Recently in Office software Category

IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA) announced the launch of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) Toolkit Union, a new open-source software community project. The ODF Toolkit will use an initial software code contribution from Sun to provide developers with an Application Programming Interface (API) for reading, writing and manipulating ODF documents. One part of the initial code contribution is an ODF Validator, a tool that validates OpenDocument files and checks certain conformance criteria. The Toolkit targets developers who want to create new applications and solutions ranging from content management, business workflows and activities to Web-based document solutions. The ODF Toolkit Union will complement other industry efforts such as the ODF standardization work done at the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). The ODF Toolkit open source software project is established at http://odftoolkit.org

Google announced they now support Microsoft Office OOXML (Office Open XML) files in Gmail and web search. This means you can now view documents created using Microsoft Office 2007: .docx documents, .xslx spreadsheets and .pptx presentations as HTML. http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/11/view-as-html-office-open-xml-files.html

Zoho announced Zoho Share, a central repository that aggregates and lists all business and personal user content published in Zoho Show presentations, Zoho Sheet spreadsheets, and Zoho Writer documents and PDFs. Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, and Zoho Show give users several options to share and publish their content, including sharing it with select users, embedding it in a blog or making it public and accessible to anyone online. Published content, however, remains in the individual Zoho applications, with no single point of access to all published content, regardless of type or author. Zoho Share gathers all the Zoho users' content published in the individual Zoho applications and makes it available from a central interface. When Zoho Business moves out of private beta, Zoho Share will serve as the dashboard for all published content within an organization. When users first arrive at Zoho Share they will find the following tabs across the top of the homepage: Content - displays all presentations, documents, spreadsheets, and PDF files published by Zoho users. Each content type can be sorted by criteria that include featured, recent, popular, top rated, and license based; People - shows all Zoho users who have published content. These content authors can be sorted by top contributors, recent users, and all users. Clicking on an author's name reveals all content published by that author; My Area - displays all of the individual user's files, both private and public. Users can also edit their files and publish content that was previously private; Upload - lets users publish desktop files directly to Zoho Share. Users can define the license type for their uploaded content. From the Upload page, users can select from "all rights reserved," "public domain," and six variations of "attribution." Users do not need a Zoho account to view published content on Zoho Share. Publishing content, however, requires a Zoho account as does posting messages and adding comments. http://www.zoho.com, http://www.adventnet.com

The Imaging Source, the manufacturer of TX Text Control, has announced version 14.0. The latest version of TX Text Control now offers ISO ratified format as one of its many supported file formats. In addition to the new XML based MS Word format, legacy Word formats, such as Word 97 and 2003, Rich Text Format (RTF) and HTML are also supported. Furthermore, Adobe PDF documents can be created and saved. TX Text Control 14 has been optimized for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, supports the newest .NET framework 2.0 and 3.5 and ships in 64 bit and 32 bit versions for all current Windows editions. After a long development cycle, the word processing components now has a number of new features: Document sections with various page formats and different headers and footers are supported. MS Word formatted documents and templates, which contain mail-merge fields can be created. All the typical fields of Microsoft's Office packet are now supported by TX Text Control as default. The server functionality has also been extended to include the new MailMerge component, with which MS Word templates can be populated with data from a database. This allows print-ready documents to be created on the server. The server version of TX Text Control ships with a freely distributable template designer. http://www.textcontrol.com/news/versions/1400/

Microsoft announced that customers of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with a qualified Volume Licensing Software Assurance enrollment can benefit from SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS), a new, partner-delivered offering designed to help customers successfully plan their deployment of SharePoint. Microsoft Corp. SDPS introduces new knowledge offerings to the SharePoint partner community for customers' benefit. These tools include SharePoint Deployment Plan Templates, Architecture Design Guidance Documents, and SharePoint server farm deployment guidance. Microsoft partners that currently have Microsoft Competencies in Information Worker Portals and Collaboration, Enterprise Content Management, or Search specializations can now advance their skills and become certified to participate in the SDPS offering. In return, these partners will be reimbursed by Microsoft to deliver SharePoint deployment planning consultation to customers. In addition, SDPS-certified partners will be able to participate in a new online community that Microsoft has established to enable collaboration and information sharing among partners on SharePoint deployment best practices. SDPS is available now. Partners can get more details and register to be an SDPS provider at http://www.microsoftsdps.com/

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced a new version of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, the company's Web conferencing and eLearning solution. Acrobat Connect Pro includes new features for Web conferencing such as options for archiving and editing recorded online meetings; new presence capabilities that can allow federation with instant messaging (IM) clients; and compliance and usage reporting tools. eLearning enhancements include break-out rooms to let students in virtual classes initiate separate conversations online; rapid authoring of video-based content; integration with Learning Management Systems (LMS) from Blackboard and SumTotal; and tools that track and organize online classes. Users also can easily tailor training sessions or meetings that help capture participants' attention and increase knowledge retention, resulting in an online learning experience remarkably similar to an in-person class. Combined with the new version of Adobe Presenter, also introduced, Acrobat Connect Pro can enable users to hold online meetings that incorporate Adobe Flash Player compatible presentations. Adobe Presenter can give you the ability to turn Microsoft PowerPoint presentations into multimedia experiences that include video, narration, animations, interactivity and advanced quizzes. New capabilities in this release include question pooling and randomization, easy-to-work-with video, and the ability to publish presentations to mobile devices or within PDF files. Acrobat Connect Pro is expected to be available by the end of May 2008, on a hosted or on-premise basis. It will be available in English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese. http://www.adobe.com/

Kapow Technologies introduced Kapow OnDemand, giving companies the ability to create enterprise mashup applications that provide structured "web intelligence" in a matter of minutes. The company's new hosted service is designed to be the fastest way to deliver real-time data from the web into Excel spreadsheets. Kapow OnDemand is based on the Kapow Mashup Server. Kapow OnDemand provides access to the underlying data sources and services to be mashed up. In addition to Excel spreadsheets, companies can also import web data into existing applications and IT infrastructure via XML. In conjunction with the Kapow OnDemand announcement, the company unveiled Kapow Connector for Excel. When used in combination with Kapow OnDemand or the Kapow Mashup Server Web 2.0 Edition, Excel users can find and execute web services that deliver data directly to their spreadsheet. The Kapow Connector for Excel automates and extends the value of spreadsheet-based applications, and makes it feasible to collect and analyze web intelligence in real-time at the user's desktop. Analysts can automate the combination of massive amounts of market data related to competitive pricing, product mix analysis or financial metrics. Kapow OnDemand includes a Robot Designer to construct custom web harvesting feeds and services in a flexible role-based execution runtime. Additionally, a full set of tools is provided that allows monitoring and managing a portfolio of services and feeds to provide Kapow OnDemand site administrators with control and insight into their OnDemand environment. Kapow OnDemand is available now. Product pricing is based on a flexible subscription offering starting as low as $3,400 per month. http://www.kapowtech.com/

Google announced they are rolling out offline access to Google Docs over the next few weeks, starting with a small percentage of users. According to a post on the Official Google Docs Blog: "With Google Docs offline (powered by Google Gears), I can take my little piece of the cloud with me wherever I go. Once enabled, I have a local version of my document list and editors, along with my documents. As long as I have an Internet connection, every change I make is saved to the cloud. When I lose my connection, I sacrifice some features, but I can still access my documents (for this initial release, you can view and edit word processing documents; right now we don't support offline access to presentations or spreadsheets...). Everything I need is saved locally. And I do everything through my web browser, even when I'm offline ... When my connection comes back, my documents sync up again with the server. It's all pretty seamless: I don't have to remember to save my documents locally before packing my laptop for a trip. I don't have to remember to save my changes as soon as I get back online. And I don't have to switch applications based on network connectivity." Offline access is only available in English for now. They're working on offline access in other languages. It will also be available to Google Apps users soon, and domain administrators that want it now can opt-in via their control panel. http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/03/bringing-cloud-with-you.html

DocsCorp announced it has significantly expanded its integration capability to include NetDocuments, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider. NetDocuments, a vendor of SaaS document, email and collaborative document services, provides legal, real estate, financial and health service professionals with instant access to their "work" (documents, emails, projects etc) no matter where they are. Documents are stored in a repository that users access through their browser. Integration with pdfDocs Desktop means that NetDocuments users will be able to "pull down" documents to their local system, convert them to PDF and "push" them back as new or related documents. Alternatively, users can save documents into NetDocuments as PDFs direct from MS Word. DocsCorp plans to extend its integration within the next couple of months to help NetDocuments provide a feature-rich, efficient and secure document service to its clients. Some of the features earmarked to be included in the next release will be the ability to save a document back into NetDocuments as the current or new version of an existing document. http://www.netdocuments.com, http://www.docscorp.com/

ThinkFree announced a new version of their online office suite to be available April 7th, 2008. They will now open their new ThinkFree Manager service (previously known as ThinkFree Premium) to everyone for free. Customers will now be able to use the ThinkFree Office suite online/offline when creating or editing documents. Previously only a select number of people were allowed to use the ThinkFree Premium service. Other major new features include: Hierarchical Documents Planning - a way of organizing many documents through subfolders and tree hierarchy features; a 'Workspace' to collaborate with other users - to be able to collaborate with people, share documents, and manage on-going projects through the 'Workspace'; and 'Quick Edit' mode has been replaced with a new 'Web Editor' based on WYSIWYG-XHTML technology (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get). This will allow you to edit documents without installing any other applications onto your machine. http://www.thinkfree.com/