Office 2010 release date announced
Microsoft have officially announced May 12th, 2010 will be the launch date for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. This date represents the retail launch of the products, with the RTM date scheduled for sometime in April. This means MSDN and TechNet subscribers should have the bits before the end of April.
Office 2010 provides some important updates like the ribbon UI across all apps, new backstage view, threaded email conversations, social connector add-in support and some much needed updated same templates. Ultimately its a very polished Office 2007, using the same .docx, .xlsx file types. New in 2010 is the web apps, although we’re still yet to see editing of word docs online, this should be available at launch.
Here’s a good comparison video showing what’s new in Office 2010 and Office 2007.
SharePoint 2010 on the other hand is a massive upgrade on SharePoint 2007. A completely new UI features the ribbon that users are familiar with from the using Office products. There’s also an extended range of in-built site types. Integration between SharePoint and Office has been improved with a new SharePoint Workspace application added to Office. This allows important SharePoint content to be available whilst offline. If you create any new documents while out on the road, you can easily sync these back when you return to the office.
More @ Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog
Will you pay for games and apps 3 times ?
In a demo a Tech.Ed Middle East, Eric Rudder showed how a single project (in this case a game) could be published and run on 3 entirely different platforms. Running on Windows, Xbox and Windows Phone 7 which all have different input mechanisms – keyboard and mouse, controller, touch-screen and accelerometer, this begins to get very interesting.
This gets a whole lot more awesome when you find out that your game/app can sync across platforms. So hit the save point on the Xbox, run out the door and continue playing on your phone. Someone should sort through the old beyond 2000 footage, this technology is probably in there somewhere. It sounds like futuristic and probably will be some ways off before you get a triple-platform app in your hand.
My biggest question out of this is the pricing model. Are we expected to buy the game 3 times to get ultra-portability ? It’s important to also recognise that this isn’t functionality everyone wants. So building it into the price of the first purchase will hurt those who only want it on one platform. For the right price, those that want ultra-portability should pay for that feature, but at a subsidised price. Maybe after the primary purchase, you could then pickup the same app/game on the other platforms for 5-10% of the original cost. I think that’s a model that would work.
For a $100 Xbox 360 game, you should be able to get the PC version for an additional $10 and maybe an additional $5 for the mobile version. Currently pricing models don’t recognise that people game in different places, when in reality that’s very true. Imagine if you didn’t have to make the console vs PC choice, but could have the game on both for an affordable price. Crazy thought right ?
More @ Engadget
Windows Azure announced for Australia
Update
The Windows Azure platform will be available in Australia in April 2010.
Update 2
Microsoft are not announcing Australian pricing today. Which begs the question, what’s the point ? The price is the single critical piece of information that will affect businesses decision to move to Azure or not.
Microsoft has officially launched their Azure platform in Australia. Azure offers Microsoft services in the cloud like Exchange, SQL, SharePoint as well as storage and application hosting to enterprises and startups.
Microsoft say the benefits to businesses that choose to use Windows Azure are:
- Bring your ideas to market faster and pay as you go
- Reduce costs of building and extending on-premises resources
- Reduce the effort and costs of IT management
- Respond quickly to changes in your business and customer needs
- Choose an on-premises or off-premises deployment model that best suits your needs.
- Scale your IT resources up and down based on your needs.
- Consume computing resources ONLY when the needs arise.
- Focus less energy on managing operational resources and constraints.
- Remove the need to manage hardware
- Use your existing development skills to build cloud applications
- Consistent development and management experience across on-premises and the cloud.
Windows Azure has been available in the US for months now, the important thing about today’s announcement is local, Australian servers. This becomes critical when it comes to speed, with businesses moving multiple gigabytes of data up and down from cloud services.
Watch the conversation on Twitter – #azureau
Windows Mobile 7 has Zune integration
During the Microsoft keynote at MWC, it was confirmed that Windows Mobile 7 will indeed have the Zune service integrated. Containing Music, Videos, Podcasts, Radio and the Zune Marketplace, this surely means the world-wide release of the Zune services.
In Australia we can of course download the Zune application, or rent movies through Zune Video marketplace, but if you wanted to use Zune Maketplace to purchase your music or videos, your out of luck. For the new Windows Phones to seriously compete in Australia, where smart phones have been very successful, the full Zune service (hopefully including subscription-based music) needs to be available.
Windows Phones 7 Series get slick Zune UI
Microsoft have revealed Windows Phones 7 Series which contains a number of phones from a multiple manufacturers, but run a brand new interface. This group of devices run Windows Mobile 7 which as you’ll see from the screens below has drawn strongly on the popular ZuneHD user interface.
The home page (above) is made up of a number of ‘tiles’ that contain information from data sources online. Facebook, Xbox Live for example, as well as other updates like SMS, email, and phone calls. These are customisable so your experience with the phone suits the services you use most.
Naturally Microsoft have a key arm to their mobile strategy that has really been under-utilised. That is full Microsoft Office support on a mobile device. While today’s keynote was very consumer orientated, a more important play is the business market, which can also take advantage of SharePoint integrations.
In the Q&A after the keynote, it was confirmed by Steve Ballmer that devices will not ship with Adobe Flash support “out of the gate” but added, they are not against having it on Windows Phones. With many months between now and launch, I’d expect Adobe will work with Microsoft to make this happen before launch.
Windows Phone 7 Series devices will be out before Christmas this year.
You can watch the full MWC Microsoft keynote video here.
Australia Tax Surfaces – Microsoft Surface Australian release
After initially launching in April 2008, Microsoft’s multi-touch table, the Surface, has had a pretty quiet life to date. Here in Australia, there’d only been a couple of companies that’d gone to the expense of importing it. Today Microsoft are officially launching Microsoft Surface in Australia, with one very different spec – price.
I don’t remember a larger gap in the US-AUS price translation than this. In the US the retail Surface sells for US$12,500, yet somehow that number grew with a serious Australia-tax to A$21,000. We’re still waiting for a response form Microsoft to justify the dramatic difference in price.
Update
A Microsoft spokesperson says the Microsoft Surface price is a result of getting a new product into a new market. Sighting support, operational costs, certification and regulatory requirements as the reasons for the Australian cost.
If your in the development market, you’ll need to hand over A$24,000, compared to $US15,000 in the states. While the size and weight of this device would make for expensive shipping, it’s possible that importing from the US could be cheaper.. this is ridiculous.
We’re two and half years on since it’s release, components should be cheaper now, unfortunately this hasn’t correlated to the Australian prices. If this is another example of pricing technology based on what they think ‘the market will bear’, then they’re clearly wrong.
Surface is an amazing device, if it was offered at a sub-$10k price, thousands of business may be enticed to get one. But at the current price point, you’ll probably have to visit a casino to see one.
Watch the latest updates on the launch on twitter.
Zune coming to Australia, 17 other countries
Zune is finally going global ! A few hours ago Liveside posted about a Financial Times story that has details on Microsoft’s Zune brand going global to a total of 18 markets. Good news for Australians, is we’re on the list.
The Zune-branded service – which includes the most popular films from MGM, Paramount and Universal – will be available in 18 of its largest western markets, including the US, UK, France, Germany and Australia.
Given the introduction of the Zune Video Marketplace on Xbox (launching to public later today), it’s not entirely surprising. What this means for consumers is the introduction of the first subscription model for buying music. The big issue being price. Currently iTunes dominates electronic music sales in Australia, so I’d like to see Microsoft be aggressive with the Zune Pass pricing.
More @ LiveSide