Random Rants & Raves

Watch out Google Apps, Office “14” is coming to the Web – and unlike the Google version, it works with the offline rich client as well as mobile devices to give a whole new set of features.

Some salient points:

• Office 14 is going to be available in the normal rich client version
• The Web version will be included into the applications
• Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote are the apps that will be available in the “cloud” :)
• Seamless syncing of content between the desktop, Web and mobile will be possible
• Multiple people can work on the same document in different media at the same time and see changes in real-time
• The Web version works on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari
• If you have the Silverlight 2 plugin installed (in any of the above browsers) you get an even richer experience than the Ajax based one which mimics the rich desktop client almost exactly
• The rendering engines in each application is the same as the one in the desktop version and hence the document you view in your desktop will be exactly the same as the one the Web!
• You get all the rich features – charts, tables, WordArt, SmartArt etc. on both the Desktop and Web version – YAY!

Check out the video over at Channel9 for a quick cool demo.

Tags: pdc, office, beta
Categories: Office | Internet | SilverLight

Just saw a story on the heavily biased Slashdot about comments Miguel de Icaza was supposed to have made during his session at Mix which criticized the MS/Novell Pact. This is typical Slashdot/Linux FUD against anything Microsoft. I was there in the discussion and even asked Miguel specifically about these topics. I posted a reply to the article at Slashdot (quoted below since Slashdot has a way of making pro-MS comments vanish):

This is simple, absolute FUD - typical of Slashdot. I was there and Miguel never said any of those things in the _public_ presentation.

But if slashdot, you want to even appear fair you should also report the other stuff he said.

Things like "Linux on the server is boring", "We open source commies...", etc. In fact I asked him specifically about the GPL and its effect on the MS/Novell/SL/Moonlight stack. His comment was that the GPL is quite irrelevant since most Linux vendors are going to be fighting with each other (he gave an example of 'committee for freedom of  Judea' and 'Judea freedom commitee' fighting with each other instead of for the actal freedom).

There were enough comments from him to "prove" that he thinks Linux sucks royally (if you were there and saw his Termnial font change problem comment, you'll know what I mean). But we know he doesn't hate linux. So again, a comment made by him aobut the deal doesn't mean he doesn't agree with it and endorse it. He might have personal opinions which he puts out in a private group - that shouldn't be taken as him hating the deal.

Slashdot - at least report the full facts / comments and try to be fair.

Hopefully, (although I don't think so), Slashdot will correct their story. If any of you were there and want to add to this, please do so.

Tags: rant, fud, silverlight
Categories: Linux | Rant | SilverLight

So sitting over at Mix '08 in Vegas, I've been seeing all the talks on SilverLight 2 and XAML and Ajax. But what really makes me very, very excited is actually two announcements that were made - a little too quietly then I'd have wanted them to be.

The first one was mentioned in the keynote in the part about SilverLight being available on mobile devices. That is of course a great step forward, but what really made me excited is the availability of SilverLight on Nokia Phones! Higher end Nokia phones running the Symbian Series 60 will be able to run SilverLight apps directly. Which means you can create rich web applications in SilverLight that will run on a good 80-90% of the phones out there. Since Symbian and Windows Mobile together will make up at least that much. The next place to go would obviously be the iPhone - especially given the opportunity now that Apple has basically discounted the nearest competitor to it.

The other major SilverLight impact would be the availability of MoonLight - the SilverLight port to Linux. This basically means that SilverLight can become an ubiquitous "standard" for Rich Internet Applications very quickly - and one that runs on an extremely vast variety of hardware and software platforms - truly a Web that can be thrown wide open!

Tags: rave, silverlight, linux
Categories: Internet | Linux | SilverLight