Microsoft touts Mac-Windows collaboration at Macworld

Promises program to simplify document sharing between the rival OSs
By Gregg Keizer
January 6, 2009 (Computerworld) Microsoft Corp. today said it would launch new Macintosh software later this year that will let Office 2008 for Mac users collaborate with people running the Windows version of the application suite.
The company made the announcement at the Macworld Conference & Expo, where Apple Inc. delivered the keynote for the last time, without CEO Steve Jobs, a longtime fixture at the event.
Document Collaboration Companion will be released to a small number of beta testers next month, said a Microsoft spokeswoman in an e-mail today. However, Microsoft would not commit to a definitive final release timetable, saying only that it would deliver the software "later this year."
The spokeswoman said that the program will make it easier for users to download and upload documents to enterprise servers running SharePoint, Microsoft's browser-based collaboration platform, or to Office Live Workspace, the free online service that offers similar functionality. Document Collaboration Companion also will provide Mac-based tools to let Office users check shared documents in and out.
Microsoft touted the upcoming software and a planned makeover of Entourage -- the e-mail client for Office 2008 for Mac -- as its first moves toward providing some of the same kind of services to its Mac customers that those running Windows already enjoy.
"Entourage Exchange Web Services and the Document Collaboration Companion lets Mac Office users connect with counterparts on a PC," said Eric Wilfrid, general manager of Microsoft's Mac business group, in a separate statement. "These releases are the first step in harnessing the power of software plus services on the Mac."
Microsoft promised that Entourage will also be beefed up this year so that it's more on par with Outlook, the Windows e-mail client, in enterprises. As part of that upgrade, which Microsoft will offer later this year free of charge to Office 2008 users, it is transitioning Entourage to Exchange Web Services (EWS) for connecting to Exchange mail servers and dropping the currently supported WebDAV.
The changes will also include new support for synchronizing tasks, notes and categories in Entourage via an Exchange server.
A public beta for EWS will be released later this month, Microsoft said.

source:www.computerworld.com

Windows 7 beta leaks to Internet

Clues point to a mid-January release of public beta, but pirates have it now
By Gregg Keizer
Windows 7: Vista Reloaded
December 27, 2008 (Computer world) Pirated copies of a Windows 7 build pegged by many as the beta Microsoft Corp. will release next month have been leaked to the Internet, according to searches at several BitTorrent sites today.
A search on the Pirate Bay Bit Torrent site, for example, returned two Windows 7 Build 7000 listings, both of which had been posted Friday.
As of Saturday afternoon, one torrent on Pirate Bay showed more than 1,800 "seeders" -- the term for a computer that has a complete copy of the torrent file -- and about 8,500 "leechers," or computers that have downloaded only part of the complete torrent. The torrent is a disk image of the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate, Build 7000, according to users commenting on the site and elsewhere on the Internet.
Pirate Bay and other Bit Torrent sites, including Mininova, listed the beta build as a 2.44GB download.
This is not the first time Windows 7 has escaped from Microsoft's limited testing pool. Just hours after the company unveiled an earlier version at its Professional Developers Conference in late October, the alpha edition hit BitTorrent.
Users first reported the newest Windows 7 leak on Neowin.net's forums Friday, with the opening message and screen shots coming from someone identified as "+five star VIP," who said he was from Beijing.
Build 7000 is what Microsoft will issue next month as Windows 7 Beta, according to other reports by Windows bloggers who have copies. Paul Thurrott, for example, posted a review and screen shots of Build 7000 today on his "SuperSite for Windows" site, naming it as the beta build.
Although Microsoft has promised to open the beta to all users in early 2009, the company has been mum on an exact release date. Information published on its own Web site earlier this month, however, hinted that the beta will be available no later than Jan. 13.
Some commentators and bloggers have maintained that Microsoft may release the beta as early as Jan. 7, after CEO Steve Ballmer delivers a keynote that evening at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where he is expected to talk about Windows 7.
The successor to the perception- and problem-plagued Windows Vista will ship in late 2009 or early 2010, according to previous statements by Microsoft executives.

source:www.computerworld.com