Microsoft today announced the start of the Office 2010 preview program. A new, larger group will get to start playing with the next major version of the Office suite next month. This announcement is not a surprise and was widely expected to be made today. The news was accompanied by even more information about the online version of Office, the Office Web Apps. This online version is aimed at competing with Google Docs, Zoho and others. Like most online apps, the Office Web Apps are designed to be run from the cloud, completely in a user’s web browser. The “app in a browser” function of Office Web Apps may make future Google Chrome OS users the big winners, given the timing of both products for next year.

Office Web Apps will be free to Windows Live users, which is hardly surprising given the free nature of Google Docs. The online storage will be supplied by SkyDrive, and Microsoft is not forthcoming on if the apps will be ad-supported. Office Web Apps will be lightweight versions of their full Office suite siblings, and will consist of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. The inclusion of an online version of OneNote is exciting, and may offer Microsoft a way to compete with Evernote. Evernote has taken the online notetaking world by storm of late.

While many webworkers and the like have been moving to the cloud in greater numbers, the big winners of the appearance next year of Office Web Apps may ironically be Google Chrome OS users. Chrome OS will no doubt be written to work seamlessly with Google Docs, but the strength of Office in the enterprise cannot be overlooked. It is logical to expect documents created with Office Web Apps to be pretty compatible with the full versions. This could give Office an advantage over Google Docs, something users of the forthcoming Chrome OS could use to their benefit.

It will be interesting to see how Office Web Apps plays out, as far as compatibility with non-Microsoft web browsers is concerned. The online apps will certainly be written to best support Internet Explorer users, but Firefox is now mainstream, so it will likely work fine, too. The Google Chrome browser is a wild card with regards to Microsoft support, as this interview makes clear, so it may face a bumpy road when working with Office Web Apps. Microsoft may have to take some pains to ensure the Web Apps are compatible with Google Chrome, however, to avoid the typical cries of “foul”.

UPDATE: Robert Scoble has posted a number of videos of Office 2010 in action. The last video demonstrates Office Web Apps, and the Microsoft product manager states that they will work in IE, Firefox and Safari.

Microsoft has Exchange 2010 in a beta form but I haven’t played with it yet. I probably won’t either, since I use Gmail. However, when I had a personal hosted Exchange account, it was a blissful experience with Windows Mobile handsets. Might it get even better with Exchange 2010 and Windows Mobile 6.x? It looks like it, based on this video demonstration video by Adam Glick, Sr. Technical Product Manager of Microsoft’s Unified Messaging team. If you can’t view the video above, here’s an MP4 version. Some highlights:

• Conversation views hit the handheld. In the email preview, a number will appear in parenthesis, indicating how many messages are in the threaded conversation.
• Moving a message to a folder can be turned into a server-side rule. For example, if you move a message thread to a particular folder, any new messages in that thread can automatically be moved to the same folder.
• Voicemails can appear in your Inbox, complete with a transcription and built-in audio player to hear the message.
• View free/busy information for your peers right on their Contact card in Outlook Mobile. Just click the Get Free/Busy button on a contact.

Mobility Site says that SMS messages can also be synchronized with the server, so you’ll have a central place to store and search through short text bursts as well. I see some upcoming features here that I currently enjoy in Google’s Voice and Gmail products.

These days I’m not using a Windows Mobile handset nor an Exchange account, so I may not get to play with the new bits on the WinMo side. Even though over 20 companies license Microsoft Exchange Active Sync, I suspect the nicer mobile features won’t appear on non-Windows Mobile handsets. While there is Exchange support on other mobile platforms, not all of the features are always supported. Tasks come to mind as those not always being supported by EAS licensees, although you can generally count on email, contacts and calendar events.

We are preparing to head into a big holiday weekend here in the U. S. and before I do that it’s time to share my past week at Mobile Tech Manor with you. I kept my nose to the computer screen pretty much all week and revisited a program that makes keeping all those bits of wisdom I run across right where I need them. Come on in and share my week for a bit.

Continue reading »

It’s time to share the wealth of knowledge that is the GigaOM Network. Here’s a rundown of what is hot on the network:

• Smart Meters That Can Tweet, From a Utility That “Gets” Broadband- GigaOM
• Chu: For Green Building Design, We Need to Go Open Source- Earth2Tech
• Will Michael Jackson’s Funeral Be Live-Streamed- NewTeeVee
• Firefox 3.5, Portable Edition Arrives- OStatic
• Apple/NVIDIA Rift to Spark Major Component Changes?- TheAppleBlog
• 3 Options for Sharing Your Project Research- WebWorkerDaily
• Is Marketing Key to Mobile App Store Sales?- GigaOM Pro

The Public Service Announcement for the day is for those who are always stopping to jot notes in a notebook. You see a notice on a board, or even something on a computer screen, so you jot it down before you forget it. I’m here to save you a lot of time with this tip. Use Evernote, and instead of jotting notes down everywhere, snap them with your phone camera.

Evernote is the note-taking app extraordinaire that lives on the web and does some seriously good things with your notes. The time saver I am sharing is the best way to get those notes into the system. When you see that sign, the notice on the board, or even something on your computer screen that bears remembering, pull out your smartphone and snap a photo in Evernote. There are versions of Evernote for the BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm Pre and Windows Mobile, so just about every smartphone is covered. The desktop is covered with both Mac and Windows versions to go along with the web version that works in just about any browser.

Once you snap the photo in Evernote, it is sent to your notebook in the cloud where some cool things happen to it. First and foremost, Evernote looks at your photo image, and if it sees any words in the image, it indexes them for searching. That means that from now on, you can search for a word and every saved image that contains that word will be shown to you. Simple and easy. Try it, and you’ll quickly see how powerful this can be. This is by no means the only way to use Evernote, but I’ll share more on that soon.

As a full-time Gmail user, one of the bits I really can’t stand is now fixed. Google implemented some changes to its Label system that I’m ready to pounce on, but the new features are rolling out throughout the day. At the moment, my account doesn’t have them. So what am I waiting for with high levels of anticipation? Three things that should help my productivity.

The Label system is now above the Google Talk or chat area, which is super helpful when I’m using my netbook. I use Labels far more than I use Chat, and I always wondered why I couldn’t swap placement of the two features. With only 600 pixels to use on a typical netbook display, the Labels often fall off the bottom of the screen. Of course, with several dozen labels, they’ll still drop below the small screen, so the second new tidbit will overcome that issue: configurable hiding or showing of Labels. Yup, you can now specify which Labels you want to see all the time, as opposed to those hardly used (but still useful) Labels. Google will start you off by showing the most used Labels, and you can modify as needed after that.

For the “old school” emailers, Gmail now supports dropping and dragging for Labels. You can drag messages to a Label or you can drag a Label onto an email. Using this feature will perform a “move and archive” function, just as it does with the Move button that Google added prior. Is it just me that’s excited over these changes? Perhaps I’m easy to please…

One of the most common questions I get from readers is, “What’s a good online task management system?” There are several to choose from, but Remember The Milk is always on my list. The basic task functionality is free, and it integrates with my Gmail account. The advanced features will cost you, though, and for that reason, some folks shy away from it. But if you pay $25 per year for the Pro account, you can use the free iPhone application in lieu of the web client.

Version 1.1.0 of the RTM software for iPhone and iPod Touch devices includes push notifications, which might provide the tipping point for folks to grab a Pro account. Essentially, your task alerts will get pushed to your iPhone and pop up on your device at the time you set. Non-Pro account users can try the iPhone app free for 15 days.

I’ve enjoyed my free RTM account for several years, but this new feature has me thinking of upgrading my account. I’ve been holding off on choosing one, and only one, task management platform because I haven’t found the perfect one to meet my needs. I’ve looked at OmniFocus, Things, Gmail’s Tasks, you name it. I need a task manager I can actively use when online at a computer or when out and about with just a phone. It has to be cost-effective, simple and configurable. Plus, it needs to remind me when a task is due, wherever I am and on whatever device I’m using at the time. I’m creating a task to give this some additional thought, but the inclusion of push notifications has me leaning towards RTM.

If you’re like me, you use Gmail all day, no matter what computer you are using. Maybe you sometimes use other people’s computers to access your Gmail remotely. It is always a good idea for security reasons to log out of Gmail whenever you finish using a given computer, but we users don’t always do what we’re supposed to do.

Gmail has our back, with the ability to sign out of any Gmail session remotely from any computer we are using at the time. It’s been available for a year, but bears reminding for those who forget such things. Just click on the details link at the bottom of the main Gmail screen:

This will pop up a window that shows the details about your recent activity and list all currently open sessions. Just tap the button to log out of all other sessions remotely to start a clean slate.

Google seems to be taking a page out of Apple’s UI playbook with the latest change to Gmail. After adding the floaty barto Gmail’s web client for iPhone and Android back in April, it decided to speed up the commonly used Archive function. Now you can simply swipe a message to have an Archive button pop up, similar to Apple’s Delete button in the iPhone’s native mail client.

Is it a huge deal? For some, no, while others will appreciate the speediness that swipe and archive brings. The bigger deal is how Google continues to iterate on a regular basis by rolling out little bits of functionality to mobile devices.

Although Google says the new function is for iPhone only, I had to try it on my Palm Pre since it, too, uses the popular WebKit browser. That user agent string must be a dead giveaway, since swiping doesn’t do anything more than smudge my screen. Then again, there is a dedicated Archive button at the top left, so I could choose multiple emails and archive them that way.

You’d think that my full-time transition to Gmail in 2007 would have me using every trick in the book to manage my mail. Nope. Getting caught up in the grind with gadgets coming and going, I haven’t found the time to exploit all of Gmail’s little tips and tricks. That changes today for two reasons: I’m going to make the time and I have a good launching pad with this timely post from Web Worker Daily.

I knew about Gmail aliases: these are the custom email addresses you can create yourself. For example, my personal Gmail address is kctofel@gmail.com. But kctofel+abc@gmail.com will also come to my Inbox also. That “+abc” can be anything of my choosing. But I never thought to combine those aliases with Gmail’s filtering system.

Jenny suggests just that in the WWD post. She uses a +p alias and a filter to apply a “Pictures” label, which is a perfect example for me as I often email pics from my phone for blog purposes. The opportunities are pretty endless when combining aliases with filters and I plan to start taking advantage of them today. Got any other tips for me?