Office News & Articles

Remember that Web 2.0 Google Developer Event we were telling you about? You know the one where you can learn all about web development the Google way? Well there’s a reason for you to attend that event for sure now…

Google has just released, in private beta, a new service called the Google App Engine. Now you host your web applications on Google’s servers and get all the benefits of a fully integrated application environment.

But there’s a catch…

Well they’ve gone and done it. Google has finally enabled offline access to Google Docs using their Google Gears plug-in. A little late considering Zoho did the same for Zoho Writer way back in November 2007 — also using Google Gears.

Google Docs and Zoho have always been rather handy for people on the go – you can access your documents from anywhere you can get online, you aren’t having to email yourself documents and it’s dead handy for teamwork, with users finding very useful the potential for sharing and collaboration that applications such as these provide.

Enterprise infrastructure software purveyor and valiant digital copyright protector Autonomy has announced the availability of new advanced features for its Pan-Enterprise Search platform, IDOL (Intelligent Data Operating Layer). These features include drag and drop personalization, video indexing, and intent-based ranking among other new additions.

Seems like everyone is working to advance workflow these days. SpringCM is no exception.

A leader in on-demand document management and workflow, they’ve released SpringCM 4.0, which offers Advanced Workflow and business process management (BPM) capabilities.

It’s easy to get lost in the piles of digital data that accumulate over the years. For businesses looking to better manage troves of data stored in content repositories, Teragram comes to the rescue.

Microsoft just can’t get any peace. With Google Apps eroding the need to own a copy of Microsoft Office, and Zoho improving where Apps leaves off, the Word/Excel monopoly may be fast seeing sundown.

And the end may be sooner than expected, now that Adobe’s announced it’s going to purchase Virtual Ubiquity, the company that produces an offering called Buzzword.

Even if Microsoft can’t completely get its act together when it comes to virtualization (cough-cough-Viridian), aficionados who see a niche to fill may still save the day.

Yesterday, and to raucous applause on our end, Michael Robertson launched ajaxWindows.

Imagine having your desktop — no, your entire computer — fully-functional and accessible from any system (Mac, Microsoft or Linux) and any browser.

Do enterprise architects really need to be reminded that they should “do their homework” before choosing an enterprise productivity, collaboration and content management application? When considering Google Apps as an enterprise-wide option, the surrounding fog of hype certainly seems to warrant a “yes”. And The Burton Group, a research and consulting firm, has just served the official version of it.

Web office suite Zoho has announced it will be launching an offline component of its Zoho Writer offering, with other applications to follow over time.

“Innovation is taking ECM out the 1990’s”

With these words and the immediate availability of Alfresco Community Edition version 2.1, CTO John Newton hopes to position Alfresco as not just an innovator in the enterprise content management space but also in the enterprise architecture community.

As the Google vs. Microsoft battle hits the road warrior, many are expecting the first major outbreak of the iPhone to be fired with Google Docs and Spreadsheets - which as of this week, works on Safari.

In order to help customers better manage their electronically stored information while also meeting internal and external governance requirements, EMC has delivered new versions of both their email and file system archiving solutions.

Microsoft have announced the completion of the 2007 Microsoft Office system code and confirmed its release to manufacturing (RTM). This gold code milestone concludes the largest Microsoft Office beta program to date, with more than 3.5 million people downloading Beta 2.

“We’ve crossed the development finish line,” said Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division.