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iPad workspace app CloudOn goes 2.0, adds Adobe Reader, Box storage support
There are several perspectives on the iPad as a productivity tool. Some knowledge workers thrive on a suite of native apps; others can't really get comfortable within a text or code-based workflow without a legitimate keyboard and mouse. The "third way" of iPad productivity provides a hybrid environment: familiar Office apps or remote access to existing computers, with varying degrees of customization to incorporate the touch UI atop the traditional desktop. We've previously talked about Onlive Desktop, one of the major players in the remote gaming and desktop SaaS space (which seems to have struck a conciliatory tone on Windows licensing by moving from Win7 to Windows Server for the underlying tech). Today, the first major version update of CloudOn, one of the primary alternatives to Onlive and other "full Windows" tools, is hitting the App Store. The original free iPad app from CloudOn provided users in the US, UK and Canada with a straightforward way to create and edit Microsoft Office documents without Office, and without their own PC. The back end CloudOn servers plug into your Dropbox account to give you near-immediate access to your files for touchups or extended editing sessions. What you see on the screen is a remote session, optimized for quick transmission across the Internet to you. It works great on WiFi, acceptably on 3G and shows snappy response on a new 4G iPad as well. In the new 2.0 version of the app, the cloud storage options have been extended to include Box.com for personal or enterprise users. CloudOn 2.0 also adds Adobe Reader to the app suite, permitting iPad users to view 3D content or fill-in PDF forms on the fly. A universal image viewer and full outbound email support round out the new feature list. Instead of making the iPad into a virtual Windows desktop, CloudOn masks the filesystem and other apps to deliver an Office-only experience. You want Word, you get Word -- and nothing else. This no-distractions, one app at a time model can track closer to the native iPad experience of "app immersion." While the lack of native copy/paste and autocorrect does slow things down a bit, I found that I could be pretty effective while typing into CloudOn's apps, especially with a Bluetooth external keyboard. Since you're using "real" Office, albeit remotely, some of the key features normally absent from iPad productivity apps are there for you. Ryan Faas keyed in on one of those features: Track Changes and comment support in Word, which has made CloudOn very popular with members of the legal profession. Last week I met with Milind Gadekar, the CEO and founder of CloudOn, and got to hear a bit of his company's vision for the future of distributed work. He told me that his team forsees a continuing fragmentation of the computing landscape, with multiple OS platforms and devices talking to multiple storage providers. The way to enable productivity, he suggested, is to provide a functional nexus of three key components: your files, your apps and your collaborators. While some successful companies are building the infrastructure for files and collaborators and then laying the applications over that with third party integrations (like Box.com), Gadekar and his team decided to go at the problem from the applications vertex first. Given that there are a lot of very capable and popular storage solutions in the market, this seems like a good play. In developing CloudOn, Gadekar and his programmers are keenly aware that the iPad is being positioned as a productivity tool even though it doesn't have the major productivity app suite that most people use everyday: Microsoft Office. While native app vendors have the freedom to create novel interfaces that leverage iOS's touchscreen UI directly, CloudOn's emphasis is on making the subtle adjustments and accommodations that let Office apps (and eventually more mouse-based apps) work smoothly without a mouse and keyboard. Hiding the Windows desktop from the user was the first step in drastically simplifying that legacy UI. As CloudOn expands its suite of available applications (and perhaps makes a move to other access approaches from its current iPad-only incarnation), we can expect to see some revenue models evolve. For now, though, it's a free service and a great way to get your feet wet with remote productivity apps on the iPad.
Microsoft brings Word, PowerPoint, Excel to Symbian Belle handsets
As promised, Nokia and Microsoft have made the mobile versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel available to select Symbian Belle handsets. Earlier this year, the duo heralded the release of OneNote, Document Connection, Lync and PowerPoint Broadcast. With this latest software add, the Office suite for Symbian is (seemingly) complete. Those of you rocking an E7, C7, C6-01, X7, Oro, 700, 701 or 603 can acquire the fresh bits by launching the Nokia Software Update utility. Not bad for a dead mobile operating system.
Microsoft Office 15 revealed, simpler UI with touch-friendly features
Microsoft started seeding its Office 15 technical preview to a select few partners earlier this year to get it ready for public consumption, and The Verge managed to get a sneak peek at some of the software's new features. As you would expect, the newest Office version got a dose of Metro style, and now has a cleaner interface and touch mode to make browsing documents and presentations as easy on a tablet as it is on a desktop PC. Word also received improvements, like double-click to zoom, smoother scrolling, video embeds and the ability to share documents online through a browser. Excel received some formatting controls and chart animations, among other improvements, while PowerPoint has made it easier to drop Excel charts into presentations without futzing with formatting. Outlook now has weather forecasts built in, in-line replies, and greater multiple email account support, and OneNote received improved tables support. So, it looks like the gang in Redmond is trying to stay a step ahead of its open-source competition, but we won't know for sure until Office 15 gets in the hands of the people this summer.
Onlive Desktop comes to Android tablets, brings Microsoft Office along for the ride
Good news today for Android tablet owners with OnLive Desktop envy: the cloud-based service, which recently hit the iPad, is coming to select tablets running Gingerbread and higher. The app uses the company's remote gaming technology to bring a number of desktop apps to the tablet, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe Reader. It comes in a number flavor, including free, Desktop Plus ($4.99), Dekstop Pro (starting at $9.99) and an enterprise version. OnLive Desktop'll work with Acer Iconia Tab A500, ASUS Eee TF101, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1 and HTC Jetstream. More info after the jump.
Nokia Belle earns corporate street-cred with Microsoft Office apps
Looks like the corporate bromance between Microsoft and Nokia is stronger than ever. The Finnish handset maker has announced a suite of MS applications that is making its way to select Symbian handsets right this very moment. Users rocking a Belle device are being given access to a handful of apps from Redmond, which will include: OneNote, Document Connection, Lync and PowerPoint Broadcast. A second wave of Office-centric wares, including Word, PowerPoint and Excel, will be made available at an undisclosed date in the not-to-distant future. Nokia E7, C7, C6-01, X7, Oro, 700, 701 and 603 owners should see the goodies appear in Symbian's software update application; the phone maker has promised to add support for the N8, E6 and 500 "soon." For more information on the Microsoft software infiltration, check the press release after the break.
Slidevana provides pro design templates for Keynote
Slidevana is a curious thing. This US$69 bundle offers a set of professionally designed slides. These templates map out the kinds of data most speakers want to communicate, providing specific elements you can customize. Called "Dark," this first release includes a clean presentation style that would feel at home at any boardroom or conference. From tables to bullet lists to key point images, Slidevana offers a unified design that easily translates into high quality presentations. It's like a Keynote version of those graphic design and color harmony cookbooks you can purchase at art school bookstores. But instead of general graphic layout, Slidevana focuses on the most common presentation challenges. Slides are self documenting. They tell you what they do and how you use them in the presentation. It's then up to you to add your content and match it to the various tasks in your talk. There are slides for describing the talk's takeaway, slides for providing the current section context within a whole talk overview, slides for presenting related points in a single overview, and slides for factoring before and after comparisons. From tables to pyramids to Venn diagrams to phased cycles, Slidevana has many of the most common discussion flows covered. There's a real wealth of coherent elements, all of which fit together by design. Slidevana includes over 130 slides in its template. A fair number of those introduce sections, and there's a bit of redundancy such as 4 charts worth of duplicate shapes, all presented with distinct key colors. Even so, there's enough useful content here to satisfy anyone looking to create a slick presentation. Slidevana's templates work on both the Mac and iOS versions of Keynote, although I think they are more easily used on the Mac side of things. The purchase price includes both, so you do not have to choose when buying. A PowerPoint version is promised for the near future. At $69, Slidevana is clearly targeted towards business purchasers. What you get for that price is a smart collection of slide design that goes way beyond any of Keynote's built-in templates.
Kodak's Document Print app means never visiting the girl from the Xerox place
Printing on the road usually leaves you at the mercy of your local Kinkos FedEx Office, but as long as you've got one of Kodak's cloud-print enabled Hero printers, you can avoid getting gouged. The company's just released an Android app that lets you print nearly everything, even webpages as long as they're accessed from the baked-in browser -- provided that you've left your home printer switched on. You can pull it down for free from the Android market from today and if you're interested, head on past the break for an unusually terse press release from the company.
Kinect hack makes presentation slides work around you (video)
What's the scariest thing about presentations? Getting the perfect angle. You know, the point on stage where you can wave at your slides without blocking the projector bulb or your audience's view. Thankfully, Haruki Maeda from Meiji University is gonna show your text and graphics who's the boss. He's knocked up presentation software that can sense where you stand and orders the text into the visible space around you. Transitions are handled with gestures and you can even pinch-to-zoom live on stage. If you'd guessed there was some Kinect magic at the heart of it, well, thanks for reading the title. The modest Mr. Maeda says all it took was some C#, the Kinect SDK and an Excel spreadsheet to get this beauty working. You don't even need to do that if you're curious yourself -- just go and watch the video we've got after the break.
Mac 101: Using Keynote as Motion in a bind (Updated)
Update: KeynoteUser.com notes that it's easy to export your Keynote animations with an alpha channel, making it much simpler to work with them in pro editing apps or in Motion. On this trip to WWDC I packed light. One backpack, a MacBook Air and a camera light. I haven't had my Air for very long, and I've been trying to install only essential software on it and see what I can do without. I've been impressed enough with iMovie's capabilities (once you get past what I consider to be a terrible UI), so I didn't bother loading Final Cut Studio. I forgot, however, to whip up some "bumpers" (intro/outro) for our videos before I left. I'm used to using Apple's Motion to handle that, but I found myself looking for an easy alternative. The solution I found was Keynote, and a grand solution it is. I'm certain many of our intrepid readers have used this method in the past, but it was new to me. If you've never used Keynote, think of it as PowerPoint on a type of steroids that automatically make presentations not look like steaming piles of bullet points. With the animation and build tools available in the object inspector, I was able to drag in a couple of logos, type a little text and create a five-second intro in about five minutes. I created the whole thing in one frame, easily timed and sequenced the animations and output a QuickTime file ready to drop into iMovie. I have to say, the process was a thing of beauty. Below is a sample of the results, created in Keynote and soundtracked in GarageBand. I won't claim they're genius, but it was a surprisingly elegant solution in a pinch. Even if you never use higher-end production tools, keep Keynote in mind next time you need custom titles or video intros. Combine it with some loops in GarageBand and have some stylish video ready to go in just a few minutes. You can grab Keynote in the Mac App Store as a standalone app for US$19.99.
Adobe CreatePDF for Android does exactly what its name implies
Google's mobile OS is growing and maturing into a business-savvy adult before our very eyes. With the release of Adobe's CreatePDF in the Android Market, we're delighted to finally see a PDF-creation app on the mobile front. Not only does it let you build a PDF from the ground up, it can convert most popular filetypes -- Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OpenOffice, Photoshop, RTF, and Illustrator, just to name a few -- into PDF format. You can import any of these kinds of docs from your phone to app via the built-in file manager, or transfer an email attachment to it using Android's share function. Available for a one-time payment of $9.99, CreatePDF won't be for the light-walleted or the casual app enthusiast; don't be put off by the price, though, because the online version charges that much per month to do the exact same tasks on your computer. Anyone rocking Eclair or better can partake of the PDF love, so head to the source link to get straight to installing.
Preview app in Lion will act as Word, Excel, PowerPoint viewer
Mac OS X's Preview app has come a long way since its humble beginnings as a PDF viewer. AppleInsider reports that in the latest build of Lion, Preview has received a UI overhaul and added some pretty cool new features. For example, Preview will act as a Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint viewer. This is one of the smartest things Apple could have done. How many times have you sent a PowerPoint file to someone only to get an email back saying they didn't know how to open it (happens all the time with my friend's grandparents)? Now when anyone running Mac OS X 10.7 Lion receives an Excel or PowerPoint file, the file will automatically open in Preview if they don't have Office or iWork installed. Of course, they won't be able to edit the Microsoft docs in Preview, but they will be able to view them just like they can view PDFs. Word docs can open in Preview as a viewable file too, but by default they will still open in TextEdit as an editable document. Other additions to Preview include Full Screen mode; monochromatic, square toolbar buttons; a magnifier loupe tool (like the kind you find in Aperture); expanded PDF annotation tools (including filled text and speech and thought bubbles); and the ability to scan your signature in the Preview app so you can use it to digitally sign documents. I don't know about you, but I always look forward to OS X upgrades not so much for the big features, but for the continued refinements to the OS and its apps as a whole. Judging by the way Lion is shaping up, it won't disappoint.
Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad gets PowerPoint editing for Christmas
The Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad has gained some new features that make it even more useful to business people on the go. Quickoffice, Inc. announced today that its mobile office suite for the iPad now has an editor for Microsoft PowerPoint files in addition to the Excel and Word editors that were available earlier. You can manipulate font type, color, size and style, and you can add, delete or reorder slides in a PowerPoint deck. Graphical editing tools allow object layering changes, insertion and editing of text boxes, and insertion and rotation of common shapes, images and text boxes. Another feature of the PowerPoint editor is that it allows the insertion of images from inside the app or from the iPad's Photo Library. When presenting from Quickoffice, the app supports video output using the Apple Dock Connector to VGA Adapter and provides a built-in "laser pointer" for pointing out highlights on the slides. There's also a filmstrip preview of slides to assist in making presentations on external monitors. While Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad now allows round-tripping of animations and transitions between the desktop app and iPad, there is still no way to edit or show custom transitions or animations on the iPad. The Quickoffice developers have noted that this is in consideration for a future update. It's also worth mentioning that the PowerPoint editing feature only supports PPT (Office 2003 format) files; PPTX (Office 2007/2010/2011 native format) presentations can be viewed and shown, but not edited yet. The app now supports additional cloud storage services, including Box.net, Dropbox, Google Docs, Huddle, MobileMe and SugarSync. If you already own the suite, this is a free update for you. To kick off the new update, Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad is on sale on the App Store for US$14.99, 40% off of the usual $24.99 price. Thanks for Mike Rose for the gallery screenshots! %Gallery-111932%
Google Docs presentation makes PowerPoint weep, beg for mercy (video)
And you thought your year-end PowerPoint -- complete with that snazzy "Ding!" after every slide -- was something to admire. The video below is a Google Demo Slam entrant, going up against a Voice Search piece featuring Maria Sharapova. We know precious little about what it took to create, but somehow or another, a trio of animators created a mind-blowing 450 page presentation in just three days, and none of 'em were located in the same space. Thankfully for you, it's all explained in a blistering one minute, twenty-nine second YouTube clip. Enjoy.
Office 2011 gets hefty discounts for Black Friday
The official Office for Mac blog just posted a list of places interested buyers can get Office for Mac 2011 at reduced cost throughout the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. Here are the prices you'll get if you buy during the US Thanksgiving holiday weekend from these retailers (note the special savings from Amazon): Apple Stores (US & Canada): $20 off Home & Student Family Pack for $129 (regularly $149 ERP). Best Buy and MacMall (US): $20 off Home & Student 1-pack for $99 (regularly $119 ERP) and $20 off Home & Student Family Pack for $129 (regularly $149 ERP). Amazon (US): $40 off the Home & Student 1-pack, cost of $79 (regularly $119 ERP) and Home & Student Family Pack for $109 (regularly $149 ERP). OfficeforMac.com (US): $20 off Home & Student Family Pack for $129 (regularly $149 ERP). Office for Mac 2011 was released at the end of last month and has gotten generally favorable reviews, especially for its speed increases. If you're in the market for an Office upgrade, it looks like next weekend is the time to buy.
Office 2011 puts pedal to the metal with demonstrable speed bumps
As we've been diving into the Microsoft Office 2011 application suite, we've been focusing on the new features going from 2008 to 2011, and the relative value versus alternative tools like Apple's iWork suite. One thing we haven't really nailed down, though, is speed. Although it's easy to see in the first few moments of using it that Office 2011 is bringing a lot of performance optimizations to the table, exactly how much faster is it? Enter our friends over at MacTech magazine, who have polished their stopwatches and lined up a slew of test machines to get at the raw numbers and compare Office 2011 to both Office 2008 and 2004 across the entire suite. The whole article is worth a read, but the gist is that Office 2011 is quite a lot faster everywhere you care about speed: application launches, file open/save (noted as faster with the XML formats than with the legacy .doc, .xls etc. files), key operations, and more. In particular, Excel has gotten a serious turbo injection, with operations like fill range and charting timing out as "orders of magnitude" faster than in the previous version. MacTech suggests that Excel users who lean heavily on the charting capabilities "run, don't walk, to get the upgrade." On the Mac Mojo blog, Microsoft's own Erik Schwiebert posted an interesting look inside the development process and philosophy that drives the speed optimizations seen in Office 2011. From the user perspective, you might not think that squeezing a few milliseconds out of a particular function would lead to worthwhile improvements, but Schwiebert lays it out well and explains the cognitive science behind perceived application performance -- worth a read. His video demo of Excel's launch speed improvements is in the 2nd half of this post.
SlideRocket brings web presentations to iPhone and iPad with HTML5
Since the dawn of time, traveling professionals have sought easier ways to present on the go. Pico projectors! Netbooks! Converting presentations to video to show them on iPhones! Then there was Keynote on the iPad, and it was good. Not great, however: presenters with libraries of PPT content have had to convert them over, and keeping your decks up to date with the latest and greatest from the sales department is a drag. Wouldn't it be better and easier if there was a nice cloud-based solution that played well with Mobile Safari? Enter SlideRocket's new HTML5 player; the freemium web service now supports playing back (not editing) presentations on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch with full-screen video, a handful of good-looking builds and transitions, and all the analytics and version control you want. While the normal SlideRocket player requires Flash or AIR to show content, this one works fine without them. Click on to learn more about SlideRocket's capabilities, and see a video demo of the HTML5 playback in action.
Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 now on sale, downloadable for upgraders
It's been percolating for ages, maturing like a fine wine and fermenting like a premium cheese: the latest edition of Microsoft Office for the Mac, Office 2011 (or Office 14, if you're counting version numbers) has finally made it to market. Enterprise and education customers have had access to the new version for a few weeks now, but as of late last night those users who had registered for free upgrades from Office 2008 (for purchases after August 1) were able to start downloading the software. Note that this version of Office is for Intel Macs only and does require Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later. The various editions are on sale & downloadable from Microsoft (US$150 for Home & Student, $280 for Home & Business which includes Outlook), or you can get the DVD versions. The boxed app suite is also for sale in both Apple and Microsoft retail stores. Education versions with lower pricing are also available. Home & Student allows you to install Office 2011 on up to three personal machines. The big-ticket new features in this edition are many and varied; we'll be digging deeper into them over the next few days. Click "Read More" for a quick rundown.
Office 2011 for Mac is available today.docx
There are plenty of free, paid, web-based, desktop-bound, cross-platform, or uni-platform alternatives, but there can only be one Office. Microsoft's flagship desktop suite of productivity applications just got a major new update. Office 2011 for Mac replaces Microsoft's Mac-specific Entourage email app with the industry standard Outlook, brings in some interface tweaks from Office 2010 over in PC land, and integrates with those Office Web Apps you've been hearing so much about. The entire "Home & Business" bundle goes for $279, and if you're not so into Outlook, you can get the Word / PowerPoint / Excel "Home & Student" version for $149.
First look: Fuze Meeting extends remote presentation mojo to iPad
Modern meetings are a marvel. With strong competition in the remote presentation/conferencing product space, we now have plenty of capable and feature-rich platforms that offer affordable (sometimes free) remote meetings, most with a good Mac compatibility story to tell. The catch, of course, is that all these technologies depend on Java, Flash/AIR or a bespoke browser plugin to deliver the goods -- meaning that the iPad and iPhone are largely left out of the fun. Given the demand, it's clear why the Adobe Connect iPhone client and WebEx player for iPad deliver meeting attendance options for iDevices; who wouldn't want to attend a web meeting from the beach? Still, if you want to host a meeting from your iPad and show off the content stored there or in the cloud, there hasn't been a solid option [Commenters noted Mighty Meeting, which includes straightforward PPT sharing from the iPad to remote or local displays]. Now, with the introduction of Fuze Meeting HD for the iPad, there is a new contender. Callwave's new & free iPad client for Fuze, released today, gives you access to your Fuze Meeting account on the go. Want to host a meeting? Three taps and you're rolling, including any PPT or Keynote presentations on your device, photos, videos and more. You can include local content or tightly-synchronized media playback from files stored in your Fuze account, including HD media. Pinch to zoom in, point to show a 'laser pointer' indicator -- just like being there. Read on for the video demo & more features.
Nokia makes E7 QWERTY slider official: 'beautiful and all business' (update: specs)
Nokia's just unveiled its aluminum-clad E7 QWERTY slider handset. One of the new family of Symbian^3 devices, it has a 4-inch tilting touchscreen display on the front and an 8 megapixel imager capable of 720p video on the back. Yummy. It's said to be the best business device Nokia, or anyone else, has ever produced and comes with the touted ability to create PowerPoint slides on the go. The E7 also features Nokia's new ClearBlack Display sorcery and is expected to ship before the end of the year in exchange for €495 (before taxes and subsidies). You'll find the full press release after the break. Update: By now you'll have noticed that the E7 and N8 are almost identical outside of the E7's 4-inch display and slightly bigger chassis required to host it. There are a few other differences, though. For example, The 12.9mm-thin N8 has an FM transmitter and 2mm charging connector unlike the slightly thicker 13.6mm E7. The E7's bigger display also trims back the reported talk time to 540 minutes (the N8 does 720 minutes). Of course, as part of the business focused E-series, the E7 also features a healthy set of preloaded apps including Mail for Exchange (with MS Outlook sync of contacts, calendar, and notes and multiple calendars with meeting request support), IBM Lotus Notes Traveler, Quickoffice dynamic premium, Adobe PDF reader, and F-Secure Anti-theft. The N8 counters with the better camera and stereo mic, thanks to a big 1/1.83-inch 12 megapixel sensor and Xenon flash that require some extra girth on the backend. Oh, and no MicroSD slot on the E7 -- you get 16GB and that's it.%Gallery-102110%
