The latest installment of Office, Microsoft’s long-running productivity suite was slated for a June release, and today is the day it lands in retail.

Yesterday, popular office supply store Staples sent out a mass email saying “Microsoft Office 2010 is Here!” with a link to a pre-order site, but we checked three local Staples stores in the Baltimore metro area, and none of them had the software stocked on shelves yet.

This morning, however, Microsoft made the Office 2010 retail launch official, and the software is now available in more than 35,000 retail stores worldwide; including Best Buy, Office Depot, Fnac, Harvey Norman, and PC World.

Office 2010′s beta phase was dramatically larger than it had been with previous versions, with some 9 million downloads from MSDN and TechNet.

Some highlights of Office 2010:

• All Office 2010 applications now use the “Ribbon” interface.
• Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and Publisher all have picture editing tools: crop, control brightness and contrast, sharpen or soften, and visual effects, and Powerpoint now has the ability to edit and embed videos.
• PowerPoint Broadcast Slideshow: lets you deliver presentations over the Web to up to 100 people.
• Increased synchronization with Office Live “cloud” tools such as SkyDrive, letting you collaborate and edit Office documents online with co-authoring functionality.
• “Backstage View”: save, share, print and publish documents across different Office applications from a single interface, vastly improving printing functionality.
• Improved Outlook interface and integration with third-party Web services such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

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Microsoft plans on releasing two critical security bulletins for its May 11 Patch Tuesday update, plugging critical holes in Windows and Office.

Both updates repair two critical vulnerabilities — one affecting Windows and the other in Microsoft Office — which can leave users susceptible to remote code execution attacks.

The patch will also be available to both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, although neither are affected by the critical vulnerabilities addressed in the May patch.

Microsoft, however, will not be releasing a patch this month for a recently detected security flaw in its Sharepoint Server and SharePoint Service.

“Our teams are still working on an update for that issue,” said Jerry Bryant, Microsoft group manager for response communications, in a company blog post. Microsoft released an advisory at the end of April warning users of a vulnerability in Windows SharePoint Service 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, given the slightly less severe ranking of “important,” which could potentially enable a hacker to infiltrate an organization’s system to access and steal sensitive information such as intellectual property and customer data. Microsoft anticipates a fix for the SharePoint flaw in June, which will likely to be included in the regularly scheduled update cycle.

Until Microsoft releases a fix for the SharePoint flaw, the company recommends that users apply the suggested workarounds, which includes getting an administrator to restrict access to the SharePoint Help.aspx in order to prevent an attack through this vector.

Bryant advised users to start preparing for the testing and deployment of both critical security bulletins “as soon as possible,” before the patches became available on May 11.

Bryant also reiterated to customers that Microsoft will eliminate support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2 starting July 13, recommending that they should upgrade to either a supported operating system or the latest service pack in order to keep receiving security updates.

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Four antivirus makers have weighed in on the release of Microsoft Security Essentials, and their opinions are all over the place. We asked various security companies for their opinion on MSE, which launched yesterday, and Symantec, ESET, Avast, and AVG responded with their thoughts.

Microsoft claims it is targeting consumers who currently don’t have any protection on their Windows PC, but of course MSE will end up on many computers that already have third-party security software installed. Since MSE is free, the software security market is going to get a serious shake-up, and here’s what Microsoft’s new competitors think about what’s about to happen.

Symantec, maker of the Norton line of products, says MSE doesn’t stand a chance in today’s market: “While we applaud any vendor that heightens consumer awareness of the need for computer security, it’s clear that the threat landscape has moved on from the product Microsoft is launching,” a Symantec spokesperson told Ars. “Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is a stripped down version of their old OneCare product which was poorly rated by industry experts and users alike. From a security perspective, this Microsoft tool offers reduced defenses at a critical point in the battle against cybercrime. Unique malware and social engineering tricks fly under the radar of traditional signature-based technology alone—which is what is employed by free security tools such as Microsoft’s”

ESET, maker of the NOD32 line of products, is unfazed by the product’s launch: “Certainly basic, but free, protection is better than no protection,” Christopher Dale, Public Relations Manager of ESET, told Ars. “For those whose primary concern is price, we would imagine MSE will hold great appeal while making the freeware market more competitive. The product doesn’t directly impact ESET as we offer a full-featured security solution w/ more configuration choices and free phone support.”

Avast is perfectly fine with Microsoft entering the market: “We are glad to see Microsoft joining us in offering free anti-virus/security protection to users,” Vince Steckler, CEO of Avast, told Ars. “We have long believed that top notch security protection should be freely available—that is why nearly 100 million users around the world protect their computers and data with our free avast! antivirus. Around the world there are about 500 million home computer users that need [to be] protected while using the Internet. We believe only around 20 percent of these users are using a traditional paid security product while 250 million are using avast! or one of the other high-quality free products. Users have already decided that security should be free—there are more users of free avast! than users of all paid products combined. But, free users should not be subjected to inferior or ‘basic’ protection.”

AVG, on the other hand, thinks Microsoft will push its product via as many anticompetitive ways as possible: “Microsoft will likely push MSE out via every automated channel available to them—which in and of itself poses all sorts of interesting anti-trust questions,” Siobhan MacDermott, VP Head of Public Policy, Corporate Communications, and Investor Relations for AVG Technologies, told Ars. “They will focus on gaining consumers through the simplicity of installing the product via routine channels of connection. On paper it makes sense, but in reality, we believe this will force consumers to unwittingly enter into a situation that makes them more vulnerable. Experts agree that the biggest nemesis to Windows was not the vulnerability of its code but rather the popularity of the operating system. It is a law of numbers; large communities create large pools of opportunities for thieves. If Microsoft leverages the power of its OS market to rapidly create a large community of MSE users, we believe those customers will be doubly vulnerable.”

There you have it; two antivirus makers are fine with Microsoft Security Essentials and the other two aren’t. We’re more surprised with the ones that are fine with it, since MSE can potentially steal customers away from them (in fact, many of our readers and users on other forums have already declared they are switching). In our first look at MSE yesterday, we were impressed with what Microsoft was offering as a free download for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. For those who have had a chance to install it, how do your thoughts compare to the above statements?

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There are many ways to measure how Windows 7 is doing. There are reports on new PC sales, tallies of boxed copy sales, and surveys of planned enterprise adoption, to name a few.

But one of the most encouraging signs for Microsoft is the lack of phone calls it is getting from people with problems. Overall, Microsoft said the volume of calls to its support lines is half of what it expected.

“Overall we are finding our call center volume is down significantly more than we expected,” said Barbara Gordon, vice president of customer support for Microsoft.

The drop in calls isn’t just due to the fact that Windows 7 appears less problem-plagued than its predecessor, though. In the weeks leading up to and following the operating system’s release, Microsoft also added two new ways to get help–through an online forum called Microsoft Answers and via the Microsoft Helps feed on Twitter.

“What we have found is we are seeing far more take-up of self-service…forums and Twitter to get responses,” Gordon said in an interview this week.

With the Microsoft Answers forums, which launched late last year, users submit questions and experienced community members offer answers that Microsoft workers later validate to make sure they are correct.

So far, Microsoft has validated some 60,000 solutions. The company says that 83 percent of English-language queries are answered within seven days. Those in other languages have a slightly lower rate, but even of those 78 percent are taken care of within a week.

Meanwhile, Microsoft went live with its Twitter help site in October. Users can post a tweet with “@microsofthelps” in the message and Microsoft will respond. A team of seven employees dedicated full time to the project work with the broader support organization to respond to the many tweets. The goal is to either answer simple questions or to point people to a place where they can get a more detailed answer.

“It’s hard to answer (most questions) in 140 characters,” Gordon said.

But, she said, social networks like Twitter, Gordon said, allow the company to realize a problem that could be affecting thousands of people via a single short message.

“It’s really like a customer megaphone,” Gordon said.

Gordon hopes the new online options will not only cut down on call center expenses, but ultimately improve overall customer satisfaction with Windows. Customer satisfaction an area where the Mac has traditionally outpaced the various PC brands.

But Gordon says she hopes to see Windows gain ground. “We are really working on this,” she said.

Although Apple touts its personal touch with its stores, Gordon suggests Microsoft’s high-tech approach might ultimately win it more fans. “If I can help myself without having to go to the mall and sit at a geek bar I will be happier,” she said.

Nonetheless, one of the main features of Microsoft’s two retail stores is an answer desk very similar to the “Genius Bar” found in Apple stores.

As for the questions people ask on Twitter, they range from the expected range of bugs and problems to inquiries about future versions of products. This week, for example, one user asked when to expect Windows 8. Although vague, the answer was at least as direct as anything a reporter would get by asking Redmond.

“It will be a few years until the next official version comes out,” Microsoft replied on the Twitter feed. “Keep an eye out on microsoft.com for future updates.”

In addition to building goodwill and cutting costs, the online forums also allow Microsoft to quickly see when a problem is affecting a significant number of users. Such mechanisms helped Microsoft to recognize and then solve a video driver problem that was causing some users to have their systems hang when they reached 62 percent completion on an upgrade to Windows 7.

Within a week, Microsoft had a solution on its Website and shortly thereafter it posted an automated “Fix It,” essentially a script that a user can click on to have the proper steps done automatically. The Windows 7 upgrade fix has already been used more than 35,000 times, Microsoft said.

“We’re getting people able to meet their needs themselves,” Gordon said.

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BRUSSELS – More than 100 million Europeans will get to pick a Web browser after Microsoft agreed to offer Internet users a choice to avoid fresh fines — a move that could represent a real thawing of long-standing tensions between the software company and the European Union.

In a deal with regulators Wednesday, Microsoft Corp. will from March provide a pop-up screen to all users of its Windows operating system, asking them to choose one or more of five major browsers — including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari — and seven smaller rivals.

In return, the European Commission will drop charges it filed against Microsoft in January, when it said tying Internet Explorer to Windows — already-installed on most computers — gave the browser an unfair advantage. That was the latest in a long list of concerns — in more than a decade of EU antitrust action, Microsoft has been fined euro1.7 billion.

Neelie Kroes, the EU’s competition commissioner, said the deal resolves “a serious competition concern” for a key market in the development of the Internet.

“It is as if you went to the supermarket and they only offered you one brand of shampoo on the shelf, and all the other choices are hidden out the back, and not everyone knows about them,” she said. “What we are saying today is that all the brands should be on the shelf.”

Microsoft is not totally out of the woods yet, as it can still be fined up to 10 percent of yearly global turnover without regulators having to prove their case if it doesn’t stick to its commitment for the next five years.

The EU is also still investigating a complaint that Microsoft isn’t sharing enough technical information that would help developers make compatible products; regulators reacted coolly to Microsoft’s offer Wednesday to provide developers more information to make their products compatible, saying they would check to see if it does help rivals.

The U.S. Department of Justice welcomed the deal which it said could enhance competition. It investigated Microsoft during the 1990s for trying to squeeze browser rival Netscape and settled the case in 2002 in a deal ordering the company to share some data with rivals.

However, U.S. regulators did not follow up more recent complaints, leaving the EU as the most active global antitrust enforcer probing Microsoft’s move into server, media and Web software.

Google said more competition among browsers would boost innovation and promote a shift to “cloud computing” where people use Internet-based applications to perform tasks that they now do offline — often using Microsoft programs for word processing or bookkeeping.

Meanwhile Mozilla — the maker of Internet Explorer’s nearest challenger, Firefox — said it was happy to see that the EU deal would stop Microsoft repeatedly prompting users to switch from other browsers to Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer has some 64 percent of the global browser market, followed by Firefox at nearly 25 percent, Apple’s Safari at 4 percent and Google’s Chrome at 3.9 percent, according to figures from Net Applications.

Opera, the Norwegian browser company that made the initial complaint to the EU, said it thought the browser screen would help it attract more users even though it will be competing against major brand names. Opera’s share is just over 2 percent.

Most European users of Windows XP, Vista or 7 will get the new choice screen from Microsoft’s automatic updates if they have Internet Explorer installed as their default browser. Users outside the 30 countries in the European economic area — the 27-nation EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein — won’t get the update.

Users will see a box that asks them to find out more about browsers before they click to download one or more of them. They can close the box to keep Internet Explorer if they want.

The EU says some 100 million computers will get the update by mid-March and another 30 million new computers will see it over the next five years. The choice of browsers will be updated every six months based on new market share information.

Microsoft must also report back to regulators in six month’s time to check how the program is working — and could make changes in the EU asks. The EU is also able to review the entire deal at the end of 2011.

Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith said he was pleased to resolve long-standing competition law issues.

Microsoft also pledged Wednesday to offer far more technical documentation on its most popular products to makers of rival software — including open source developers — and support some industry standards.

“We believe it represents the most comprehensive commitment to the promotion of interoperability in the history of the software industry,” he said in statement.

Thomas Vinje, a lawyer for the group of companies that complained about Microsoft’s interoperability, said it was “not yet clear” if Microsoft’s offer would tackle competitive problems in the industry.

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo may be tough competitors when it comes to Internet software and services, but they are putting their differences aside to build a developer community to tackle bigger picture problems like saving lives in emergencies.

The companies have joined with NASA, the World Bank, and PR agency SecondMuse to organize the first-ever Random Hacks of Kindness event, which was held at a warehouse space-cum community center called Hacker Dojo this weekend. For two days, coders worked on ways to use technology to help solve real-world problems, such as how people can get information and find each other during disasters.

 The event came about after representatives from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo attended a Crisis Camp conference for emergency and disaster relief groups in Washington, D.C. in May. The technologists decided that they would join forces to create a community of developers to build tools to help emergency workers.

Developers worked on a dozen or so tools that could help disaster and emergency workers in times of crisis. Several tools took advantage of social media sites, like Twitter, and SMS for information sharing. One project envisioned using laptops, routers, mobile devices, USB keys and Wi-Fi to create a mesh network for times when normal networks are down.

Several projects explored the use of maps, including one group that built a widget that allows a user to click on a point in a map to have the coordinates automatically inserted into a message that can then be posted to multiple social networks at once via the HelloTXT service.

The first-place prize went to a group primarily from NASA that worked on a mobile notification app that can be used when regular cellular networks are so bogged down people can’t make phone calls. Using the “I’m OK” app, people can easily notify friends and family members that they are safe via SMS by clicking one button. The “I’m OK” message is then instantly distributed to everyone a user has designated on a pre-set contact list.

Separately, NASA coders have created a GeoCam tool that was used by people fighting California fires earlier this year to place photos of burn areas that were taken by GPS-enabled cell phones on maps so workers can see what damage is like in specific locations.

In addition to training AMES Research Center employees to be first responders in disasters, NASA wants to offer developers use of the satellite and other earth science data collected by its space crafts, which comes to about four terabytes per day, said Robert Schingler, a project manager in the office of center director at NASA Ames research center at nearby Moffett Field. NASA also has tools to analyze the data, which provide information about things like sea surface temperatures, ice sheet activity, and aerosols in the upper atmosphere, he said.

“We’ve got 40 years of data,” Schingler said. But, NASA needs a good application programming interface (API) so developers can make better use of it, he said. Meanwhile, the tools developed at Random Hacks of Kindness events could be used by workers at the World Bank and other agencies.

“It’s a perfect opportunity to mobilize the technology community to work on issues such as sustainable development and disaster relief,” said Emma Phillips, a consultant in disaster risk management and sustainable development at the World Bank. “This is a first step in building community, and bringing together the public and private sectors for a common goal.”

The next Random Hacks of Kindness event will be early next year in Washington, D.C.

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A Texas judge’s order that Microsoft pay more than $240 million in damages to an obscure Canadian firm and stop selling its popular Word program within 60 days appears to have triggered more patent suits against the software maker in the plaintiff-friendly Lone Star State, InformationWeek has learned.

Allvoice Developments US, a provider of speech recognition systems, and mobile software developer EMG Technology both filed suits against Microsoft in recent days in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas, where judge Leonard Davis a week ago ruled in favor of Toronto-based i4i in its action against Microsoft.

Allvoice claims that speech recognition support built into Windows XP and Windows Vista violates its patent on the technology. Allvoice also alleges that Microsoft discussed using its technology in Windows but later rejected it. Allvoice is seeking unspecified damages against Microsoft.

EMG, meanwhile, contends that Microsoft’s Windows CE, PocketPC, and Windows Mobile products infringe its patent for viewing Web content on a mobile device. EMG also lists investment broker Scottrade and Southwest Airlines in its complaint.

EMG is seeking unspecified damages.

While the actions might ordinarily be dismissed as nuisance suits brought by patent trolls (EMG, which has a barely functioning Web site, previously filed a case against Apple), Judge Davis’ stunning order last week in favor of i4i shows anything’s possible in the Eastern Texas federal court jurisdiction.

A 2006 New York Times article labeled the Eastern District’s Marshall, Texas base “the patent lawsuit capital of the nation, where plaintiffs are more likely to get a favorable judgment.” Some of the Court’s rulings have raised concerns about software patents and sparked calls for reform.

Davis last week took the unprecedented step of ordering Microsoft to stop selling Word 2003 and Word 2007 in the U.S. within 60 days. The decision shows just how far Eastern Texas jurists are willing to go—not only at the expense of corporations but also at that of consumers—to protect what they see as patent plaintiff’s rights.

Microsoft said it plans to appeal Davis’ ruling. On Friday, the company filed an emergency motion that would forestall its having to post a bond against the millions in dollars in damages Davis levied against it—including $40 million the judge imposed for what he said was Microsoft attorneys’ trial misconduct.

Source: InformationWeek

SEATTLE — A federal district court judge has ordered Microsoft (MSFT) to stop selling Word in the U.S. — and the tiny company behind the lawsuit is digging in for a David vs. Goliath showdown.

Toronto-based i4i, which has 30 employees, claims that Microsoft violated an obscure patent related to Extensible Markup Language or XML. It’s a key software component of many websites and computer programs, including Word.

Judge Leonard Davis agreed Tuesday, ordering Microsoft to pay $290 million in fines and stop selling Word in the U.S. in 60 days. That could derail a core business for the world’s largest software maker.

As part of Microsoft Office, Word is used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Office accounted for more than $3 billion in sales in the company’s last fiscal year.

“It’s not a question of fear or pride or anything else,” Loudon Owen, i4i chairman says. “We’re very respectful of Microsoft, but when you’re in the right you have to persevere.”
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Microsoft plans to appeal. “We are disappointed by the court’s ruling,” said Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz in a statement. “We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid.”

I4i, which mainly makes software for drug and defense companies, obtained the patent for a “customized XML” tool in 1998. XML is a specialized alphabet that can capture any kind of computer file as a regular text.

Microsoft started using XML as an alternative way to save Word files in Word 2003 and made it the default format for all Office files in Office 2007.

This made it easier for Microsoft and its partners to create programs such as accounting software that generates reports in Word formats, says Rob Helm, analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft.

I4i sued Microsoft in 2007, claiming that Word uses the patented process. Now, “Microsoft is behind the eight ball and has 60 days to see if it can get the federal appeals court to stay the injunction,” says Henry Sneath, a Pittsburgh intellectual property lawyer.

No one expects Microsoft to actually pull Word off the market. It’s a big company with deep pockets that has faced many legal challenges over the years. It could win the appeal, settle with i4i, or even buy out the company.

Source: USA Today