Jun 16, 2006 | blog
I’m a little disappointed in both Microsoft and Adobe on this topic. On the one hand, Microsoft has answered the requests of many of its customers in adding the feature to the current Word 2007 beta 2 release. On the other, you have them also adding their new XPS document format – a competitor the PDF format that we all use.
Adobe, is threatening Microsoft in statements about how Microsoft’s history of “embrace and extend” has destroyed other products and markets, in essence absorbing the market to the point that there is no point in competing. Of course Adobe does keep pointing out that their PDF format is an open standard and is the “de facto standard” for portable documents.
The disappointing part is that Adobe simply doesn’t trust Microsoft on this, and Microsoft has done nothing to make anyone believe that it isn’t after conquering the portable document market. The same behavior has been seen before on numerous occasions and Adobe has every right to be worried – Acrobat & PDF are one of its most visible brands that define the company.
So how do these partners move forward? How will they resolve this in the best interests of the customer? Microsoft’s Word development team had the right idea in making it easy for their customers to create PDF documents from Word documents. The XPS document format is interesting, but why create another portable format when PDF is already entrenched? What “enhancements” could Microsoft bring to the table in a service pack and render the Adobe Acrobat unable to read the new file format? Who’s to say that’s what would happen? Why wouldn’t it?
The simple thing for both companies to do is for Microsoft to abandon its XPS format in this case, actually enter into a licensing agreement with Adobe with verbiage to explicitly accept that Adobe is the sole developer of the PDF format. Adobe would generate royalties from licensing and both companies customers would gain from the agreement.
Of course the reality is that PDF may be an open standard, but Adobe’s Acrobat Pro is a $125 shipping product, and simply having PDF creation capabilities in Word virtually eliminates the need for this product, regardless of who develops the file format going forward. Add to that – if Word usurps Acrobat’s creation abilities, what incentive is there for Adobe to expend resources to develop and distribute a free reader for it?
Also, don’t forget that competition is the lubrication of innovation. Interesting stuff will develop because of this little riff.
Jun 14, 2006 | blog
Ok, thought I’d give a quick update on where I’m at using OneNote as a blogging tool, and I’ll try to keep it short.
ITS GREAT!
So I was able to follow Chris Pratley’s workaround (look at the bottom of the post) to get blogging through Word to work. And it does! Here are the steps I do have to go thru:
Simply highlight what you want to post, right-click and select “Blog This”. OneNote then shoots the selection over to Word and uses the blog template that ships with Beta2.
Edit the post if needed, and then I publish the post as a draft to my blog.
Once the draft post is on my blog, I can log in and make sure the formatting is correct, select the categories I want for the post, and add the
Technorati tags.
Finally I correct the date for the post since Word currently generates an incorrect date.
Publish post
So that’s it! Yes there are a few steps to the process, but being able to use OneNote as the creation tool is simply incredible.
Jun 13, 2006 | blog
Ok, maybe I was a little quick to dismiss OneNote as a blogging tool. My issue is with the ability to post directly from OneNote something it does not do currently and not with the software itself.
As Chris Pratley noted in a post on his blog, you can use a workaround to post to a blog through Word 2007. Interesting…
Well, Im going to keep using OneNote as a post creation tool, mainly because its great for saving quick notes, ideas and stuff for each post. Once the post is created, Ill do something like copy to w.bloggar to post to my blog.
The combination of Word & OneNote 2007 has huge potential for bloggers, and I hope that the functionality is fleshed out a bit more. To that end, Im going to post a list of feature requests for Word & OneNote specifically for bloggers.
Jun 12, 2006 | blog
I’ve been looking for better tools to write, manage, and post to my blog lately – and I’m still looking. The freebie tools are interesting, but are not working that well for me. w.bloggar is about the best one for post creation, and it lets me save posts as files on my PC, so I could manage them in a set of folders prior to posting.
Writely is another tool I’ve been using to write & manage, but not to post. I had been posting directly from Writely, but it soon started to display this ugly skill of skewering my blog layout. The first time I thought it was something I did and it took me about 2 days to track it down, then I wised up.
So this past week I started trying to use Microsoft’s OneNote 2003/2007 as my blog post manager. While it does not have the ability to post directly to a blog, it seemed to be a great way to organize by folders, tabs, and pages all the research, pictures, links, and posts for my blog.
While OneNote is great at doing exactly the thing I was hoping for – organizing & managing the research and post creation – it failed at the most simply thing. Or at least Windows did – Copy & Paste.
When I copied the post text and pasted it into WordPress, the full HTML formatting followed the text. Now maybe I’m being stupid again (shh…), and there is a simple way in Windows/Office/OneNote to copy only the text – like when you paste in most Office apps, you can choose unformatted text as an option. If there is will someone point that out to this slow IT guy? 🙂
If I can get past the copy & paste issue, I’ll be using OneNote full time. I’m about ready to try and request the product at work, it is that helpful to the way I work. Being able to combine all forms of digital information into one page is huge – makes me want to get a Tablet PC ;).
Jun 12, 2006 | blog
Paul Thurrott has posted a review of Windows Live OneCare on his SuperSite about a week ago (I know, I’m slow). Looks to be a good review of the product, as Paul gives some background information on the product and how it came to its current form.
Along with some shameless self-promotional plugs, Paul covers the product in detail, along with some good screen shots of OneCare in action. Performance, usability, and feature set are covered in this review.
Windows Live OneCare is a $50/yr. service provided by Microsoft. The OneCare product includes a managed firewall, antivirus, anti-malware, and performance tuner in one easy to use package. The annual service cost of $50 includes the license to run OneCare on up to 3 computers, so it ends up being a great deal. Compare this product to Symantec and McAfee’s products – it’ll run rings around them (my opinion).
I’ve been using this product for about 9 months, since some of the early betas, and have been continually impressed with the security it provides, and the performance compared with competitor’s products.
