will help you keep your videos focused and interesting to your audience. You can also use this tool to create a compilation video, combining all the best moments from your videos into one. This technique is often used in blogging, creating one post that links to all your best content on one subject.

The online video editor shows you all the videos you’ve uploaded to YouTube in the left pane. Drag these or click the ‘+’ sign to add them to the timeline for your new video. As you add new clips, you can edit them by hovering over them and clicking the edit icon (looks like scissors). Drag the marker on the left to the place where you want this clip to start and the right marker to where you want it to stop. It’s really that simple.

You can have a maximum of 7 video clips with a total duration of 10 minutes. You can also add an audio clip from Audioswap library. This gives you tens of thousands of songs to choose as your soundtrack. One feature that would really make this tool pop is transitions, but being creative with where you splice your videos can keep things looking professional.

Once your done, set a title and publish your video for all to see. One click of a button and you’re good to go. If you’ve been avoiding video editing, this may be exactly what you need to offer more value to your audience.

The new version of Bing for iPhone adds two very interesting features. The first is the ability to see relevant status updates from your social networks within your search results. The second is Visual Scanning feature which is very similar to Google Goggles.

Connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts within the Bing application to enhance your search results. In addition to seeing your standard results for a specific query, you will also see updates from your social networks that are relevant to the search. This is like automatic crowd sourcing.

Say you’re thinking of buying an album from an artist you’re not that familiar with. While you’re researching clips and background on them, you will be able to see what your friends and contacts have already said about them. The new Bing app also makes it easy to share content you find across Facebook, Twitter, and via email.

Using your iPhone camera, you can now scan bar codes, cover art, and other items. Microsoft is calling this Visual Scanning, probably because they couldn’t think of anything cooler…like “Google Goggles.” Once you’ve scanned a CD, book, or other product, you can see details about it. A description, pricing, reviews, and links to where you can buy that product may be included.

It seems that, to the dismay of many, social media will remain a part of search results. While some think they should be excluded, relevant updates from your social circle are useful in most cases.

We also see visual search becoming a new standard here. Being able to search for things not just with words, but by scanning a barcode or taking a picture is an awesome feature for mobile users and helps connect potential customers directly to merchants. Instead of just asking a friend where they got their new shoes, you could scan them, check out the details, and by them without blinking an eye. Microsoft seems to be taking this area seriously with Microsoft Tag and now this update to the Bing app.

Other features in this update include updates to the Movies section, giving you access to more videos, trailers, and showtimes. You can also use the new Shopping section to search for products, price them, and buy them.

via TechCrunch

There are many reasons why you might opt for a refurbished laptop instead of buying a new one. The primary obstacle is that buying a used computer is frowned upon for apparently no good reason. We will invest thousands in a car that is several years old, but spending hundreds on a laptop that might be just a few years old seems out of the question. Once you have overcome the mental block, it’s time to figure out exactly how to go about finding a good refurbished laptop.

One thing to keep in mind while searching is that you probably don’t need as much laptop as you think. Many of us go out and buy top of the line hardware, the fastest graphics processor, the biggest hard drive, the fanciest software add-ons, all so we can check email and browse the web. Take a good look at how you will be using your new (to you) laptop so that you have a good idea of what your minimum specs can be.

Knowing where to look is the next step. When shopping for a used car, you probably don’t want to shop at just any lot. There is no telling what these guys are doing to make a buck and you don’t want to get stuck with a lemon. The same goes for your laptop. Stick with major manufacturers who have a brand name to protect. They usually offer some type of certification that the used hardware is checked out and tested before being resold to you.

Dell, for instance, offers 3 choices depending on your comfort level:

• Previously Ordered New – Systems that may have been shipped to customers, but have never actually been used by anyone. They are tested and then repackaged by Dell Outlet.
• Certified Refurbished – Fully refurbished systems that may have been used by another customer. They are tested and repackaged to meet original factory specs.
• Scratch and Dent – These may have some obvious physical blemishes, but are otherwise just fine. If you’re not picky, you can probably catch a steal in this category.

Other manufacturers you might check out include Apple, Lenovo, and HP. If you’re having a hard time finding a “refurbished” or “used” section, look for the “outlet” area of the site.

Fileblaze is a new service that lets you backup, preview, send, and receive unlimited files instantly and securely. The site is easy to use and they say they are the fastest on the web. Fileblaze has some unique features like multi-tasking and instant preview. It is built on a “sophisticated, scalable architecture” which should make sure the site remains stable, fast, and available when you need it. CEO Chuck Baker is hoping to bring something useful to a somewhat confusing niche.

Fileblaze is definitely entering into crowded territory here, but it offers a set of features that differentiate it from potential competitors and aim to solve a specific problem. There is more data available to us than we can handle. This becomes abundantly clear when you start trying to collaborate with others for business. We have seen a lot of activity in the collaboration and cloud storage space because of this, but no one service offers a complete solution. Fileblaze wants to be that solution. Their mission is to “empower professionals to manage & track their data, instantly & securely.”

Security is a major focus in Fileblaze. User customizable DRM protects your files from piracy and unauthorized distribution, a feature valuable to music and video content creators. You can also give away the goods, but keep some control on who can download your files using the Link Expiration feature. 128-bit encryption ensures your data remains safe even if someone is snooping on your network. Forwarding files can be disabled at will. Fileblaze scrambles file URLs using UUID so the location of those files isn’t easily guessed. You also benefit from analytics so that you can see who you sent files to, who is downloading your files, and even how many times they’ve been accessed.

The Fileblaze web interface makes uploading files a snap. You can queue up multiple files at a time and even bulk upload. Fileblaze figures out file types for you and sorts them accordingly, making it easy to find what you want. Multitasking allows you to play music while handling other tasks and you can even create playlists for your media in the cloud.

Currently in Beta, Fileblaze gives every user a 2GB free account forever. You can also send 1GB of files from the homepage without signing up. After their commercial launch in August, we should see 25GB, 50GB, 100GB, and 500GB plans rolled out. For many applications, it offers a better solution than services like YouSendIt, Megaupload, Box.net, and even Dropbox (my personal favorite). Check out Fileblaze and tell us what you think.

Days before the release of the iPhone 4, iOS4 (iPhone OS 4 minus the “Phone”) launches today. There are many small updates and a few major feature additions. Most notably, multi-tasking is finally coming to the iPhone.

Multitasking is not really multitasking as we know it on the desktop or other devices. Rather than opening things up for developers and allowing true multitasking, Apple is simply letting applications do a few specific things in the background. These include:

• Audio – This is probably the most obvious argument for multitasking. We all like listening to music in the background while doing other stuff, but this was previously impossible. Exiting Pandora, for instance, kills the music. Now, you will be able to listen to music while doing productive activities like email.
• VoIP – For applications like Skype, you can keep the conversation going while you go do other things.
• Location – Tracking your location can now be done in the background as well, so you can still get your directions without having to stare at the same app the whole time.
• Local notifications – Previously, apps relied on push notifications. For many applications, this doesn’t even make sense and required you to have a network connection for some pretty simple things. Now, you can get alerts directly from applications on your phone without them having to travel the entire Internet to get to you.
• Complete tasks – If you start some boring task that doesn’t really need your attention, you can now switch from that and let it complete in the background.
• Fast app switching – You can put one app on hold, jump to another one, and then pick up where you left off.

While multitasking is exciting for many iPhone fans, most of those fans won’t be able to access the functionality. Existing apps will need to be updated to take advantage of the new feature, but those same apps will no longer run at all on the original iPhones. The iPhone 3G and the 2nd generation iPod Touch can still run the apps, but with no multitasking goodness.

Other feature additions include folders for storing more apps on your screen, iBooks, 5x digital zoom, tap-to-focus, playlists, unified inbox with threading, spell check, and the ability to “gift” applications. For an extensive overview of iOS4, check out Ars Technica. Also check the specs at Apple and learn how to upgrade.

MobileMe is Apple’s solution for web-based productivity. For $99 a year, you get a calendar, email, online storage, and apps. Besides the fact that it’s offered by Apple, there has never really been a clear incentive for paying $99 a year for something you can get free elsewhere. The benefit, of course, is having a tightly integrated and tailored experience that is made to work with your Apple devices. It completes the experience. The average consumer is probably just not willing to pay $99 for this experience. However, businesses might benefit from a security standpoint.

One useful security feature is Find My iPhone. In the event that your phone is lost or stolen, you can login to your MobileMe account and find the device on a map. As long as the phone has a 3G or Edge connection, the MobileMe map can estimate where it might be. This feature will also display a message on the phone and play a sound, even if the screen is locked and the device is on silent.

There have been a lot of mistakes made with company secrets and consumer privacy lately. The iPhone 4 was found in a bar and leaked to the world before the official announcement this month. One part of the story worth repeating is the phone was wiped remotely, which may have been instrumental in keeping most of the details of the phone a secret.

Remote Wipe is one of the features offered by MobileMe. If your phone falls into the wrong hands or gets lost, you can permanently erase all the data on it remotely. Your personal data is destroyed and the phone returns to factory default settings. This would be a very useful tool for businesses that loan devices to employees. The company doesn’t have to rely solely on the employee to keep their data safe.

The new MobileMe offers a fast and secure productivity solution with the ability to keep your email organized and updated, even when working remotely. These standard features, combined with the added security of Remote Wipe and Find My iPhone, may be worth $99 per month to any small business or organization.

Do you use MobileMe?

Chum.ly is a messaging platform based on Status.net and designed to do all the things that Twitter doesn’t. The Chum.ly team looked at how the Twitter ecosystem was developing. They saw an awesome messaging platform surrounded by third-party applications that served to enhance it. There are specialized applications for sharing photos, posting videos, sending long messages, and more. Chum.ly saw the opportunity to combine all of this into one easy to use application.

Chum.ly integrates with your existing social networks, allowing you to broadcast your message across all of them at once. It also integrates with these other services to help you receive your messages all in one place. Messaging is not limited to 140 characters, providing a link to the full text on services where there is a limitation. Other features include tagging posts, conversation threads, re-broadcasting messages, groups, pictures, video links, and documents.

The primary timeline looks just like Twitter, as expected. There are a few features that immediately set Chum.ly apart. Instead of using the ‘@’ symbol for mentions, you use a slash ‘/’. Chum.ly also features groups, which you can direct a message to by using the ‘!’ symbol. The posting box offers a few interesting features:

• Attach a file – this can be an Image, Audio, Audio+Image, Video, or a Document.
• Keywords – Chum.ly will recognize hashtags within your message, or you can add them using the keywords option.
• Save as draft – save your update and edit/post it later
• Make private – this will make sure your post is only visible by you and the people or groups it’s directed to.

Not only can you save and edit drafts, but you can also edit updates you’ve already posted. On each post, you can: delete, comment or reply, resend an update (think retweet), favorite, or forward an update via email. Updates can also include location information. You can access the entire conversation thread from any update by clicking “in context.” You can filter your timeline to only show Chum.ly users, excluding updates from external services. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you can also choose to see 1 post per user for the past 2 weeks.

Chum.ly is not just another Twitter/Facebook client, although you can use it as such. It is a complete messaging platform on it’s own that integrates intelligently with your other social media sites. It needs a little polish in some areas (no OAuth support for Twitter, for instance), but it’s potential is great and I will definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

You can connect with me on Chum.ly here and tell us what you think about it in the comments.

Finally, all that crotch-grabbing and spinning around in imitation of the King of Pop that most of us grew up doing will be put to good use. At the recent E3 event, Ubisoft announced the development of a video game based on Michael Jackson’s moves. The game will offer “an interactive experience that enables players to step into the shoes of Michael Jackson himself and re-live his most iconic performances through their own singing and dancing.”

“Michael always pushed every limit when it came to technology to give his fans unforgettable entertainment experiences, whether it involved his videos, his recordings or his concerts. Now, with this interactive product, we have the chance to bring Michael, the artist, into households around the world in a perfect match of Michael’s artistry and the family entertainment which he always highly valued. Kids, their parents, extended family members and friends will now have an opportunity to all come together and experience Michael’s music and dance in an innovative, exciting and fun way.” – John Branca, co-executor for The Estate of Michael Jackson

The game will support all the current motion controller technologies and systems and will be available on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 with Kinect (Project Natal), PlayStation 3 with Move support, Nintendo’s Wii, PSP, and Nintendo DS. It would be one thing to simply have a Michael Jackson video game, but to have a Michael Jackson video game that can actually be controlled by your movements takes things to another level. Given MJ’s popularity, I suspect many non-gamers are going to go out and buy a new Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 just to play this, since people who are into video games already know what they like and want, so they play video games as CSGO, and even buy items online in sites like mycsgoboosting.com/resources/buy-csgo-skins and many others.

Ubisoft has landed a whopper here, the most interesting part of the story being that the Michael Jackson estate reached out to them. According to an article on CNET, the estate reached out to a few different publishers, but ended up choosing Ubisoft, the leader in dance games.

The estate has kept a close eye on how the game was developed, staying involved and being very selective about what they authorized. The full playlist isn’t available yet, but “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” are definitely on it. Look for the game to be available just in time for the holidays.

Twitter Adds Places. Should Foursquare Care?

Twitter adds another layer of context to your tweets with the new Places feature. This allows you see where a tweet originated from, as well as what other tweets came from the same location. Places will also be pulled from Gowalla and Foursquare tweets. Location information in your tweets is also now supported in all major browsers.

Google Makes Doc Sharing Easier

Google has made some important new feature changes in Docs which give you more flexibility and more simplicity in your doc sharing. Documents can now be Private, shared only with people who have the link, or Public (indexed in search engines). See document sharing and privacy settings right in the docs list. Google has simplified the three-tab interface down to one, provides bulk changes in the docs list, and will let you reset the document’s URL if it gets into the wrong hands.

Finally, Bebo Gets Bought

First, Bebo tried to stay relevant and gain some traction by biting off FriendFeed, a move that worked great for Facebook. A year later, showing no improvement and with Facebook and Twitter taking the spotlight, AOL announced they would sell or close down Bebo. They finally found a buyer in Criterion Capital Partners, a hedge fund. If you recall, AOL bought Bebo for $850 million. Rumors say they are selling it for about $2 million, but the exact terms of the deal have not been disclosed at this time. At least they can claim the hefty loss on their taxes.

Facebook CEO Disses iPhone, Deletes Post

Mark Zuckerberg shared his frustrations with his new iPhone on Facebook, complaining that he had to buy four chargers to keep the phone charged everywhere and that he had to resort to a land line to actually make calls. He later deleted the post or possibly made it more private. Some speculated that this was actually the new iPhone 4, but later comments from Zuckerberg contradict that. In any case, Apple needs to get Zuck a longer-lasting iPhone 4 immediately before he switches to Android.

Sonicbids Acquires ArtistData and Offers Free Premium Access All Summer

Sonicbids, a service that helps artists find gigs and helps promoters find artists, has acquired ArtistData, a company that helps artists engage with fans across all social networks without wasting a lot of time. The merger seems like a match made in heaven for indie artists. Find places to play and then promote your upcoming shows all in one place. To add icing on the cake, Premium ArtistData features will be free for the entire summer until September 1st so get your account now.

I Like Your Comment

Just as Facebook’s Like button is gaining steam across the web, they’ve introduced a new feature that lets you like each comment within a thread. This is something often requested on FriendFeed and other similar services. Sometimes, a comment is more insightful or entertaining than the original post. You will be able to like comments and see which users have liked which comments. I wonder if we may see some type of comment promotion system in the near future.

WordPress 3.0 is named after Thelonious Monk, a Jazz giant whose improvisations have inspired this new version of WordPress to new heights of creativity. The first thing you will notice after taking the plunge is a lighter, less distracting dashboard theme. This will help you get down to business and focus on what’s important.

Unified Updates

The first important new feature to take note of is how WordPress now handles updates. There is one page under your Dashboard that shows you whether your plugins, themes, and WordPress installs itself are all up to date. If not, you can handle all your updates from one place automatically. WordPress puts your site into maintenance mode during your updates so you have nothing to worry about. Even if you have the latest version of WordPress installed, you can to re-install if something has gone horribly wrong.

On a related note, it now only takes a couple of clicks to upgrade all of your plugins. Rather than clicking Upgrade for each one, you can do a Bulk upgrade and have them all handled at once. This is a feature I’m sure many have been looking for, especially if you have a good amount of active plugins installed.

Default Theme

Everyone is familiar with the default WordPress theme, Kubrick. It is a hallmark of a new blog. A sign that maybe nobody is home. Definitely not all that pleasing to look at. Kubrick is replaced with 2010 as the default WordPress theme. It was specifically selected because it takes advantage of most of the new features in 3.0 including: custom menus, backgrounds, and headers.

Custom Menus

It used to be a pain to customize your menu. Even if you found a hot theme, you had to be pretty well versed in PHP and HTML to get the menu exactly how you wanted it. Now, you can customize your menu from the WordPress Dashboard. Rather than digging into the PHP/HTML code, you can create the perfect menu for your blog using simple drag-and-drop. Pick which Pages, Categories, and Custom Links you need and order them however you see fit.

Multiuser + WordPress = 3.0

WordPress MU used to be a recipe for confusion. If you wanted to run multiple blogs from the same WordPress install, you were on your own. With WordPress 3.0, this is no longer the case. Run 1 or a network of 10 million sites, all from the same installation. This is a feature that many have dreamed about.

There are a few other features in this release, including: Custom Post Types, API enhancements, and Shortlink Support using your service of choice. This release has so many updates packed into it that the next release isn’t even being touched on yet. The next coding cycle won’t be focused on coding WordPress directly, but on enriching the ecosystem that has evolved around WordPress.

Have you upgraded yet?

Skylight is as suite of web-based tools that aim to “simplify your business life.” It offers Project Management, Booking, Task Management, Simple CRM, Email and Calls, and stores files and documents for you. The goal for Skylight is to become “the best web app there is for managing business and teams using latest web technologies.”

The Skylight Dashboard gives you a bird’s-eye view of what’s going on with your business. It includes access to just about every facet of the system all in one place. From the dashboard, you can tell what projects you have, what milestones are nearby, and what tasks your team needs to complete to reach them.

Each of the items on the dashboard can be accessed from the main menu to drill down and get more details. These include:

• Projects – general items that need to be completed
• Contacts – people and companies you work with
• Resources – things like equipment and conference rooms
• Tasks – track the specifics of what you need to do and how long each will take
• Files – any related files you have uploaded (a free account gives you 2GB of storage)
• Rates – keep track of how much your spending/billing
• Accounts – includes Invoices, Quotes, and Purchase Orders
• Reports – generate reports from your data to get different perspectives on your success

Skylight integrates with your existing email account to send and receive emails. You can also integrate your Skylight tasks with your existing Google or iCal calendar. Interestingly, at a time when just about every service integrates with social media, Skylight offers no such features. You are still able to collaborate with your team and your customers/clients by giving them access to the system at specified security levels.

In addition to letting you send emails, you can make calls from Skylight via Skype. Upload and organize your files by project, contact, or resource. Storage in the cloud makes your files accessible wherever you are. Every item that you create in Skylight, including uploaded files, can be tagged to help in keeping things together.

Skylight is entering a crowded space. There are a plethora of web applications that aim to help with team collaboration and project management. Skylight may be able to stand out from these with their billing and resource management features. Business collaboration is nice, but invoicing and getting paid for your work is even better and not many applications currently offer a good mix of both.

Apple’s latest mobile device opened up for pre-ordering late last night/early this morning. You can only pre-order it in black, with no word as to when the white version will be available. That is, of course, if you can get your order to go through at all. It seems that AT&T is once again testing it’s relationship with Apple by completely breaking down and even breaching users’ privacy…again. Things have gotten so bad that Apple’s online store is also having problems and pre-orders are being done using pen and paper.

What it seems has happened is that AT&T’s servers were completely overwhelmed by pre-order requests. First, users were unable to order online, so they went into the stores. The problem there is that the stores seem to rely on the same system, so orders were taking anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours to process. Sales people at the stores just kept pressing submit on each screen until they didn’t get an error.

Other users were shocked when they went to access their accounts and found that they had full access to someone else’s information. Probably a pretty scary situation for many and I wonder how many people didn’t even notice the glitch. There are probably a number of AT&T customers out there who have just pre-ordered an iPhone and don’t even know it.

There are a couple of ways to get around the issue that seem to work. Best Buy and possibly other outlets are having no problems accepting the pre-orders. This may be because they are not processing them in real-time. You can also use the iPhone Apple Store app, but you may not get the upgrade price. You’ll be paying $699 instead of $199 (16GB) or $299 (32GB) and, hopefully, AT&T will sort things out for you later. This won’t even extend your contract as there is not connection to AT&T with this method.

At least one customer reports that he had no problem pre-ordering his phone, but it shows as being backordered by 2 or 3 weeks. This is not a good look for AT&T at all. They recently left a gaping hole in their system, allowing 114,000 iPad customer emails to be taken. Coverage for the iPhone on AT&T’s network is a spotty for most. If Apple wasn’t planning to bring the iPhone to another network already, they are probably rethinking their options.

More details at Gizmodo.

Today, June 15, Microsoft is announcing the availability of Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010, and Microsoft Project 2010. Microsoft Office has been the number one selling software product for the past 7 years, even outselling games. Almost 10 million people downloaded the Office 2010 beta, which is almost 7 times the number who participated in the Office 2007 beta.

You can now buy Office in over 35,000 retail stores around the world, through online stores like Amazon, and from Office.com. In the next year, more than 100 million PCs will ship with Office 2010 preloaded with activation being as easy as buying one of the available versions: Office Home and Student 2010, Office Home and Business 2010, or Office Professional 2010.

“Working with major retail partners and PC makers, we’ve made dramatic changes in the way we deliver Office 2010 to give consumers more buying choice, making it easier than ever to unlock the power of Office on new and existing PCs. For the first time, people can purchase a Product Key Card at retail to activate Office 2010 preloaded on new PCs. For those who want to download Office 2010 direct from Office.com for an existing PC, the new Click-to-Run technology will have them up and running in a matter of minutes.” -Stephen Elop, president, Microsoft Business Division.

Recent data shows that Office is running on more than 1 billion computers across the globe, making it the most widely used productivity suite on the planet. Office 2010 leapfrogs previous versions, tapping into the cloud and revamping the interface to provide a better experience for customers. They continued to enhance the software based on customer feedback from the beta. This brings us a suite that makes it easy to:

• Create great looking documents and presentations
• Connect and collaborate more easily by integrating with the social web
• Get things done from virtually by leveraging the cloud

A survey of Office 2010 beta users shows that about 75 percent of them plan to buy Office 2010. By making such drastic improvements in Office 2010, expanding distribution channels, and making it available to download, Microsoft expects this will be the biggest release of Office ever.