Cloud users get Microsoft Office Web Apps update first

Users of Office Web Apps have just been given some minor but welcome updates, described here.

They include printing in Word when in edit mode,new chart tools in Excel, and again in Excel the handy autofill tool, which lets you drag the bottom left corner of a selection to extend it automatically. In the

…continue reading Cloud users get Microsoft Office Web Apps update first

OpenStack takes on Amazon with open source cloud computing

Today’s big open source announcement is OpenStack, an open source cloud platform that aims to be an non-proprietary alternative to Amazon’s Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3).

There are nearly 30 companies currently signed up to support OpenStack, including NASA, Citrix, Dell, Intel, AMD and Right Scale, but the big mover

…continue reading OpenStack takes on Amazon with open source cloud computing

Office and Windows Live SkyDrive – don’t miss unlucky Clause 13

How secure is Windows Live SkyDrive?

One of the most notable features of Office 2010 is that you can save directly to the Web, without any fuss. In most of the applications this option is accessed via the File menu and the Save & Send submenu. Incidentally, this submenu used to be called Share,

…continue reading Office and Windows Live SkyDrive – don’t miss unlucky Clause 13

Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie at All things Digital – a poor performance

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie put on a poor performance when quizzed by Walt Mossberg at the All Things Digital conference, judging by Ina Fried’s live blog.

What was wrong with it? They allowed the conversation to be focused mainly on competing products: Apple iPad, Google Android, Google

…continue reading Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie at All things Digital – a poor performance

Farewell to Becta

The UK government today announced that Becta, a government body to “promote technology in learning”, is to be closed. Becta stands for “British Educational Communications and Technology Agency”.

I have mixed feelings about this, though in a period when severe cutbacks are required a body like Becta is hard to justify. I first came

…continue reading Farewell to Becta

Office 2010: the SharePoint factor

Microsoft Office 2010 launches today. I’ve been using the product since for some months, in beta and final form, and written a fair amount on the subject. Is it worth upgrading? There’s no simple answer. If you spend a lot of time working in Office, then even a small tweak might be worth the

…continue reading Office 2010: the SharePoint factor

Mad or brilliant? Google Chrome OS will print via the cloud

Google Chrome OS, the operating system that is essentially a browser on a netbook, does not support printer drivers. Given the problems these things still cause, you might think that is a good thing. At least, until you want to print a Google map to give to a friend. Or an invoice to stick

…continue reading Mad or brilliant? Google Chrome OS will print via the cloud

Jewels from the loft: launch of Delphi, Netscape’s Constellation, HTML to die, Longhorn for developers

It’s the Easter holiday in the UK and I’ve suffered a bout of spring-clean fever. It is time, I decided, to clear out a mountain of old books and magazines.

A job like this always prompts reflections, the first of which is the sad decline of print journalism in the field of software

…continue reading Jewels from the loft: launch of Delphi, Netscape’s Constellation, HTML to die, Longhorn for developers

QCon London 2010 report: fix your code, adopt simplicity, cool .NET things

I’m just back from QCon London, a software development conference with an agile flavour that I enjoy because it is not vendor-specific. Conferences like this are energising; they make you re-examine what you are doing and may kick you into a better place. Here’s what I noticed this year.

Robert C Martin from

…continue reading QCon London 2010 report: fix your code, adopt simplicity, cool .NET things

Microsoft maybe gets the cloud – maybe too late

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave a talk on the company’s cloud strategy at the University of Washington yesterday. Although a small event, the webcast was widely publicised and coincides with a leaked internal memo on “how cloud computing will change the way people and businesses use technology”, a new Cloud website, and a Cloud

…continue reading Microsoft maybe gets the cloud – maybe too late