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(Credit:
Microsoft)

(Credit:
Microsoft)

After the change of settings, the missing menu options appeared on the Office button menu. I was able to transfer a Word 2003 template from my XP machine to Word 2007 on the Vista machine in just a few seconds. And it was just as quick and simple to place an Excel 2007 worksheet into the workspace I created, and download it from there to Excel 2003 on the XP system.

Uncheck options in the Windows Live installer to avoid downloading programs you don’t want or need.

Unfortunately, getting the options in place on my Vista PC required a separate download, a tweak to my Office 2007 settings, and a couple of restarts. The separate download wasn’t so bad, but my Office 2007 security settings prevented the add-in from running. First, I had to change my Add-ins settings in Word 2007 (click the Office button > Word Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Add-Ins > Require Application Add-ins to be signed by Trusted Publisher > OK > OK). Then I had to select “Enable all code published by this publisher” in the pop-up window that appeared after I clicked the warning at the top of the document window when I next opened a file in Word. That’s a lot of running around just to get two Microsoft products to work together as they’re designed to.

Tomorrow: keep the junk out of your Outlook inbox.

Once I got used to what the service isn’t–it isn’t a way to actually work on the files in a browser–I came to appreciate how easy the service makes it to save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files on the Web, and open them in their original app on any PC with an Internet link.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

I decided to start from scratch by creating a new Windows Live account rather than using my existing Hotmail account. Signing up for the account was a breeze, though I opted out of most of the options the installer presented. For example, I had no interest in downloading Messenger, the Windows Live Toolbar (my browser’s cluttered enough already), or anything having to do with OneCare, which single-handedly destroyed my home network when I tried out the beta last summer. Be sure to uncheck the option to make MSN your home page, and you may want to avoid sending Microsoft any more data than the company already helps itself to.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

The biggest downside is how difficult it is to get the service working on a Vista machine running Office 2007. I was uploading and downloading Office 2003 documents on my XP machine in just a few minutes, but I had to jump through a series of hoops to do the same in their Office 2007 equivalents on my newer Vista PC.

In Office 2007 you open files from your workspace or add them to a workspace by clicking the Office button, choosing either Open from Office Live or Save to Office Live, and selecting the workspace in the window on the right.

Open files from or save them to your Office Live Workspace from within Office 2007 apps via these menu options.

The utility adds a toolbar to Office XP and 2003, and new items on the Office button menu in Office 2007. To open a file from your workspace in Word 2003, Excel 2003, or PowerPoint 2003, click the down arrow to the right of the toolbar’s Open button, and choose the workspace from the list that appears. Likewise, you can save the file you’re working on in one of those three programs to your workspace by clicking the down arrow to the right of the Save button and selecting the workspace you want to add it to.

Choose the down arrow to the right of the Save button on the Office Live Add-in toolbar to place a copy of the file on your workspace.

Choose Enable all code published by this publisher to allow the Office Live Add-in to work with Office 2007 apps.

I spent Wednesday afternoon getting to know Microsoft’s new Office Live Workspace, a free service that lets you store Office files online for easy access and sharing.

Among the workspace templates Microsoft provides are ones geared to students (”Class”, “Essay”, “School,” and “Study”), business (”Job Search”, “Meeting,” and “Project”), and special subjects (”Event” “Household”, “Sports,” and “Travel”). Even with all these workspace options, there’s not much you can do with the files in your browser besides read them or copy material from them for pasting elsewhere. You can add comments to the file, and you can view its history in the Activity pane on the right side of the screen. That’s about it.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Adjust your workspace by mousing over its name in the left pane and choosing an option from the popup menu.

To share the file, click the Share button, choose Share Workspace, and enter the e-mail addresses of people who you want to let edit or view the file. The Share Screen option requires the Microsoft SharedView beta, which I didn’t test. The program is designed to let you share your desktop or application with the people you invite. I may try it when the need arises to collaborate with someone on a file in real time.

Most people share files by attaching them to e-mail. Office Live Workspace is a small step up from this technique by providing rudimentary versioning, though you still do all your work in a desktop app. For now I’ll be satisfied with what the service is–a file-sharing freebie–rather than fret about what it isn’t–a Google Docs-type online word processor/spreadsheet/presentation program.

Once the Windows Live installation completed, it took just a few more clicks to get started with Office Live Workspace. You’re prompted to give the generic workspace a name and description, which you can change later simply by mousing over the name in the left pane and choosing one of the options that appears.

Of course, there’s not much you can do with the service until you get some files uploaded. You can add files from inside the workspace one at a time or in batches, though the batch approach uses an ActiveX control, and thus requires Internet Explorer 6 or higher. Since I normally use
Firefox (and had used that browser to create the workspace), switching to IE just to upload a bunch of files at once would have been a major inconvenience. Still, I never intended to use this method to add files to the workspace. Instead, I downloaded the Office Live Add-in, which lets you upload files to and download them from the workspace directly inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Dunnington will arrive just before the Nehalem generation of chips, which will be quite a mishmash of designs. Intel will have a wide variety of Nehalem chips, including ones with two, four, and eight cores, chips with up to 16 threads, and some with integrated graphics.

This slide from a leaked Sun presentation uncovers Intel's six-core Dunnington processor.

After months of deriding rival Advanced Micro Devices’ strategy of cramming four cores onto one chip, Intel is set to take that concept a step further.

Dunnington would be Intel’s first monolithic design since its original Core 2 Duo chips released in 2006. The presentation indicates that Dunnington has six 45-nanometer Penryn-class cores integrated onto a single die. Each pair of Penryn cores shares 3MBs of Level 2 cache, and each of the six cores can access 16MBs of Level 3 cache. That’s a ton of space to store frequently used instructions, which could be a help for the chip in avoiding the front-side bus bottleneck to the main memory that’s still apparently in the works for Dunnington.

A leaked presentation authored by Sun has shed some light on Intel’s plans for its Dunnington processor, which appears to be a six-core server chip where all six cores are part of a single chip. Intel had previously hinted that Dunnington would have four cores or more, but it hadn’t been clear whether the company would reuse its multichip module strategy of cramming several distinct chips into a single package.

Sources familiar with Dunnington’s design confirmed the presentation is accurate, and that the processor features all six cores on a single chip. The presentation also reiterates Intel’s plans to release the Nehalem generation of chips with an integrated memory controller and point-to-point interconnects between cores later this year, borrowing design techniques from AMD’s Opteron chips. Nick Knupffer, an Intel spokesman, declined to comment on Dunnington but said of Nehalem, “Nehalem is on track and a screamer, but we’re not going to comment further.”

Intel chose to build quad-core chips by taking two dual-core chips and putting them into a special package. This approach was scorned by the chip design purists, but it allowed Intel to get quad-core chips out quickly while AMD struggled for a year with the technical challenges associated with building Barcelona, a quad-core chip with all the cores on one die.

(Credit:
aceshardware.freeforums.org)

Designs have 31 days to get funded, and any investors who fund a failing design get their money back. If a design is completely funded, the 20 benefactors get the first run of the shirt and a small cut of future sales. The designer gets $500 and a free print of his or her shirt. From then on, anyone who comes by Cameesa can freely purchase that shirt like they would any other shop–seeding the dividends to the initial investors.

Artists and shirt investors can make a buck or two off a hot design with Cameesa, a crowd-funded online T-shirt shop.

The shop currently has three shirts that have gotten over the funding hump. Meanwhile, the upcoming pool is filled with a handful of really good-looking designs that can be sorted by date or what needs the most funding. Because of the slim selection I’ll still likely stick to places like Neighborhoodies which pumps out 200 new designs every month, and Shirt.Woot.com which has a new shirt every day for $10 shipped. Neither of those have nearly as cool of a business opportunity for the buyers, though.

It’s no secret I’m a fan of Web T-shirt shops. This time last year I rounded up 20 different online shops that specialize in selling the cotton wonders, but few of those were as interesting as Cameesa.

Like many online T-shirt operations, everything on Cameesa is designed by freelancers who submit their stuff with the hopes of making a buck and getting some recognition. These designs (once approved by human editors) go into a pool where shoppers can pick out a shirt they want; the only catch is that they’ve got to invest in it so Cameesa can scrap together enough money to get it printed.

(Credit:
Cameesa)

Many people think the movie is a response to the concert–an attempt to give those who couldn’t get tickets to the show a chance to see it. That, a Disney representative said, is a misconception. The film was planned long before the concert tour, which wraps up Thursday, the representative said. The unusually short one-week theater run, she added, is meant to make it more like a concert event.

Having already sold out during popular show times in certain markets, Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: The Best of Both Worlds Concert, is no doubt making online ticket sellers happy, too.

Montana is actually Miley Cyrus, daughter of country star Billy Ray Cyrus. Her rise to fame began with the launch two years ago of Disney’s Hannah Montana TV show, in which she hides her pop star identity in order to live a so-called normal teenage life in Malibu, Calif.

A still from the 3D film, Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: The Best of Both Worlds Concert, which opens Friday for a one-week theater run.

The wildly successful show led to the release of two Hannah Montana albums and a sold-out concert tour that set attendance records and triggered parents to reportedly pay some $500 per ticket.

U2 3D, of course, beat Hannah Montana to the punch. But in my 8-year-old daughter’s eyes, Bono’s got nothing on the Jonas Brothers, who are special guests in the Hannah Montana film.

For example, Fandango.com, the largest online movie ticket seller, is likely to mark January as one the most–if not the most–trafficked month in its eight-year history. “Most of the traffic is due to Hannah Montana,” said Fandango spokesman Harry Medved, who added that it’s the site’s “biggest concert film ever” in terms of sales.

For those readers (who, unlike me, as a mom) aren’t privy to fads among Disney-controlled prepubescent girls, Hannah Montana is a pop sensation fueled by her TV persona a la Donny and Marie, The Partridge Family, The Monkees, or, my personal favorite, Shaun Cassidy (of Hardy Boys fame). The Hannah Montana hype, however, has hit modern-day levels of rabid consumerism, with merchandise ranging from video games to a clothing line.

The film was made using a custom-made 3D camera system developed by James Cameron and Vince Pace. In production notes, Pace described the system as having two eyes, in the form of two high-definition cameras, and a very powerful brain, in the form of a computer.

(Credit:
Disney)

And that says something, especially because the film is only playing in about 700 already 3D-equipped theaters nationwide and is only screening for seven days.

It’s not just screaming little tweens who are buzzing about Disney’s Hannah Montana 3D concert film, which open in theaters Friday for a one-week run.

“James Cameron and I set out to change entertainment as we know it by designing the tools necessary to shoot a new form of 3D, one that is based more on experience than effect,” he said.

There was no mention of price or how such a service would work in the report. But let’s think about this: to compete with Apple TV or Vudu, the device would have to cost around $200, and rentals of movies and TV shows should be around $3 to $4 each, which would be slightly cheaper than rentals of new releases from Blockbuster currently. The big advantage Blockbuster would enjoy over Apple TV, Vudu, and TiVo, it seems, would be selection. Considering its longstanding relationships with the studios, it would likely have the largest library of films and TV shows to choose from. See my colleague John Falcone’s excellent comparison of set-top rental boxes.

The service would take advantage of video-on-demand technology from Movielink (which Blockbuster bought last year) that allows movie downloads from Universal Studios, Paramount, Sony Pictures, MGM, and Warner Bros.

Assuming the report is spot-on, and Blockbuster attempts to make this transition to digital content, it’s time to wonder how much longer physical media will be a factor for mainstream movie renters.

No matter the details of the how the device would work, this represents a new direction for Blockbuster and the video rental market. Money spent on DVD ownership and rentals has been decreasing steadily for the past four years, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, which tracks sales of disc media. And though there’s no indication Blockbuster would eliminate its brick-and-mortar stores, a streaming video service would clearly cannibalize some of that business.

Netflix and Blockbuster are already offering DVD rental service by mail. Amazon.com, Microsoft’s
Xbox Live, and Netflix deliver movies directly to the PC. TiVo, Vudu, and Apple TV–not to mention cable and satellite companies–are doing the same for TV sets. Local independent stores notwithstanding, the only major brick-and-mortar options left for renting discs are Hollywood Video/Movie Gallery, which is close to bankruptcy, and Blockbuster.

But The Hollywood Reporter says Blockbuster may be giving customers more reasons not to visit its stores. The rental chain is said to be making a set-top box that will allow video content to be streamed directly to a television. The announcement should come sometime later this month, according to THR

A Blockbuster spokeswoman said it is “talking to numerous companies” about ways it can provide “access to media content across multiple channels–from our stores, by mail, through kiosks, through downloading, through portable content-enabled devices–so it’s not surprising that there are rumors out there.”

(Credit:
Blockbuster)

Trips to the video rental store may be a thing of the past sooner than thought.

So I use Microsoft’s Office product, and I’m exceptionally happy with
Microsoft Office for Mac 2008, in particular because of its improvements to Entourage, its e-mail client. It’s an excellent product.

In fact, I can’t seem to get it to sync with Apple’s iCal and Address Book, either (though colleagues of mine have had no issues doing so). A call to Microsoft has them pointing the finger at Apple, and I’m sure Apple will point a finger back when I call them. Why these companies can’t use open standards to make integration easier, I don’t know.

It doesn’t save into the OpenDocument Format. (Yes, this is a problem for me as I also use NeoOffice, especially for my presentation files.) And it obnoxiously saves into its new Office Open XML format (which you can turn off but which is aggravating all the same since 99.999 percent of the world still uses the old file formats). Also, synchronization to my BlackBerry has died with this upgrade since PocketMac no longer seems to be able to find the Microsoft Sync Services. (A call to Microsoft’s help desk made it clear that Microsoft doesn’t know how to find them, either.)

Entourage is the biggest area where I see improvements. It is soooo fast compared with Office 2004 for Mac. The UI is gorgeous. My favorite improvement, however, is My Day. It’s a floating window that shows my upcoming appointments, “To Do” items, and e-mails that I’ve flagged for action. It’s such a simple addition, but I’m already wholly reliant on it.

I bought Microsoft’s newest version of Office for
Mac (2008) on Tuesday and have been using it nonstop ever since. (Check out the CNET review here.) It is snappy, intuitive, and even innovative in some ways. (MyDay, seen at right, is a blessing.) In short, Microsoft has done something very, very right with this product. I recommend it to everyone who needs it.

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What I do know is that the upgrade was worth the price. You might ask why I don’t use OpenOffice/NeoOffice exclusively, given that I’m an open-source proponent. Answer: I want an all-in-one communications suite, and neither Apple nor the open-source community makes one. Apple forces me to use disparate applications (Address Book, iCal, Mail, etc.). Open-source provides paltry e-mail tools with the same lack of integration between calendaring, tasks, etc.

The product does have some downsides.

Microsoft is looking into a vulnerability that could affect Word, the company said Monday.

Overall, Microsoft said, it believes the vulnerability’s risk is limited because its requires people to take multiple steps for the hack to be successful. Microsoft said it is only aware of targeted attacks that take advantage of the flaw.

According to Microsoft’s security alert:

Customers using Microsoft Word 2000 Service Pack 3, Microsoft Word 2002 Service Pack 3, Microsoft Word 2003 Service Pack 2, Microsoft Word 2003 Service Pack 3, Microsoft Word 2007, and Microsoft Word 2007 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 are vulnerable to these attacks.

The vulnerability is in Microsoft’s Jet Database engine, which can be exploited through Word. Microsoft is investigating whether other applications can also exploit the vulnerability.

Customers running Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2,
Windows Vista, and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 are not vulnerable to the buffer overrun being attacked, as they include a version of the Microsoft Jet Database Engine that is not vulnerable to this issue.

People who believe they have been attacked can go to the Microsoft Web site for support.

Atlanta-based Suniva said on Tuesday that it has raised $50 million to commercialize its solar-cell technology, which it says will be as cheap as conventional electricity.

The venture round will be used to build a manufacturing facility in the Atlanta area, the company told the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Investors are New Enterprise Associations and H.I.G. Ventures, according to the company’s Web site.

The surge in interest in solar power has pushed up the price of silicon, spurring investments in alternative materials and novel manufacturing techniques.

Its manufacturing process is efficient as well. The company told VentureBeat that a staff of 40 people could man its operations for round-the-clock production.

Using monocrystalline silicon, it said it can improve the efficiency of cells to about 20 percent, which is the high range of traditional panels. SunPower has a panel with 22 percent efficiency.

Suniva has licensed technology from Georgia Tech’s University Center of Excellence in Photovoltaics (UCEP) to make very thin solar cells–less than 100 microns.

Solar-technology companies, one of the hottest areas of green-technology investing, continue to attract the funding.

CNET News.com’s Marguerite Reardon contributed to this report.

Comcast said its Pivot mobile customers would be switched to a similar Sprint package.

The service, called Pivot, was begun as a partnership between the cable giant, Sprint, Time Warner, Cox Communications, and Advanced/Newhouse Communications in 2006. It offered a package of services, including TV, broadband, and both a landline and wireless phone service.

“We decided to discontinue the service because the product required a lot of operational complexities, so we decided it wasn’t the approach we wanted for the long term,” said a Comcast spokesperson.

Well, that’s one way of putting it. By the end of last year, demand was so low for Pivot they stopped marketing it. Part of the problem is that nearly 80 percent of U.S. residents already subscribe to a cell phone service. And the cable operators weren’t given much freedom in pricing or packaging the Pivot service to make it enticing enough for people to switch carriers.

Comcast said Wednesday it has changed its mind on a joint wireless communication venture with Sprint-Nextel, according to a Reuters report.

To compliment the band mentions on blog posts there’s a really great service the team has built called battle of the bands. Like Alexa and Compete, battle of the bands lets you compare up to three bands together to see which one’s been the most “hot” in the past five weeks based on various interactions on MySpace as well as mentions in blog posts, and the Amazon.com sales rank. The system is built to accept other streams of data, so if and when Facebook begins to make the data on artist pages a little more transparent, those numbers could be integrated into the stats too.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

If you’re a person who loves live music but hates having to keep up on when your favorite bands are coming into town, there’s a great new service for you. It’s called Songkick, and it’s been designed to help you stay on top of upcoming concert dates, as well as discover new music from your existing tastes. It’s making a complicated process wonderfully simple, and I expect it to be the next big thing in live music in the same way that Last.fm and Pandora were with prerecorded music tracks.

Battle of the bands tracks three different bands of your choice against MySpace activity and sales data. (Click to enlarge)

This third leg of the service, called “BandSense” is a very novel concept. Bloggers who want to opt into the service can embed a line of Javascript into a single post or their entire blog template and get links to bands at the bottom of a post if they’re mentioned. It’s not just any a link spamming option, the service will only create links for bands only that are on tour. Clicking the band link in the blog goes straight to the tour dates and ticket pricing information, and if a user buys a ticket, the blog owner gets a cut. To compliment the system and keep bands you don’t like (but mentioned) off your blog, you can create a blacklist. These blacklisted artists will get no such link love.

To figure out what you like in the first place, the service makes it easy by letting you import the library data from iTunes, Winamp, or Windows Media player using a small plug-in. That same plug-in will also update the data if you add new music to your collection.

In the future Hogarth tells me there will be music integration on the Songkick band pages as well as the recommendations so you can listen to some tracks without having to navigate offsite. The only delay has been finding a way to do it democratically with all of the music hosting services out there. Songkick already has integration on partnered sites like Qloud and Seeqpod, and in the future intends to spread its tour date and recommendation engine even further.

Each artist has a page on Songkick that lists some similar bands as well as pricing and direct links to buy the tickets from 17 different vendors. Users can also leave comments (called “two cents”) about a band, although CEO Ian Hogarth told me they might add a bona fide rating system to complement it later on. Also on artist pages, and an integral part of the service is the blog listing guide. Songkick will scour the web and pull up any references to the band or artist in blog posts. These show up in reverse-chronological order on the band page, and can be toggled with upcoming tour dates.