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The Daily Roundup for 02.08.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
LibreOffice kicks it up to version 4.0, promises leaner performance and greater interoperability
It's been a little over a week since Microsoft unveiled its big Office 2013 suite (along with that Office 365 subscription option) to the world, and right on cue the Document Foundation has released version 4.0 of open source alternative LibreOffice. The latest update promises to be cleaner and leaner according to devs, but more importantly to you and me is that it brings greater interoperability between different file formats such as DocX and RTF documents. It also integrates better with content and document systems like Alfresco, IBM FileNet P8, OpenText and Microsoft Sharepoint 2010. Other notable improvements include an Android app for controlling presentations, several new features to the Calc spreadsheet app (like chart exports and ODF OpenFormula functions), UI upgrades and a performance boost across the board. For a full run-down on what the new LibreOffice can do, have a gander at the source or download it yourself at the rightmost link.
Intel joins the Document Foundation, pimps LibreOffice
You're forgiven if you missed this little blip on the news radar: Intel has joined the advisory board of the Document Foundation and added the coalition's LibreOffice to the AppUp market. What's more, Chipzilla actually worked with SUSE to help optimize the free and open source office suite for Intel hardware and, as part of the advisory board, will be providing the project with significant monetary support. This is good news for fans of LibreOffice, but it's probably not sitting well with Microsoft -- normally Intel's ally and current king of the office suite hill.
LibreOffice updates to version 3.5, brings grammar check, bigger Calc workbooks, and more
Microsoft recently outed a preview of MS Office 15, so it's fitting that the Document Foundation has taken the wraps off the next major release of Office's open source competition, LibreOffice. Among the new features is a bundle of upgrades for its word processor, including a built-in grammar checker and a real-time word count window. Its PowerPoint equivalent, Impress, received the ability to embed multimedia and custom color palettes among others upgrades, while the spreadsheet software, Calc, now supports up to 10,000 sheets per workbook. Version 3.5 also reintroduces an online update checker to make it easy to keep LibreOffice up to date. All total, 30,000 code commits went into the improvements, so if you're on the open source office suite bandwagon, don't let that hard work go to waste -- check out the fruits of their labor at the source link below.
A spreadsheet based music tracker: get ready to rock your accounts (video)
Art and geekery: two sides of the same coin. A fact wonderfully demonstrated by this spiffy spreadsheet-based music sequencer. Live-coder and all-round music hacker Patrick -- aka cappel:nord -- spotted the LibreOffice spreadsheet's sonic potential and decided to work his magic. The result is demonstrated in the video below. Sure, it's a little bit senza functionally, but it does appear to have velocity control, based on the cell's number value, as well as effects. Not bad for what the creator claims was "a three hour hack". Sadly there's sparse detail on how exactly the task was accomplished, but if you know your quavers from your variables, grab the source code by tapping the via after the jump.
