Clearly the Press Announcement today from Microsoft will bring about another wave of discourse on the future of document formats.
The really short version of this announcement is that Office is going to support ODF, PDF, and XPS in the product directly and Microsoft engineers are going to join the OASIS working group on ODF, participate in the future of PDF in AIIM, stay active in the Ecma working group for XPS, and of course, remain active in JTC 1 SC34 where Open XML (and hopefully ODF) will be maintained over time. Also, when released, Office 14 will update the already substantial support for IS29500 in Office 2007.
blueKiwi Software, the leading european provider of enteprise social software, is announcing the blueKiwi SharePoint connector and blueKiwi OfficeAssistant - a set of components that enable the integration of blueKiwi's specialized social software suite with Microsoft's business productivity platform.
In this 10-part series, you will receive practical technical information from Robert Bogue and Andrew Connell, Microsoft SharePoint Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), covering 10 fundamental developer topics on SharePoint Products and Technologies via Live Meeting Webcast.
20-May-08 ... Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Web Parts. Register 21-May-08 ... Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Data Lists. Register 27-May-08 ... Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Silverlight and SharePoint. Register 28-May-08 ... Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Using Event Handlers. Register 03-Jun-08 ... Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Page Branding. Register 04-Jun-08 ... Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Workflows. Register 10-Jun-08 ... Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Web Services. Register 11-Jun-08 ... Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Page Navigation. Register 17-Jun-08 ... Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: User Management. Register 18-Jun-08 ... Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Custom Content Types. Register
Microsoft has released a software add-in to help those who have difficulty reading printed documents to turn Word documents into audio files.
The "Save as DAISY XML" add-in makes it easier to create audio books from text files, and was developed by Microsoft, Sonata Software, and the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) Consortium as an open-source project. It can be downloaded for free, and is compatible Microsoft Word 2007, Word 2003 and Word XP.
The user guide is downloadable here and represents approx 200 pages of documentation applicable to both the 2005 and the 2008 release of the Visual Studio extensions for SharePoint. The user guide contains an introduction to using the Visual Studio extensions for SharePoint, and it contains walkthrough samples for each of the project templates that are supplied with the Visual Studio extensions for SharePoint.
Today, we are delivering the first Community Technical Preview (CTP) of XNA Game Studio 3.0, giving you the ability to build games for the entire family of Zune media devices.
Microsoft XNA Game Studio is a toolset which makes creating great video games for Windows-based PC's, the Zune digital media player and the Xbox 360 console (with an active XNA Creators Club subscription) easier than ever
Ori Amiga shows a number of demos showing the native Mesh feeds, WPF applications using Mesh, a Silverlight client that supports working on and offline, a custom Facebook application that syncs Facebook photos with Live Mesh, a Mac client that sends photos to Live Mesh and even LINQ queries over Mesh objects
The suite of professional design tools includes Expression Web 2, Expression Blend 2, Expression Design 2, Expression Media 2 and Expression Encoder 2 and works seamlessly with Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008, solving the age-old designer and developer workflow challenge.
The innovations in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), used by both Expression Studio and Visual Studio, allow for unprecedented designer-developer collaboration for the creation of both standards-based and Microsoft Silverlight-enhanced Web experiences as well as Windows Vista and .NET Framework 3.5 client applications.
Microsoft Pro Photo Tools provides a free set of tools for photographers to perform various tasks with their images—including RAW captures. The current version enables you to quickly geotag your photos, view and edit metadata, and more, leveraging the power of Windows and Microsoft Live Local.
Microsoft have announced the completed settlement of its tender offer for Fast Search & Transfer ASA, a leading provider of enterprise search solutions. FAST will operate as a Microsoft subsidiary, with a dedicated enterprise search research and development center in Oslo, Norway, and offices throughout the world.
With the Live Mesh SDK, you'll be able to build applications that:
Use the Live Mesh sync service to synchronize files, data, and applications across all the devices in a user's mesh - even in scenarios where devices are only occasionally connected to the service.
Use the Live Mesh member service to provide file- and data-sharing experiences to anyone.
Extend the Live Desktop experience to deliver applications that are accessible from anywhere.
Plug in to the Live Mesh news feed system to generate notifications for key activities in your application.
If you'd like to be one of the first to test and evaluate these platform services, please apply here.
There's been a bunch of buzz about "the mesh" since Ray Ozzie alluded to it at last month's MIX Conference. As Ray said there, we've been exploring the concept of 'the mesh' for a couple of years now.
We started by asking ourselves a series of questions about our own digital lifestyle experiences, and examining the role of the web in our lives. We examined many of the ways the web is becoming more central to us - both workstyle and lifestyle. We're friending, twittering, digging, tagging and linking to stay in touch, share photos, be entertained, meet new people, express our opinions, learn, and the list goes on.
Devices are how we interact in this new "web connected" world and we use a variety of them, including PCs, laptops, media devices, phones, digital picture frames, game consoles, music players and the list grows at every CES. However, as we discover, adopt and use more of these digital devices, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep the people, information and applications we depend on in sync.
GTA IV is a fantastic title to showcase how great the Xbox 360 is ... amazing graphics & gaming experience, easy it is to play with your friends on Xbox LIVE, Achievements to aim for and the exclusive extra episodic content that will only be available for download on Xbox 360.
The goal of this release is to provide support for the new Windows Server 2008 platform, expand the keyword filtering capabilities by including installable lists to help customers filter out profanity and discriminatory words in 11 languages, and provide a roll-up of software fixes that help facilitate the administration of this security solution.
Organizations should upgrade to Forefront Security for SharePoint with Service Pack 2 if they are moving to Windows Server 2008 or want to take advantage of the new installable profanity and discriminatory keyword lists.
I've created a Visual Studio tool window that would do some of the work for me. First and foremost, the primary objective was to help in the customization and content creation of structures needed in a Visual Studio project used for SharePoint development. Second, it was to eliminate the chance for typos and trivial errors. Third, to eliminate repetitive tasks and free me up to do the more complex stuff.
An Add-In for Outlook 2007 which allows you to view and interact with your entire contact list from Office Communicator 2007.
Business users spend a majority of thier day in Outlook, why should they have to toogle back and forth from Outlook & Communicator? This Add-In allows those business users to keep working in Outlook as well as view presence, call or instant message thier contacts.
Office 2007 SP2 - Open XML, ODF, PDF, and XPS
Microsoft has released a software add-in to help those who have difficulty reading printed documents to turn Word documents into audio files.
Expression Studio 2 
Expression Web 2 
Expression Blend 2 
Expression Design 2 
Expression Media 2 
Expression Encoder 
From MOSS WebCM topgun 
Microsoft have announced