Google has announced that Android 2.2 or Froyo will be officially available for all Nexus One smart phone beginning yesterday. The update notification will be sent to all Nexus One phone over-the-air (OTA) from which the update can be downloaded and installed. You also can try check the update from the smartphone manually, via WiFi connection if you don’t have data plan.
We have seen how certain bloggers and media has received an update to Android 2.2 as early as last month, fueling speculation that Google is prioritizing power user to be the first to have the update. But this news should end whatever speculation out there. Google Nexus one users is definitely cheering this update, but for the rest of Android users, you gotta wait the news from the phone provider.
The Beta version of new Microsoft Live Essential has been made available for download by Microsoft last week. The powerful but fairly low profile (given the fact that MS product rarely got coverage but tech blogs) is specifically designed for only Windows Vista and Windows 7 (going to disappoint Windows XP users), focus on cloud services integration as well as simplify the everyday task.
Microsoft Live Essentials provide you the desktop tools for the most frequently task done only daily basis although not all is necessarily valuable to most. It got Messenger for chatting, Photo Gallery to manage your photo, Mail as email client, Movie Maker for movie editing, Writer to compost blog post to various blogging platform , Family Safety to monitor internet usage, and Toolbar, Microsoft Office Outlook Connector to bring Hotmail and Live Calendar to your Outlook email client, Office Live Add-in, and Microsoft Silverlight.
With focus to integrate existing cloud services in use, Windows Live Essential is now able to connect to various cloud services and social networking websites such as Youtube, Flickr, Facebook and etc. The addition of what could be seen as the biggest enhancement of Windows Live Essential is timely when integration between various web services is common to other services, and very critical to appeal to the mass.
Most tools also have undergone quite extensive modification to simplify the task to get job done. Backing the storage of most tools above is Windows Live Skydrive, on the free on cloud storage with up to 25GB space.
If you new to Windows Live Essential, the video below should provide you an adequate overview about this service.
Microsoft has officially released its latest productivity tool, Office 2010 last week. It marks continuous effort from Microsoft in desktop based productivity tool at the time when web based office tool has grown its user base as well.The beta version of Office 2010 has been available for download since last year with millions of downloads since then. The success of beta is essential to Microsoft, where valuable information and feedback for improvement are gathered.
Unless you’re living in the US where Office 2010 can be purchased and downloaded from Microsoft online store, you need to have a look at any Microsoft partners nationwide to make a purchase. But at least, please make the pricing available such as at Microsoft US website.
Meanwhile, Microsoft Malaysia via its Office 2010 website has an unusual way to woo customers to get Office 2010. Yes, they’re giving away free coffee for 1 year (yes, you read it right) to the first 1000 users. Why coffee? Perhaps it’s synonym with office workers who consume coffee more than other working environment.
In Malaysia, Office 2010 is currently available to consumers in three suites (source)
Office 2010 Home and Student edition includes Excel, PowerPoint, Word and OneNote : RM309
Office 2010 Home and Business includes Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word and OneNote : RM688
Office 2010 Professional includes Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, Access, Publisher and OneNote : RM1,799
As comparison, here is the Office Suite version in the US.
We all know that Chromium OS will finally unveiled someday, but we just don’t know when that will happens. It might be soon, if what folks at DownloadSquad spotted on Chromium OS Git repository, is an indication that vendor are currently customizing the OS based on their own configuration. The 3 vendors are the leading computer manufacturer HP, Acer and Dell.
It is interesting to see if Chrome OS will making it’s debut on PC platform or tablet that we all know is the hottest gadget this year. But as Android is more dominant on the later, I foresee it will most likely make it debut on the PC, the platform where Google is still less recognized. Furthermore the earliest Chromium OS was released on desktop, but remember there is also Chromium OS concept previewed in tablet. Now things become interesting again..
p/s : Not to get confused, Chrome is browser, and Chromium OS is an OS
Microsoft has just launched the Office Live that they have announced before in their cloud storage, Skydrive. You’ll need to have Live/Hotmail account to access Office Live and after that you’re set to go.
Well, as you can see the shortcut to create office documents such as word and excel are available at the right side of the screen. It’s not pretty but it works.
According to blog post, you also can also upload document (drag and drop if your browser have Silverlight), edit the document, collaboration, read the docs in smartphone and etc.
The UI is exactly like the Office 2007 and onward with ribbon and etc but with less feature. So you have have no problem to get familiar with Office Live. It’s pretty slow in my testing and saving the doc is not working in Chrome (not sure why, probably my case only). It works perfectly in Firefox though.
Google Docs still provide seamless experience in creating document online to me, but Office Live deserve the credit to have it’s Office suite online considerably fast. Whoever the best wins!
