In the meantime, these documents have been made available to the public that had been classified Confidential originally. They talk about releasing Internet Explorer 9 Beta from August 2010 onwards. At this time, preparations at Microsoft’s OEM partners should begin, too.

However, the documents are dated 20 April 2010, so the information contained in them may well have changed in the meantime due to delays. Furthermore, there is an explicit note that these are preliminary plannings.

Possible dates for Release Candidates of Internet Explorer 9 have not yet been set, neither is there a date for its RTM. For both cases, decisions will be taken only after the beta.

Related posts:

1. Future of Internet Explorer 8

All you need to use the online applications with your browser is a computer with Web access, and an account on Microsoft’s website. Signing up at live.com is free. A small welcome present consists of 25 GB web storage for documents.

Afterwards, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote are really available online, directly in your browser. You can load existing Office documents, create new documents, edit them, store them online, print them and much more. Microsoft hopes to gain more attention with the Office Web Apps.

Advantages of working online

There are several advantages of using online apps. You don’t have to install any software, you can use the Office programs on any computer with Web access and edit your own documents there easily. You don’t need CDs nor USB sticks to transfer data to other computers. Instead, you can access your docs from wherever you are, anytime you want to.

Additionally, it is possible to create and edit documents in a team. Each document can either be private, so only you yourself can view and edit it. Or you can make a document public, so anybody can view it. Another possibility: Sharing a document with specific people only. In this case, you can edit a document with multiple users at the same time (!), for example in a workgroup. Advantage: You don’t have to send any documents back and forth via e-mail, but you can work online directly.

Web Apps are light versions of the full programs

The Web apps (online versions) are trimmed down versions of the full programs. By far not all features available in the programs you can buy, are also available in the online variants. Especially advanced features are missing in the Web Apps.

The feature basis of the free Web versions is impressive nevertheless. The new Web Apps are sufficient for many tasks, for example to write (and print) a letter, but not for printing a mass mailing, this can only be done with the full Word version.

Regarding the speed, the Web Apps are not as fast as the native programs: Loading big documents, moving photos, dropping down menu bars can consume some time. The exact placing of objects in a document is easier with the full versions than with Web App.

Accessing your documents anytime, anywhere, without having to buy or install Office 2010, is useful without a doubt. However, you will want to use the full version the longer you use the software intensely. Nevertheless, the Web Apps are more than just a teaser for the full programs. The native applications support the Web Apps and thus connect Offline and Online programs.

Step against Google

Microsoft bringing Office 2010 into the Web is also a step against Google’s monopoly. The search engine primus is offering Google Docs for a while, working somewhat similar. The difference to Office 2010 is that Google Docs is exclusively available online, there is no offline version.

There are more text and spreadsheet programs. Looking at the feature set, Microsoft and Google’s versions are the most comparable ones.

Related posts:

1. Microsoft Office 2010 Starter: Details emerge
2. Office 2010 for all

Private users, kids and students as well as smaller companies and freelances can choose from four Office 2010 product variants: Office Home & Student 2010, Office Professional Academic 2010, Office Home & Business 2010, and Office Professional 2010. Furthermore, Microsoft offers the new Office Starter 2010, exclusively shipped pre-installed on computers, replacing the Works program suite. Office 2010 is available as Full Packaged Product including disk, as well as Product Key Card. This latter variant comes without disk; you have to download the software from the Web.

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. You can install it three times per household, but you may not use it with your business. Its Product Key Card costs 109 Euro, the disk package 139 Euro. The Mcirosoft Office Academic Professional 2010 variant is only available as Product Package for 109 Euro, for people in research and education exclusively. The package contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access.

The Microsoft Office Home and Business variant 2010 contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook and costs 249 Euro as Product Key Card, 379 Euro as Product Package. Microsoft Office Professional 2010 contains Publisher and Access on top and costs 499 Euro and 699 Euro respectively.

Related posts:

1. Microsoft Office 2010 Starter: Details emerge

After the Windows Live team blog has been shut down recently, Microsoft is continuing their consolidating blogging efforts: The MessengerSays blog is closing.

The Windows Live team announced:

We’ve officially stopped maintaining this blog.

It seems that Microsoft is clearing up many things in connection with Windows Live Wave 4, including closing down blogs and opening new ones. What do you think?

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Amy Essene, Marketing Director for Windows Live, stated that in the past three years, more than 3 million US dollars have been gathered that could be distributed among the ten cooperating beneficent organisations.

Among others, Unicef, the Red Cross, animal rights organisations as well as the American AIDS foundation have taken part in the program. Users could participate by making use of special emoticons. Furthermore, money was given to organisations preventing breast cancer and supporting people with Multiple Sclerosis.

With its donations program, Microsoft wanted to achieve a marketing effect for its messaging and web mail services and at the same time help beneficent organisations. This way, part of the advertisement revenue gained by messages sent from the participating user was donated.

Related posts:

1. Windows Live and You: Messenger and Apple – a good combination?
2. New Live Hotmail: Has Microsoft a hearing ear?
3. Live Wave 3: the next round will start soon (UPDATE)

In the past two years, Microsoft has spent more energy in making Windows Live Hotmail even better. The result proves that these efforts were not in vain. But—what does “better” mean? What is important for a modern e-mail service in 2010 and beyond?

Security

With considerable amounts of spam and phishing mails flooding your inbox each day, it is important that you stay secure. Trusting your mail provider is of essential importance. Hotmail now checks every link that you click within e-mail messages. Even before they reach your inbox, mails are scanned for potentially harmful contents. This is done by the Microsoft Smartscreen filter. When a message is filtered, you will get informed of the reason. Mail from trustworthy senders displays an icon so you can recognize them at first glance.

With the new Hotmail, you will also be able to run your complete session SSL-encrypted. Sign-in is possible not only with user name and password, but also with single-use codes that are delivered e.g. to your cell phone. This increases your account safety in public places, such as airports or Internet cafés.

Easy usage

Hotmail Highlights inform you about your friends and their messages to you, about social news, events and birthdays. One-click filters allow you to scan your Inbox for relevant items, and new Quick Views display messages with attachments, videos or photos.

Removing unwanted mail is about to get easier. Have you ever been irritated by the bunch of messages delivered to you by Social Networks—“John Doe wants to connect with you”? When you are in need to find a certain mail, even newsletters can get into your way easily. With the Sweep feature, you can sort out such mails with a single click, and only your really important correspondence is left over.

Viewing messages in conversations is an good way to read even older messages sent by the same sender—with a simple mouse-over. Unlike the same functionality in Google Mail, in Hotmail you can turn this feature on and off as you need.

Focusing on mail contents

Often, messages you receive request that you take an action. For example, a friend may send you a link to a video on YouTube. Or, you want to take a look at the vacation photos in the Flickr album that your sister has just sent you. With Active Views, you can now watch the video or browse the photo album right from your inbox. Hotmail is also partnering with other companies and services like LinkedIn to provide an interactive experience, letting you take actions inside the email they send.

Access from anywhere

Reading and sending mail from your cell phone is getting simpler, too. If your phone supports Exchange ActiveSync, you can now sync your mail, calendar and contacts with your inbox on the Web. You don’t have to miss the rich functionality of Hotmail on your phone anymore, such as filters, previews, HTML views, reading messages offline, or show/hide message headers.

Integrating your Office

Microsoft Office 2010 is now integrated into Hotmail via SkyDrive, for free. This lets you view and edit Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, OneNote notebooks and PowerPoint presentations. With versioning, you can access older versions of the same document, from the Web—wherever you are, anytime you want.

Hotmail—ready for the future

With these upcoming improvements in mind, my opinion about Hotmail is getting better gradually. I see that the Windows Live team has invested time to think about how e-mail is used these days. What do you think about the new Hotmail?

Related posts:

1. New features in Windows Live Hotmail Wave 4
2. Hotmail gradually switches to new Wave 4 version

Download: Bing screensaver (5.8 MB)

Thanks to Olli for the tip!

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Until now, Microsoft had been communicating with users of its diverse products by means of more than 2,000 public newsgroups. There are some additional 2,200 closed groups, for example for discussing specific trade partners’ problems.

The company now announced that starting from June 2010, the complete communication is moving to reworked forums of the TechNet, MSDN and Microsoft Answers platforms. Though, Microsoft is not reasoning that the Usenet is not being used much anymore nowadays and there would be more modern ways for customer communication.

Instead, the main reason is that forums are easier to protect against SPAM, enhancing the discussion quality. More advantages are that users are now able “to subscribe to forum activity they are interested in by subscribing to either RSS or to Live Alerts on any thread they are interested in tracking.”

Related posts:

1. End of life for MSN Web Messenger: 30 June 2009

Chris Jones, Corporate Vice President of the Windows Live team, is talking about what we can expect in the fourth wave of Windows Live. In the official Windows Live US-Blog, Jones reveals plans and background information about the new generation of Messenger, Hotmail and the Windows Live Essentials.

Messenger

When developing the new Messenger, the key question was: How do people use IM services today and in the future? While Messenger services were the only large “social networks” some time ago, more and more people express themselves via web 2.0 sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc. Communication on the Web has become directer, more multimedial and on top of all, more vivid.

However, this trend has a bad part. You are probably connected with hundreds of “friends,” but you communicate only with a small subset of them — that is, with your “real” friends. That’s what the new Messenger is about, Chris Jones explains. The Wave 4 Messenger is more open and linked with the popular social networks than ever before. To stay in contact with all friends, in the new version it is not necessary anymore to open all network sites. The most important news and requests from these networks are collected in Messenger. And if you want to, you only see messages by your best friends. Thus, it gets easier for you to stay in touch with the most important friends set without sinking in the flood of social information.

Hotmail

Similar to Instant Messaging, the medium e-mail has changed as well. Nowadays, the focus is not only on the mere sending of text messages. We’re sending Word or Excel files in the office, receive messages from our social networks, or share photos and surfing tips with friends and family. Saving time is thus the most important task to make Hotmail better. It should be as simple as possible for each user to make use of his mailbox in the most efficient way. From setting up social networks with ease, via filtering unimportant messages automatically, up to viewing friends only: In the future, everything will get easier and faster.

Windows Live Essentials

When concepting the new Windows Live Essentials, the easy usage of social networks was the main aim of the Windows Live team, too. Optimizing the Essentials services to the new usage habits of PCs and Web-aware mobile phones. Detailed: If you take a photo or video with your cell phone, the Wave 4 Windows Live Essentials tools provide you the shortest way possible to edit and organize the captures as well as uploading them with one mouse click to the network or into your own Web harddisk Skydrive. Regardless whether self-cut movie or enhanced photo — all participating tools are connected perfectly with each other and with the Web.

What does the Windows Live Wave 4 stand for?

Chris Jones’ answer: The new generation of Messenger, Hotmail and Essentials has been developed to be used on any device, whether on PC, mobile phone or via the browser. It should be easy and fast. At the same time, protecting your privacy and the application security is top priority.

Related posts:

1. Live Wave 3: the next round will start soon (UPDATE)
2. New features in Windows Live Hotmail Wave 4
3. Opera Unite vs. Windows Live, or: How will the client-server future look like?

Word and Excel in Office Starter will display permanent advertisements reloading every 45 seconds. In the near future, only Microsoft ads for Office programs will be shown, for example to hint users to PowerPoint, available in the paid Office versions. This happens independently of the document contents that won’t be indexed.

Capossela described some of the missing features in Office 2010 Starter. For example, the trimmed Word can display even complex documents, but cannot run macros. Furthermore, Word isn’t able to create Tables of Contents automatically, and cannot insert comments into documents. However, comments added by users of normal Word 2010 can be read. Restrictions in Excel are comparable with the ones in Word: Users cannot use advanced features like PivotTables or PivotCharts.

If you want more than the existing features, or need PowerPoint, you have to buy one of the full versions. Microsoft will make this upgrade easy by shipping computers with pre-installed Office Starter with the full version as well, so you only have to enter a valid key to get it running. Until fall 2010, Capossela expects around 80 percent of all sold computers to be shipped with Office Starter.

Related posts:

1. Office 2010 for all
2. Office on the Web: Using Office Web Apps

Opera, Firefox, Internet Explorer—everybody may and must decide which program to use for surfing.  Professionals are glad, for newbies this can be messy.  What now, which program to pick?  Let’s talk about the backgrounds—and get some tips.

Many Internet Explorer alternatives

Probably every Windows user is familiar with Internet Explorer, as the Microsoft browser was pre-installed by default on every Windows computer.  Just there.  And that is why most people went online with it.  At least for first.  However, there are so many alternatives: Opera.  Firefox.  Safari.  Chrome.  Just to mention some.  But not every Windows user knows about these alternatives, or hesitates in switching because he doesn’t know how to install them.  There are still such people.

Ballott Screen

That is why the EU Commission has forced Microsoft to leave it up to each and every Windows user in Europe to choose a browser they want to use for surfing the Web.  Now this user choice has come reality: All Windows computers are about to get such a choice.  After updating, you are presented with a selection dialog, called ballott screen, listing the five most popular browsers, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome.  The order in which these browsers are displayed is by random—and determined from scratch each time the dialog is displayed.  This is how it looks like:

Exploding download counters

One mouse click is sufficient for installing a different browser and setting it to be your new default application.  You can also install and use multiple browsers in parallel—no problem at all.  Obviously, many users make use of this.  Since days, Firefox and Opera notice exploding download figures—good for competition.  Here in Germany, Firefox is the most-used browser anyways since a while.

Just one mouse click

Important: It has never been that simple to use a different browser on your Windows computer —and you should make use of it.  To install one of the suggested browsers, one mouse click is sufficient—and all the rest happens automatically.  It is also possible to install multiple browsers and use them in parallel.  Here’s a tip:  Only five browsers are displayed—but there are more to choose from.  Simply drag the scroll bar to the right, then more alternatives are shown.

Manual Windows Update

However, only the first five browsers are really interesting, the others are not well-known.  And if you know them, you are able to get them without such an aid, too.  If you want such a choice dialog as well, but you cannot see it on your Windows computer yet: Launch Windows Update from the Control Panel.  You will get a corresponding update that you can download and install to get the comfortable browser choice window.  All newly sold Windows computers get shipped per default with the browser selection.

Browser summary

Some like the new freedom of choice—others are overwhelmed as they do not know which browser to use.  So, here is a short summary what the five most important browsers are like:

Firefox

In Germany the most popular browser.  It is fast, reliable—and customizable.  What I like most: You can easily extend the browser and thus integrate new features.  The optimum for individualists.

Internet Explorer 8

I think Internet Explorer is better than its reputation, at least in the most recent version, and it is relatively fast, too.  However, there are still too many security issues—that are often not removed fast enough.

Opera

Insides like it very much, as it is very fast and innovative.  Opera offers many interesting features.  However, its usage can be thrilling to get used to.  I don’t have to use it—but a good browser without a doubt.

Safari

Apple’s browser used to be much faster than other browsers.  In the meantime though, the others have gained speed—and I don’t know any good reason why to use Safari in Windows.  Unless you are a real Apple fan.

Chrome

That’s Google’s browser.  Extremely fast and very ordered.  Pages display with high speed really.  If you surf much and get impatient quickly, you should take a look at Chrome.  But only if you trust Google.

The good thing is: It has become much simpler to try out other browsers—and to stay with the browser you like most.

More information

• Browser choice (www.browserchoice.eu)
• Firefox (www.firefox.com)
• Internet Explorer 8 (www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/)
• Opera (www.opera.com)
• Safari (www.apple.com/safari)
• Chrome (www.google.com/chrome)

Related posts:

1. This Week’s Thoughts: Tuning your browser
2. EU Settles Web Browser Arguement With Microsoft
3. This Week’s Thoughts: Closing Internet Explorer’s Security Hole

CeBIT in Hanover (Germany), it is still the largest computer trade fair worldwide, even with having shrunk in the past years — this year again with fewer exhibitors and fewer visitors. Some companies though have a CeBIT booth for the first time, like the Web gigant Google. Google has built a booth — and now have a guess what they are showcasing there: The search engine? Their online services? Google Earth? Not at all. They show something completely different — and you would be really surprised.

Google Streetview

Now it is not black limousines anymore rolling through the cities, but multicolor painted ones — let’s call them artworks. Much more elegant, true? Will this convince Google Streetview’s adversaries? Hardly, I’d say. A really strange booth, the Google one. Instead of showing products and telling people about the services, Google only does PR. Really surprising.

3D television

To make 3D television possible, everything has to be recorded differently. In 3D, that is. And the devices have to be 3D-ready as well, even computers that should show games in 3D. Well, honestly spoken, I don’t think this trend will succeed.

Subtleties of the Fraunhofer Institute

It is more interesting what the Fraunhofer Institute is playing around with. Namely, they are working on threedimensional objects literally hovering in the air – and that can be moved and directed by hand gestures. Kind of a hologram, somewhat like in the Minority Report movie. So that is what researchers are currently working on — very impressive.

Not much of news for normal computer users

For normal computer users, there are not really that many news on the trade fair. Microsoft presents the new Office 2010, that is, Word, Excel and Co. The main news with the new Office version: Soon we will be able to use the applications for free, as trimmed-down program versions on the Web. You will even be able to use Office with your mobile phone.

More information

• CeBIT 2010 – website (www.cebit.com)

Related posts:

1. CeBIT is “a real pearl,” says Microsoft Germany CEO
2. CeBIT 2010: “Connected Worlds” in the world’s biggest IT trade-fair

“A business-only trade fair does not work anymore, that has come perfectly clear since two, three years,” Berg stated.  In the meantime, the trade fair has massively opened itself to new topics, included the consumer market.  “For us, CeBIT is a real pearl.”

For many innovations today, it is the private consumers that start innovations, before they are introduced in the business sector.  Berg mentioned the example of the growing market share of smartphones or communication channels like messaging, areas launched just by private users.  “CeBIT has understood that, we consider that to be extremely positive.”

For many years, the leading trade fair had tried to exclude consumer electronics, to get distinguished as business fair in the growing competition.  Once, even Sony have to remove their game console Playstation from the CeBIT booth, after Microsoft complained as they had been forbidden to demonstrate the Xbox.

In this year, the number of exhibitors has decreased again.  With 4,157 companies from 68 countries, the organizator has the lowest participation rate since 20 years.  However, the trade fair could gain some 300 new companies coming for the first time to Hanover, like Google and the online retailer Amazon.

Microsoft is going to present itself with 50 partners on the trade fair starting next week.  One of the absolute hot topics for the company is Cloud Computing in all variations.  Thereby, Microsoft showcases different solutions that store data in the Internet “Cloud” instead of on servers or computers.  Microsoft is also going to demonstrate its new operating system Windows 7 that had been contributing to the push of the PC sector since October 2009.

More information

• Microsoft Germany (www.microsoft.com/germany)
• CeBIT trade fair (www.cebit.com)
• MACHs Live (twitter.com/machslive)

Related posts:

1. CeBIT 2010: “Connected Worlds” in the world’s biggest IT trade-fair
2. CeBIT 2010: Some highlights
3. Google Street View Germany: No legal issues anymore

According to an agreement with the European Commission, Microsoft will give all Windows users in Europe the possibility to choose their favorite browser. From 17 March onwards, an update is delivered showing a ballott screen listing a number of browsers. On an exclusively created website, Microsoft presents all browsers installable for European Windows users. Even exotic browsers have managed to get on the list.

You can view the displayed browsers from now on via the Microsoft website browserchoice.eu. In total, users can choose from 12 different browsers. Each browser entry has a small description and two buttons leading to the direct download and the company website. On the first page, the following 5 browsers are offered prominently:

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Apple Safari
• Opera Browser
• Windows Internet Explorer 8

The order how the browsers are shown changes on each page reload, sorted by random. This is how Microsoft meets a requirement by the European Commission stating that all browsers presented to users must be shown in a random order. Using a horizontal scroll bar, you can show the remaining 7 browsers. There are also exotic browsers among them, like:

• Sleipnir
• K-Meleon
• GreenBrowser
• Avant Browser
• Maxthon
• FlashPeak
• Flock

This secondary list of 7 browsers is also sorted by random each time you reload the page.

Related posts:

1. This Week’s Thoughts: Choose your favorite browser
2. EU Settles Web Browser Arguement With Microsoft
3. My browser is a bad guy :(

At first sight there is not much that has changed.  The most important change is that Writer now comes with the Ribbon toolbar. Of course, Writer has also the new emoticons. New emoticons? Stay tuned for downloading a collection of those…

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