bruceb news

Previously:
The Future Of Microsoft Office On Tablets And Online
The Future Of Microsoft Online With Office Web Apps

Microsoft Office Web Apps can be used to view and edit Office files online in a web browser. You can create new Word, Excel and Powerpoint files online in Skydrive; or you can upload files at the Skydrive web site; or you can install the Skydrive app on your computer and put files in the Skydrive folder, then find them online.

There are two advantages to Office Web Apps that set them ahead of Google’s similar web apps for most businesspeople. […] continued

Previously: The Future Of Microsoft Office On Tablets And Online

OFFICE WEB APPS

Two years ago Microsoft introduced Office Web Apps, online versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote that can be used entirely inside a web browser. If you set up Skydrive on your computer and store files in your Skydrive folder, you can use Office Web Apps to edit the files in a web browser from any computer and find the updated files waiting for you when you next sit at your computer.

Windows 8 devices – computers, tablets, phones – will all feature built-in easy access to your files in Skydrive. […] continued

Microsoft Office has an overwhelming global presence in businesses large and small. Estimates range from “81% of companies” to “holding steady at 94 percent for years”. Google Docs is making inroads but currently controls less than 10% of the market for office applications by any measure (and Google’s momentum has been slowed by publicity over Google Drive privacy issues and the failure of Google+ to make any headway against Facebook).

[An aside for nostalgic lawyers: WordPerfect is currently estimated to have a worldwide market share of 0.35%.]

Almost half of Microsoft’s profits come from Office. Word and Excel are deeply embedded in the business flow for almost every major company; inertia and the need for compatibility will ensure that it continues to be dominant for many years. […] continued

It was another busy week for updating your computers.

Microsoft released updates for Windows, Office, Silverlight and .NET Framework on its regular monthly schedule.

Adobe was forced to issue an emergency update for Flash after the bad guys began actively exploiting one of the typical oh-my-god-we’re-all-gonna-die vulnerabilities where a malicious file in an email message can be used to crash applications and take control of your computer. The vulnerability affects all versions of Flash – Windows, Mac, Linux and Android – although the active attacks are only directed at Windows computers so far.

If you are a subscriber to Bruceb Remote Management, it is installing the update this week. […] continued

TAKEAWAY

Office 365 delivers all incoming messages to your mailbox. It does not hold messages in a spam quarantine.

[05/09/12 Update below]

DETAILS

Microsoft does thorough spam filtering on incoming mail for Office 365 subscribers – and then uses technology built into Exchange to make the experience with spam completely painless. This is an important advantage for Office 365 subscribers!

Most spam filtering services put messages identified as spam into an online quarantine. A summary is emailed to the user every day or two. The services differentiate themselves by crowing about how many messages are trapped and how few of them are mistakes that weren’t really spam after all. […] continued

Every time I write about Microsoft OneNote, it seems appropriate to introduce it to people who aren’t yet familiar with it. I’ll repeat the overview from my previous articles about OneNote, then give you some tips and tricks that turned up recently.

OVERVIEW

Microsoft OneNote 2010 collects information on the fly from any source you can imagine, and helps you find it again later when you need it. That’s any information. OneNote can hold your grocery list as easily as your research or trial preparation. Saving a web page is as easy as right-clicking the page and clicking on “Send to OneNote.”

OneNote is designed for its notebooks to be stored online in Microsoft’s Skydrive service. […] continued

An updated version of Microsoft Security Essentials is being installed automatically for anyone currently running the free antivirus program. It is being pushed out silently by the Automatic Updates system and will likely be completely invisible to most of you. It does not require a restart after the update is installed.

One recent report showed that Microsoft Security Essentials has become the most popular security program in North America and second worldwide. MSE is one of Microsoft’s best program designs precisely because it is nearly invisible when it is doing its job: it installs with two or three clicks and no restart, and there are virtually no popup windows calling attention to the program when it is running, unlike every other antivirus program on the market. […] continued

Previously:
Dropbox, Microsoft Skydrive, Google Drive: Send In The Clones

This is not an exhaustive list, just a few things that stand out about the cloud syncing services in their current forms. None of these is a reason to choose one or the other service, they’re just interesting things to know.

DROPBOX

SPEED Dropbox has become tremendously popular because of its speed and reliability. When you modify a file on your laptop, the changes are synced to your desktop computer in the time that it takes you to push your chair in front of the other keyboard. Dropbox uses very smart technology to sync folders with an absolute minimum of data being transmitted back and forth. […] continued

Microsoft and Google each introduced services this week that are copies of Dropbox in rather precise detail.

Taken together, these services represent a fundamental change in the way we use technology. Here’s my best effort to sum it up:

Storing files on one device or in one physical location is now just another option – and not a very useful one.

We are using multiple devices in multiple locations: our own computers at office, home or on the road; smartphones and tablets; and borrowed and public devices. These services (and all their less well-known competitors) give you equal access to those files at all of those locations on all of those devices. […] continued

Let’s gather up all the things that are on the verge of changes large and small. It covers just about every category.

The common thread is that not one of them is ready now.

Everything is in play. Anything that you buy now will seem like a poor decision in hindsight within a short time.

I’ve written about all of these things before but it’s interesting to put it all in one place.

DEVICE CHOICES

The biggest change is right in front of you all the time now. It’s the dawning realization that not everyone needs a computer. A computer is a massively overpowered and overcomplicated device for people who want to browse web sites, check Facebook, read email, and watch TV shows – and that’s all the technology that a lot of people need. […] continued